summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/doc/bugs/Too_much_system_load_on_startup.mdwn
blob: 9ee63f6d7140735c3509b2793f6cb5fc60e6c91c (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
### Please describe the problem.
When I log in, if git annex is monitoring a large repo, my desktop is very sluggish getting started. Git-annex causes moderate CPU load, but keeps the disk IO very busy -delaying the opening of desktop applications.

### What steps will reproduce the problem?
On Linux, with git-annex set to autostart and monitoring a folder with more than a few hundred files (I have a pdf library of a few thousand journal articles).

### What version of git-annex are you using? On what operating system?
4.20131002 Ubuntu, from Hess's PPA.

### Please provide any additional information below.

I solved this problem by changing the call to git-annex in /etc/xdg/autostart/git-annex.desktop from:

Exec=/usr/bin/git-annex assistant --autostart

to

Exec=sleep 5 ionice -c 3 /usr/bin/git-annex assistant --autostart

This delays the start of git-annex for 5 seconds, letting the desktop get started, and forces git-annex to yield IO to other programs -preventing it from slowing them down by forcing them to wait for disk access. Since this is a background daemon with potentially high IO usage, but no need for quick responsiveness, perhaps that would make a decent default?