Hi. I did some testing installing using eatmydata to see how much it could reduce the installation time. I used the enclosed test script to compare the installation time for three test setup. One is the normal one, the other is using dpkg-divert to divert apt-get, aptitude and dpkg, while the third uses the Dir::Bin::dpkg setting to use a dpkg wrapper with eatmydata enabled.
The installation was done with 100Mbit/s connection to the Debian mirror, so most of the time is spend unpacking. I tried using two package sets, kde-standard and kde-full, picked to get a fairly large number of packages installed. This was the result. The number is in seconds. Installing kde-standard Wed Sep 17 09:54:50 CEST 2014 used: 357 divert Wed Sep 17 10:00:51 CEST 2014 used: 359 dpkg_conf Wed Sep 17 10:09:38 CEST 2014 used: 525 default Installing kde-full with policy-rc.d in place. Wed Sep 17 10:29:33 CEST 2014 used: 424 divert Wed Sep 17 10:36:29 CEST 2014 used: 413 dpkg_conf Wed Sep 17 10:45:35 CEST 2014 used: 543 default As you can see, the reduction in installation time is in the range 21-32 percent of the current default. It is not obvious to me why the Dir::Bin::dpkg approach can be quicker than the divert approach. This might be caused by other issues, as the last run was done just after boot. Perhaps the order these tests are executed matter? Anyway, just wanted to share with you this data point comparing the different ways to speed up package installation in Debian. ------------------------ test-install-speed ---------------------------- #!/bin/sh suite=testing chroot=chroot-testing mirror=http://http.debian.net/debian mirror=http://ftp.uio.no/debian unset TMP TMPDIR # Never wait for input DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive export DEBIAN_FRONTEND make_chroot() { debootstrap $suite $chroot $mirror printf "#!/bin/sh\nexit 101\n" > $chroot/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d chmod a+rx $chroot/usr/sbin/policy-rc.d chroot $chroot apt-get install -y eatmydata } install_chroot_pkgs() { chroot $chroot apt-get install -y kde-full } test_default() { make_chroot install_chroot_pkgs } test_divert() { make_chroot for bin in dpkg apt-get aptitude tasksel ; do file=/usr/bin/$bin # Test that the file exist and have not been diverted already. if [ -f $chroot/usr/bin/$bin ] ; then info "diverting /usr/bin/$bin using eatmydata" printf "#!/bin/sh\neatmydata $bin.distrib \"\$@\"\n" \ > $chroot/usr/bin/$bin.edu chmod 755 $chroot/usr/bin/$bin.edu chroot $chroot dpkg-divert --package debian-edu-config \ --rename --quiet --add /usr/bin/$bin ln -sf ./$bin.edu $chroot/usr/bin/$bin else error "unable to divert /usr/bin/$bin, as it is missing." fi done install_chroot_pkgs } # https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=613428 test_dpkg_conf() { make_chroot cat > $chroot/usr/bin/dpkg-eatmydata <<'EOF' #!/bin/sh /usr/bin/eatmydata /usr/bin/dpkg "$@" EOF chmod a+rx $chroot/usr/bin/dpkg-eatmydata cat > $chroot/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/dpkg-eatmydata <<EOF Dir::Bin::dpkg "/usr/bin/dpkg-eatmydata"; EOF install_chroot_pkgs } for f in divert dpkg_conf default ; do rm -rf "$chroot" start=$(date +%s) test_$f end=$(date +%s) (LC_ALL=C date; echo "used: $(($end - $start)) $f" ) >> test.log done echo tail test.log ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
