After 24 hours, Linux lags to near freeze

I have had Mandriva One 2008.1 Spring installed on my pc for about a week and a half now. The first several days Linux ran just fine. But, the last few days whenever I run my system for about 24 hours or so, at random my system will just start to lag severely to a near freeze, though it doesn't actually freeze. But, Linux has frozen too at random a few times. However, my system does start to lag so bad that I have no choice but to hit the restart button on the tower. From the start of the lag til my system becomes nearly frozen only takes a matter of seconds. Does anybody know what is causing this? I know it can't be my system because before I installed Linux on here, just a matter of weeks ago, I was running Windows 7 Beta on here and I had my system running for 20 days straight before I restarted and I didn't even have to restart then. So, I know it's got to be a problem with Linux. Just trying to figure out what it is. Anybody have an ideas?

when the system starts showing signs of lagging, you should (from a console ) run the `top` command. This will show you all running processes sorted (by default) by CPU usage. Although it is also likely that you are running out of ram too, and should run `free -m` It will post something like

$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 872 342 530 0 102 158
-/+ buffers/cache: 81 791
Swap: 1027 0 1027

the important lines here are the -/+ buffers under the free colom, and the swap in use. If you are out of free ram, and are using a lot of swap, there lies your problem, which can be further diagnosed by

`ps -ax -o vsz,pcpu,comm,pid | sort -n`

which will show which processes are using the most ram.

once you are figuring out what is using the most resourcess durring your lag, post them here, and maybe we can help further.

Are you running as root by any chance?

Also, what applications do you have running during this time?

meton_magis,

I can't be running low on RAM because I have 2GB DDR2 RAM installed. Next time I lag which will probably be tonight with my luck, I'll try to post the results using "top" command here.

bigtomrodney,

I automatically login as a normal user. The only time I login as root is when requested during use of the terminal. As for what programs I'm running, I have a dual monitor setup so I'm always watching movies off my right monitor while the left monitor is consistantly running firefox (on average from 3 to 6 tabs [sites] going at the same time), terminal, and pidgin messenger. Those 3 are my everyday programs. Anything else is just temporary, but I never get a lag when extra programs are open. I have noticed though that the lags tend to come when I'm watching a movie and open the "Add & Remove Software" application, but only sometimes. Tonight, I was browsing the net without the "Add & Remove Software" application running and my system suddenly started lagging so bad I had to restart. I was doing the same thing at the time that I'd been doing all day with no extra programs running when the lag occured.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dark Nuker

I can't be running low on RAM because I have 2GB DDR2 RAM installed. Next time I lag which will probably be tonight with my luck, I'll try to post the results using "top" command here.

---

That does seem to be sufficient ram, but don't automatically discount the ram idea. A memory leak can take all the memory you have and use it no matter how much you have. Plus it is always best to take the 2-3 minutes to determine that it is in fact not the problem, then spend 2-3 weeks trying to figure out what it is, and find out that it was the ram.

I'd leave a terminal open with a command ready to run in it to determine the problem and as soon as lagging starts I'd execute. For example

Code:

---

ps aux >> ~/lag

---

That way even if your system goes down you can check it when you reboot again. I've left the redirect as an append so that you can run it a few times as it gets worse.

I'd bet that the beagle is in the background. It happens sometimes, that it eats up the system resources. If you see it in the output of the top command with huge percentage of CPU and/or memory consumption, you'll know that it is the guilty. I was running 2008.1 for 11 months, without any troubles, in fact I got bored with its perfection, so I've switched to Debian, which is far more tricky.

My system lagged again today for a little bit, but nothing as severe as what is has been the last few days. It happened when I brought up the Add/Remove Software program while a movie was playing. I think it's the Add/Remove Software program that's causing it because if I'm running two or three programs my system seems fine, when I bring up Add/Remove Software, that's when my system tends to lag until I close it out. Is that normal or should it not do that? When I have a chance tomorrow, I'll test out my theory by opening a few programs then bringing up Add/Remove Software and see if it lags (it probably will) and i'll post the output of the command "ps aux" in here and see what you guys think because I'm still learning to understand it.

What's your computer resources like RAM, CPU...maybe your over taxing your system...Gerard4143

Another thing, what graphics card do you have and are you running the correct driver?