Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
I have another question... Do you think it is possible for Windoze to infect linux across a partition THAT all sounds like a perfectly normal Windoze scenario to me :-) But seriously, many times similar things have turned out to be simple over-heating. Cheapest overhaul in the world! Another BIG fan. Cheers, John - Original Message - From: Damian [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Lista de Mailing Linux-Newbie [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 19, 2002 11:31 AM Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish i may have a penny to add to this thread. but before i start babbling, i have a question for everyone getting a sluggish system after a while. are you all running KDE? see ya. Damian Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
i may have a penny to add to this thread. but before i start babbling, i have a question for everyone getting a sluggish system after a while. are you all running KDE? see ya. Damian = Yes, Jeff Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
El dom, 17-03-2002 a las 13:45, jquandt3 escribió: Well, I have the same problem on occasion. I cannot say if it is related to being online since I have a cable connection, but RAM is not my problem. I have 512 MB DDR and my system never touches the swap file. I intentionally tried to make it hit the swap file and had a hard time getting it below 150 MB. Similar symptoms to the previous message. Everything slows down to a crawl until reboot. it takes 2 mins for the clock icon to leave a program opening in KDE and then it may not actually pop up for another 30 sec to 1 min. Even if I just want to open a terminal. It does not seem to be related to length of logon time, as it has occurred soon after a reboot and after several hours. Thanks, Jeff - Original Message - From: Gerald Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh i may have a penny to add to this thread. but before i start babbling, i have a question for everyone getting a sluggish system after a while. are you all running KDE? see ya. Damian Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Well, I have the same problem on occasion. I cannot say if it is related to being online since I have a cable connection, but RAM is not my problem. I have 512 MB DDR and my system never touches the swap file. I intentionally tried to make it hit the swap file and had a hard time getting it below 150 MB. Similar symptoms to the previous message. Everything slows down to a crawl until reboot. it takes 2 mins for the clock icon to leave a program opening in KDE and then it may not actually pop up for another 30 sec to 1 min. Even if I just want to open a terminal. It does not seem to be related to length of logon time, as it has occurred soon after a reboot and after several hours. Thanks, Jeff - Original Message - From: Gerald Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
On Sunday 17 March 2002 10:45 am, jquandt3 wrote: Well, I have the same problem on occasion. I cannot say if it is related to being online since I have a cable connection, but RAM is not my problem. I have 512 MB DDR and my system never touches the swap file. I intentionally tried to make it hit the swap file and had a hard time getting it below 150 MB. Similar symptoms to the previous message. Everything slows down to a crawl until reboot. it takes 2 mins for the clock icon to leave a program opening in KDE and then it may not actually pop up for another 30 sec to 1 min. Even if I just want to open a terminal. It does not seem to be related to length of logon time, as it has occurred soon after a reboot and after several hours. One often cause for symtoms like this is a runaway process(es). When your system gets sluggish, open a terminal and run 'top'. Shift+P will show proccesses usin the most cpu time. Rarely should it be much over 10% total, much less any one process. Runaway procceses often show 60% or more and need to be killed ASAP. Which is what you did with a reboot. 'kill -9 pid' would'a fixed it. A way to constantly monitor, is to use lm_sensors and a GUI for it (GKrellm). I configure Gkrellm to show just cpu temp which also displays a little cpu load gauge. I've got it in a window (always on top, all desktops) less than 1/4 high, about an inch long on the top right side of my screen (just fits on open windows title bars). When/if I see cpu temp go to the max, and/or the little cpu gauge turn red, peg to the right and stay there... I start 'top' and see who the offender(s) is. Often I already know tho ;) It's normal to see high cpu usage during somethin like a kernel modules compile. It's not normal tho even when you have dozens of open and running apps, 'cept maybe for a few seconds here'n there. I've got a dozen running apps right now, including 2 simultaneous d/l's going over a Net connection... and the cpu gauge is bouncing on low to -0-, cpu temp is normal. For Windoze users the whole deal is actually a lot simpler ... the system just crashes ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
In addition to Toms excellent advise. Try the CTRL - ALT - F2 key combination to bring up a different Term. Login there then run top. It may be quicker if X is sluggish. Alternatively, if things are not that sluggish, you may want to use a GUI version like kpm (under KDE). Open it and have a look while things are normal. Mine (running MDK7.1) is in Applications Monitoring Process Management The PID (Process ID) is the task number of each running program. You can kill any programs from the menus if you are root, or kill any of your own if you are a user. Have fun Michael Tom Brinkman wrote: On Sunday 17 March 2002 10:45 am, jquandt3 wrote: Well, I have the same problem on occasion. I cannot say if it is related to being online since I have a cable connection, but RAM is not my problem. I have 512 MB DDR and my system never touches the swap file. I intentionally tried to make it hit the swap file and had a hard time getting it below 150 MB. Similar symptoms to the previous message. Everything slows down to a crawl until reboot. it takes 2 mins for the clock icon to leave a program opening in KDE and then it may not actually pop up for another 30 sec to 1 min. Even if I just want to open a terminal. It does not seem to be related to length of logon time, as it has occurred soon after a reboot and after several hours. One often cause for symtoms like this is a runaway process(es). When your system gets sluggish, open a terminal and run 'top'. Shift+P will show proccesses usin the most cpu time. Rarely should it be much over 10% total, much less any one process. Runaway procceses often show 60% or more and need to be killed ASAP. Which is what you did with a reboot. 