Mousestroke and keystroke delays

rollo · 11-14-2004, 04:55 PM

I have installed GAIM and Firefox and both work fine.. except for one extremely annoying problem.

In GAIM there is a keystroke delay - every keystroke takes a quarter-second or so to register, which makes typing fast all but impossible.

And in Firefox there is a mousestroke delay. Every operation performed with the mouse - i.e. clicking and manipulating menus and buttons - takes a half-second or so to register. Scrolling down the bookmarks menu is so slow and unreactive that I have started to just trying remembering addresses instead.

What could be causing these little delays? RAM perhaps (there's definitely not enough of it)?
The thing is, there's no delay in other applications, like Konqueror, or even OpenOffice.

Is it something to do with interrupt requests or something?

All ideas really really appreciated...

rollo · 12-07-2004, 04:39 PM

Sorry to push this to the top of the heap but I would really like to make progress on this one...

Has anyone got any ideas? If only just to say why it must be just an ordinary memory problem...

Thanks again.

visaris · 12-07-2004, 04:43 PM

I know this may be WAY off the mark, but what does your /etc/hosts file look like?

Tinkster · 12-07-2004, 04:57 PM

I'd think it's most likely load-related ... have a look
at the output of top (or tload) ...

Cheers,
Tink

rollo · 12-07-2004, 05:27 PM

Quote:

what does your /etc/hosts file look like?

127.0.0.1 localhost

# special IPv6 addresses
::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

fe00::0 ipv6-localnet

ff00::0 ipv6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ipv6-allnodes
ff02::2 ipv6-allrouters
ff02::3 ipv6-allhosts
127.0.0.2 linux.site linux

Quote:

have a look
at the output of top (or tload)

With nothing but Firefox running, here are the figures from top:

27% firefox-bin
10% X
4% kdeinit

..followed by around 40 other items, including some with multiple instances (such as "kdeinit" and "mingetty")

Tinkster · 12-07-2004, 05:34 PM

And the load average?
E.g.

Code:

top - 12:34:24 up  5:04,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.05
Tasks: 100 total,   1 running,  99 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):   0.7% user,   1.7% system,   0.0% nice,  97.7% idle
Mem:    515560k total,   509412k used,     6148k free,    22744k buffers
Swap:  1000712k total,      248k used,  1000464k free,   325472k cached

Cheers,
Tink

rollo · 12-07-2004, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Tinkster
[B]And the load average?

load average: 0.20, 0.58, 0.69

(Tried to paste a section of the rest but it caused total formatting havoc with strange SI and ESC characters.. what was that all about?..)

Tinkster · 12-07-2004, 09:51 PM

Well, that shouldn't be causing your problems,
then ... what is the hardware we're looking at?

As for the funny characters: that may well be
due to how your xterm is set-up.

Cheers,
Tink

visaris · 12-07-2004, 11:28 PM

Quote:

127.0.0.1 localhost

# special IPv6 addresses
::1 localhost ipv6-localhost ipv6-loopback

fe00::0 ipv6-localnet

ff00::0 ipv6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ipv6-allnodes
ff02::2 ipv6-allrouters
ff02::3 ipv6-allhosts
127.0.0.2 linux.site linux

Ah, that might be the problem. I had this happen on a SuSE box once. If your box's current hostname (type "hostname") is not listed in your /etc/hosts file like:

Code:

127.0.0.1 localhost your_hostname_here

, it can cause some really long laggy delays in many apps.

Give it a try maybe?

rollo · 12-08-2004, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by visaris
Ah, that might be the problem. I had this happen on a SuSE box once. If your box's current hostname (type "hostname") is not listed in your /etc/hosts file like:

Code:

127.0.0.1 localhost your_hostname_here

, it can cause some really long laggy delays in many apps.

Give it a try maybe?

Changed it to

Code:

127.0.0.1 linux

. No difference unfortunately, but thanks for the suggestion.

Tinkster, the hardware we're looking at is now in my sig below. Yes it's rubbish I know, but I can't afford to upgrade right now and I just don't have the expertise or time to try a slimmer distro like this Slackware.

I would just like to know why I get this maddening lag problem in Firefox and GAIM and not in other applications, including hefty ones like OpenOffice. A bit of hard-drive chugging is to be expected when you have too little RAM, but this...

rollo · 12-10-2004, 10:43 AM

Maybe I've described this problem badly... does anyone know what I'm talking about here?

I'll try again. In Firefox I click on "Bookmarks". There is a half-second delay before "Bookmarks" lights up, then another half-second before the menu appears. Same goes for hovering over menu items, changing tabs and indeed anything else that you typically do all the time in Firefox. There is no hard-drive activity and the lag time is constant however many programs are open.

In Konqueror and OpenOffice and other programs this doesn't happen.

I guess it must be just program architecture, and tough luck to me with my slow computer.

Tinkster · 12-10-2004, 02:46 PM

Maybe THIS

Code:

Compaq Armada 7400 PII 300mhz 128mb

is your problem ... how do those programs behave if you
run them under gnome rather than in KDE?

rollo · 12-14-2004, 06:31 PM

Quote:

Maybe THIS

Code:

Compaq Armada 7400 PII 300mhz 128mb

is your problem ... how do those programs behave if you
run them under gnome rather than in KDE?

It's only Firefox (and Gaim) that I'm talking about. Those other programs all run fine, which is what is strange. That was my point.

