Version: (using KDE 4.2.0) OS: Linux Installed from: Ubuntu Packages Despite CPU power increases over time, I/O bandwidth doesn't keep pace with it. This means that it gets easier to kill desktop responsiveness. It'd be nice to be able to allow, for example, a drag-and-drop copy with a changeable ionice. This would allow, for example, a little slower copy of large files without killing the desktop responsiveness. On command line everyone can tune the ionice. In KDE you cannot do it in a user friendly way. My suggestions: 1. An integrated program that will show KDE processes/tasks with a significant name to be re-ionice-ed at runtime. 2. Add in the copy/move progressing dialog a re-ionice option. 3. Add a systemsettings panel to allow users to pre-define ionice levels per tasks. 4. Add a ionice monitoring applet/whatever. As a benefit, users could get much better experience from the KDE with no change in the internals, as the ionice can be changed at runtime.
Suggestions #1 and #4 could be merged into a new "ktop" program.
What would also be good is when background indexing, http cache cleaning etc. ran with ionice. But as far as I know, ionice command is reserved for root user :(
Also mount is only for root, nonetheless as a normal user I can still stick my USB memory in a port and get its partition mounted. Anyway, that was my suggestion/wish list.
*** Bug 208877 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
ionice can be run as an unpriveledged user too. You can't switch classes (i.e., use realtime and idle classes) unleass you're root, but within the best effort class it's possible to use priorities from 0 to 7. Here's a demonstration of this and the effectiveness of ionice: $ ls -lh total 513M -rw-r--r-- 1 victor victor 256M Jan 26 02:46 file1 -rw-r--r-- 1 victor victor 256M Jan 26 02:45 file2 # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches 3 $ /usr/bin/time -o ionice0 ionice -c2 -n0 cp file1 file1-cp & \ > /usr/bin/time -o ionice7 ionice -c2 -n7 cp file2 file2-cp [1] 10115 [1]+ Done /usr/bin/time -o ionice0 ionice -c2 -n0 cp file1 file1-cp $ cat ionice0 0.01user 0.84system 0:17.13elapsed 5%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2784maxresident)k 524472inputs+524288outputs (1major+362minor)pagefaults 0swaps $ cat ionice7 0.01user 0.91system 0:39.71elapsed 2%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2784maxresident)k 524352inputs+524288outputs (2major+361minor)pagefaults 0swaps # echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches 3 $ /usr/bin/time cp file1 file1-cp 0.00user 1.26system 0:20.27elapsed 6%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 2784maxresident)k 524752inputs+2570232outputs (2major+228minor)pagefaults 0swaps I would like very much for ionice support to be implemented for background tasks in KDE SC.
(In reply to comment #5) > ionice can be run as an unpriveledged user too. > correct. > You can't switch classes (i.e., use realtime and idle classes) unleass you're > root, > man ioprio_set: Kernel versions up to 2.6.24 also required CAP_SYS_ADMIN to set a very low priority (IOPRIO_CLASS_IDLE), but since Linux 2.6.25, this is no longer required.
*** Bug 251492 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This would be on my wishlist so that all kio_thumbnail would be ioniced to idle. wathing a HD video on my system causes problems, with the video being choppy, I'm pretty sure it's due to the desktop search and kio_thumbnail processes running.
No news in 5 years! It needs to be a dumb idea, then!
It's a nice idea (no pun intended), but needs some volunteer to actually implement it.