[Sussex] New distro install (Mandriva 2006) problems - where too start?

John D. john at johnsemail.eclipse.co.uk
Sat Dec 10 05:53:13 UTC 2005


Thomas Adam wrote:

>What.  You're actually _using_ your computer?  :P

Well, you know how it is. It, well, happens!

>So -- the computer is having to do lots od tasks.   How is this unusual?
>What you haven't said is what program you're using  (Is
>Man{driva,drake,whatever} still using DraxConf as an interface for this?
>  
>
Don't quite follow Thomas. With for example, the software manager and 
maybe firefox, or patience, swapping between windows is when the slow 
redrawing shows up - It doesn't have to be any particular app or 
combination of apps. Plus the slow screen redraw also shows at the 
taskbar sometimes. There seems to be no corrolation as to when the 
cursor becomes "jerky" other than that I've done "something" like click 
a button or scrolled a page.

>top, would be a good program to have running prior to you starting a
>task such as this -- at least that way you can see which process is
>likely to be slowing things down.
>
> Desmond Armstrong wrote:
>  
> John,
> Please open a terminal window and then type su enter the root password 
> and then type 'top' and enter.
> I have had the same problem but because of the extreme slowness I was 
> not able to establish the culprit.
> Please report back the top cpu hoggers.
> You may also go into the uninstall and remove 'kat'. This shows as 
> 'kded' in top.
> I suspect the problem is with xorg so I look forward to your findings.
> With the machine I did I resorted to Mandriva 2005 and that runs very 
> well, but, I need to know what the problem is. Some information from 
> you and I shall retry Mandriva 2006.
> Otherwise I am having great success with Mandriva2006
> What is your processor speed and how much RAM do you have? 



The "top" command gave me this

> top - 05:19:19 up 12:42,  3 users,  load average: 0.29, 0.15, 0.05
> Tasks: 101 total,   1 running, 100 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
> Cpu(s):  1.0% us, 13.1% sy,  2.9% ni, 50.9% id, 31.4% wa,  0.4% hi,  
> 0.3% si
> Mem:    775504k total,   272108k used,   503396k free,    23876k buffers
> Swap:  1469936k total,   101608k used,  1368328k free,   146008k cached
>
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  3779 root      15   0 88784 7680 2076 S  7.9  1.0   5:59.61 X
>     1 root      16   0  1564   76   56 S  0.0  0.0   0:38.24 init
>     2 root      34  19     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
>     3 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.05 events/0
>     4 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 khelper
>     5 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthread
>     7 root      20  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kacpid
>    84 root      10  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:24.39 kblockd/0
>   119 root      17  -5     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 aio/0
>   118 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   5:59.67 kswapd0
>   708 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kseriod
>   790 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:13.43 kjournald
>   932 root      21  -4  1564    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.10 udevd
>  1271 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khubd
>  1730 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.68 kjournald
>  2734 root      16   0  1584   56   32 S  0.0  0.0   1:43.91 ifplugd
>  2824 rpc       16   0  1688    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 portmap
>  2848 root      16   0  1608  196  132 S  0.0  0.0   0:09.34 syslogd
>  2860 root      16   0  2336  172  124 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.95 klogd
>  2912 root      16   0  1552    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 acpid
>  2958 root      20   0  1696    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rpc.statd
>  3052 root      16   0  5484  460  324 S  0.0  0.1   1:28.14 cupsd
>  3462 xfs       16   0  3996  344  148 S  0.0  0.0   0:01.01 xfs
>  3487 messageb  16   0  2224    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 dbus-daemon-1
>  3512 root      17   0  4040  388  180 S  0.0  0.1   3:51.30 hald
>  3605 root      16   0  1832    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 mandi
>  3753 root      17   0  2612  196  152 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kdm
>  3754 root      16   0  2800  300  232 S  0.0  0.0   4:04.43 nifd
>  3864 nobody    18   0 11424   96   68 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.11 mDNSResponder
>  3890 daemon    16   0  1688  100   68 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.12 atd
>  3933 root      18   0  4276    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 sshd
>  3999 root      20   0  2148    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 xinetd
>  4074 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsd
>  4075 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsd
>  4076 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsd
>  4077 root      15   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsd


Obviously I'm not familiar with that type of output, so don't know if 
that tells me/us/you if anything is particularly "sinful".

My pc has a 2 gig pentium 4 chip and 768 megs of ram installed.

As I say, I've never experienced anything like this with any other 
distro - so I have to presume that it's something to do with this 
version of Mandriva. I've not selected/installed anything other than the 
default offerings and a few extra kde bits (the card games etc).

I'll go and uninstall "kat" and see if that makes any difference.

regards

John.





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