[Bug 759561] Re: updatedb.mlocate should warn if it takes too long / time out

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** Changed in: mlocate (Ubuntu)
       Status: New => Confirmed

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Title:
  updatedb.mlocate should warn if it takes too long / time out

Status in “mlocate” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: mlocate

  In the course of doing some numerical computations, I've created
  several tens of millions of small files.  (If you're curious, they are
  a cache of intermediate results; this computation runs for several
  weeks.  And, no, the cache couldn't be drastically smaller without
  impacting performance.)  During that time, I started wondering why the
  heck my system 's performance was so poor: it would be running it's
  disk all the time, but nothing that showed up on "top" was doing that
  much disk activity.

  Anyway, it turned out to be updatedb.mlocate grinding away, taking
  nearly 24 hours to scan my disk.   That's fine -- I fixed it by
  tweaking the configuration file -- but it's hardly the first program
  you think of checking when your system grinds to a halt.  Nor does it
  really show up as active on "top" because it uses very little CPU
  time.

  Anyhow, life would be more pleasant if updatedb.mlocate recognized it
  was well outside the bounds of normal operation and sent an e-mail, or
  left a message in syslog.   Something like "mlocate.updatedb still
  running after 2 hours: either you have a lot of files to index or
  /etc/updatedb.conf may be misconfigured."     One of the configuration
  options would be the warning timeout interval.

  Since mlocate isn't used intensively, and since it's run once per day,
  the timeout shouldn't be set too high: I'd recommend 2 hours.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
  Package: mlocate 0.22.2-1ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-28.50-generic 2.6.35.11
  Uname: Linux 2.6.35-28-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Wed Apr 13 09:08:01 2011
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release amd64 (20100816.1)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
   PATH=(custom, user)
   LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: mlocate

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