how to optumize mandrake 7.2

[knavely]

iv got 194 mbs of ram, and this system under mandrake 7.2 cant handle too many aplications

hard drake says iv got total:194 mb
used:76
free:2 mb
shared: 0 mb
buffers: 22 mb
cached: 53 mb
swap total:255 mb
swap free: 255 mb
this is a dell demention pc at 667 mghz and linux is running on a 10 gig hard drive

does this configuration seem effiant? is there anything i can do so that it will let me play an mp3 and run big programs with out the music dying? please help to me keep my music. http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/wink.gif

[MkIII_Supra]

First, which WM you using? Second issue the following command:

ps -ax

Then go ahead and copy it from Konsole into StarOffice (if you have it) other wise use kwrite. Then copy it into netscape. Now here is the fun part you need to use the following tags so that we can see it correctly:

[ code]
YOUR ps -ax RESULTS HERE!!!
[/code]

Now the upper tag was intentionally written incorrectly. There are no spaces... this is what you should see if you wrote it correctly:


This is text in the code
tag format. It makes it
really easy to read screen
outputs and C++ as well as C
other codes!


Once you have the above information posted then I can help you out.

------------------
The Dragon is swift and powerful. Beware his wrath...
Honor your family and yourself. Speak not out of passion but out of wisdom and temper the fires of war that reside in you, and you shall then reach your full measure as a man of Honor, Courage and Integrity.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra/ (http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra)

[Craig McPherson]

If you want to make sure your MP3 program doesn't skip, just run it at a higher priority. See the man page for the "nice" command. If you run the MP3 program at near realtime, it won't skip, but other programs will execute slower, because the MP3 program is taking almost all of the CPU cycles. Alternately, use a MP3 player that's less of a resource hog. I've seen comparisons, but I don't have any handy.

Normally when talking about optimization I talk about going through init scripts and shutting down any startup services that aren't needed, but you have plenty of RAM (Linux doesn't keep much RAM "unused" -- it uses almost all spare RAM for buffering and cacheing so it's doing something useful, and looking at the size that's being used for cache, you're doing fine). Run top every now and then and see if anything is eating up CPU cycles. You probably won't see anything, though. Consider running a ligher Window Manager, preferably one like Icewm that shows CPU usage in a little thingy ("thingy" being high-brow technical jargon) on the taskbar. Also keep in mind that anything that causes disk writes will chew up a lot of CPU cycles, because writing to an IDE drive is hard on the CPU. Eliminate any processes that write to the hard drive regularly, cut back on your logging a bit, etc. Also see the NHF on HDPARM: that'll get your hard disk writes over with faster so your CPU can get back to doing real work.

Hope this helps.

------------------
http://users.ipa.net/~cmcpher/paminv.gif DEBIAN (http://www.debian.org/) http://users.ipa.net/~cmcpher/paminv.gif
It turns girls into statues!

[This message has been edited by Craig McPherson (edited 12 January 2001).]

[MkIII_Supra]

PS: I am using `Drake 7.2 on a proprietary Compac Presario 5000.
AMD Duron 700
196MB PC-100 SDRAM
Nvidia TNT2 Vanta LT 8M AGP video
Creative ensoniq sound
PS/2 Mouse and Keyboard
Mitsubishi Diamond Scan 70 17" monitor
UDMA-66 52X CDROM
27GB Maxtor UDMA-66
20GB Quantum Fireball UDMA-66


[mac@dt0d3n44 mac]$ ps ax
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ? S 2:11 init [5]
2 ? SW 0:00 [kflushd]
3 ? SW 0:01 [kupdate]
4 ? SW 182:38 [kswapd]
5 ? SW< 0:00 [mdrecoveryd]
8 ? SW 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
35 ? SW 0:00 [open]
41 tty12 SW 0:11 [wsMonitorBin]
116 ? SW 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
117 ? SW 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
118 ? SW 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
119 ? SW 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
416 ? S 2:45 /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /net yp auto.net
440 ? S 0:39 syslogd -m 0
463 ? S 0:34 crond
536 ? S 1:33 xfs -port -1 -daemon
568 ? S 0:03 /usr/local/psionic/portsentry/portsentry -stcp
570 ? S 0:00 /usr/local/psionic/portsentry/portsentry -sudp
685 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/iplog -l /var/log/ip.log
690 tty1 SW 0:00 [mingetty]
691 tty2 SW 0:00 [mingetty]
692 ? S 0:00 kdm -nodaemon
693 ? Z 0:11 [iplog <defunct>]
694 ? S 1:53 /usr/sbin/iplog -l /var/log/ip.log
697 ? S 3:27 /usr/sbin/iplog -l /var/log/ip.log
698 ? S 0:50 /usr/sbin/iplog -l /var/log/ip.log
2490 ? S 401:04 /etc/X11/X -auth /etc/X11/xdm/authdir/A:0-GMlmNq
3536 ? S 1:32 cupsd
5919 ? S 0:00 -:0
5932 ? S 0:00 sh /usr/bin/startkde
6026 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: dcopserver
6028 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: klauncher
6030 ? S 0:03 kdeinit: kdesktop
6032 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kded
6037 ? S 0:08 artsd -F 5 -S 8192
6041 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kxmlrpcd
6049 ? S 0:02 kdeinit: kicker
6051 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: klipper
6053 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: khotkeys
6055 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: Running...
6057 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kwrited
6058 pts/0 S 0:00 /bin/cat
6059 ? S 0:00 knotify
6063 ? S 0:00 ksmserver --restore
6064 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kwin
6065 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: konsole
6067 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kio_uiserver
6068 ? S 0:00 gkrellm
6069 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: konsole
6070 pts/1 S 0:00 /bin/bash
6255 pts/1 S 0:00 su
6259 pts/1 S 0:00 bash
6309 pts/2 S 0:00 /bin/bash
6326 pts/2 S 0:00 xscreensaver -nosplash
6340 ? S 0:01 kdeinit: konqueror
6341 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kio_file
6342 pts/2 R 0:00 ps ax
[1]+ Done xscreensaver
[mac@dt0d3n44 mac]$


