Subject: partman: menus are very slow Package: debian-installer Severity: wishlist
*** Please type your report below this line *** The menus used by the partition manager during an install in low-memory mode are very slow. Several seconds elapse between <Enter> and the next menu. This is too long. The delay should be 1/2 second or less, similar to the reponse for choosing timezone (continent, country, zone) at the beginning of install. Examining /lib/partman/lib/base.sh, the culprit is the intensive use of constructs such as "$(cat $dir/default_response)". This takes way too long. First, avoid searching for "cat" every time. The default search tries: /usr/local/sbin/cat /usr/local/bin/cat /usr/sbin/cat /usr/bin/cat /sbin/cat before finding /bin/cat. Instead: use 'which' or 'type' to do the search once, assign the result to a local variable, and expand the variable instead of searching: CAT=$(which cat) $($CAT $dir/default_response) Or, in nearly all cases the result is known ahead of time: CAT=/bin/cat Second, use a shell builtin if possible: $(< $dir/default_response) which is documented and works in bash. The current version 0.5.4-11 of 'ash' does not complain, but also does not give the correct result. Third, use shell text strings where possible: PM':'$dir':'default_response=$( ... ) # capture value as text $PM':'$dir':'default_response # expand text variable This is a good candidate for the fastest possible method, although it looks ugly. -- System Information: Debian Release: lenny/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: armel (armv5tel) Kernel: Linux 2.6.25-2-ixp4xx Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C (charmap=ANSI_X3.4-1968) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash -- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
