Ubuntu
apt-xapian-index package

  1. Bug #363695
  2. Comment #136

Comment 136 for bug 363695

Revision history for this message
Max Polk (maxpolk) wrote :

On an idle system with 512M memory and 768M swap, while /etc/cron.weekly/apt-xapian-index was running, I used free to see memory and swap used. It rose to then peaked at this:

             total used free
Mem: 503528 497736 5792
Swap: 786428 231196 555232

Total used memory is 728M.

After ending, it immediately dropped back to this:

             total used free
Mem: 503528 259160 244368
Swap: 786428 224484 561944

Total used memory is 483M.

I conclude that apt-xapian-index consumes the difference, which is 245M.

Running "apt-cache stats" I see at the end "Total space accounted for: 26.0 M".

Therefore, it takes 245M to sort and index 26M of information. This seems conclusive that the algorithms, containers, and functions chosen are very inefficient. It should definitely not require 10 times the memory space of what is being indexed.