'kill -9 pid' would'a fixed it. A way to constantly monitor, is to use lm_sensors and a GUI for it (GKrellm). I configure Gkrellm to show just cpu temp which also displays a little cpu load gauge. I've got it in a window (always on top, all desktops) less than 1/4 high, about an inch long on the top right side of my screen (just fits on open windows title bars). When/if I see cpu temp go to the max, and/or the little cpu gauge turn red, peg to the right and stay there... I start 'top' and see who the offender(s) is. Often I already know tho ;) It's normal to see high cpu usage during somethin like a kernel modules compile. It's not normal tho even when you have dozens of open and running apps, 'cept maybe for a few seconds here'n there. I've got a dozen running apps right now, including 2 simultaneous d/l's going over a Net connection... and the cpu gauge is bouncing on low to -0-, cpu temp is normal. For Windoze users the whole deal is actually a lot simpler ... the system just crashes ;) -- Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas -- I feel partially hydrogenated! Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
On Sunday 17 March 2002 14:39, you wrote: Not sure about cacheing name server, but I am beleive DNS is taken care of through my ISP. My box is a AMD 1.33 Ghz 512MB DDR Mandrake 8.1 running on a 4GB drive with 2GB / 200MB swap rest /home - Original Message - From: ed tharp [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, March 17, 2002 12:53 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish are you running a cacheing name server? and what is the DNS running on? you box, the network connection? are you running slocate? have you tried top to see what is eating reasources? On Sunday 17 March 2002 11:45, you wrote: Well, I have the same problem on occasion. I cannot say if it is related to being online since I have a cable connection, but RAM is not my problem. I have 512 MB DDR and my system never touches the swap file. I intentionally tried to make it hit the swap file and had a hard time getting it below 150 MB. Similar symptoms to the previous message. Everything slows down to a crawl until reboot. it takes 2 mins for the clock icon to leave a program opening in KDE and then it may not actually pop up for another 30 sec to 1 min. Even if I just want to open a terminal. It does not seem to be related to length of logon time, as it has occurred soon after a reboot and after several hours. Thanks, Jeff - Original Message - From: Gerald Waugh [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 2:31 PM Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh - - - - Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com --- - Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Just a $.02 cents worth here, but on a 4gig HD depending on what you have installed there is not a lot of room left for things that are cached, like cookies etc. so when the disk gets more than 50% full the seek times start slowing, and at 80 to 90 % full you may see a noticable slow down. Now this is speaking from experience with my wifes windows computer and when she clears cache in netscape and ugh-aol, the system speeds up again. So you might give that a try when yours slows down. HTH -- Dennis M. registered linux user # 180842 Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Tom Brinkman wrote: Often I already know tho ;) It's normal to see high cpu usage during somethin like a kernel modules compile. It's not normal tho even when you have dozens of open and running apps, 'cept maybe for a few seconds here'n there. I've got a dozen running apps right now, including 2 simultaneous d/l's going over a Net connection... and the cpu gauge is bouncing on low to -0-, cpu temp is normal. For Windoze users the whole deal is actually a lot simpler ... the system just crashes ;) Actually, I find it very useful to run Resource Monitor in Windows -- when the resources get low I start thinking about closing applications and rebooting -- at least I avoid most of the surprise lockups, and sometimes go several weeks in Win95 without rebooting. Randy Kramer Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
That's OK Civileme, it makes the rest of us feel better to know you are not quite perfect. Thanks Alan - now I have another command with which to baffle myself and others ;-) Brian On Fri, 2002-03-15 at 13:38, civileme wrote: Alan Shoemaker wrote: Brian Parish wrote: Civileme, Hmmm. I can see that bdflush is running on my system, but bdflush is not found either as root or as a normal user. locate can't track it down either. Software Manager says it's installed, but all I find is the man pages. Looking at these, the command is certainly documented as you suggest. Any ideas? There's no problem here, but I get curious when little inconsistencies like this come up. Brian Brianthe bdflush executable is named 'update'. :) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Darn! I forgot I had it aliased Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
RE: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Title: RE: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Gerald Waugh Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2002 2:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh Or if you didn't set it up on initial install, you need to add a swap partition at least equal to or twice the ram amount that you have, oops here comes a debate on the size of swap needed. Dennis M.
