Peep Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 I'm not sure what is going on, but I recently started running apache for a small website on my box and everything has gotten VERY SLOW. (and it isn't that people are accessing the apache server, because there rarely is anyone on the site, it's just for family, etc). I'm not even sure where to post this because I'm not sure if it's a setup problem, hardware problem or software problem. this is a PIII 550Mhz with 256mb PC100 RAM running mandrake 9.1 with KDE. would adding more memory help speed things up a bit? (KDE system guard says memory: 215812KB used, 40248 free... swap: 85484kb used, 730956KB free). since the swap seems pretty inactive, i don't think it's a memory issue? the CPU load doesn't seem particularly high... so i'm not sure why things are going slowly. could part of the problem be that i have such a huge swapfile? (that's what mandrake automatically picked at setup) an example of a problem I frequently have is that evolution will stall for 30+ seconds at a time (just not refresh the window as you type, etc). i had seen posts with similar complaints, but the solution was always upgrade to a newer version, which didn't seem to help me. (tried both the newer mdk version and the texstar version). I have similar slowdowns in phoenix as well. does anyone have any ideas of what I should check? Thanks in advance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 Personally i would say that 256mb is not enough if you use kde & some servers like apache/mysql. With 512mb of ram you should use virtually no swap space which is a good thing in terms of having a responsive desktop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted April 21, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 this motherboard will only take a max of 384mb (3x128), which isn't all that great. i'm not going to upgrade the whole system right now, but may need to eventually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 Type free at a command line. If it tells you that swap is being used, more ram could speed things up. If no swap is used (under normal use), then more ram would do nothing, just sit there unused.... My results: free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 904376 896736 7640 0 16228 689588 -/+ buffers/cache: 190920 713456 Swap: 1044184 0 1044184 (ok, I have too much money and so 1GB of ram. But I want to run loads of apps at the same time, and this makes sure things won't slow down...) Note also that when I had only 512MB of ram, linux tended also not to use swap, it just knows now that it can, and so will, use it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 this motherboard will only take a max of 384mb (3x128), which isn't all that great. i'm not going to upgrade the whole system right now, but may need to eventually. 384mb probably would make a decent difference. KDE is a real memory hog(but real pretty :wink: ), if you used a lighter wm you would be fine with 256mb. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 You might also want to look at what services you are running. Some may be unnecessary and possibly some may be taking up too many cpu cycles.. Try this command.. top Gives you a list of processes and stats.. If you want to see if you can speed things up but are too used to KDE (don't want something radically different) try gnome.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted April 21, 2003 Report Share Posted April 21, 2003 KDE is a real memory hog, especially the 9.1 version. I have a computer with 256 MB of memory (a little bit less actually since 16 mb is taken for built in video) and according to gkrellm memory krell, it takes about half of the available memory just by running X and KDE. However, when checking the same computer without running X and KDE through gkrellm server, it only takes about 15% of the available memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted April 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 thanks for the tips. i had used (and liked) gnome when i first installed 9.0 a month or so ago, but actually was under the impression that it was more of a memory hog than kde. i may eventually switch to just a window manager, but i don't think i'm quite ready to abandon kde/gnome quite yet. plus, one of the main reasons my girlfriend didn't kill me when i transitioned all our computers to linux was that it still acted a lot like ms windows... so we'll see. i'll also try to research which processes aren't needed. since i'm using 90mb of swap consistently, that should tell me that another 128mb of sdram would help. i'm hesitant to upgrade the whole computer right now less because of the $$ and more because i like how quiet it is (no fan on the CPU, so the only sound is from the power supply, which is quiet). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 thanks for the tips. i had used (and liked) gnome when i first installed 9.0 a month or so ago, but actually was under the impression that it was more of a memory hog than kde. i may eventually switch to just a window manager, but i don't think i'm quite ready to abandon kde/gnome quite yet. plus, one of the main reasons my girlfriend didn't kill me when i transitioned all our computers to linux was that it still acted a lot like ms windows... so we'll see. i'll also try to research which processes aren't needed. since i'm using 90mb of swap consistently, that should tell me that another 128mb of sdram would help. i'm hesitant to upgrade the whole computer right now less because of the $$ and more because i like how quiet it is (no fan on the CPU, so the only sound is from the power supply, which is quiet). yes sdram doesn't make any noise (well except for that crackling noise when it is on fire ) I'm used to the vacum cleaner like sound of my computers as i use AMD :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 I'm used to the vacum cleaner like sound of my computers as i use AMD :wink: Me, too. As for RAM, I really don't think RAM is the issue here. I ran apache and kde and a buncha stuff with 128 MB PC100 RAM with no great slowdown. I think it's a matter of the available video RAM that is causing your slowdowns, personally. Ex: 215812KB used, 40248 free... swap: 85484kb used, 730956KB free It's using swap even though you have 40248 free. I went from 128 MB RAM to 384 with no appreciable increase in speed, but when I upgraded my video card from 32 MB to 64 MB DDR, I did notice a difference. Here's my output from free: [root@localhost omar]# free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 386408 344932 41476 0 102208 106292 -/+ buffers/cache: 136432 249976 Swap: 401584 1548 400036 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 I have 192MB RAM, and 9.1 running OpenLDAP, Apache, Postfix, and much more. No probleme here with Gnome2.2 or KDE3.1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted April 22, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 ahh. the video card could very likely be the culprit. it's an old TNT2 with 32mb. i don't game much anymore so i never upgraded--but maybe it's time to get a more recent video card. i logged in using gnome and it is using the swapfile much less than in kde. i'll keep playing with this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MottS Posted April 22, 2003 Report Share Posted April 22, 2003 Hi Peep and co. Try IceWM (this is there by default on MDK). This is REALLY light. I'm sure Linux will not even touch your swap when using that DE. You can tweak IceWM to suit your girlfriend's need by playing around with the config files in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/icewm. If you don't want to play with files, download a GUI that will modify the config files for you. I guess there is a couple of them at sourceforge/freshneat. Good luck MottS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peep Posted April 25, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 I've played around with IceWM for a few days now, and I've got it set up so I like it. A lot. When I first installed mandrake I looked at some of the other window managers, but i think i was scared away by some of the really minimal ones (ie, twm), but now that I know my way around the system a bit better IceWM has everything I need and it's FAST. I'm not sure why I need the "start" button, but having a taskbar is somehow comforting :P I tried fluxbox but ended up getting frustrated trying to install a configuration program (it needed python2 but mandrake apparently renames it python2.2, probably an easy solution but i just gave up). I'm using IceWM Control Panel and it seems to work well. Icepref (included on MDK CDs) isn't nearly as useful. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted April 25, 2003 Report Share Posted April 25, 2003 I have a 300mhz PII and 160mb ram. Apache is running and it isn't slow at all. rcxau Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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