Is prelink worth it?

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 02:04:50PM -0400, Sam Tregar wrote:
> 
> Does anyone have any data about how much prelink actually improves
> performance?  My lowly Thinkpad T20 is cratered by the daily prelink
> run.  I'm wondering if it's worth the trouble or if I should just turn
> it off.

If you run it once you it will make no changes
until you load packages that prelink looks at.

So, run it by hand on occasion and leave it off so cron does not run
it when you are trying to get other work done.  Trying to get work
done at the same time that prelink runs is like chewing rocks.

Working on a system after prelink has done it's thing will feel quicker.

The trick is to control when it runs.

/etc/cron.daily and company are designed to ensure that
housekeeping can be done on a system that is only booted
during the day.  Traditionally housekeeping would be done
in the small hours of the night.  Since many people powerdown
workstations lots of stuff was not being cleaned up.

Again, the trick is to control when it runs (not if it runs IMO).

You could move /etc/cron.daily/prelink to
/etc/cron.weekly or  perhaps /etc/cron.monthly

Another poster gave a good URL for a paper 

   http://people.redhat.com/jakub/prelink.pdf

I think you will find that it should run.. just not when
you are attempting to get other work done.


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