Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
Hi Maciej Zenczykowski, > This is happening on a freshly installed RH7.1 notebook. > Celeron 400 + 64 mb ram, kernel as shipped (2.4.2-2, have not even > recompiled it yet). I have a 140 mb swap partition set up but at the time > this happened it was OFF. I was (still am) running X + twm + two xterms > with ssh + netscape (this is probably the cause of the entire problem). > I had a single netscape window open with a mid-graphic intensive screen. > The system started thrashing... Now my question is how can it be > thrashing with swap explicitly turned off? [oh just to make stuff even > funnier netscape is at nice -19 (i.e. lower priority)] nice -19 means high priority doesn't it? It is not nice towards other processes. Ookhoi - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [OT] Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
On Mon, Jun 25, 2001 at 06:32:16PM +0200, Daniel Phillips wrote: > On Monday 25 June 2001 18:16, Colonel wrote: > > Had you tried fvwm-1.24r (the original) ? It was designed long ago to > > be lean and fast on the desktop. I know it whips KDE. > > Yes, I did. It's even faster than xfce but there's one problem: it just > isn't very much like a modern desktop. xfce is, to a surprising degree, like > a modern desktop. It's roughly equivalent to W95 I'd say - more > sophisticated in some areas, less in others. Oh, did I mention I haven't run > into a bug yet? It's true. firstly, i better have at least one paragraph related to the kernel ;) 2.4 is a *much* better desktop than 2.2 for me. make -j32 bzImage and other large amounts of processes/io don't destroy the interactivity of my X session anymore. (wearing asbestos suit) i have run, as full-time desktops, kde-1.x, enlightenment, windowmaker and fvwm-* on 10baseT switched networks with Tektronix XP400 terminals hosted on linux (and of course on xfree86-based normal linux desktops) in both cases the better and "more interactive" window manager was not fvwm or wmaker. sure, E can be a pig with the right theme, but with a nice lightweight theme it is great. E certainly seems lots better over ethernet than the other two... kde 1.x of course was absolutely ghastly over a network (gnome not too prominent in those days, so i didn't get a chance to try it) lately i have been trying to make kde2 run smooth like my E setup, but there are some niggles, and i wouldn't bother if i had less than 256mb ram. j. -- "Bobby, jiggle Grandpa's rat so it looks alive, please" -- gary larson - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [OT] Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
On Monday 25 June 2001 18:16, Colonel wrote: > In clouddancer.list.kernel, you wrote: > >Further to that, I followed Alan's lead and installed xfce. My laptop, > > which was really suffering under Gnome with 64 meg (much more so under > > KDE) is suddenly light on its feet. Not to mention that it built from > > source in under 10 minutes and installed with zero 'interesting > > problems'. > > > >After another year of optimizing the kernel to handle bloatware better, > > and at the same time encouraging the 'big desktop' side of Linux to > > follow the lead of these lightweight alternatives[1] we will be looking > > pretty good. > > Had you tried fvwm-1.24r (the original) ? It was designed long ago to > be lean and fast on the desktop. I know it whips KDE. Yes, I did. It's even faster than xfce but there's one problem: it just isn't very much like a modern desktop. xfce is, to a surprising degree, like a modern desktop. It's roughly equivalent to W95 I'd say - more sophisticated in some areas, less in others. Oh, did I mention I haven't run into a bug yet? It's true. -- Daniel - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
On 25 Jun 2001, Xavier Bestel wrote: > On 24 Jun 2001 22:36:25 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > > > recompiled it yet). I have a 140 mb swap partition set up but at the time > > > this happened it was OFF. I was (still am) running X + twm + two xterms > > > > > > top gives me: > > > mem: 62144k av, 61180k used, 956k free, 0k shrd, 76 buff, 2636 cached > > > swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free [as expected] > > > > Not as expected - 0k used 0k free - you have no swap > > That's what he said. *WITHOUT* swap. :)) yeah, exactly what Alan said. -Mike - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: [OT] Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
In clouddancer.list.kernel, you wrote: > >Further to that, I followed Alan's lead and installed xfce. My laptop, which >was really suffering under Gnome with 64 meg (much more so under KDE) is >suddenly light on its feet. Not to mention that it built from source in >under 10 minutes and installed with zero 'interesting problems'. > >After another year of optimizing the kernel to handle bloatware better, and >at the same time encouraging the 'big desktop' side of Linux to follow the >lead of these lightweight alternatives[1] we will be looking pretty good. Had you tried fvwm-1.24r (the original) ? It was designed long ago to be lean and fast on the desktop. I know it whips KDE. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
[OT] Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
