Desktop performance

Q · Posted: Thu May 15, 2003 10:12 pm Post subject: Desktop performance

Hi,

I have a P4 2.4 machine with 512M of memory. I am using the i845 display of the motherboard so I guess that is using some memory.

I am also running gnome 2.2 and Xfree4.3-r2. There are a number of services running qmail, courier-imap, cups etc but I am a lone user so load on these services can't be a problem

The problem that I have is that the memory is being used up and the machine is swapping to disk which is affecting performance.

Is this not enough memory and if so what is causing it to swap.

di1bert · l33t Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 963 Location: Oslo, Norway

Does this happen all the time or is it when you are doing something in particular ?

Also things like the cron jobs for "makewhatis" and the locate update will cause these symtoms, if only for a short while.

I have an AMD 2500+ and even I get the odd bit of disk thrashing..
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choff.

Q · Posted: Fri May 16, 2003 12:00 am Post subject:

Once the system reaches this state it remains in this state. It seems that memory is not correctly unallocated when applications are closed. I can watch memory usage increasing from the point of boot at which time about 320 MB is recorded by task manager as used.

di1bert · l33t Joined: 16 May 2002 Posts: 963 Location: Oslo, Norway

mm...something definately sounds amiss there. My first impression would be X 4.3.0-r2 as I have quite a few hassles with it (it lasted all of 30 minutes on my box). But yeah...Perhaps try that first...

just my thoughts...
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choff.

spectre · n00b Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 40 Location: Virginia USA

I had a *similiar* problem as this. For me, it was related to a particular release of gentoo-sources on my hardware. It would run for a little bit and then swapping would start until I would reboot. I switched to gaming-sources and the problem went away.

I have since tried later gentoo-sources without the problem reoccuring. However, on another box, the gentoo-sources-r5 will lock up after a time and the r3 would run forever. (Switched to gaming-sources there too). This just illustrates how a particular patchset on a kernel can cause strange behavior.

512 MB should be plenty. I run 312MB on my laptop without problem with Gnome, postfix, openoffice, etc. On my boxes with 768 MB & 1 GB, I usually just have lots of empty memory.

What kernel are you running? Also, have you tried shutting down services like QMail, etc. and running for a while that way to isolate if the problem still occurs?

Q · Posted: Sat May 17, 2003 11:14 pm Post subject:

I installed gaming sources and things seem much better. I was using r1 of the gentoo sources and a startup (including gdm) it was using 320MB now at start up memory uasge is 170MB.

Thanks

spectre · n00b Joined: 11 May 2003 Posts: 40 Location: Virginia USA

Q · Posted: Sun May 18, 2003 3:28 pm Post subject:

Actually both X r1 and r2 as far as I could tell were constant in their memory use. It looks thus far as though it was a kernel issue becuase the system is not swapping at all.