Hi, all, Not too many facts here, will probably have to gather them.
My m/c is a standalone potatoe box running in console mode with a dial up to ISP for email. The other evening I booted up, and then promptly connected for the email. Shortly after booting up, machine probably had been off for 24h, there is a flurry of activity from the hdd. I imagine this is the file system being updated. A look at top, for instance, shows ls being run and lots of other stuff too. This is a regular occurrence. At this time I was downloading the email when this happened (wvdial, exim, fetchmail, etc) and the email download came to a grinding halt while we had some many minutes of automatic operation tidy-up or whatever. We don't get free local calls here, the local monopoly has punitive rates designed to make them rich from internet surfers, so this is a matter of serious concern. Thought. Surely my priorities are screwed up here? If I initiate a dial-up session, I want this to have priority over any housekeeping task scheduled to run by cron or anachron. What do you think? Should (can, how) I reduce priority of housekeeping tasks or increase that of the dialup components? Can I in fact do anything about this? Any time that you guys can spend away from the enormous thread developing on Debian and money etc. welcomed. (Please keep comments on-list). Regards -- Ian Balchin http://www.imaginet.co.za/fables This machine is running Debian GNU/Linux ... http://www.debian.org
