Arch Linux

darkknight97

Member

Registered: 2020-08-14

Posts: 5

Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

I installed arch around 2 weeks back with a KDE Plasma DE. However, over time I've seen the RAM usage at any time go from less than a GB at a time to around 4.8GB in my 6GB laptop. I don't know if it's because of the RAM usage but nowadays arch responds extremely slowly after I leave the laptop on for more than 2 days (takes a little while to open the terminal window after I hit the hotkey and takes another while to show the prompt, takes forever opening some other applications etc). The issue is resolved temporarily when I reboot the system and when I do so the average RAM usage after startup is around 3.1GB. But again after 2 days it goes upto 4.8 gigs shortly after which my CPU usage also starts spiking and the system becomes slower. The RAM is mostly used up by firefox and I do have a lot of tabs open at any time but I used to do the same to my Ubuntu system and I never really encountered this over there. Please help.

Last edited by darkknight97 (2020-08-14 07:19:17)

schard

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From: Hannover

Registered: 2016-05-06

Posts: 2,702

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Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

Please provide some more information. E.g. the output of top sorted by CPU and memory.
Also the fact that RAM is being used does not necessarily indicate a problem.
https://www.linuxatemyram.com/

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darkknight97

Member

Registered: 2020-08-14

Posts: 5

Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

I had just rebooted my system and so things are pretty okay for now. I'll post the outputs once it starts hanging again.

ewaller

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From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

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Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

Do you have swap set up?   What is the output of free right now?  Watch it over time to see if the amount of free memory declines over time and whether the swap usage increases.   When things get slow, post the output of free again.

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herbie643

Member

Registered: 2015-03-03

Posts: 28

Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

Maybe check your autostart programs because 3.1GB on cold boot is really high.
I run Xfce and my startup is around 340mb and I hear that Kde is a lot lighter that previous versions.

darkknight97

Member

Registered: 2020-08-14

Posts: 5

Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

top - 09:32:45 up 3 days, 11:09,  4 users,  load average: 1.31, 2.07, 2.01
Tasks: 275 total,   1 running, 273 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s):  7.2 us,  5.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 85.3 id,  0.8 wa,  1.3 hi,  0.3 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   5809.4 total,    419.3 free,   4666.7 used,    723.4 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   7629.0 total,   3820.9 free,   3808.1 used.    557.2 avail Mem

    PID       USER                PR  NI    VIRT      RES       SHR S     %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                                                         
   9366     darkknight97    20   0 3540232 347276  47492 S   70.2   5.8          204:12.07 Web Content                                                                                     
   1226     darkknight97    20   0 4620488 394496 108408 S  15.2   6.6          331:30.42 MainThread                                                                                     
   1113     darkknight97    20   0 3768712  40192  21152 S     7.3    0.7          107:44.27 kwin_x11                                                                                       
525159   darkknight97    20   0  998768  40492  21948 S      5.6    0.7          0:03.80 konsole                                                                                         
    653      root                   20   0  678376  45704  38488 S      4.6    0.8          67:28.17 Xorg                                                                                           
   1138     darkknight97    20   0 3778620 162560  29456 S    3.3    2.7          67:04.96 plasmashell                                                                                     
   1189     darkknight97     9 -11 3192864   6940   4076 S       2.3    0.1          8:23.31 pulseaudio                                                                                     
   1751     darkknight97    20   0 3526992 277812  46976 S    2.0    4.7          97:02.00 Web Content                                                                                     
    369      root                  -51   0       0              0      0 S          1.0     0.0          1:13.84 irq/131-i2c_hid                                                                                 
   5426     darkknight97    20   0 3688728 412448  41824 S    1.0    6.9          72:51.96 Web Content                                                                                     
   6070     darkknight97    20   0 3437524 337360  74044 S    1.0    5.7          37:08.90 Web Content                                                                                     
533869   darkknight97    20   0    9608   4056   3180 R          1.0    0.1          0:01.07 top                                                                                             
   1530     darkknight97    20   0    4180    264      0 S              0.7    0.0          7:08.75 ksysguardd                                                                                     
   1640     darkknight97    20   0 3400356 373108  50048 S    0.7    6.3          44:56.46 Web Content                                                                                     
   3393     darkknight97    20   0 3485932 270180  53284 S    0.7    4.5          49:22.09 Web Content                                                                                     
   5152     darkknight97    20   0 3314660 282716  56272 S    0.7    4.8          40:24.24 Web Content

This is the output of my top command. When sorted by memory the same processes are what's there. My CPU spikes at times to 95% when I checked on a system monitor tool I has installed.

darkknight97

Member

Registered: 2020-08-14

Posts: 5

Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

Do you have swap set up?   What is the output of free right now?  Watch it over time to see if the amount of free memory declines over time and whether the swap usage increases.   When things get slow, post the output of free again.

Yes.
Free command output after slowing down:
                     total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          5.7Gi       4.7Gi       239Mi       346Mi       803Mi       440Mi
Swap:         7.4Gi       3.7Gi       3.7Gi

Before slowing down, the "free" field was somewhere at 589Mi for Mem and "available" was around 1.7Gi

darkknight97

Member

Registered: 2020-08-14

Posts: 5

Re: Arch linux extremely slow after leaving laptop on for long

I have a new update. I experienced a little screen tearing recently. I had only then noticed that I am running Plasma on Xorg. Is it possible that might be the issue? And that the lag I experience is simply the display server being slower to respond?

Last edited by darkknight97 (2020-08-30 18:54:00)