Extreme system slow down ==>memory/swap troubles??

[dol-sen]

[edit] It is definately a memory/swap problem, something(s) is eating up memory causing the desktop to run from swap. [/edit]


This morning when I got up & went to check the forums/email, moved the mouse to bring the system out of xscreensaver (I had turned the monitor off overnight) the system took forever, I noticed the HD light on/flashing ~90%, eventually about 10 minutes later the screen had rebuilt. Disk I/O was still ~90%, evolution was pinging (100%) completed, fetching mail at about its 10min interval, mouse movement was somewhat barely there. I tried to get to the application menu to start the system monitor to find out what was eating up all the processing, that took 10 minutes, another 30 min. to start and show on screen. I checked my firewall/switch for traffic = not network related. While waiting for the system monitor I clicked on evolution's stop button, it took 30-35 minutes to exit.

When the system monitor came up, it showed cpu usage @ 12%, memory 246Mb used 249 total, 112Mb Swap used 512Mb Total. When I was able to switch to the processes tab, the system monitor was using 7% almost everthing else was 0, a few were 1%. Cpu usage went up to 15% & Swap up to 113Mb as evolution was exiting.

Anyway after about an 1hr. 15min. I gave up struggling and did a <cntrl><alt><backspace> to reset X. After several minutes it finally closed and reset X & disk I/O seemed to normalize, logging back in I found the system very sluggish. It was about as fast as my old Pentium 200MMX system. I logged out & in again ==> same, logged out then in as root ==> by the time gnome started with only nautilus disk I/O brought it to a crawl. I logged out, @ the gentoo emergence login I <cntrl><alt><F1> to go to the console. I logged in as root did a killall gdm, restarted gdm ==> still slow, repeated that ==>same result. I used the reboot command from the console & things seem back to normal

My new system : Gigabyte GA7VAX KT400 Mainboard, XP2000+ CPU, 256Mb PC2700 DDR Ram, 3-WD60gig HD's, DVD, Asus/Nvivdia GF4-440MX AGP 8X video, 17in. LCD monitor.

Gentoo = 1.4_rc2 install /gcc version 3.2.1 20021207 (Gentoo Linux 3.2.1-20021207)
Kernel = Linux version 2.4.19-gentoo-r10

I also remember having to twice power of to reset my old P200 system as it also had a flurry of disk I/O and the system seemed unresponsive, I believe it's using 2.4.16-gentoo sources.

I found this thread that seemed like it might be related https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=35028
thargor66 suffered a slowdown he noticed that seemed to disk I/O related.

Sorry if this post seems longwinded, more info is available of course

Thank you for any and all assistance, Brian

[Malakin]

Have you tried a different kernel? 2.4.20 vanilla sources maybe?

If it continues try disabling any agp/apci stuff you might have enabled and see if that makes any difference.

[dol-sen]

No, I have not tried any other kernels, although I think I will.

I do have agp enabled but it isn't properly supported for this chipset yet (that I know of). I have had this system running ok continously for 3 to 4 days before rebooting to windblows, last night it was on less than a day. My old p200 system does not have agp. but almost never shutdown/rebooted. (off right now, needs a new PS fan, 96Mb ram)

The thought that I have is that something went wrong with the swap system, possibly some memory holes from emerges/unmerges or something causing continous swapping/dragging the system down to a snails pace. I had galeon open with 3 or 4 tabs (gentoo forum pages, developer docs for ebuilds) gedit with 3 open tabs (ebuilds), 2 terminals (1 SU'd to root, 1 user), naurilus, evolution, then xscreensaver (random) ran overnight. Swap memory used was at 112Mb. I had never seen swap used over the base 20-30K with very little to nothing running, even when I emerged open office from source with galeon/evolution also running.

I won't try a different kernel just yet in case this system is usefull for debugging.

Brian

[Malakin]

[dol-sen]

I have another question. I am unsure how any modules are located by the kernel. Are they located directly in the linux-.x.x.x directory or are they located thru the linux directory link?

I'm glad to know that the kt400 support is coming available.

Brian

[dol-sen]

I need help identifying the processes that are running rampant with my systems memory causing the desktop to run from swap.


So far I noticed init was several Mb's before a system reboot 488K after.

Thank you for any and all help, Brian

[Malakin]

[dol-sen]

The vanilla sources I don't think helped the memory problem much, It does seem better, but I have not loaded up the memory and then let xscreensaver run for much time. I have let xscreensaver run overnight and there was defineatly more swap used the next morning, but I did not have much open on the desktop. I have also noticed that other apps also use up main memory eventually pushing into swap, closing the apps does not always reduce memory stats, and never returns to the values to what they were before the app was run. The other thing I learned is that logging out & back in again helps reduce the memory used but does not return to the values at boot-up & initial login. I assume that some of the memory is being held by the kernel properly for whatever.

I have also changed the xscreensaver from random, to Atlantis, and now blank screen only. The blank sreen only setting seems better at not increasing memory when active. The first time I tried blank screen it reported an error about a sudden memory increase of 8k, I didn't have time to write it down, and has not returned as yet.

Rereading your posts again I'll try disabling apci next. I'll keep the AGP problems over on
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=37227


Brian

[dol-sen]

Ive found this thread with the same problem and has some better info so far.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=32334


Use that thread instead.

Thanks, Brian