Red Hat Linux Server Unbearably Slow
 

I just installed RH9. Apps from the desktop take a long time to launch. Even Konsole takes at least 20 seconds. Konqueror takes more than 40 seconds. Also when I start Kwrite it takes almost a minute. It seems that most of the X window apps are just plain slow launching.
However if I type ll -a or someother CLI app it runs instantaenously.

Specs: 2.2 Mhz Celeron server with 60GB HD 7200RPM, 256MB RAM from Gateway Computers. My partitions are as follows:
/boot 102MB,
/swap 1GB,
/ 50GB

I switched to KDE. I turned off a lot of services. (Sendmail, Canna, the autoprobe module). I have it down to minimum. I checked the DMA and it is set to 1.

The system has no sound card and no other hardware boards.
I restared a few times.

The strange thing, RH9 runs faster on my slower notebook (but I do have 512MB ram there).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

why don't you run ps aux in console to figure out which programs are running and use root to kill the processes that are unwanted :) just a suggestion, I have a server right now. So far it's running quick and easy. barely anything runs on it though, and i didn't need to use ps aux to check the processes and kill anything, All i needed to do was secure the box down, than again i run slackware 9.1. I've been hearing a lot of complaints about redhat nowdays, why don't you give slackware a try?

You could run top to list the top 10 programs taking CPU time.

2.2 Mega Heartz? Thats slow! Or do you mean 2.2 Giga Hertz? I dunno, just thought I'd mention that....

With Redhat 8 on, I wish this tip would become a sticky at the top of the Redhat Distribution forum. It needs to be able to resolve it's own name. Add localhost and it's network address to the hosts file. It will help regardless if you have a Cray or a Commodore.

Can't guarantee it will fix your issues, but this is major issue number one when it comes to speed.

I meant 2.2 Ghz not 2.2 Mhz.

Does anyone think 256 MB ram with 1GB swap space is enough?
I am even going to up my RAM to 512MB.

I used the red hat service manager instead of ps aux or top. Does it matter?

And the localhost issue/suggestion. I thought that was done automatically.

I will double check everything and report back what I have done. But any other suggestions still appreciated.

The RAM and SWAP are kind of at opposite ends of the scale. If this is a public server, I'd double or triple the RAM, but if this is a low-load server, I'd say 1GB swap is way too much. Make it equal to your RAM up to 512MB. Keep in mind that these issues, in my opinion, are not in anyway related to your slowness issues, but just another suggestion.

Adding the localhost and actual IP to the hosts file is not done automatically. Redhat assumes that you will set up DNS for this purpose, which is a waste for a low-load server. It is a VERY common mistake that I've written in these forums hundreds of times. Don't worry though, I made the same mistake too.

I have a very slow starting sendmail along with some X programs that launched very slowly. You my try adding ".localdomain" versions of each host name in your /etc/hosts file.
BEFORE
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.1 firewall
192.168.1.102 bobby

AFTER
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.1.1 firewall.localdomain firewall
192.168.1.102 bobby.localdomain bobby

This worked for me. Sendmail starts very quickly now (on RedHat 8 and 9 systems).