[sf-lug] system is sloooooowwww and frozen screen of death

[jim]

     Below are (hopefully) helpful stats on my system, a laptop
with 8GB RAM and a four core 2.4GHz CPU running Ubuntu 12.04.

     My problems are that GUI response is frustratingly slow and
that from time to time the system freezes solid with no fix other
than a cold reboot.
     Mostly these problems manifest when I'm using Thunderfird
(my email client); I've compacted the "folders".recently with no
change in behavior from before to after compacting. Rarely the
system freezes when I'm not using Thunderbird. I suspect XORG but
don't know how to troubleshoot or fix.
     Suggestions?


Info:
ubuntu 12.04 (with all patches up to September 13, 2015)
7.7 GB RAM
CPU intel core i3-3120M CUP @ 250GHz x 4
Graphics unknown
OS type 64 bit
Disk 109.3 GB


# df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2       102G   21G   77G  22% /    ## flash ram
/dev/sdb1       296G   66G  215G  24% /home/jim/sdb1   ## external 
spinning drive



------------------Without Firefox running :

# free
              total       used       free     shared    buffers cached
Mem:       8094768    1613548    6481220          0     154720 724460
-/+ buffers/cache:     734368    7360400
Swap:      8798204          0    8798204


# top
top - 17:01:33 up 54 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.01, 0.06, 0.11
Tasks: 181 total,   2 running, 179 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.2%us,  0.2%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.5%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi, 0.0%si,  
0.0%st
Mem:   8094768k total,  1577740k used,  6517028k free,   154724k buffers
Swap:  8798204k total,        0k used,  8798204k free,   723684k cached

PID   USER   PR  NI   VIRT   RES   SHR  S  %CPU  %MEM   TIME+ COMMAND
1563  root   20   0   144m   18m  5744  D     1   0.2   1:11.65 Xorg
2147  jim    20   0  1143m   78m   30m  S     1   1.0   0:32.70 compiz
2168  jim    20   0   490m   17m   11m  S     0   0.2   0:02.06 nm-applet
2210  jim    20   0   383m  9.9m  7408  S     0   0.1   0:01.42 bamfdaemon
    1  rot    20   0  24560  2504  1348  S     0   0.0   0:00.90 init


# ps aux | wc
     183    2171   17561



------------------With Firefox running

# free
              total       used       free     shared    buffers cached
Mem:       8094768    2174796    5919972          0     163084 872788
-/+ buffers/cache:    1138924    6955844
Swap:      8798204          0    8798204


# top
top - 17:16:47 up  1:09,  2 users,  load average: 0.24, 0.13, 0.12
Tasks: 185 total,   2 running, 183 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  1.2%us,  0.6%sy,  0.0%ni, 98.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi, 0.0%si,  
0.0%st
Mem:   8094768k total,  1985620k used,  6109148k free,   163064k buffers
Swap:  8798204k total,        0k used,  8798204k free,   865964k cached

  PID USER   PR  NI   VIRT   RES   SHR  S %CPU  %MEM    TIME+ COMMAND
3339 jim    20   0  1146m  268m   52m  S    2   3.4   0:17.02 firefox
2147 jim    20   0  1145m   79m   30m  S    1   1.0   0:40.40 compiz
1563 root   20   0   147m   19m  5808  S    1   0.2   1:31.52 Xorg
   15 root   20   0      0     0     0  S    0   0.0   0:00.10 ksoftirqd/2
2161 jim    20   0  1258m   30m   17m  S    0   0.4   0:03.68 nautilus
3108 jim    20   0   512m   17m   11m  S    0   0.2   0:03.17 
gnome-terminal
    1 root   20   0  24560  2504  1348  S    0   0.0   0:00.90 init


# ps aux | wc
     184    2182   17651



hopefully, with thanks,
jim

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