update-apt-xapi --- not nice!

When this commands runs it hogs CPU up to 100%. It happens to me on Ubuntu 11.10 and has been known to happen to others.

I found two "fixes":
http://naveenubuntu.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubuntu-update-apt-xapi-takes-lot-of-cpu.html
and
http://sapnwnewbie.blogspot.com/2010/11/high-cpu-usage-by-update-apt-xapi.html

Comments, anyone?

PS: I still have Synaptic as a carry-over from 11.04 because I upgraded. People who did a clean 11.10 install may not have Synaptic unless they subsequently installed it.

 

This issue is intense in my poor AMD C50 Netbook where the CPU gets taxed tgo 100% for a brief moment, however its no sweat for my i7 laptop or dual Xeon desktop.

 

http://askubuntu.com/questions/79481/is-100-cpu-usage-harmful-while-update-apt-xapi-runs

I wanted to ask about some of the suggestions I've come across about fiddling with the "niceness" but didn't!
http://naveenubuntu.blogspot.com/2011/10/ubuntu-update-apt-xapi-takes-lot-of-cpu.html
http://sapnwnewbie.blogspot.com/2010/11/high-cpu-usage-by-update-apt-xapi.html

 

This POS seems to fire every Monday (at least). It ran for about 1 min 15 sec. I really don't like it!

 

Here's a link to a bug that implies that removing it doesn't end the world. And the good news is that it may not be present in 12.04 (according to a comment in the bug)!

 

But I think I saw it today

 

hi, i had the same problem. i checked to see which fix i used, as update-apt-xapi runs very smoothly now. the fix i used was editting /etc/cron.weekly/apt-xapian-index

Code:

#!/bin/sh

CMD=/usr/sbin/update-apt-xapian-index

# ionice should not be called in a virtual environment
# (similar to man-db cronjobs)
egrep -q '(envID|VxID):.*[1-9]' /proc/self/status || IONICE=/usr/bin/ionice

# Check if we're on battery
if which on_ac_power >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    on_ac_power >/dev/null 2>&1
    ON_BATTERY=$?

    # Here we use "-eq 1" instead of "-ne 0" because
    # on_ac_power could also return 255, which means
    # it can't tell whether we are on AC or not. In
    # that case, run update-a-x-i nevertheless.
    [ "$ON_BATTERY" -eq 1 ] && exit 0
fi

# Rebuild the index
if [ -x "$CMD" ]
then
    if [ -x "$IONICE" ]
    then
        nice -n 19 $IONICE -c 3 $CMD --quiet
    else
        nice -n 19 $CMD --quiet
    fi
fi

NOTE this is on "Linux Mint 12 Lisa"

 

Hi & thanks. I will look at that. BTW, it doesn't look like having Synaptic installed or not is a factor. This is a totally clean 12.04 install, new /home new everything which doesn't have Synaptic.

 

well, i don't know it seems if i read my linux posts from 5 years a go i knew what i was doing, now i'm at noob level lol. i tried these commands to no avail

Code:

sudo apt-cache show update-apt-xapi
sudo apt-cache depends update-apt-xapi
sudo apt-rdepends update-apt-xapi
sudo debtree update-apt-xapi

what makes me more depressed is Mrk and i started using linux at about the same time and i bet he comes a long with the right answer lol. still, i have vowed to start getting fit and reading a linux book every 2 weeks, so Mrk better watch his back