Prelink eating all my resources

[Dotan Cohen]

Hi list,
Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
74%-98% CPU usage.

 PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink

So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
every time I open a new program?

Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
swap partition.

Dotan
http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/60/basil_toni.php
Basil, Toni Song Lyrics

[Peter Teuben]

On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Dotan Cohen wrote:

>  Hi list,
>  Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
>  I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
>  74%-98% CPU usage.
>  
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>   5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  
>  So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
>  so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
>  machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
>  firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
>  prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
>  every time I open a new program?
>  
>  Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
>  know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
>  lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
>  sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
>  swap partition. 

I've also notices that on occasion i have a similar (but not prelink)
"problem": the machine is crawling to a halt, the load can go up
like crazy (10 or 20) briefly and return to normal after a while. I am
doing things that take resources, e.g. once i was loading big (1kx2k)
images using xv, and another time compiling a large project. To me
it seemed as if it was not able to figure out how to efficiently manage
the swap. Overal, i'm not impressed with my new FC4system (which
ran RH9 quite allright before).

peter

[Dotan Cohen]

On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  I've also notices that on occasion i have a similar (but not
> prelink)
>  "problem": the machine is crawling to a halt, the load can go up
>  like crazy (10 or 20) briefly and return to normal after a while. I am
>  doing things that take resources, e.g. once i was loading big (1kx2k)
>  images using xv, and another time compiling a large project. To me
>  it seemed as if it was not able to figure out how to efficiently manage
>  the swap. Overal, i'm not impressed with my new FC4system (which
>  ran RH9 quite allright before).
>  
>  peter
>   
Yeah, I didn't want to be a jerk about it, but in other OS's,
including FC3, the machine was real snappy. FC4 is by far the most
sluggish OS that I've tried, but as I haven't set up a swap partition,
I did not want to blame FC4 just yet. But I know that a lot of people
complain that is is sluggish.

Side note: what is the general opinion about disabling CUPS, so that
it will not start up when I start the computer? I don't have a
printer, and it also seems like a resource hog.

Dotan
http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/346/michael_george.php
Michael, George Song Lyrics

[Peter Teuben]

>  Side note: what is the general opinion about disabling CUPS, so that
>  it will not start up when I start the computer? I don't have a
>  printer, and it also seems like a resource hog. 
that should be something like

	chkconfig --del cups

use
	chkconfig --list 

to see what you have running in your runlevel (usually 5)

peter

[Dotan Cohen]

On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  
>  
>  > Side note: what is the general opinion about disabling CUPS, so that
>  > it will not start up when I start the computer? I don't have a
>  > printer, and it also seems like a resource hog.
>  
>  that should be something like
>  
>          chkconfig --del cups
>  
>  use
>          chkconfig --list
>  
>  to see what you have running in your runlevel (usually 5)
>  
>  peter
>   
Thank you! I man'ed the command, and as I understand it, cups will not
restart when I restart the machine? I just think that it is a little
redundant to restart the machine now, rather than to simply ask...

Also, what other services can be safely disabled, before I man them all.

Dotan
http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/355/moody_blues.php
Moody Blues Song Lyrics

[Peter Teuben]

>  Thank you! I man'ed the command, and as I understand it, cups
> will not
>  restart when I restart the machine? I just think that it is a little
>  redundant to restart the machine now, rather than to simply ask... 
/etc/rc.d/init.d/cups stop

is the command to stop it. There is also a wrapper script to this
called 'services'

>  Also, what other services can be safely disabled, before I man them
> all. 
other than "trial and  error" ?  there was a neat story on slashdot
today where they showed that in windows you could actualy run the
system without ANY services running, even IE !

peter

[Dotan Cohen]

On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  
>  /etc/rc.d/init.d/cups stop
>  
>  is the command to stop it. There is also a wrapper script to this
>  called 'services'
>  
>  > Also, what other services can be safely disabled, before I man them all.
>  
>  other than "trial and  error" ?  there was a neat story on slashdot
>  today where they showed that in windows you could actualy run the
>  system without ANY services running, even IE !
>  
>  peter
>   
I just thought that maybe is was known that there are certain
services, such as cups, that are not essential on many systems. I'll
figure out what I can do without with man (and trial and error). 
Thanks, Peter.

