System slows down after some use

[jigarzon]

Hi everybody!

 

I've noticed, that after using my computer (Mandrake 10.1) for some time (1 or 2 hours), my system becomes very slow. It does not depend on what programs I'm using (for example, it happened working with DBDesigner and also with Anjuta). I'm running Mandrake using vmware, under winXP, but I use it within its own partition (without windows and vmware) too.

 

When the system slows down, I can see that the hard disk R/W Led is turned on all the time. I supose this is because its swaping (so, i concluded the main problem is the RAM memory).

Googling, i found in a gentoo forum somebody that has the same problem, and he says that linux makes disk caches that take a lot of RAM.

I want to know if there's a way to solve this...

 

Thanks a lot!!

 

[moved from Everything Linux by spinynorman]

[scarecrow]

Since you are running VMware, you should know that there IS a problem with it and SMP-enabled kernels and HT CPU's, already documented in VMware forums.

The crude solution is closing VMware and restarting its services after some time. the time that the system slows down can vary from 30 minutes to 4-5 hours.

BTW I use a SMP enabled kernel (Arch Linux stock stuff) and did not have this problem, but I always start/stop the VMWare services manually, and rarely use the virtual OS for more than 70-80 minutes. It does not seem to matter which is the host OS, it happens both with Windows and Linux hosts.

With non-SMP kernels there shouldn't be any similar issues, nor with SMP and two physical CPU's- either separate or dualcores. Since you use Windows as host, SMP is enabled by default, and I don't know a way to disable it- you may find better info at VMware forums.

Edited August 10, 2005 by scarecrow