YUM is super super slow

[Druid]

I don't know why but every time I type

yum update

I have to wait about 3 minutes just for this:

Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
fedora/metalink                                              |  32 kB     00:00     
fedora                                                       | 4.2 kB     00:00     
fedora/primary_db                                            |  14 MB     00:07     
fedora/group                                                 | 1.8 MB     00:01     
google-chrome                                                |  951 B     00:00     
google-chrome/primary                                        | 1.4 kB     00:00     
google-talkplugin                                            |  951 B     00:00     
google-talkplugin/primary                                    | 1.6 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free                                               | 3.3 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free/primary_db                                    | 378 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free/group                                         | 9.8 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free-updates                                       | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free-updates/primary_db                            | 164 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree                                            | 3.3 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree/primary_db                                 | 115 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree/group                                      | 4.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates                                    | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates/primary_db                         |  50 kB     00:00     
updates/metalink                                             |  29 kB     00:00     
updates                                                      | 4.7 kB     00:00     
updates/primary_db                                           | 3.9 MB     00:02     
updates/group                                                | 1.8 MB     00:01     
google-chrome                                                                   3/3
google-talkplugin                                                               1/1
updates/pkgtags                                              |  42 kB     00:00

How can I fix it ?

yum is very inconsistent with speed, sometimes its fast for me an sometimes super slow., only thing that bugs me about yum.

here's something i found that may help to speed up yum http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=64891

[marriedto51]

Something else that might help is to install the "fastest mirror" plugin:

su -c 'yum install yum-plugin-fastestmirror'

After the first run, it seems to speed things up for me.

[Druid]

Thank you both

It seems to speed up things a little but yet it's slower than apt-get.

[Sagitter]

It seems to speed up things a little but yet it's slower than apt-get.

I think that is the opposite.

[bob]

Here's an explanation for the "slowness": http://fedoraunity.org/Members/zcat/yum-rpm-faq

[Mordac]

This is not even mentioning the five hours it takes for the delta-rpms to build.

Yum is honestly the aspect of Fedora I most dislike. You just have to put up with it I'm afraid, though disabling presto (warning: don't do this is your isp enforces a data cap, as it will drastically increase your download traffic, but if your bottleneck is cpu power rather than connection speed, it works great), or using the fastest mirror plugin as mentioned above should help.

[marriedto51]

Originally Posted by Mordac

This is not even mentioning the five hours it takes for the delta-rpms to build. [snip

It might be horses for courses here: the yum-presto plugin has drastically reduced update times for me (with a slow broadband connexion but reasonable CPU). I can imagine that it's not a great choice, though, for someone with the opposite set-up.

dunno for sure but have you tried to update by disabling presto
yum update --disableplugin=Presto ] i think it is.

look into yum help

[Mordac]

Originally Posted by marriedto51

It might be horses for courses here: the yum-presto plugin has drastically reduced update times for me (with a slow broadband connexion but reasonable CPU). I can imagine that it's not a great choice, though, for someone with the opposite set-up.

Aye, it is a tradeoff, but my CPU is not even that slow (2 cores a 2.0Ghz), and it can still take upwards of five minutes if the update is more than 10 or so packages!

[marko]

Mordac, there's either something wrong with your system or your network connection. I have a similar machine at work (Dell Optiplex 755 with a E8500 dual core and 4GB of ram) and it doesn't take 5 minutes to do 10 packages.

I'd try looking for hard disk errors in your /var/log/messages.log (remember to set up smartd to get that output in the log). Also examine your dmesg for unusual warnings.

Also try going to dslreports.com and do some speed tests on your network:

http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest


I also see you have a PAE kernel thread about missing RAM, that might be related to this slowness.

[Mordac]

Actually, I think it's more likely disk I/O problems. I'm booting Fedora from an external hard drive, linked via USB, so that probably explains it. Will have to try swapping the disks out and see if the problem persists. I may have exaggerated the extent of the problem a bit though; though if one of the packages is the kernel or something similarly large, it's true.

Also, did Red Hat hire the guy who wrote the windows file transfer dialogue and have him write the yum presto countdown thing?

[gUrUr2]

No that is not the problem. I have a 2.8GHz system with fedora installed on a top of the line Intel SSD with 6GB of memory. I recently updated from fc14 to fc16 and the performance of YUM is considerably slower (ofcourse in comparison to apt-get it was slow in fc14 as well but one could live with it). Now, I am doing "yum info" and really think about it before I issue the command. I do not want to make this rocket science, but that is my opinion.

[RupertPupkin]

I agree with marko that something else is wrong with your system if yum is that slow. Yum is very fast for me in F16. I don't use any yum plugins, so that may be part of it, but I doubt that's the main reason.

[gUrUr2]

Well, my argument was against disk I/O problems.

Also, I doubt how plugins can slow up the yum process, since they usually introduce new commands, which are not called upon.

It is just sad, how much the difference between the debian package manager apt and yum has increased over the past few years. I think, I'll be jumping ship soon.