All of a sudden a major slowdown. Why?
 

After using my "old reliable" Mandrake 8.1 system 24/7/365 for the past four years, I've been trying for almost a year to get Mandriva 2006 to work (with Win4Lin) on a new box I that I built just for that purpose. It has been a long ordeal but I finally got most of the essentials to work ... and then all of a sudden everything that used to work has drastically slowed down and I can't figure out why.

For example, whereas it used to take only a second or two for kmail to start, it can now take more than 30 seconds for kmail to start (and sometimes it doesn't start at all). Same with other apps. Even opening a terminal shell window can take 10-15 seconds, whereas it used to open instantaneously.

Below is a snapshot of the results of running 'top' that shows cpu and memory usage.

I suspect that the problem may be related to kontact and/or kmail in some way, but I don't know how to proceed to analyze and try to solve the problem.

Hope someone here can offer some guidance.

Joe Lowder - joe@actionline.com
Mesa, Arizona

top - 10:12:33 up 3 days, *2:03, *3 users, *load average: 1.13, 1.44, 1.94
Tasks: *96 total, * 1 running, *95 sleeping, * 0 stopped, * 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 75.7% us, *2.3% sy, *0.0% ni, *0.0% id, 21.6% wa, *0.3% hi, *0.0% si
Mem: * *515484k total, * 509460k used, * * 6024k free, * * 1704k buffers
Swap: *1269084k total, * 100368k used, *1168716k free, * 334524k cached

* PID USER * * *PR *NI *VIRT *RES *SHR S %CPU %MEM * *TIME+ *COMMAND
*3923 joe * * * 15 * 0 *137m *73m 5868 S 64.2 14.6 * 2708:27 kded
23690 joe * * * 15 * 0 70620 *37m *25m S *0.0 *7.5 * 0:08.93 kontact
21375 joe * * * 15 * 0 33676 *19m *19m S *0.0 *4.0 * 0:08.04 dosexec
*3031 root * * *16 * 0 31116 *18m 2272 S 10.6 *3.7 *91:30.23 X
22956 joe * * * 16 * 0 30688 *15m *12m S *0.0 *3.1 * 0:02.04 kwrite
21404 joe * * * 15 * 0 24352 *13m *10m S *0.0 *2.6 * 0:01.04 kppp
23772 joe * * * 15 * 0 27332 *12m *10m S *1.7 *2.5 * 0:04.28 konsole *

Couple of things.
First, turn off kat. It is a worthless buggy piece of software at the moment.
Second, how did you "get 2006 working?" I have never been able to "upgrade" my system to the next release. Instead, I install new. I do keep the same /home but rename the desktop settings folder(s) so that a new version of kde (or gnome or whatever) does not burp. Later, I can incorporate my customized settings without mishap.
Finally, win4Lin is an odd bit of stuff. VMware and Wine, work great for running specific software in linux. But running the entire wondows os like that is really a waste. Why not dual boot?

Turn off Kat if you haven't already. It was bogging down all apps on my 2006 version. All's well after I turned Kat off.

Thanks very much! Turning off 'kat' seems to have been the solution.

Regarding the question, "how did you get 2006 working?", it was a difficult ordeal and while I did try to keep good notes and records, I'm not really sure what finally got it to work. But it is finally working. I'll try to reconstruct the steps and post back here later.

What did you mean by your statement: "Instead, I install new." New what?

Regarding your negative comment about win4lin, I have been using it for about five years and my experience with it has been very good. I'm not sure what you mean by your comment that it is "an odd bit of stuff." It is the only thing I have found that will allow me to use Pagemaker and Paint Shop Pro ... and I have found no Linux applications that are as good and as easy to use as those two programs which are very important to my work. Neither VMware nor Wine will allow either Pagemaker or PSP to run under Linux.

Like you, I am very "anti" Microsoft and "wondows" as you call it. But those two win98 apps I mentioned are very crucial to my work and they work flawlessly under Linux via Win4Lin.

You asked: "Why not dual boot?" I did for a while long ago, but that really is a waste and a pain in the neck. By running Win4Lin, I can cut and paste between Linux apps and Pagemaker and PSP so I have the best of all worlds with both running simultaneously on the same desktop screen. (Also, Win98 runs faster and much more efficiently and is more stable under Linux than running it natively.

By "Instead, I install new", I think he means he did a clean install - wipe the "/" directory (preserving "/home" on another partition), and just installed on the freshly formatted "/"-targetted partition.

:)

I have to agree with you, joseppi, that there are some applications for windows (ie. PageMaker) that just haven't spawned a linux clone, yet.

I will also agree with you that dual-booting is a pain in the arse - not to mention a needless one. I had WinXP dual booted with Mandrake 10.1 for a couple of days, then for WHATEVER reason, the boot after the first time I had run WinXP (since the install) left me with a scrolling LILO error; I can only assume that WinXP was trying to "liberate" my MBR.

Yes, I format my / and /usr partitions for an install. (I set up /, /usr, /home. and swap when installing a linix system. One can also set up a storage partition with a symlink in /home for ease of use)
Indeed, there are programs that have yet to be duplicated in linux. They are just a handful, but they are important programs. I was unaware that Vmware or commercial versions of emulators would not run these programs.