Actually if you don't have StarOffice then use AbiWord to copy your results into nutscrape...

http://www.geocities.com/mkiii_supra2/gkrellm.jpg

------------------
The Dragon is swift and powerful. Beware his wrath...
Honor your family and yourself. Speak not out of passion but out of wisdom and temper the fires of war that reside in you, and you shall then reach your full measure as a man of Honor, Courage and Integrity.
http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra/ (http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/MkIIISupra)

[This message has been edited by MkIII_Supra (edited 12 January 2001).]

[This message has been edited by MkIII_Supra (edited 12 January 2001).]

[knavely]

my wm is kde2
thanks alot for your help, and i hope i did this right

PID TTY STAT TIME COMMA[root@localhostND
1 ? S 0:04 init [5
2 ? SW 0:00 [kflushd]
3 ? SW 0:00 [kupdate]
4 ? SW 0:00 [kswapd]
5 ? SW< 0:00 [mdrecoveryd]
84 ? SW 0:00 [khubd]
414 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /misc file /etc/auto 429 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/automount --timeout 60 /net yp auto.net
478 ? S 0:00 syslogd -m 0
488 ? S 0:00 klogd -k /boot/System.map-2.2.17-21mdk
501 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/atd
514 ? S 0:00 crond
530 ? S 0:02 cupsd
574 ? S 0:00 gpm -t ps/2
591 ? S 0:00 httpd-perl -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-perl.conf -DPERLP 592 ? S 0:00 httpd-perl -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-perl.conf -DPERLP 593 ? S 0:00 httpd-perl -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-perl.conf -DPERLP 594 ? S 0:00 httpd-perl -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-perl.conf -DPERLP 595 ? S 0:00 httpd-perl -f /etc/httpd/conf/httpd-perl.conf -DPERLP 739 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 748 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 749 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 750 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 751 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 752 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 753 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 754 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 755 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 756 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 757 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 758 ? S 0:00 httpd -DHAVE_PHP4 -DHAVE_PROXY -DHAVE_SSL -DHAVE_ACCE 844 ? S 0:00 sh /usr/sbin/adsl-connect eth0 b1bpxq76
854 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/pppd pty /usr/sbin/pppoe -p /var/run/pppoe. 867 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/pppoe -p /var/run/pppoe.pid -I eth0 -T 80 - 925 ? S 0:01 xfs -port -1 -daemon
938 ? S 0:00 anacron
970 tty1 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty1
971 tty2 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2
972 tty3 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3
973 tty4 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4
974 tty5 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5
975 tty6 S 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6
976 ? S 0:00 kdm -nodaemon
986 ? SL 0:03 /etc/X11/X -auth /etc/X11/xdm/authdir/A:0-SUA937
993 ? S 0:00 -:0
1008 ? S 0:00 sh /usr/bin/startkde
1089 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: dcopserver
1091 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: klauncher
1093 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kdesktop
1095 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kded
1099 ? S 0:01 artsd -F 5 -S 8192
1101 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kio_file
1107 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kxmlrpcd
1112 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kicker
1114 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: klipper
1116 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: khotkeys
1118 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: Running...
1120 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kwrited
1121 pts/1 S 0:00 /bin/cat
1122 ? S 0:03 /usr/lib/netscape/netscape-communicator -session-mana 1125 ? S 0:00 knotify
1139 ? S 0:00 ksmserver --restore
1146 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kwin
1147 ? S 0:00 (dns helper)
1153 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: konsole
1154 pts/2 S 0:00 /bin/bash
1168 pts/2 R 0:00 ps -ax