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Civileme, Hmmm. I can see that bdflush is running on my system, but bdflush is not found either as root or as a normal user. locate can't track it down either. Software Manager says it's installed, but all I find is the man pages. Looking at these, the command is certainly documented as you suggest. Any ideas? There's no problem here, but I get curious when little inconsistencies like this come up. Brian On Thu, 2002-03-14 at 08:36, civileme wrote: Gerald Waugh wrote: On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com What browser are you using? Several will fill the memory with cache and not flush. The command line bdflush -d will display the settings for the flush. Share them and we will know more. If the message is command not found, INSTALL bdflush and start it without parameters at boot time--put the line bflush as the next to last line of /etc/rc.local Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Brian Parish wrote: Civileme, Hmmm. I can see that bdflush is running on my system, but bdflush is not found either as root or as a normal user. locate can't track it down either. Software Manager says it's installed, but all I find is the man pages. Looking at these, the command is certainly documented as you suggest. Any ideas? There's no problem here, but I get curious when little inconsistencies like this come up. Brian Brianthe bdflush executable is named 'update'. :) -- Alan Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Alan Shoemaker wrote: Brian Parish wrote: Civileme, Hmmm. I can see that bdflush is running on my system, but bdflush is not found either as root or as a normal user. locate can't track it down either. Software Manager says it's installed, but all I find is the man pages. Looking at these, the command is certainly documented as you suggest. Any ideas? There's no problem here, but I get curious when little inconsistencies like this come up. Brian Brianthe bdflush executable is named 'update'. :) Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Darn! I forgot I had it aliased Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
On Wednesday 13 March 2002 22:31, Gerald Waugh wrote: On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive Given that it only happens online, it sounds like it could be more than a simple RAM problem, though getting a lot of RAM might well solve it. for a quick check, while offline, run a lot of RAM-heavy processes at the same time. For example, open the GIMP, get it to do some complicated rendering on a couple of big graphics files (or better still, do some 3D rendering ,f you have a program like Blender), then open StarOffice, then, hell, I don't know, compile some source code or something. If the system doesn't complain too much while it's doing all this, you do _not_ have a RAM problem. If it's purely an online phenomenon, the culprit could be fetchmail, which can slow things down a lot, or possibly Netscape, which is a real RAM-hog, and sometimes chokes while trying to load a dodgy plugin (4.* is notoriously buggy; 6.2 is much better, but seems to use even more RAM). Again, you can test by disabling the fetchmail daemon if it's running, then opening a nice simple web page in Konqueror. You might also want to check that you haven't inadvertantly instaled some servers that you don't actually want to use (sounds silly, but it happens). BTW, for a typical workstation install, 64MB of RAM should be enough (though you might want to cook dinner while you wait for Star Office to open) and 128MB is plenty. If you want to do stuff like video capture or 3D animation, you'll need a lot more, and a fast processor into the bargain. At the other extreme, I've run Mandrake with 32MB of RAM, but that was too slow to run KDE (IceWM worked fine). Robin Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [newbie] System Getting Sluggish
Gerald Waugh wrote: On Wed, 13 Mar 2002, cervix couch wrote: %_ I've been having a problem in Linux and I have no idea where to look for the culprit. My problem is that, periodically, while I'm online (and only when I'm online), the system will get extremely sluggish to the point where I usually have to power down and reboot. When this happens, there are sounds like there's a lot of hard disk activity going on and it never stops. I've tried unplugging the modem, but it doesn't do any good. Does anyone know why this happens? THRASHING!!! You need more RAM Linux is trying to run swapping everything back and forth to the hard drive -- Gerald Waugh Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com What browser are you using? Several will fill the memory with cache and not flush. The command line bdflush -d will display the settings for the flush. Share them and we will know more. If the message is command not found, INSTALL bdflush and start it without parameters at boot time--put the line bflush as the next to last line of /etc/rc.local Civileme Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
