hi all, i am a linux newbie
i installed red hat 9 easily in my box
here is my configurations :=-

PIII 933 Mhz, 256 Mb ram,
i installed redhat with XP in dual boot

i have some 4 gb partition for the Linux
and 1 gb swap

the problem is the computer is very very slow in linux
and sometimes it is faster..
i checked in both the conditions threw the system monitor
i found that system in faster when swap is used and slow when only ram is utilized and no swap is used

how to recover from this
is ther any setting to make the usage of swap more?

or is this any other problem

please help me
i donno why sometimes swap is used and sometimes not lol:

"how to recover from this
is ther any setting to make the usage of swap more?"

The way that Linux handles swap is complicated and very good. I doubt that you can speed up your system by changing the way swap works.

"or is this any other problem"

I think that what you found out about your system works faster when swapping is probably either a coincidence or a clue to some other non-swap problem.

I suggest that you look at what software is running when the system is slow and what software is running when the system is fast.

___________________________________
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http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

no other software in my system.. just my redhat Pc installation

If your is like the others, there are processes running in the background. Go into a terminal and type in:

That will list all the processes running. You will likely get a screen full. You can run that when it is fast and when it is slow and see what changes.

You may also want to use top to see what is taking up so much CPU time. Just type in "top" in a terminal. You can type in a capital "P" to sort by processor time.

Post back what you get. Somebody may can tell you what it is. You may be able to disable some of the stuff as well.

Later

the problem now is that i cant even login into the system it takes 1/2 hour to boot .. i think i am going to re install the whole stuff again .. lol

"the problem now is that i cant even login into the system it takes 1/2 hour to boot .. i think i am going to re install the whole stuff again .. lol"

One thing that could cause the symptoms that you are having is a dying hard drive.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

"One thing that could cause the symptoms that you are having is a dying hard drive."

no the hdd is new and just bought before a month 7200 rpm 40 gigs

the windows works ok on the same machine

You posted that you use Redhat but it sounds like Mandrake with a lot of services running in the background. My old AMD 400MHz was really slow to with Mandrake. You may want to cut off services that you are not using. If it takes that long to boot, you have to much running somewhere.

My two cents worth, that ain't much.



edit: I put in but instead of boot. I need to reboot my brain. Uh oh, I have to have one before I can reboot it.

i have uninstalled it and i am going to install it again tomorrow
i need peoples ideas on this issue.

"i need peoples ideas on this issue."

If you still have the problem after you get Red Hat reinstalled then I suggest that you check things out the way that dalek suggested.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

well i reinstalled that stuff
but still seems to be slow

i did only the minimal installation of 400+ Mb

no gnome / kde . or any extra services

it boots very slowly
as some one stated before i think i have some problem in my HDD
but the hard disk works well and fine in windows without any problem.
there is no overheating,badsectors in that

is my PC not meeting any requirement?
PIII 933 / 256 sdram/ 1 gb swap do i need to give any more details?

Post the results of ps aux like mentioned above. That will help us. Something is really sucking power. It is likely something that you don't know about. It was installed without asking type of thing.

Mandrake does the same thing. It's not the user, it's the installing program that puts to much on it.

Later



hmmm, just write down what scrolls by that it is loading. If it takes that long, you should be able to write it down and post that here too.

ok ,, i donno how to do it .. i can see the results but i donno how to copy it and show it here..

i am a in linux

also when i am posting here i am on Mswindows

how to show you the results... some one help me

and i cant even tolerate the slowness of booting..
it takes a lot of time to show the shell

Hmmmm, may have to get pencil and paper on that one. On ps aux it is the stuff off to the right that looks like this that we need.

/usr/sbin/cron
kdeinit: dcopserver --nosid
[kapmd]

The whole line would look like this:

just the last bit is OK.

You will have to do this as root. I assume you are booting to command line which looks like old DOS. Just type in "root" at the login prompt and then type in your password. Then type in the commands. Double check what you type to make sure you don't type in the wrong thing. It won't usually ask if you are sure. Y/N?

post back if you have questions.

Later

I owned AMD k2-6 500 Mhz, 512 Mb ram,
i installed redhat with windows 2000 in dual boot

i have some 60 gb partition for the Linux
and 8 gb swap

I noticed the higher the swap file the better
I was thinking to put higher than that.