liferea might cause unnecessary disk activity

[ubuntu_demon]

Binary package hint: liferea

liferea might cause unnecessary disk activity. It is important for laptop users to reduce unnecessary disk-activity because the harddrive head might be parked or the drive might be spun down.

When adding a new feed the feed specific interval shouldn't override the global default update interval if the feed specific update interval is lower than the global default update interval. The feed specific update interval should only override the global default update interval if the feed specific update interval is higher than the global default update interval.

For example :
If the global default update interval is set to 1 hour and you add a new feed with a feed specific update interval of 1 minute then the global default update interval of 1 hour should be used instead of the 1 minute interval.

If the global default update interval is set to 30 minutes and you add a new feed with a feed specific update interval of 2 hours then the feed specific interval of 2 hours should be used.

This might be one of the contributors to the famous Load_Cycle_Count bug :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/17216
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

When you add a new feed, it uses the default feed refresh interval. But if a user then goes to a feed and sets it to use its own interval and sets it to something, then that specific feed should use that interval, doesn't matter whether it's higher or lower than the default feed refresh one. If you set it, you'd expect it to work. And if you don't want it to be updated more frequently than the default feed, don't put a lower interval.

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

An example :
If I add http://www.security.nl/headlines.xml to liferea then liferea will add the feed and default to the feed specific interval of 1 minute (it does present a GUI to change the interval and other options). If I would set firefox to automatically add feeds to liferea if I click on a feed then I wouldn't see the liferea GUI part to change the interval and http://www.security.nl/headlines.xml would be added with a feed specific update interval of 1 minute.

If I have a lot of feeds in liferea with different intervals then I would see a lot of unnecessary disk activity (this happened to me). So I would have to check each feed after I have added it to make sure it doesn't use a ridiculous interval such as 1 minute. Clearly it would be better to default to the global update interval unless the feed specific interval wants a bigger time frame than the global default interval (to be nice to the website).

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

Thanks for the test case, I didn't know that.

So what do you think if we popup a window saying the update interval isn't the default one for that feed, and allowing the user to change it, leave it as is, or set it to the default interval?

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

You are welcome :)

I would personally prefer to have update intervals that are smaller than the global default interval be overridden by the global default interval. That way you would never have a feed with a smaller update interval than the default one unless you specifically tell liferea to do so.

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

Fixed upstream, to be released with 1.4.7

Finally the solution is that the update interval will be set to the default interval if the feed's one is lower than the default one.

[ubuntu_demon (ubuntu-demon)]

to Emilio Pozuelo Monfort :

It will be fixed in 1.4.8 instead of 1.4.7 : "Fixed in SVN. To be released with 1.4.8"

Very cool! It's great that the liferea dev team already fix it. Thanks Emilio.

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

Right, 1.4.7 is already in the repository ;)

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

liferea (1.4.8-0ubuntu1) hardy; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. LP: #160460.

 -- Emilio Pozuelo Monfort <email address hidden> Thu, 22 Nov 2007 16:55:29 +0100

[Bruce Cowan (bruce89-deactivatedaccount)]

I have made a Gutsy backport, see my PPA (https://launchpad.net/~bruce89/+archive).