System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

Declan · 2010-06-22 04:56:34

Hi everyone!

My system is being very slow. It is a Dell Latitude D830 with 2GB RAM and 2GHz CPU. It has a total HD size of 110GB, with 16GB free, if that matters. It used to be quite speedy, but has lately been slow as hell. I haven't changed anything major. I Syu'd to see if that would somehow fix the problem, but no dice. I use Gnome and Metacity.

Whenever it is being slow, I'll look at top. In the past, I could have firefox, amarok, pidgin, and a terminal open at the same time and there would be no slowness. Now, just having one app open hogs all the CPU for some reason. If I have almost nothing open, but I move my mouse too much or minimize a window, Xorg or metacity or nautilus will suddenly jump to the top of top.

This is driving me nuts and I can't tell what it is. The text is lagging as I type right now. Opening my home folder in nautilus takes a solid 5 seconds. Does anyone have any suggestions of stuff I could try?

Thanks!

x33a · 2010-06-22 05:11:07

For starters, try running memtest to see if it's a problem with the ram.
Also, check the hard drive.

litemotiv · 2010-06-22 07:25:26

check your video driver, how does your computer respond when you're in a tty instead of graphical x? do you have compiz enabled?

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-06-22 07:49:34)

quigybo · 2010-06-22 11:02:20

Maybe check I/O activity with something like htop or iotop?

Declan · 2010-06-22 14:37:10

x33a wrote:

For starters, try running memtest to see if it's a problem with the ram.
Also, check the hard drive.

Ok, I got memtest86+ from the repositories, but now I need to learn how to do both of these things.

Declan · 2010-06-22 14:41:47

litemotiv wrote:

check your video driver, how does your computer respond when you're in a tty instead of graphical x? do you have compiz enabled?

My video driver is nvidia. But that's a good point, maybe something I should have pointed out: right now firefox is thrashing with 90% CPU and Xorg with 20% (it's a dual core so it can add up to 200%), but if I switch to the virtual console, firefox drops to a reasonable 15-30% and Xorg to basically nothing (1-5%) very quickly.

I don't use compiz. I did once and it slowed me down a ton.

Declan · 2010-06-22 14:51:08

This is very weird. It's suddenly being exactly like it used to be, perfect and speedy. It just randomly gets ok. But I don't see it staying like this for long.

hokasch · 2010-06-22 15:10:34

Check if your run into swap, or run out of space on one of your partitions. For firefox, try with a new profile to check if that got borked.

Declan · 2010-06-22 15:57:35

htop (really cool by the way!) says swap is untouched. I only really have one partition, I think... I'll check the firefox thing!

x33a · 2010-06-23 03:12:36

Declan wrote:

Ok, I got memtest86+ from the repositories, but now I need to learn how to do both of these things.

You need to run memtest from a live cd, or usb.

litemotiv · 2010-06-23 08:02:28

x33a wrote:

Declan wrote:
Ok, I got memtest86+ from the repositories, but now I need to learn how to do both of these things.
You need to run memtest from a live cd, or usb.

what does memtest have to do with a laggy pc? i've never heard of that.

Declan · 2010-06-27 15:21:47

Well, I created a new profile for firefox. I can't say I've really noticed much difference. Also, I doubt it's just firefox, because the problem of one program suddenly taking up all the CPU can happen for any program, it seems. Here are a few weird screenshots:

First, here's a really light program hogging all the CPU:

But if you look, it's actually not taking up that much ram. So I went further down the list (these ones were taken at different times, only the one with amarok was taken at the same time as the wicd one):

or

I don't know if this one is supposed to be here, but I can't imagine what would need this many instances of it:

So if you look, they aren't using much CPU but are using most of the ram. What does this mean? Should I worry about them? Why the hell are there like 8 firefox's or amarok's anyway?

quigybo · 2010-06-27 17:32:08

they arent separate instances, just threads. you can hide them in the options.

Declan · 2010-06-27 22:53:49

Ah, ok. But what can this be? It's basically seems like it chooses a random program, then it just starts thrashing like crazy.333

x33a · 2010-06-28 03:12:58

does it happen with console programs also?

try switching to a tty, and run a console program like a music player (cmus, moc, mpd, etc ..) or irssi etc.

kcholakov · 2010-06-28 06:08:24

Check your CPU and memory usage before starting X. I had such problem using incorrect video driver.

Declan · 2010-07-04 05:53:18

x33a wrote:

does it happen with console programs also?
try switching to a tty, and run a console program like a music player (cmus, moc, mpd, etc ..) or irssi etc.

It seems not to, but if the program is running in X and I switch to tty1 and check out top, it's still using a lot.

Declan · 2010-07-04 05:55:48

kcholakov wrote:

Check your CPU and memory usage before starting X. I had such problem using incorrect video driver.

