2005LE keeps slowing to a crawl

[suomynona]

Hi,

 

I just installed 2005le. However, 1-3 minutes after logging on, it keeps either slowing to a crawl (can't move the mouse for ~10 seconds, can move it a little bit/slowly, it stops again), or it just plain stops for minutes at a time. I've reinstalled a couple times and this still happens.

 

Any idea what could be causing this?

 

it doesnt' seem to matter what i'm doing (installing more packages, using firefox, playing with the console..), this keeps happening, even after 2 or 3 reinstalls.

 

i have 512mb or RAM and a 510mb swap drive (i specified 512, but oh well). Maybe the swap isn't set up right, since i've reinstalled a few times without recreating the swap (i mean i just kept the one i created from the first install)? : /

Edited May 22, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

nm for the moment -- i'm trying the stuff here

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...343&hl=freezing

[sellis]

Have you run "top" from a console to see if anything is eating your cpu time?

[suomynona]

(i've run top. see post 6)

-----

 

i suspect the problem is my wireless network card (linksys WMP54G, a week old, works fine in XP). For the time being, I don't have any security enabled other than MAC address filtering (it's not really necessary where I live, and I dont' want more complications than necessary while getting linux set up).

 

once in a while, while loading mandriva, it freezes on 'bringing up interface ra0.'

 

<snip unimportant stuff>

 

----------------

 

i tried this:

 

Try going into the Control Centre, then "boot", then "boot loader".

 

You should see a few options below;

 

"Enable ACPI"

"Force no local APIC" and maybe "Force no APIC"

 

Anyway it's these options you should try enabling and disabling, as this was the only solution I found after Searching google for hours.

 

Currently I have "Enable ACPI" DISABLED, and "Force No Local APIC" ENABLED.

 

but nothing has changed (still freezes when logged on, still freezes sometimes at ra0)

 

<snip>

Edited May 22, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

<snip>

Edited May 22, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

OH.

 

I noticed that there's a line in top that says:

 

Cpu(s) ... 49.1% id, ... 50.1% si

 

what's si? having trouble finding it in google.

Edited May 21, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

si, swap in..

 

what would be causing such a high swap rate?

 

I think my swap partition is 510mb, and i have 512mb of RAM.

[adamw]

How does memory usage look?

 

BTW, try htop rather than top. I find it a lot more usable and readable. Packaged in contribs.

[suomynona]

when things were working but just slowing down for afew seconds at a time, nothing was showing more than 2-3% mem. but then i tried to load firefox and it froze completely. tried again with GAIM, it froze complely. tried one of the KDE media players, clicked a link in the setup loading Konqueror, then i did something (clicked something, i forget what) and it froze completely.

 

after that, i couldn't even get past 'bringing up ra0'. i'm trying a reinstall.

 

i'll try htop if i can ever get logged in again (i'm on another windows computer).

Edited May 21, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

When setting up networking, should I write anything for DHCP host name? I've entered 192.168.1.1 before and it worked. I left it blank one install ago, and it would freeze trying to 'bring up' ra0.

 

What does 'allow users to start the connection' mean, when installing the networking? Should this be yes or no?

 

When I click 'next' after configuring everything, I'm given the option to check the 'net for updates. I select 'yes', but whatever it says after that flashes by too fast to read. : /

Edited May 21, 2005 by suomynona

[suomynona]

I've reinstalled, setting it up to use my wired onboard internet instead of my wireless card. It still freezes.

 

still using 'top' (did an upgrade install, forgot to install htop), 'si' is solid at 50% +/-0.2%

 

what i notice is that when things get choppy, 'net_applet' appears using about 3.8%MEM and very little %CPU (usually 0.7, sometimes 0.3, and rarely 1.0).

 

--

 

https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...343&hl=freezing

I had similar hard times once. Found it was a LAN/WAN problem with ipv6 (now disabled) and NFS (bad configuration).

 

It could come from hard disks too. Have you seen something about "disabling DMA" or "spurious interrupts" in your logs ?

 

I disabled ipv6 before and it didn't help.

I have not set up NFS.

I tried to read a log in emacs (users.log, i think), but i wasn't allowed to read the file (i guess because I was logged in : P what, no readonly mode?). then it was freezing so badly i gave up for the time being.

 

anyway, net_applet seems to be the problem, or at least a another symptom of it.

[suomynona]

though swap in is at 50%, there is actually no used swap memory.

 

mem:

514 944k total

247 244k used

267 700k free

17 720k buffers

 

swap:

779 112k total

0k used

779 112k free

129 224k cached

 

: /

 

things are fine, then i try to load emacs fro mthe task bar, and things slow down again and net_applet appears in the top list. no swap memory is used during this, but si remains at 50%.

[suomynona]

the problem IS with the wireless card setup. if i take the card off the allowed MAC list, so that ra0 (the wireless card, linksys WMP54Gv4) fails to be 'brought up', and plug in the onboard LAN, there are no freezes.

 

But that's not a useful solution because I need to move the linux computer to a room wires won't reach.

 

 

I was able to set up ra0 with ndiswrapper and the WMP54Gv4 windows driver from the linksys cd as recommended on the ndiswrapper site, but it still freezes.

 

And my onboard sound (very common motherboard) doesn't work.

 

 

This is really absurd.

 

 

EDIT: ok, all of the sudden, my sound works : / yay, but weird : ).

Edited May 22, 2005 by suomynona