[HLUG] Clogged cache?

[Mark Broadbent]

On 23/04/2008, grhmc at lavabit.com <grhmc at lavabit.com> wrote:
> > On 22/04/2008, Graham Cole <GrhmC at lavabit.com> wrote:
>  >> Hi everyone
>  >>  I'm trying to understand my ailing desktop which can't cope with a
>  >>  normal workload these days. It slows down when the browser is used for
>  >> a
>  >>  while and eventually it gets so slow that I have to press the reset
>  >>  button and start again. Printing a photo also slows things to a stop.
>  >>  I suspect a fault with the RAM because once recently I got an error
>  >>  message: E:Cache open()failed, please report. I think it was cured with
>  >>  dpkg --configure -a
>  >>  Is this situation familiar to anyone?
>  >>  I'm using Ubuntu 7.10
>  >
>  > Hi Graham,
>  >
>  > I wouldn't think it is a RAM fault as that usually kills your computer
>  > pretty quickly.  To start simply, is your disk full?  I would find out
>  > by opening a terminal window and typing:
>  >
>  > $ df -h
>  >
>  > If any of the columns have a percentage greater than 95% then that's
>  > probably the issue.
>  >
>  > Thanks
>  > Mark
>  >>
>
>
> I found no high percentage. I used the system monitor and saw there was no
>  activity in the swap file: always 0%. Recently I did have to remake the
>  swap file and that was satisfactory at the time. The system got
>  progressively worse in the last couple of days and is now practically
>  useless. I'm using a laptop now but I'd like to rescue the desktop!
>  The RAM use shown in the system monitor goes up fairly steadily to
>  something like 70% and then the system becomes slow and unusable. Should
>  the RAM use go up and down rather than go up steadily?

Yep, welcome to Linux.  Like any good operating system Linux tries to
use all your remaining RAM for caching and buffering to avoid
accessing slow external drives (like hard disks).  A healthy Linux
system is always using as much RAM as possible!

However your problem seems to indicate that an application is using up
a lot of memory.  If you could run the following command 'ps auxwf' in
the terminal once the computer gets slow and send it here I should be
able to see if that is the problem.

Thanks
Mark