Subject: [TAG] High Load on Computer....

From: Thomas Adam <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 22:08:39 +0000 (GMT)

Hello All,

You'll have to forgive the distinct lack of information that comes with
this problem, but truth be told -- I don't have any to give you. Within
the last four weeks or so, I replaced my old; yet faithful P166
motherboard with an older (yet newer in comparison) SiS, AMD-K6
motherboard which has the ability to do upto 350MHz, although it doesn't
like that, and so I run it at 333MHz. I also have 512MB RAM [1]

I know you'll laugh, but I was so very impressed with the speed increase!
What a difference going from a P166 with 32MB RAM to this new motherboard.
The only thing is, I have noticed X is very sluggish. At first I thought
it was just because I was using VESA, which was taking up memory. So I
compiled a 2.4.25 kernel, fine tuned it to K6, etc etc, compiled in
support for voodo3 (since I have an old 3dfx voodo3 card), and changed X
to use the appropriate driver. 

Yet, the machine is still slow. By slow, I mean, it is very sluggish. It
takes a while in re-rendering windows if I flip pages (I'm using fvwm), It
takes a few seconds to re-draw. Xload, shows the system in a constant
high-load [2]. Even with no applications open, except the running window
manager, the load shown by [2] is constant.

I have had top(1) running constantly looking for any relationship between
load peaks, and processes, and I cannot see any. As an example:

```
[n6tadam@station n6tadam]$ uptime
 21:54:26 up 1 day,  4:48,  9 users,   load average: 2.83, 2.75, 2.67
'''

```
[n6tadam@station n6tadam]$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        515092     424804      90288          0      14436     251408
-/+ buffers/cache:     158960     356132
Swap:        72256          0      72256
[n6tadam@station n6tadam]$ 
'''

These load averages seem to fluctuate to 3.21, but never below those
above. At first I thought mozilla1.6 was running amock. I killed that, but
the system's Xload usage remaind as constant as in [2]. I even installed
'and', and configured it to see if that would help\ -- nope.

At this point, I am wondering if I have a memory leak somewhere. I have
run a quick test on my memory via memtest86, and that shows no errors. If
it is the kernel, I would be surprised, since I have just installed a 2.4
kernel. I can't quite see how the same consistent error can exist in 2.2.
-> 2.4.

Has anyone got any suggestions?

Kindly,

-- Thomas Adam 

[1] http://linuxmafia.com/~n6tadam/tag/dmesg
[2] http://linuxmafia.com/~n6tadam/tag/screenshot.jpg

=====
"The Linux Weekend Mechanic" -- http://linuxgazette.net
"TAG Editor"                 -- http://linuxgazette.net

"<shrug> We'll just save up your sins, Thomas, and punish 
you for all of them at once when you get better. The 
experience will probably kill you. :)"

 -- Benjamin A. Okopnik (Linux Gazette Technical Editor)

___________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" 
your friends today! Download Messenger Now 
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html
_______________________________________________
TAG mailing list
[email-masked]
http://linuxgazette.net/mailman/listinfo/tag

---

From: Thomas Adam <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 23:24:28 +0000 (GMT)

> Has anyone got any suggestions?

Heh, replying to myself :) I had meant to also say that [3] is there for
your persual, but certainly there are no 'D' processes.

-- Thomas Adam

[3] http://linuxmafia.com/~n6tadam/tag/ps_output

=====

---

From: Ben Okopnik <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 20:55:42 -0500

> manager, the load shown by [2] is constant.
 
What happens when you run it without any manager, i.e. just start X
itself? If the load is still low at that point, what happens when you
fire up, say, "twm"? There are times when you have to slice very fine to
get to the root cause, and this sounds like one of those.

> [n6tadam@station n6tadam]$ 
 
So, where's the output from "top"? :)

* Ben Okopnik * okopnik.freeshell.org * Technical Editor, Linux Gazette *
-=-=-=-=-=o0o=-=-=-=-= <http://linuxgazette.net/> =-=-=-=-=o0o=-=-=-=-=-
_______________________________________________
TAG mailing list
[email-masked]
http://linuxgazette.net/mailman/listinfo/tag

---

From: Thomas Adam <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 26 Mar 2004 02:00:28 +0000 (GMT)

> get to the root cause, and this sounds like one of those.

Thanks, Ben. I have fixed this now within the last ten minutes or so. The
problem was with the BIOS. It seemed I had to turn off *all* memory
caching in there, and to disable APM since that was causing all kinds of
nasties.

> So, where's the output from "top"? :)

I didn't mention it, because it was purely 'top' itself that was being
returned.

Thank you :)

-- Thomas

=====

---

From: Ben Okopnik <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 21:08:00 -0500

> caching in there, and to disable APM since that was causing all kinds of

[laugh] I just love the TAG effect. Happens on a regular basis. Hey,
maybe I should ask you guys for help with this ACPI problem I've got -
it would probably solve itself a few seconds later! :)