[Digikam-users] lots of photos and startup time

[Milan Knížek]

Andi Clemens píše v Út 07. 07. 2009 v 13:12 +0200: 
> Hmm seems to be a reiserFS problem, since every one reporting this is using 
> reiserFS, also the older reports are talking about reiser.
> 
Yes, it could be reiserfs. Until recently (a week ago or so), I have
been using ext3 [1] and did not notice such a long startup.

Now it takes about three minutes to load 15 thousand images (the splash
screen shows "reading database") for the first run after PC reboot.
Iotop shows average read activity 600 kB/s. (I have 4 GB RAM on amd64
with digiKam 0.10.0, ubuntu.)

If I quit digiKam and start again, it takes about 5 seconds....

Flushing cache does not lead to expected long startup time - just about
13 seconds.

> Note that reiserFS is fragmenting quite fast, much more then all the other 
> linux filesystems. So even if I create a test partition today, I'm not sure if 
> I will see performance issues, since the reiserFS partition will be quite 
> new.
In my case, I do not think a significant fragmentation would appear in a
week time (desktop computer use, 750 GB HDD, 40 % free). And it is still
slow.

[1] Off topic: There is a known problem with kernel 2.6.x in some linux
distributions - high I/O activity makes the desktop computer unusable
with programs which need some, even minimal, read/write on harddrive
(Firefox, Evolution, etc...). With reiserfs (and others), the problem is
not so obvious as with ext3. Recent kernel 2.6.30 should improve some
things with ext3, but the general fact that high I/O "kills" the desktop
still remains.

regards,

Milan Knizek
knizek (dot) confy (at) volny (dot) cz
http://www.milan-knizek.net - About linux and photography (Czech
language only)