Re: Running makemandb on every boot

I like the idea of the system determining whether to run it or not by default, but being able to force it on or off.

Maybe a makemandb_force=YES/NO, defaulting to NO.

If makemandb_force=NO then the makemandb will be skipped iff

- Memory is 64M or less

- man.db has been modified in the last N hours (24? 4?)

This does mean on a small old box which is never run overnight makemandb would never be run, but I think that is a reasonable edge case - and in fact I'd prefer that behaviour on my small old boxes :)

On 19 May 2014 13:16, Martin Husemann <martin%duskware.de@localhost> wrote:

We have a rc.conf setting for this (makemandb=YES/NO), but we could argue
about thedefault (currently: YES).

I am fine with changing that to NO, but I really dislike port-specific
defaults (however they are implemented). They just cause confusion.

I ran a few more tests, and runtimes vary seriously (partly due to different
sets of pkgsrc man pages being installed):

SparcStation LX (50 MHz sparc v8), slow scsi disk, 96 MB ram:
2145.91 real 1856.68 user 92.47 sys

JavaStation Krups (100 MHz sparc v8), diskless, 64MB ram:
1469.48 real 1127.50 user 118.26 sys

HP9000/715/50 (50 MHz hppa), slow scsi disk, 96MB ram:
118.93 real 93.40 user 0.00 sys

GuruPlug (1.2 GHz ARM), sata disk, 512 MB ram:
32.44 real 27.78 user 4.24 sys

GuruPlug (1.2 GHz ARM), diskless, 512 MB ram:
21.00 real 11.33 user 6.52 sys

Apparently something makemandb does is not very performing well on
sparc - this needs closer investigation (maybe we can make it faster
for everything).

Martin