I suspect this has nothing to do with RAM or KDE but is something internal to these programs.

Never mind, thanks anyway. Guess I'll just have to start saving for a faster computer. The cure-all solution.

Tinkster · 12-14-2004, 07:45 PM

I wasn't actually suggesting that you need new
hardware ... it's just that these two are GTK apps
(quite likely linked against some gnome-stuff as
well) which means that you're getting strange
reaction times. I'd still love to see the output
(particularly the first 5 lines) of top on that box.

Besides that you may want to look at
~/.xsession-errors after having run them, there
may very well be diagnostic information in there,
and also see what goes on in a shell if you fire
them up from there ...

Cheers,
Tink

rollo · 12-15-2004, 07:00 PM

Tinkster thanks for the GTK lead.

Quote:

I'd still love to see the output
(particularly the first 5 lines) of top on that box.

Code:

 [H [2J [?7l [m top - 01:09:20 up 5 min,  2 users,  load average: 2.72, 2.07, 0.92 [m  [39;49m [K
Tasks: [m  [39;49m [1m  69  [m  [39;49mtotal, [m  [39;49m [1m   1  [m  [39;49mrunning, [m  [39;49m [1m  68  [m  [39;49msleeping, [m  [39;49m [1m   0  [m  [39;49mstopped, [m  [39;49m [1m   0  [m  [39;49mzombie [m  [39;49m [K
Cpu(s): [m  [39;49m [1m 33.3%  [m  [39;49mus, [m  [39;49m [1m 13.4%  [m  [39;49msy, [m  [39;49m [1m  0.0%  [m  [39;49mni, [m  [39;49m [1m  9.1%  [m  [39;49mid, [m  [39;49m [1m 44.0%  [m  [39;49mwa, [m  [39;49m [1m  0.2%  [m  [39;49mhi, [m  [39;49m [1m  0.0%  [m  [39;49msi [m  [39;49m [K
Mem:  [m  [39;49m [1m   126640k  [m  [39;49mtotal, [m  [39;49m [1m   124868k  [m  [39;49mused, [m  [39;49m [1m     1772k  [m  [39;49mfree, [m  [39;49m [1m     4384k  [m  [39;49mbuffers [m  [39;49m [K
Swap: [m  [39;49m [1m   251360k  [m  [39;49mtotal, [m  [39;49m [1m     2392k  [m  [39;49mused, [m  [39;49m [1m   248968k  [m  [39;49mfree, [m  [39;49m [1m    34384k  [m  [39;49mcached [m  [39;49m [K
 [6;1H
 [7m  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  5146 rollo     17   0 27648  17m  23m S  7.5 14.2   0:04.94 oooqs               [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  [1m 5190 rollo     17   0  1756  820 1540 R  3.8  0.6   0:00.05 top                 [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  5163 rollo     17   0 22444 8788  21m S  1.9  6.9   0:00.04 kdeinit             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m     1 root      16   0   588  128  444 S  0.0  0.1   0:06.27 init                [m  [39;49m [K
 [m     2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0         [m  [39;49m [K
 [m     3 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.46 events/0            [m  [39;49m [K
 [m    16 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.08 kblockd/0           [m  [39;49m [K
 [m    26 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 pdflush             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m    27 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.36 pdflush             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m    29 root      13 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0               [m  [39;49m [K
 [m    28 root      16   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.36 kswapd0             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m   182 root      16   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m   234 root       5 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.11 reiserfs/0          [m  [39;49m [K
 [m   639 root       6 -10     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kcopyd/0            [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  1459 root      16   0  2500  960 2288 S  0.0  0.8   0:00.00 hotplug             [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  1460 root      18   0  1360  316 1200 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.00 logger              [m  [39;49m [K
 [m  1490 root      17   0  2500 1052 2288 S  0.0  0.8   0:00.00 pci.agent           [m  [39;49m [K

Quote:

you may want to look at
~/.xsession-errors

Code:

xset:  bad font path element (#59), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax
xset:  bad font path element (#59), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax
xset:  bad font path element (#59), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax
xset:  bad font path element (#59), possible causes are:
    Directory does not exist or has wrong permissions
    Directory missing fonts.dir
    Incorrect font server address or syntax
ksplash: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor!
kbuildsycoca running...
KAmix session mode disabled.
KAmix should be started from startkde.
konqueror: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor!
kio (KMimeType): WARNING: KServiceType::offers : servicetype text/english not found
kio (KMimeType): WARNING: KServiceType::offers : servicetype text/english not found
konqueror: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor!
QClipboard::setData: Cannot set X11 selection owner for PRIMARY
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
  Major opcode:  20
  Minor opcode:  0
  Resource id:  0x1c01af5
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
  Major opcode:  20
  Minor opcode:  0
  Resource id:  0x1c01af5
X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3
  Major opcode:  20
  Minor opcode:  0
  Resource id:  0x1c01af5
konqueror: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor!
konqueror: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor!
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1)
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1)
kio (KLauncher): ERROR: SlavePool: No communication with slave.
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1)
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104
kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1)
kio (KLauncher): ERROR: SlavePool: No communication with slave.

See anything suspect?

Tried running Firefox directly from shell but got "Gtk-warning ** cannot open display"

As I understand it, GTK is a resource-hogging subsystem used by Firefox to control buttons and menus etc, and slowing them down on slow computers? Any way round it?

Thanks again, really appreciate the tips.