[Aptitude-devel] apt vs. SSD computers

[jidanni at jidanni.org]

OK, Bob, (sorry Otto) here's what happens when we hit Y to aptitude's

"No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]"

Which is the slowest thing I can recreate today.
(It takes 28 seconds to do one big no-op.)

$ vmstat -n 2
procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu----
 r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in   cs us sy id wa
 0  0      0 483308  25596 408892    0    0     0     0   46  125  0  1 99  0
 1  0      0 478412  25596 408892    0    0     0     0  156  173 23  2 76  0
 0  1      0 459580  25608 432576    0    0     0  1854  330  144 42 13  0 45
 0  1      0 459340  25616 432576    0    0     0  2406  102  125  0  1  0 99
 0  1      0 459216  25620 432576    0    0     0  2280  101  125  1  2  0 98
 0  1      0 459092  25624 432576    0    0     0  1992   89  123  1  1  0 98
 0  1      0 458720  25624 432576    0    0     0  3234  109  132  0  2  0 98
 0  1      0 458720  25624 432576    0    0     0     0  122  263  1  1  0 99
 0  1      0 459092  25636 432576    0    0     0   992   94  129  3  1  0 97
 0  1      0 459092  25636 432576    0    0     0   264   84  123  1  0  0 99
 0  1      0 459092  25636 432576    0    0     0    68   96  224  1  1  0 99
 1  0      0 492092  25652 408892    0    0     0    22  316  242 41  5  0 55
 1  0      0 483048  25652 408892    0    0     0     0  540  175 97  3  0  0
 0  0      0 496516  25652 408892    0    0     0     0  228  134 34  4 63  0

So a lot of
       bo: Blocks sent to a block device (blocks/s).

$ vmstat -s #ASUS EEEPC 702
      1026020 K total memory
       529528 K used memory
       313028 K active memory
       190536 K inactive memory
       496492 K free memory
        25760 K buffer memory
       408936 K swap cache
            0 K total swap
            0 K used swap
            0 K free swap
       123951 non-nice user cpu ticks
           25 nice user cpu ticks
        16593 system cpu ticks
       252369 idle cpu ticks
        38084 IO-wait cpu ticks
            0 IRQ cpu ticks
         1070 softirq cpu ticks
            0 stolen cpu ticks
       384961 pages paged in
       498636 pages paged out
            0 pages swapped in
            0 pages swapped out
      1314564 interrupts
      2673249 CPU context switches
   1355119438 boot time
         5179 forks

P.S., I use

APT::Cache::AllVersions false;
APT::Clean-Installed false;
APT::Get::Purge true;
APT::Install-Recommends false;
Acquire::PDiffs::FileLimit "1";//671440 don't use diffs if we would need more than 4 diffs
Acquire::http::No-Cache true;//564829
Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt true;
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps true;//587582 at bugs.debian.org
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why true;//511230 at bugs.debian.org
Aptitude::Purge-Unused true;
DPkg::Options "--force-unsafe-io";

And it seems to make things much better here on my SSD EEEPC 702.
Bob, do CC me so I see this faster...