Hmmm, how can I do this? It logs me straight into X. Take it out of .xinitrc?

x33a · 2010-07-04 14:14:55

Declan wrote:

Hmmm, how can I do this? It logs me straight into X. Take it out of .xinitrc?

You can append

to your kernel arguments in grub.

This'll take you straight to runlevel 3.

Note: To do it temporarily, edit the grub menu at boot-up, not the menu.lst file.

Last edited by x33a (2010-07-04 14:18:10)

ancient_archer · 2010-07-04 17:06:00

Declan, install somehow (or download?) memtest, then put memtest86+.bin file in /boot and then in menu.lst append this:

title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

Then check your memory directly from the GRUB menu. I advice you to do it through the night because the check takes a lot of time.

Hope your problem will resolve soon.

Declan · 2010-07-09 06:03:10

ancient_archer wrote:

Declan, install somehow (or download?) memtest, then put memtest86+.bin file in /boot and then in menu.lst append this:
title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
Then check your memory directly from the GRUB menu. I advice you to do it through the night because the check takes a lot of time.
Hope your problem will resolve soon.

Ok, I'm going to try this tonight. I'll tell you how it goes.

I was also told by someone who had the same problem once to move .gconf/ and .gconfd/ and .gnome2/ and .gnome2_private/ (rename them actually). I tried this. It was nice and quick for a little while, but now all I have open is firefox and a terminal, and it's lagging when I type or minimize a window.

Declan · 2010-07-09 14:54:09

So I ran memtest. Seems like there were no errors:

Any other ideas?

litemotiv · 2010-07-09 15:51:44

Declan wrote:

Any other ideas?

the most important thing to find out is if this happens in a shell, so boot into failsafe mode without any X running and test extensively. it's important to know whether this is a core, X or gnome problem.

if it doesn't happen in a shell, another thing to try is to install a second window manager temporarily, for instance openbox. since that won't use all the heavy background gnome processes it might be easier to find the cause.

your only option is to rule out causes one by one, start with no programs running and see what happens when you 'do stuff' under different circumstances. keep monitoring in htop, you can also install the 'sysstat' package from community which has some more tools to debug i/o and performance problems.

Last edited by litemotiv (2010-07-09 15:55:17)

Declan · 2010-07-09 15:56:10

litemotiv wrote:

Declan wrote:
Any other ideas?
the most important thing to find out is if this happens in a shell, so boot into failsafe mode without any X running and test extensively. it's important to know whether this is a core, X or gnome problem.

If I had to guess, I suspect it's an X problem. The fact that it was being slow at the gdm screen makes me think that. What can I do to test?

if it doesn't happen in a shell, another thing to try is to install a second window manager temporarily, for instance openbox. since that won't use all the heavy background gnome processes it might be easier to find the cause.

I've actually wondered: What are all those "heavy background gnome processes"?

your only option is to rule out causes one by one, start with no programs running and see what happens when you 'do stuff' under different circumstances. keep monitoring in htop, you can also try iostat to see if there is any i/o problem.

What can I run from a virtual console to "do stuff" ?

I'm all -Syu'd up, by the way.

litemotiv · 2010-07-09 16:10:52

Declan wrote:

If I had to guess, I suspect it's an X problem. The fact that it was being slow at the gdm screen makes me think that. What can I do to test?

try out without gdm (run openbox straight from the console, see the openbox wiki page for information)

I've actually wondered: What are all those "heavy background gnome processes"?

gnome uses a lot of different libraries, including for instance the sessions handling (consolekit) that you encountered earlier.

by the way, you 3rd screenshot seems to imply that you are running a lot of kde stuff too, so that's even more background processes.

What can I run from a virtual console to "do stuff" ?
I'm all -Syu'd up, by the way.

well not that much, you can run irssi to chat or w3m to browse some webpages, playing some music with moc like x33a suggested could be a good test too.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-22 04:56:34

System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#2 2010-06-22 05:11:07

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#3 2010-06-22 07:25:26

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#4 2010-06-22 11:02:20

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#5 2010-06-22 14:37:10

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#6 2010-06-22 14:41:47

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#7 2010-06-22 14:51:08

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#8 2010-06-22 15:10:34

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#9 2010-06-22 15:57:35

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#10 2010-06-23 03:12:36

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#11 2010-06-23 08:02:28

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#12 2010-06-27 15:21:47

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#13 2010-06-27 17:32:08

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#14 2010-06-27 22:53:49

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#15 2010-06-28 03:12:58

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#16 2010-06-28 06:08:24

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#17 2010-07-04 05:53:18

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#18 2010-07-04 05:55:48

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#19 2010-07-04 14:14:55

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#20 2010-07-04 17:06:00

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#21 2010-07-09 06:03:10

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#22 2010-07-09 14:54:09

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#23 2010-07-09 15:51:44

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#24 2010-07-09 15:56:10

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

#25 2010-07-09 16:10:52

Re: System being incredibly slow, no idea why. Suggestions?

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