Newbie asks: About lost memory and speed decreasing
 

Ok, I am running Mepis 6.0 I have 512 MB of PC 3200 DDR 400 MHZ ram installed. I have been up and operating for just 6 weeks. I am running a 3. Gig processor.
Why has my page loading slowed significantly in comparison to the first three weeks?
I found the sensors in K-menu I have them on screen. it shows Ram att the edge of the green section teetering over to red section! ( I don't think that is good)

the sensor shows 502 of Ram

I found the Process Table and it shows that page loading times are averaging 1 min.! That is excessively slow in comparison to my first three weeks.

Before closing my browser, each time I go to tools and click on : clear private data.

SO what has happened to my Ram? how do I find out what is " hogging " the ram?

I down loaded allot of music just before New years eve. I think I cleared all the downloads? I think? I must have because, under the clear private data, I place a check mark in every square, each time.

Is there other maintenance I should be doing or should set up to have done while I sleep? Like what?

I never looked at this section of the tools "Clear private data" till now, one thing I noticed in here is a checkbox for "cookies". The first time you visit a website will take an abnormally long time to load because it loads a cookie which helps open that website much faster the next time you go there. If you clear cookies after each session, they will be re-loaded on next visit which again will take an abnormal amount of time.
As for the memory part, I have 1GB DDRSDRAM and only have 112mb free as I write this, I don't believe it is a problem because I have a total of 2GB total free memory when you add in the swap space. At least, it does not seem to affect my system in a negative way.
If web page loading seems to be the only sluggish effects you have it is because you cleared the cookies which need to be re-loaded next time which can take around 1 minute.

Flash animation and Linux does not mix well. If you are using Firefox, you can get an extension that does not allow flash animation or ads that uses flash animation.

My computer is a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz (Northwood core) with 1 GB of RAMBUS memory (ECC). The video card is a GeForceFX 5700 Ultra that is cooled by a passive heatsink. My computer gets a performance penalty when there are flash animation. After about two weeks, the performance is still the same or better than it first booted up.

Memory management in Linux is far superior than Windows. You can not measure Linux megabytes as you did when using Windows. Linux memory management is like both system and program cache switch on in Windows. There are plenty of information how Linux memory management is handle and how to read Linux memory values.

We as the Linux community need to start bitching/complaining at Macromedia or now Adobe to write a better Flash player for Linux. The Flash player should be using OpenSDL for better graphics performance through OpenGL and more support for audio in a multi-threaded environment.

Yeah, I'm a little ticked having not found a version of Adobe flash player for x86_64 system, apparently there is none as of yet. Maybe that's why my 64 bit system that I'm in now does'nt suffer. I have Pentium 4 650, Nvidia gforce 6800 with 256mb mem., but I don't have that nice memory you have.
But Mandrake also does not suffer.
Thanks for throwing in that little lesson on Linux memory usage, I've not had a need to study that yet.

I don't understand this.
What numbers are you talking about - describe what you see, not what you think it means.

My reply
 

I am speaking about the "Process Table {Modified} KDE system guard found in: K menu, then to system, then to more applications.

Also I am using : K-Sensors

Still no one has offered solutions to the question: where my memory is being used, where has almost 512 MB gone??
Someone tell me, does having many book marks eat up your Ram memory? So what does one do to correct this, besides reducing the number of book marks?

Does having many items on the desk top, use up ram memory?

I await your replies
Flywelder

This question is answered every now and then here. Search these forums or go to:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/FAQ_Linux_Memory_Management

I'm running Debian, but I noticed some strange memory monitor behavior while I was running version 2.6.8 of the kernel. It seemed like the usage was always high but I can't say that it actually affected anything negatively.

The number of bookmarks and other stuff like that shouldn't really affect anything. That's just a file like any other file. Do you have some sort of process monitor in Mepis? Take a look there and see where your cpu is actually being used. Chances are you've got some process running and you've forgotten what it was or didn't realise it was going to eat the cpu. Look for things like a firefox process still running even though firefox was shut down. Stuff like that.

Added:
Emerson,
Thanks. That's probably what was affecting what I was seeing in the monitor when I first updated from 2.4 to 2.6. But I never noticed anything slowing down though.

Ok great information !
 

Thank you each and all for the info! I have looked and I do not see anything like a 'process monitor' program. Does any one know of such and where it is? Remember, I am using simply Mepis 6.0 I just started using Mepis,
6 weeks ago.
I'll stop deleting cookies and see how that helps.
Flywelder
Thanks again to all!
I await your replies.

an Update from Flywelder
 

Emerson,
I went to the web site you mentioned, and that info there, helped, thanks!

I tried the command free -m: but it did nothing? my computer said, 'bad command.' What should I type, in place then?

Also, that site mentioned, the program: 'Top' ....what is Top? where do I find it, when, I have 'simply Mepis'?

Is 'Top' a Maintenance program I should be running periodically?

Also, where do I find out what my kernel is?
Flywelder

From Flywelder
 

If any of you have used Norton programs with Windows. perhaps you'll be familiar with running some of Norton's program like: Windows checker; speed disk; scan disk; one button check up; short cut checker; system check; registry checker; and all the others, Norton has.

Now is there similar programs that I should be periodically running for my Mepis 6.0?

Certainly we DON'T just sign on and off and Mepis takes care of it all, so that programs don't crash and the hard drive and memory don't become so broken up and we have lost files everywhere! This will happen...will it not?

Flywelder
I await your replies.

So U know....I know nothing about McAfee software. I have only used Norton.

Linux does not need or does not have:
speed disk
scan disk
registry
defrag


If you use ECC memory and an excellent power supply, data corruption problems will be minimized. Filesystems like EXT2/3 gets checked on every 10 mounts and/or a certain amount of days have pass since a check. Other Linux filesystems will be checked during mounting, but it depends on their design. Journal filesystems has two copies of the data, so sector corruption should not hurt your data.

I suggest reading http://www-128.ibm.com/developerwork...brary/l-mem26/.

free is an utility that may have to be installed or it can be found in /bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, or /usr/sbin. You can use "cat /proc/meminfo". Another program is vmstat.

yes thats exactly what you do.

MY reply form Flywelder
 

WOW!! Hurray! Hurray! Finally I have an OS that is reliable! I LOVE MY Mepis!!!

As for your question about "top"

First I would like to mention how to view all running processes using this command:

ps -u username

This web page can shed a little light on process management:

http://www.cs.dal.ca/studentservices...Management.php

Replacing (username) with the user name of the account you are currently logged into, you can also try it with replacing (username) with root in-case you have a terminal or such running as root.

As for top, just type $top in a terminal to see what is happening with memory, it will not be easy or accurate to understand but use this tutorial to help understand it.

http://club.mandriva.com/xwiki/bin/view/KB/AdminAproc2

To help get an idea on what's happening in the background, which is not easy to explain through this forum as you will find out in this document.

Ps: It's not like I actually know this stuff, I just asked a couple simple questions in Google.
Google is your friend.

To find what the current running kernel version is, type $uname -r