Slow Processing

[nowiz@linux]

I have just recently upgraded from Fedora Core 1 to FC4 on my gateway machine. I reformatted and started from scratch. The computer is a Dell optiplex junker with a P!!! and 256 MB of ram. The system ran fine with FC1, however now whenever there are two programs open at the same time it slows to less than a crawl and the hard drive just chatters away. It is especially bad when Firefox is running... my internet connect speed is fine, because my other computers on my network are operating just fine. I'm thinking it is a bug, but I'm not sure where I should look first. I would appreciate any/all advice on this one.
Thanks!!!

[X_console]

If you run top you should be able to see what process is consuming all the memory.

[je_fro]

you probably have all kinds of daemons and services running (that you don't need/want)

[nowiz@linux]

I have used Top several times and things appear to be okay there. I would say memory usage when I have been watching has been a max of 50% and the CPU usage seems fine too. I am however currently sitting, waiting for the find gui to open after I just clicked the button on the gedit screen and I have been waiting for about 5 minutes now. What is the deal???

[DSwain]

I have used Top several times and things appear to be okay there. I would say memory usage when I have been watching has been a max of 50% and the CPU usage seems fine too. I am however currently sitting, waiting for the find gui to open after I just clicked the button on the gedit screen and I have been waiting for about 5 minutes now. What is the deal???

Are you running top while you open a program or afterward? It may be eating up resources during the process.

A few general things you could consider:

1. Like je_fro said, you probably have plenty of daemons that you don't make use of at all which are set to run for general usability reasons. You will probably want to look up how to figure out what those services are and how to disable them.

2. Compiling yourself a new kernel could be helpful. If you built a new kernel and removed lots of excess items you don't make use of, that could help with some resource usage.

3. A new window manager may make a big difference in resource usage. FC4 uses KDE by default if I'm not mistaken, and that results in a lot of resources being consumed (you can say the same for something like Gnome). Something like Fluxbox, XFCE4 may be more of an option.

4. Keep in mind, no matter what you do, your P3 won't come to life and be a beastly machine. Granted, you should probably be seeing better performance out of the machine than that, but in the end, it won't ever become an entirely different computer.

5. Also realize that FC1 probably used fewer/less complex daemons and applications being from the age of the software. A jump from FC1-4 would be somewhat huge for almost everything on the system (kernel, applications, daemons, etc.)

[nowiz@linux]

Thanks for the input... All excellent points! I just left it running for 3 hours and the box chattered the whole time. Something is definitely not right!!

[je_fro]

So check it out...
free -m
tells you how bad you're swapping....
netstat -utl
tells you what network daemons are running....
That's where I'd start.

[nowiz@linux]

I'll be sure to check those things. I went through my log files and found one filled with... localhost sendmail [2024]:rejecting connection on daemon MTA: load average:26 There was line after line of this type of sendmail action. I'm not sure what is causing it, so I turned off sendmail. The computer wasn't connected to the Internet, so I know it wasn't anything from the outside.
Thoughts???