Arch Linux

dabd

Member

Registered: 2008-11-17

Posts: 109

System becomes too slow and unresponsive

Sometimes when I am browsing with google-chrome my system (kernel 3.2.7-1) becomes too slow so that I cannot even open up a terminal with Ctrl-ALT-F1 and kill the hanging process.
My everything.log shows the following:

Mar  2 13:05:06 localhost console-kit-daemon[20134]: WARNING: The program /usr/lib/ConsoleKit/run-seat.d/udev-acl.ck didn't exit within 15 seconds; killing it
Mar  2 13:06:05 localhost kernel: [54480.501254] INFO: task dconf-service:4518 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
Mar  2 13:06:05 localhost kernel: [54480.501293] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
Mar  2 13:06:05 localhost kernel: [54480.501326] dconf-service   D 0000000100f77589     0  4518      1 0x00000000
...
Mar  2 13:06:52 localhost kernel: [54480.501501] INFO: task VirtualBox:10155 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
Mar  2 13:06:51 localhost pulseaudio[4480]: [alsa-source] asyncq.c: q overrun, queuing locally
Mar  2 13:06:52 localhost kernel: [54480.501534] "echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.

I am running virtualbox too.
What is causing this?

Thanks.

Wilco

Member

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 440

Re: System becomes too slow and unresponsive

I noticed the same thing (and hard lockups) when using Virtualbox, I guess that's why the kernel developers marked it as tainted crap

dabd

Member

Registered: 2008-11-17

Posts: 109

Re: System becomes too slow and unresponsive

I noticed the same thing (and hard lockups) when using Virtualbox, I guess that's why the kernel developers marked it as tainted crap

What is a good alternative to Virtualbox?  I don't like VMWARE because it is harder to configure.

Wilco

Member

Registered: 2008-11-09

Posts: 440

Re: System becomes too slow and unresponsive

You can try kvm. But that also requires command line work altough it's not that hard if you follow the wiki. Do you get performance problems without virtualbox (because maybe it isn't caused by virtualbox)

nomorewindows

Member

Registered: 2010-04-03

Posts: 3,542

Re: System becomes too slow and unresponsive

You can try kvm. But that also requires command line work altough it's not that hard if you follow the wiki. Do you get performance problems without virtualbox (because maybe it isn't caused by virtualbox)

KVM will only work on a KVM enabled CPU.  There is also a KVM enabled QEMU (QEMU is usually doggy, don't have a KVM to test the KVM QEMU).  VirtualBox guest additions bring it back to life like speed of the processor, guessing they were being used.

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I may have to CONSOLE you about your usage of ridiculously easy graphical interfaces...
Look ma, no mouse.