FS#68548 - [mlocate] updatedb.timer should ideally have a randomized delay

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Martin Rys (C0rn3j) - Saturday, 07 November 2020, 00:47 GMT
Last edited by Evangelos Foutras (foutrelis) - Wednesday, 21 April 2021, 13:21 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Evangelos Foutras (foutrelis)
Architecture All
Severity Low
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 1
Private No

Details

mlocate package has a updatedb.timer which is set to run daily (00:00).
https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/blob/packages/mlocate/trunk/updatedb.timer#L5

This is problematic in case there are multiple Arch systems with mlocate running on the same host either in VMs or containers.

On my system I have 15 LXD containers, most of which have mlocate installed. When 00:00 hits, the system nearly completely freezes for up to a minute (and that's on an NVMe SSD).

I think adding a randomized delay to the timer(10 minute window?) would completely solve this issue, and possibly another issue of running into other resource-intensive tasks that might also be defined as 'daily'.

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.timer.html#RandomizedDelaySec=

A workaround is to override the systemd unit with my proposed timer change.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Evangelos Foutras (foutrelis)
Wednesday, 21 April 2021, 13:21 GMT
Reason for closing:  Fixed
Additional comments about closing:  mlocate 0.26.git.20170220-7 in [testing]

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