On Monday 25 June 2001 11:21, Helge Hafting wrote: > If it still is too slow - add RAM or run fewer/smaller apps. > Opera is a low-memory alternative to netscape. Avoiding > gnome/kde apps when plain X apps are available is also a good idea > when you're short on memory. Using low resolution and low-color > modes might help a little if you do lot of graphics. But then > you might not want that. Further to that, I followed Alan's lead and installed xfce. My laptop, which was really suffering under Gnome with 64 meg (much more so under KDE) is suddenly light on its feet. Not to mention that it built from source in under 10 minutes and installed with zero 'interesting problems'. After another year of optimizing the kernel to handle bloatware better, and at the same time encouraging the 'big desktop' side of Linux to follow the lead of these lightweight alternatives[1] we will be looking pretty good. -- Daniel [1] by voting with our feet - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
Maciej Zenczykowski wrote: > Now my question is how can it be > thrashing with swap explicitly turned off? Easy. Linux throws executables out from memory because they _can_ be fetched again from disk. Yes - this definitely gives trashing if you loose almost all your executables this way. > [oh just to make stuff even > funnier netscape is at nice -19 (i.e. lower priority)] That makes no difference. nice'ing netscape means it use less _cpu when other things want cpu_, it can still over-spend memory! > top gives me: > mem: 62144k av, 61180k used, 956k free, 0k shrd, 76 buff, 2636 cached > swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free [as expected] File i/o becomes a pain with so few buffers and cache pages left, and then your file i/o and the executable fetching competes for the disk. No wonder it got slow, and laptop disks aren't usually that fast either... > So my basic question is what can I do to fix this? Looks like you were 3M away from running completely out of memory. Turn on that swap partition you mentioned, your machine will degrade much more gracefully. It'll keep more cache around and be able to get rid of unused data instead of just dropping executables. Some of the code is used a lot after all. If it still is too slow - add RAM or run fewer/smaller apps. Opera is a low-memory alternative to netscape. Avoiding gnome/kde apps when plain X apps are available is also a good idea when you're short on memory. Using low resolution and low-color modes might help a little if you do lot of graphics. But then you might not want that. Helge Hafting - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
On 24 Jun 2001 22:36:25 +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > > recompiled it yet). I have a 140 mb swap partition set up but at the time > > this happened it was OFF. I was (still am) running X + twm + two xterms > > > > top gives me: > > mem: 62144k av, 61180k used, 956k free, 0k shrd, 76 buff, 2636 cached > > swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free [as expected] > > Not as expected - 0k used 0k free - you have no swap That's what he said. *WITHOUT* swap. Xav - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
> recompiled it yet). I have a 140 mb swap partition set up but at the time > this happened it was OFF. I was (still am) running X + twm + two xterms > > top gives me: > mem: 62144k av, 61180k used, 956k free, 0k shrd, 76 buff, 2636 cached > swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free [as expected] Not as expected - 0k used 0k free - you have no swap Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
>Now my question is how can it be >thrashing with swap explicitly turned off? Easy. All applications are themselves swap space - the binary is merely memory-mapped onto the executable file. When the system gets low on memory, the only thing it can do is purge some binary pages, and then repeatedly page them back in from the original executable file. If you added a little bit of swap, it would be able to page out some idle data rather than binaries, and would probably avoid thrashing. -- -- from: Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (not for attachments) website: http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/vnc/ geekcode: GCS$/E dpu(!) s:- a20 C+++ UL++ P L+++ E W+ N- o? K? w--- O-- M++$ V? PS PE- Y+ PGP++ t- 5- X- R !tv b++ DI+++ D G e+ h+ r++ y+(*) tagline: The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Thrashing WITHOUT swap.
Hi All, I have a queer problem. This is happening on a freshly installed RH7.1 notebook. Celeron 400 + 64 mb ram, kernel as shipped (2.4.2-2, have not even recompiled it yet). I have a 140 mb swap partition set up but at the time this happened it was OFF. I was (still am) running X + twm + two xterms with ssh + netscape (this is probably the cause of the entire problem). I had a single netscape window open with a mid-graphic intensive screen. The system started thrashing... Now my question is how can it be thrashing with swap explicitly turned off? [oh just to make stuff even funnier netscape is at nice -19 (i.e. lower priority)] top gives me: mem: 62144k av, 61180k used, 956k free, 0k shrd, 76 buff, 2636 cached swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free [as expected] cpu states: 0% user, 99.9% system, 0.0% nice, 0.0% idle process list: 99 % cpu, CTIME: 29:24 kswap... all other processes have decent time and cpu usage lists even X has a CTIME of only 11 minutes [well init has 260:10 but that is normal..., system has been up 3 days] So my basic question is what can I do to fix this? I expect (only explanation I can find) that the problem is Netscape mmaping files. Oh, and Netscape is not dead it is just very slow [like the entire system, I can watch top refresh the screen in line by line mode...] Any help would be appreciated... Maciej Zenczykowski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
