linux performance?

[Samurai_hobbit]

hi

I have a problem with redhat7.2, which I recently installed.It is very slow! I suspect the OS is running too many programs in the background.I have 256MB RAM and it show only 47MB free as you can see in the snapshot below. My question is...can I turn off any of these programs? The system is crawing! By the way I am using KDE 2.2-10, but the same thing happens under gnome.

Thanks for any help


http://merlinx29.virtualave.net/images/snap.jpg

[The Whizzard]

GNOME and KDE are resourse hogs by nature. You may want to try sonething like Blackbox which uses less resources.

For the memory question. Linux memory management can be a bit hard to understand. You may notice you have 128M of cached memory. This has recently used apps which will load quicker the next time you use them. When you use an app which needs that memory, linux will release the memory and assign it to the app which needs it.


BTW, you can probably reduce your SWAP to 256M or even 128M. With 256M of RAM, SWAP hardly gets used.

[m3rlin]

Hello, well you can increase speed on your linux machine.First check if your total RAM is detected by linux, then you can creat a script to run at startup with this

hdparm -c1 /dev/your_device
hdparm -d1 /dev/your_device
this should activate DMA mode and make the HD to work at 32Bit.
It worked for me, when the system was slow
Hasta!!

[Samurai_hobbit]

Thanks guys

I installed blackbox but I still need to find out how to run it on boot up :D. I will try the script too m3rlin, the HD does feel sluggish as well.

[maxl]

Samuari,

To exectue blackbox at startup move to your home folder and create a file entitled
'.xinitrc'. Then, in the file write:

'exec blackbox'

That's all you gotta do.
Regards,
Alex

[Samurai_hobbit]

tank you! I was looking for this file but didnt know I could just create it.

[Samurai_hobbit]

hmmm "exec blackbox" in .xinitrc did not work. It just keeps on loading KDE, which is the default window manager in the login screen. Is it possible to add blackbox to the list of windows managers in the login screen?

Also m3rlin can I enter what you said in .xinitrc as well (before "exec blackbox")?

Initially I was following the instructions here: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/x-windows/bbinstall.html

But at one point it said to modify the file /usr/sbin/fndsession and I cannot find this file either. Can I just create it?

Sorry I am a big time newbie.

P.S. I just tried just creating the /usr/sbin/fndsession file and it still didnt work.

[ 14 April 2002: Message edited by: Samurai_hobbit ]

[Samurai_hobbit]

bump ^

[seaman_staines]

You have a few daemons running there. Do you really need sendmail and whatnot running? If not, turn them off. KDE's menu should have something called services, either under the configuration or system menu. Anything you don't need, uncheck.
Also most rpm distros tend to have a rather tubby kernel. Recompile your current kernel and/or compile a newer version and you'll see a huge increase in speed.

[armando86]

Be sure to read the hdparm manpage before you mess around with it. hdparm is a very powerful program and you could quite easily end up hosing your driveif you're not careful. There's a very good NHF on it here (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hdtweak.html).

Also you could turn off sendmail, xinetd and portmap to free up some resources, unless of course you're running a server.

Hope this helps.

[Syngin]

Originally posted by armando86:
<STRONG>Be sure to read the hdparm manpage before you mess around with it. hdparm is a very powerful program and you could quite easily end up hosing your driveif you're not careful. There's a very good NHF on it here (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hdtweak.html).

Also you could turn off sendmail, xinetd and portmap to free up some resources, unless of course you're running a server.

Hope this helps.</STRONG>

Yes, that tweak works fantastic as long as your HD and motherboard (or if you have a controller card) supports DMA.

[Samurai_hobbit]

I tried the HD tip but I believe my crappy mobo and HD does not support it, since it defaults back to 16bit when I do it. My only hope is to get Blackbox running.

I will turn those off too.

[armando86]

Just out of curiosity how old is your system? 256 MB of RAm and a processor around ~450 Mhz should run KDE just fine, you shouldn't need to run blackbox to use X. Also try putting 'exec blackbox' in .xsession instead of .xinitrc, then select 'default' from the login menu.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by Samurai_hobbit:
<STRONG>hmmm "exec blackbox" in .xinitrc did not work. It just keeps on loading KDE, which is the default window manager in the login screen. Is it possible to add blackbox to the list of windows managers in the login screen?

Also m3rlin can I enter what you said in .xinitrc as well (before "exec blackbox")?

Initially I was following the instructions here: http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/x-windows/bbinstall.html

But at one point it said to modify the file /usr/sbin/fndsession and I cannot find this file either. Can I just create it?

Sorry I am a big time newbie.

P.S. I just tried just creating the /usr/sbin/fndsession file and it still didnt work.

[ 14 April 2002: Message edited by: Samurai_hobbit ]</STRONG>


try adding "exec blackbox" to your .xsession file. It does the same thing as .xinitrc, but GUI logins read it instead of .xinitrc

[njcajun]

First of all, I couldn't help but notice you're running everything, including kppp (which presumably connects you to the net) as ROOT! THIS IS VERY BAD.

In addition, if this is a standalone system, you can actually kill sendmail, portmap, atd, anacron, possibly cron, and probably some other stuff. What you really wanna look at is the output of 'ps -ef' to see everything that's running - not just the top 'n' resource hogs.

You might consider looking at tksysvinit. It's a gui that allows you to configure what starts up when you boot into the different runlevels. Nice tool.

[TheCyberDude]

HDD 32BIT [Access]

/etc/rc.d/rc.local
Add following line at bottom of rc.local!

#Added by Garry Winkle
#This sets 32 bit I/O and DMA for Hard Drive.
hdparm -X69 -d1 -u1 -m16 -c3 /dev/hde

[Must have hdparm installed!]

NOTE: -X66 for DMA 66MHZ
NOTE: -X69 for DMA 100MHZ

REF:Speeding Up LInux (http://linux.oreillynet.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html)

REF:Hard Drive Speed Tweak for Linux (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/hardware/hdtweak.html)