Guest sailor_eda Posted May 16, 2005 Report Share Posted May 16, 2005 (edited) HI, I recently upgraded my installation of Mandrake 9.2 to the recent Mandriva 2005 LE. The installation was great but I have a problem now and I'm really stumped as to how to fix it. It appears that every so often, about a minute or so, some process is hogging the cpu (I think) and the system becomes completely unresponsive. I tried doing a top with a small delay hoping this might reveal some information about the process. However nothing in top appears outside the ordinary. The system is fine otherwise and I've only got the services I want. Its really annoying because I can't even scroll in vi without these temporary freezes. So my question is how do I find out what is causing this? Is there a tool or utility that I can use to discover this? Any help would be appreciated. Sailor PS: The system under question is a dual processor Athlon MP running on a Tyan Tiger motherboard with 512M RAM. Edited May 16, 2005 by sailor_eda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted May 16, 2005 Report Share Posted May 16, 2005 What does the system log show? (/var/log :) ) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sailor_eda Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 I can see nothing obvious on the logs - nothing out of the ordinary. I usually login to the machine using vnc so I removed tighvnc and installed realvnc server and that seemed to help a little but I still have problems. I also use this as a samba server and when I'm transferring large files around, I've noticed with regular consistency that the transfer will stop midway for no apparent reason and after pause lasting 30secs of more will resume the transfer. I've tried doing a top when this happens and all is see is smbd with 15% or so cpu utilization. I'm beginning to wonder if its the d-link gigabit card I have in the machine. Although I haven't run linux on this box before, it was used extensively for windows before and it never had any problems. Any help appreciated. Adnan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 Are you checking TOP while logged into root? Isn't there an option to make sure you see all processes vs just your own. Wait.. I'm thinking of the visual gnome process monitor (forget the title).. but you get the idea? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Baco Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 I had similar hard times once. Found it was a LAN/WAN problem with ipv6 (now disabled) and NFS (bad configuration). Firefox still gives me the same symptoms from time to time (freezing the whole machine for a few seconds while trying to access some poorly written sites). Looks like it's locked waiting for something or spinning in a tight loop). It could come from hard disks too. Have you seen something about "disabling DMA" or "spurious interrupts" in your logs ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sailor_eda Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 I had similar hard times once. Found it was a LAN/WAN problem with ipv6 (now disabled) and NFS (bad configuration). How do I check if IPv6 is enabled? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted May 19, 2005 Report Share Posted May 19, 2005 there's been some issues with the new gam_server (replaced fam) in fedora and ubuntu....I d/k about mdv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devries Posted May 20, 2005 Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 The gam_server shows in top :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Baco Posted May 20, 2005 Report Share Posted May 20, 2005 How do I check if IPv6 is enabled? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> /sbin/ifconfig -a If it displays a paragraph concerning "sit0" ipv6, then add the following line to your /etc/modprobe.conf file: alias net-pf-10 off Then reboot your machine (I've never been able to fully disable ipv6 without rebooting. Stopping/restarting the network is not enough). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sailor_eda Posted May 21, 2005 Report Share Posted May 21, 2005 I disabled IPv6, rebooted and still no difference. Also I don't think its the gam_server as it never shows (ever) on top. Whatever it is it never shows up on top - the system is never really loaded and besides its a dual processor system - I'm really thinking its the gigabit driver to the d-link card. I'll swap it out for the regular 100Mps ethernet card and lets see if that makes a difference. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted May 21, 2005 Report Share Posted May 21, 2005 hit top Cpu(s): 0.1% us, 0.1% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.7% id, 0.1% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si check that, see where the cpu usage has gone. atm my server is not using any, ie its idle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sailor_eda Posted May 28, 2005 Report Share Posted May 28, 2005 Okay after much splitting of hairs replacing the nic card to 100Mps card did the trick. I'm not entirely convinced it was the drivers for the gigabit nic card I had previously as it never showed up on top. It could have been entirely my cabling and retries etc. In anycase I'm back to normal. Thanks for all of your suggestions and help. Sailor_Eda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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