slackware is very slow here

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 06:47 AM

hi!!
i'm having some problem with slackware 12 here. the problem is that under cpu intensive operations, the system just slows down
for example, if I try to compile a huge program, or play some game, it'll *REALLY* slow down at some point. that's strange, i've beem using slackware since 98 or 99 and it never happened. it don't matter what WM I use. I tried xfce and gsb gnome, and it slows down with both. actually, if I use just plain text terminal and try to compile something big, it slows down too.
this happens with both the default slackware kernel or the newers, that I compile sometimes. now i'm using 2.6.14 and the problem goes on.
does anyone know what may the cause be, or have anyone ran into this issue?
Regards

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 06:48 AM

ok now that's very strange. on my mother's machine I installed ubuntu. and, gee, it's a hell faster than slackware huh
but I noticed a difference: on the system monitor applet for gnome, i enabled on both machines the processor graph. it shows some graphics, the most important here being USER, SYSTEM and NICE. well, the problem is that my slackware's NICE is almost always at the top, maybe explaining the slowdown. but what does it mean? i do know the nice program, but what the nice graphic mean? the ubuntu's nice is always veeeeeery low, actually i couldn't see it by now.
the LOAD graphic is always high on slackware too.
just a detail: the ubuntu's machine is something about 4 times slower than my slackware box.
can someone help me?

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 06:48 AM

ok some more info. the NICE graph says that the processor is occupiead with niced programs

dive · 02-05-2008, 07:20 AM

Which programs? And how did they get niced?

onebuck · 02-05-2008, 07:26 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally Posted by alissonbn

ok some more info. the NICE graph says that the processor is occupiead with niced programs

Quote:

excerpt from 'man nice'

NICE(1) User Commands NICE(1)

NAME
nice - run a program with modified scheduling priority

SYNOPSIS
nice [OPTION] [COMMAND [ARG]...]

DESCRIPTION
Run COMMAND with an adjusted niceness, which affects process schedul-
ing. With no COMMAND, print the current niceness. Nicenesses range
from -20 (most favorable scheduling) to 19 (least favorable).

-n, --adjustment=N
add integer N to the niceness (default 10)

--help display this help and exit

--version
output version information and exit

What did you nice?

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 04:44 PM

ok, i was mistaken. it's not that niced processes are occuping the cpu. it was the tracker daemon. after disabling it, i got the real behavior: after heavy duty like games or compiling sources, slackware gets veeeery slow. from here on, any process will take a helluva time to make something. even a music player gets 100% cpu!! it's just as if the process scheduling went crazy!! if I close everything, the cpu stays idle. if I open terminal for instance, 100%=S that's why the tracker daemon, which is niced 19, was taking the whole processor.
i would like to believe it was some misconfiguration i did in the kernel, but even the default kernel will have this flaw. I also noticed some more ppl have this problem, but after googling, i could not find any answer yet.

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 04:49 PM

Quote:

Which programs? And how did they get niced?

Quote:

What did you nice?

I didn't nice anything, I'm using an almost vanilla slacware with GSB. just to remeber, the problem was always there, even before GSB. the niced program was trackerd, that was niced 19, and some services kernel related, as kthreadd, ksoftirqd/0, events/0, khelper, kblockd/0, kacpid, kacpi_notify, kseriod among others, which was nice -5.
i don't know what it could be...

jailbait · 02-05-2008, 04:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by alissonbn

hi!!
i'm having some problem with slackware 12 here. the problem is that under cpu intensive operations, the system just slows down
for example, if I try to compile a huge program, or play some game, it'll *REALLY* slow down at some point. that's strange, i've beem using slackware since 98 or 99 and it never happened. it don't matter what WM I use. I tried xfce and gsb gnome, and it slows down with both. actually, if I use just plain text terminal and try to compile something big, it slows down too.
this happens with both the default slackware kernel or the newers, that I compile sometimes. now i'm using 2.6.14 and the problem goes on.
does anyone know what may the cause be, or have anyone ran into this issue?
Regards

You should also consider that this problem might be memory related instead of CPU related. Try issuing cat /proc/swaps before and after one of your slowdowns to see if you are swapping excessively during a slowdown.

-------------------
Steve Stites

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jailbait

You should also consider that this problem might be memory related instead of CPU related. Try issuing cat /proc/swaps before and after one of your slowdowns to see if you are swapping excessively during a slowdown.

-------------------
Steve Stites

well, I don't believe it's a swapping problem, since there's no hard disk activity (unless when I ask for it) during slowdown.here it goes.
before slowdown

Code:

[alisson@northstar:~]$ cat /proc/swaps 
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/hda2                               partition       506036  0       -1

during slowdown

Code:

[alisson@northstar:~]$ cat /proc/swaps 
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/hda2                               partition       506036  0       -1

no, I didn't paste it wrong. they're both the same

also, here's free output during slowdown

Code:

[alisson@northstar:~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           758        658         99          0        174        268
-/+ buffers/cache:        215        542
Swap:          494          0        494

now gotta to restart the machine so it can be fast again:P
Regards

C-Sniper · 02-05-2008, 06:00 PM

maybe an DMA problem?
i know that when i accidently disabled DMA on my HD everything slowed to a crawl.

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by C-Sniper

maybe an DMA problem?
i know that when i accidently disabled DMA on my HD everything slowed to a crawl.

I had already checked it, since googling I found that it's a problem, but my hd dma's on

Code:

[alisson@northstar:~]$ sudo /usr/sbin/hdparm -d /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
 using_dma     =  1 (on)

onebuck · 02-05-2008, 07:55 PM

Hi,

Hardware specifications? Can you boot the original generic-smp ( 2.6.21.5-smp) kernel and see if it still happens? Why are you using the 2.6.16?

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by onebuck

Hi,

Hardware specifications? Can you boot the original generic-smp ( 2.6.21.5-smp) kernel and see if it still happens? Why are you using the 2.6.16?

my hardware is

Code:

[alisson@northstar:~]$ /sbin/lspci 
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX Host (rev 11)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS AGP Port (virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
00:08.0 Modem: Motorola SM56 Data Fax Modem (rev 04)
00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] (rev 01)
01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV280 [Radeon 9200 PRO] (Secondary) (rev 01)

i just tried the generic 2.6.21.5 smp kernel which is shipped with slackware, and it just slow down

and sorry, i'm actually using linux 2.6.24. believe i mistyped it:P

alissonbn · 02-05-2008, 09:40 PM

just noticed one thing: I have a 500MB swap partition that's never used.
its priority is also set to negative numbers (see previous output of cat /proc/swaps). and if you take a look at swapon manpage, you'll notice that priority is a value between 0 and 32767.

if I turn off and on again the swap, its priority will get even lower:S

maybe this is messing some kernel swap algorithm, and this is introducing the latency... don't know, just guessing...

i tried mkswap /dev/hda2 again, but no sucess, i still can't use the swap, even when using 100% physical memory

onebuck · 02-05-2008, 09:49 PM

Hi,

'swapoff' the swap. Check again. Then 'swapon' and check.

You might have a problem with your swap space.