LinuxQuestions.org
Latest LQ Deal: Latest LQ Deals
Go Back   LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Newbie
User Name
Password
Linux - Newbie This Linux forum is for members that are new to Linux.
Just starting out and have a question? If it is not in the man pages or the how-to's this is the place!

Notices


Reply
  Search this Thread
Old 12-11-2001, 12:49 PM   #1
devraj
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Mumbai, India
Distribution: Redhat 7.1
Posts: 8

Rep: Reputation: 0
Unhappy what's my machine is doing?


I use RH7.1 on PII. Whenever I login into Linux, the harddisk seems to moving for almost half an hour as if some resource-intensive operation is going on. The user interface actions like moving the mouse and input from keyboard appear after some time after they have been done. What the hell my machine is doing all that time?? that too for half an hour??

Last edited by devraj; 12-11-2001 at 12:52 PM.
 
Old 12-11-2001, 05:31 PM   #2
DMR
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Fairfax, California
Distribution: RH 9.0, RH 7.3, Mandrake 8.0
Posts: 986

Rep: Reputation: 30
I'd check your logs and the output of dmesg for any clues as to what process is tying up the system.

- You can't do anything (no mouse or kybd) during that period of activity?
- Has it always done this, or is this a new problem?
-Does it do it when booting into any runlevel, or just a certain one?
 
Old 12-11-2001, 10:27 PM   #3
devraj
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Mumbai, India
Distribution: Redhat 7.1
Posts: 8

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Unhappy how to do that?/

Hello DMR,
I'm a . so pls tell me in details how to check logs etc. I even don't know where they are located.??
 
Old 12-11-2001, 10:48 PM   #4
ryandelany
Member
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Orange County, CA
Distribution: RedHat 7.2, 7.3, 8.0
Posts: 66

Rep: Reputation: 15
What speed is your processor and how much RAM do you have? I have had problems in the past using the GUI when I didn't have enough memory. I had one particular problem when I was running Gnome/KDE and StarOffice.

Ryan
 
Old 12-12-2001, 03:16 AM   #5
DMR
Member
 
Registered: Jun 2001
Location: Fairfax, California
Distribution: RH 9.0, RH 7.3, Mandrake 8.0
Posts: 986

Rep: Reputation: 30
Re: how to do that?/

Quote:
Originally posted by devraj
Hello DMR,
I'm a . so pls tell me in details how to check logs etc. I even don't know where they are located.??
Logs are, for the most part, located in /var/log. The "messages" file that I refered to definitely lives there, and there are others as well. To view their contents, type "less /var/log/name of log file". The less commmand will allow you to scroll back anc forth through the documents using the up/down arrows keys or the pg up/pg down keys.
To review the messages that scroll by during boot up for possible clues, type "less dmesg". Do both of these as root.

Could you answer the questions I asked as well, please? The information could be helpful. When I ask about a "runlevel", I'm basically asking if it does this only when you boot directly into the GUI (runlevel 5 in Rehat), or if it also happens if you boot a shell/command prompt (runlevel 3). I'm assuming that your system is set up to boot directly into X (the GUI), yes?

Also, ryandelany brings up a good question. How much RAM do you have, and how large are your hard drive and swap file/partition? I doubt that these would cause pauses of the length you describe, but...
 
Old 12-12-2001, 03:52 AM   #6
devraj
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Mumbai, India
Distribution: Redhat 7.1
Posts: 8

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Exclamation My Machine

I have PII-300MMX with 128MB RAM and 133MB swap partition. I log in to GUI directly.

Interestingly i could not see the desktop icons for root login. there are there in desktop directory but are not displayed on screen. all things goes slow after login and machine seems to be doing something else than what i told it to do
 
Old 12-13-2001, 06:40 PM   #7
tome
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: PA
Distribution: debian
Posts: 7

Rep: Reputation: 0
One other thing that may be of iterest:

On my system I have the locate database (used for the locate command, try it out) update every night. This is done automatically by the system via the updatedb program and a few others.

The long and the short of it is:
There is a chance it may be running updatedb if it didnt get to run it when it wanted to. An easy way to check, while you see the increased disk activity, type:

ps aux | grep updatedb

If you see a process listed, then its running : )
This is often set up automatically by today's distros.

Hope this helps,

good luck!

Tom

Last edited by tome; 12-13-2001 at 06:41 PM.
 
Old 12-29-2001, 01:19 PM   #8
devraj
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Mumbai, India
Distribution: Redhat 7.1
Posts: 8

Original Poster
Rep: Reputation: 0
Question what next??

yes, updatedb is running.
now what next ???
 
Old 01-05-2002, 11:48 PM   #9
wilcsnyder
LQ Newbie
 
Registered: Dec 2001
Location: Guizhou, China
Distribution: rh
Posts: 13

Rep: Reputation: 0
On some distros, updatedb is run daily, per cron.daily. You can make it run weekly or monthy or not at all. You can do it manually whenever you feel you need to. Look at the cron man page, and look at the cron entries in /etc/cron.daily, /etc/cron.weekly, etc...

If you stilll have questions, write again.

cheers,
wil snyder
 
Old 01-07-2002, 12:43 PM   #10
hanzerik
Member
 
Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Cheyenne Wyoming
Distribution: Debian/Raspbian/Mint
Posts: 717

Rep: Reputation: 32
Another thing you might want to check in the log: /var/log/messages is something about USB cable down something or another, one right after another. On one of my machines, a compaq presario, The first thing i do after installing redhat 7.1/7.2 is to delete the alias usb line in /etc/modules.conf. If I dont, the log files get huge with entries about usb cable connection problems, and the hard drive is constantlly writing. I dont use usb on it anyway, its my webserver.
 
  


Reply


Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off



Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
scp: copy a file from local machine to remote machine seran Linux - Newbie 8 10-30-2007 12:23 PM
trying to copy files from another machine to the local machine using telnet,..how? shrike_912 Programming 6 03-14-2006 04:45 PM
sharing internet from a windows 98 machine to a Red Hat Linux machine ritwiksolutions Linux - Newbie 7 03-14-2006 10:20 AM
how to open a dilog on local machine when i do ssh to remote machine fahad26 Programming 3 05-03-2005 07:39 PM
Display of Unix Machine on a PCQ Linux Machine gopalkasat Linux - Networking 1 12-14-2004 02:37 AM

LinuxQuestions.org > Forums > Linux Forums > Linux - Newbie

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:58 PM.

Main Menu
Advertisement
My LQ
Write for LQ
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute content, let us know.
Main Menu
Syndicate
RSS1  Latest Threads
RSS1  LQ News
Twitter: @linuxquestions
Open Source Consulting | Domain Registration