[arch-general] Limiting pacman's IO rate

[Rodrigo Rivas]

On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 3:58 PM, Yannis Juglaret <yjuglaret at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear archers,
>
> Is there something wrong in the commands I have written above? Is there a
> way to check that the limitation is indeed enforced? (maybe the source of
> the bug is elsewhere) Alternatively, can you think of another solution to
> this problem?

No idea about your commands, but I have a few alternative solutions...
let's see if any one works.

Solution #1.

1. Run `pacman -S ghc` normally.
2. When it advances about 10%, hopefully without crashing, press
Ctrl+Z to sleep the process.
3. Wait a bit until the cache memory stabilizes, then run `sync` to
force the remaining cached data to disk.
4. Type `fg` to continue the instalation,
5. Go to step 2 and repeat until finished.

Solution #2.

1. Run `pacman -S -p ghc`. That will dump the URL of the package but
it will do nothing else.
2. In the host OS (Ubuntu) get the package with `wget <url>` or
whatever download command you prefer.
3. Copy the just downloaded file to the guest OS (Arch). You can use
rsync, in case the copy gets interrupted.
4. Install the program with `pacman -U <file>`.

HTH