Ever since (recently) installed CentOS 5.1 (enterprise) on my machine, I found my system to be terribly slow and on regular occasions have Firefox 1.5 crash a lot even when I upgraded to the latest and greatest it still crashes with multiple tabs opened - this is the way that I work and Windows including Fedora copes well!

system analysis gives:

1. TOP:

top - 21:20:20 up 1 day, 37 min, 1 user, load average: 0.49, 0.69, 0.66
Tasks: 134 total, 2 running, 132 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 21.7%us, 2.3%sy, 0.0%ni, 76.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 841728k total, 735024k used, 106704k free, 191076k buffers
Swap: 2031608k total, 0k used, 2031608k free, 217856k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
9349 jazzmast 15 0 259m 119m 20m S 22.3 14.6 19:09.47 firefox-bin
4068 root 15 0 170m 21m 4344 S 1.0 2.6 11:25.96 X
4232 jazzmast 15 0 35044 16m 13m R 0.3 2.0 0:02.93 konsole
1 root 15 0 2052 628 540 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.29 init

2. NUMBER OF PROCESSES
[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ ps aux | wc -l
137

3. HDPARM

[jazzmaster@localhost ~]$ sudo /sbin/hdparm -I /dev/hda; sudo /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: WDC WD800JB-00FMA0
Serial Number: WD-WCAJ91898097
Firmware Revision: 13.03G13
Standards:
Supported: 6 5 4
Likely used: 6
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 4047
heads 16 16
sectors/track 63 255
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 16511760
LBA user addressable sectors: 156301488
device size with M = 1024*1024: 76319 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 80026 MBytes (80 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 254
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=120ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* SMART feature set
Security Mode feature set
* Power Management feature set
* Write cache
* Look-ahead
* Host Protected Area feature set
* WRITE_BUFFER command
* READ_BUFFER command
* DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
SET_MAX security extension
Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
* SMART error logging
* SMART self-test
Security:
supported
not enabled
not locked
not frozen
not expired: security count
not supported: enhanced erase
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0 determined by the jumper
Checksum: correct

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 65535/16/63, sectors = 156301488, start = 0
[jazzmaster@localhost ~]$ sudo /sbin/hdparm -c3 -d1 -X69 /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 3
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
setting xfermode to 69 (UltraDMA mode5)
IO_support = 3 (32-bit w/sync)
using_dma = 1 (on)

4. UNAME and DF
[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ uname -asr
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.18-53.1.14.el5xen #1 SMP Wed Mar 5 12:39:19 EST 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
73608360 8032860 61776052 12% /
/dev/hda1 101086 31240 64627 33% /boot
tmpfs 420532 0 420532 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda6 31720864 22944848 8776016 73% /media/FAT32_DRIVE



What can I do to free this memory up? Swap is using nothing, why have space alocatted in RAM for swap then if not used? virtualisation seem to be set.
When I was installing I just accepted the default settings including partitioning of the hard disk. And I think most servers were started automatically. Can I disable them and how?

I wanted to start playing with enterprise stuff hence the reason for CentOS, otherwise I am very happy OpenSuSE and may have to go back to it if no resolution! Better the devil you know.....
Several intertwined issues help with whichever you can help with?

Thanks in advance.

Jazzmaster777

well everything looks ok there, that's just the way linux uses memory - you paid for it so why not use it all? if you're trying fedora and opensuse (cutting edge desktop and developement) then it doesn't sound like the right system to be running centos (long term stable servers) on anway... not that that is an excuse at all...

Check and see what services you have running. Disable the ones you do not need.


How much ram does the machine have? how fast is the processor?

Using kde or gnome? compiz enabled or disabled?

optimal Video driver installed?

RAM = 1Gb
[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ uname -pm
i686 athlon

[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ mpstat -P ALL 2 5
Linux 2.6.18-53.1.14.el5xen (localhost.localdomain) 04/13/2008
Average: CPU %user %nice %sys %iowait %irq %soft %steal %idle intr/s
Average: all 17.08 0.00 2.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 80.82 234.17
Average: 0 17.08 0.00 2.10 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 80.82 234.17

KDE

[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ kded --version
Qt: 3.3.6
KDE: 3.5.4-13.el5.centos CentOS
KDE Daemon: $Id: kded.cpp 534738 2006-04-27 18:04:45Z lunakl $

Video = GeForce FX 5200

Regards, Mike

[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ kded --version
Qt: 3.3.6
KDE: 3.5.4-13.el5.centos CentOS
KDE Daemon: $Id: kded.cpp 534738 2006-04-27 18:04:45Z lunakl $
[jazzmaster@localhost downloads]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+
stepping : 1
cpu MHz : 1880.223
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow up ts
bogomips : 4703.01

I'm with Chris - doesn't look like a memory issue to me. I'd be more worried about the CPU numbers - especially for FF.

But really, why the hand-wringing ???. If something doesn't do what you need it to do, don't use it. Simple.