Re: Adding makemandb as build tool for man.db

On Wed, 10 Oct 2018 at 20:05, Robert Swindells <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> [email protected] wrote:
> >On 10/9/18 3:02 AM, Martin Husemann wrote:
> >> On Tue, Oct 09, 2018 at 09:46:48AM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
> >>> On lower powered (and particularly lower memory boxes), the makemandb
> >>> on first boot after install can run for some time and significantly
> >>> affect the performance of the system (in extreme cases for several
> >>> hours).
> >> It is not so much memory, but slow disk access that makes it painfull.
> >> Most sparc machines do pretty well, mac68k is a disaster.
> >>
> >> Even if you distribute the database, it will take some serious time on
> >> each boot to check it is up to date.
> >>
> >> Maybe we should add an rc.conf option to delay it after boot (i.e. sleep
> >> three hours and only then start the man page check), defaulting to 0 (i.e.
> >> no delay) on most architectures but make sysinst configure it to a few
> >> hours on slow architectures.
> >
> >Maybe add a rc.conf option to disable man page processing
> >altogether?
>
> We already have one:
>
> makemandb=NO
>
> You also need a line in /etc/daily.conf though to keep it turned off:
>
> run_makemandb=NO

As a useful initial step how about sysinst setting makemandb=NO for
low memory/cpu machines (possibly RAM < x or uname-p in y), we can
then expand that later.

I would be inclined to leave the run_makemandb alone in cron at this
stage as its the overnight processing, but happy to be persuaded
otherwise :)

David