CPU on 100% very often

Satriani · 12-13-2003, 11:09 AM

Hi all,

I have some problems with my CPU usages...

I run gkrellm and can see my CPU load up to 100% way too often. As soon as I start an app, it runs to 100% and the machine becomes really slow.

When I Do a 'top' I can see that X is the nr1 in it.

Any information you might need, i am happy to provide, but at this time, i have really no idea what might be helpful to provide. ( lack of knowledge)

TIA for your help

Satch

DrOzz · 12-13-2003, 11:13 AM

is it safe to assume that your running KDE and a slower machine?
and with top running, do you see anything else out of the ordinary?
just post your desktop environment and your machine specs ...

Satriani · 12-13-2003, 11:20 AM

AH, That info I could have figured out myself... Sorry bout that:
I run RedHat 9 KDE on a toshiba tecra 8100 laptop.

If i do top, i dont see anything strange.....

Shade · 12-13-2003, 11:30 AM

What's the CPU speed, RAM, etc?

-Shade

Satriani · 12-13-2003, 11:41 AM

Not really shure about the speed, I guess its a P3 500, and has 328MB ram in it.
It has a savage 3d videocard, and a 12GB HD in it.
Is there a way to dump information that might be helpfull? (like posting the Xfree86.log or so)

Satriani · 12-13-2003, 11:52 AM

Here is a dump of my 'TOP'

Code:

 18:48:45  up  1:29,  4 users,  load average: 1.62, 1.07, 0.88
78 processes: 77 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  21.3% user   5.1% system   3.7% nice   0.0% iowait  69.8% idle
Mem:   319820k av,  315828k used,    3992k free,       0k shrd,    9324k buff
                    200264k actv,   33936k in_d,    6140k in_c
Swap:  257000k av,   22300k used,  234700k free                  186700k cached
                                                                                                                             
  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME CPU COMMAND
14391 mike      25   0 23692  22M 14372 S    49.5  7.1   0:10   0 delphi
 2368 xfs       25   0  7820 5960   600 S    28.6  1.8   6:53   0 xfs
14171 root      16   0 34264  24M  4328 S    16.0  7.7   0:23   0 X
14393 mike      15   0   752  740   644 S     2.0  0.2   0:00   0 wineserver
14428 mike      20   0  1108 1108   856 R     1.3  0.3   0:00   0 top
    1 root      15   0   120   80    56 S     0.0  0.0   0:04   0 init
    2 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 keventd
    3 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kapmd
    4 root      34  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00   0 ksoftirqd_CPU
    9 root      25   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 bdflush
    5 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kswapd
    6 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kscand/DMA
    7 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:03   0 kscand/Normal
    8 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kscand/HighMe
   10 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 kupdated
   11 root      25   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00   0 mdrecoveryd

Maybe U can find some info in it???
I found that mostly X and XFS are in top of the list.

tearinox · 12-13-2003, 12:01 PM

i think the application would like to just load fast so the program takes highest priority and uses all the cpu power to start and then goes back down to normal. Nothing to worry about, it does it with my computer too

btw - even scrolling causes cpu to rise

Satriani · 12-13-2003, 12:13 PM

mmm I am not satisfied with that answer, especially whenI have to wait a few minutes!! to use some apps.. Fortunately, not all apps start so slowly....

Any other hints / clues / ideas ???

Thanks!

Baldorg · 12-13-2003, 12:32 PM

Do the apps that start slowly have something in common? ie. OpenGL apps....

Mork · 12-13-2003, 12:52 PM

You should check if your harddrive has DMA activated, that will make a huge difference even on a fast machine (where harddrive access speed often is a bottleneck). To do this you should use hdparm. Check this article: http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue79/punk.html

Satriani · 12-14-2003, 01:11 PM

I checked that and (un?)fortunately it already usesDMA.
I see xfs consuming most of my cpu load... Can i change a setting with that to make it work faster? Or even maybe disable it ?

Satriani · 12-14-2003, 01:43 PM

I did find a second clue, maybe:
When I do nothing, just my desktop and a terminal, i see kdeinit uses a lot of mem. (3 times in there?)
Also:
As soon as i start an app, (especially Kylix Delphi) XFS runs at 99% and stays there for "hours"
Starting kylix is taking about 6 minutes .... Men thats frustrating... All apps start "slowly" but this one really su**s big time! And i wanted to port some apps to linux to completely move over... Guess thats out of the question...

ezra143 · 12-14-2003, 09:51 PM

What does you top look like in gnome? maybe another window manager? I have an older toshiba laptop with 256mb and a P450 and I have never had performance like you describe. You may also want to go in and disable some of your services that you dont need right from boot.

DrOzz · 12-15-2003, 10:06 AM

well its obviously the fact that you are using a slower machine and using KDE with redhat9....this is a huge suck on resources...your just going to have to sacrifice things (such as KDE) and innovate new ideas to gain speed...a huge gain will come from simply switching to a window manager such as fluxbox, or something similiar....even give gnome a try to see how much of an improvment you get, and you will get improvment, but how much is not known till you try....
then kill background daemons/services that initiate on bootup that run all the time that you simply don't need...this will also obviously help...

nowonmai · 12-15-2003, 10:50 AM

Try using xfce4 instead of KDE or Gnome. It's very lightweight and fast, even on older machines.