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Apt package updates take longer than expected - where to look? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been daily driving Kubuntu for ages now (currently on 24.10), and I've noticed that updates take a while for seemingly no reason.

The downloads are slower than my internet is capable of, but they happen fast enough. It's just that some packages take longer than I would expect on the "unpacking" step.

For example, anytime there's a new kernel release or new headers, apt downloads the packages fast enough, but the unpacking takes time with seemingly no resource usage. No increased CPU load (for possible inflating of a compressed archive), no IOWAIT warnings, my NVMe disk shows very little throughput (and can handle much faster disk operations, like downloading games via Steam), stuff like that. The system seems to be at idle, and yet the unpacking of some packages just... takes a while.

It's not like it's a huge issue. It's only maybe an extra 30+ seconds, but it's got me wondering if there's anything I could do to improve it.

sudo apt clean hasn't had any effect, and my Google searches are of people complaining of either slow download speeds or 30+ minute delays that end up being failing drives.

Anyone have ideas?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Keep in mind this could be a massive rabbit hole

I would start by carefully monitoring resource usage. What you are looking for is any place where it stalls. Pay attention to what packages are active as when you notice something taking a long time you can go back and look at what's running. Chances are you aren't going to be able to speed things up as it could be a single threaded process that's only hitting a single core. The other possibly is that your drive is dying so make sure you check the drive health and performance.