Slow performance

[iamtapas]

Hi All,

I am new to this forum

I have been using OpenSuse 10.1 and subsequently 10.2 for more than a year for my dell laptop [dual core ]. Recently I found my laptop is performing poorly, I have also upgraded my laptop from 512MB ram to 1 GB. However, that did not help to improve the performance.

Even to load a terminal for the first time it is taking more than 10 sec. I run "top" and could not find anything special except the "swap" memory is not used. Here is the output.

Tasks: 126 total, 1 running, 125 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 3.3%us, 0.8%sy, 0.3%ni, 85.3%id, 9.3%wa, 0.8%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1026700k total, 902948k used, 123752k free, 128552k buffers
Swap: 2104472k total, 0k used, 2104472k free, 468248k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
4793 tapas 15 0 2252 964 696 R 2 0.1 0:00.01 top
1 root 15 0 740 288 240 S 0 0.0 0:01.20 init
2 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
3 root 34 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/0
4 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
5 root 39 19 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksoftirqd/1
6 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 events/0
7 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 events/1
8 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
9 root 11 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthread
13 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/0
14 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd/1
15 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
145 root 13 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue/0
146 root 13 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cqueue/1
147 root 10 -5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kseriod
193 root 18 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush


I am confused , can any body help me?

[bigtomrodney]

Have you enabled any CPU scaling applets or tools for power management? OR perhaps set any power saving schemes? If so I would disable them. They really don't apply to modern CPUs they way they did to older generations. CPU scaling is looked after within the CPU and is much more on demand these days.

Do you have many applications running on startup? Also with 1GB of RAM try disabling swap. You should have more than enough in 1GB unless you are running databases or something memory hungry. Removing the option to swap keeps you within your RAM and can work a lot better.

[iamtapas]

Thanks a lot,

I have already disabled the power saving schemes. I have also reduced the swapinesss from 60 to 10. Still it did not help to improve the performance.

The application loading time was very high. However, once the application is loaded it is performing fairly.

Any suggestion?

[vasco]

Hi, I am having also some slow experiences with opensuse 11 kde4.1 but I have only a centrino 1.6ghz with 2 gb memory ram (so no dualcore ), can you advise how to stop the swap? and to make the processor work allways at full speed? is it within YAST?
thanks

[iamtapas]

Hi Vasco,

I made a change in the /etc/sysctl.conf file.

The parameter is "vm/swappiness". Making "vm/swappiness=0" will disable the swap. The normal value can range from 40 - 80. I am not sure how we should calculate the value of swapiness.

Normally, if the power saving applets/scheme does not work, theCPU can work to its potential.

Thanks,