[Switching discussion to yast-devel] * Ladislav Slezak [Nov 09. 2009 14:27]:

Hi all,

I'd like to discuss the problem reported in bug #550934 ('It takes minutes to refresh "system is up to date" and "system is healthy"')

It takes very long time to load the initial patches and system status information which is displayed on the first page (the WebYaST control center) using AJAX requests.

I already have implemented caching in the patches module so the available patches are not evaluated in every control center reload. But the first call still takes much time...

The problem is that the first patch status request triggers repository metadata download and cache rebuild which in case of slow/bad/overloaded network connection can take several minutes (as reported in the bug).

A similar problem is in the status module, but not that serious - the status is read from the local machine so network is not involved in this case. And even on a slow machine it won't block for more than several seconds.

I have these possible solutions for reading the patch status:

* don't display the status messages at all (IMO bad solution, I find the overview messages quite useful...)

* make displaying of the status messages configurable (so users can hide and disable status loading if it's too slow)

* use a background job for reading patches (display a generic message like "Reading patches" when the request takes too long and refresh the status after some time again to get the real status.)

AFAIK an AJAX request cannot be stopped (at least the [Stop] button in FF is disabled when the page is loaded but an AJAX request is in progress).

I'd prefer the last solution.

Me too. Its important to present a honest explanation without being too technical. Maybe adding more steps to visualize progress would be helpful, i.e. "contacting update server", "retrieving update information", "evaluating update information", ... Klaus --- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org