Dotan Cohen
http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/361/mullins_shawn.php
Mullins, Shawn Song Lyrics

[Tony Molloy]

On Friday 29 July 2005 11:21, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>  On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  > /etc/rc.d/init.d/cups stop
>  >
>  > is the command to stop it. There is also a wrapper script to this
>  > called 'services'
>  >
>  > > Also, what other services can be safely disabled, before I man them
>  > > all.
>  >
>  > other than "trial and  error" ?  there was a neat story on slashdot
>  > today where they showed that in windows you could actualy run the
>  > system without ANY services running, even IE !
>  >
>  > peter
>
>  I just thought that maybe is was known that there are certain
>  services, such as cups, that are not essential on many systems. I'll
>  figure out what I can do without with man (and trial and error).
>  Thanks, Peter.
>
>  Dotan Cohen
>  http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/361/mullins_shawn.php
>  Mullins, Shawn Song Lyrics 
Run system-config-services. This will give you a list of available 
services with an explanation of each one. It will also allow you to 
dis/enable any you want. Make sure you run it for your run-levels.


Tony

-- 


Tony Molloy.

Dept. of Comp. Sci.
University of Limerick

[William Hooper]

Peter Teuben wrote:
>  
>  
>> Side note: what is the general opinion about disabling
CUPS, so that
>> it will not start up when I start the computer? I don't have a printer,
>> and it also seems like a resource hog.
>  
> that should be something like
>  
> chkconfig --del cups

You should really use "chkconfig cups off".  If you use "--del" it
will
cause the service to be reinstalled and turned on anytime you update the
CUPS rpm.

-- 
William Hooper

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 03:17:44AM -0400, Peter Teuben wrote:
>  On Fri, 29 Jul 2005, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>  
>  > Hi list,
>  > Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
>  > I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
>  > 74%-98% CPU usage.
>  > 
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  >  5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  > 
>  > So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
>  > so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
>  > machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
>  > firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
>  > prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
>  > every time I open a new program?
>  > 
>  > Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
>  > know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
>  > lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
>  > sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
>  > swap partition. 
Running any Unix without a swap partition is not recommend
although
you have found that that works after a fashion. You have just proved
to yourself that the swap partition is not really the virtual memory
repository that people think it is but it is useful to move aside
chunks of disk space that are not currently being actively used.-- 

=======================================================================
I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! Can't prove anything!
                -- Bart Simpson
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: [phone]

[Terry Horsnell]

> Hi list,
> Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
> I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
> 74%-98% CPU usage.
>
>  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>
> So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
> so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
> machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
> firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
> prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
> every time I open a new program?
>  
If you look in /etc/crontab, you will probably see something like:

SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly


This tells cron to run stuff at regular intervals.
If you look in /etc/cron.daily/ you will see things like

00-logwatch
00-makewhatis.cron
0anacron
logrotate
prelink
rpm
slocate.cron
tetex.cron
tmpwatch
yum.cron

Looking at the prelink script, it goes round your system seeing if
there is any new stuff to prelink.

Likewise 00-makewhatis.cron re-builds the 'whatis' database

These are both disk-intensive (hence cache-consuming)
things which you may not want to do so frequently...

Cheers,
Terry.

[Dotan Cohen]

On 7/29/05, T. Horsnell <tsh(a)mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk&gt; wrote:
>  >Hi list,
>  >Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
>  >I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
>  >74%-98% CPU usage.
>  >
>  > PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  > 5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  >
>  >So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
>  >so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
>  >machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
>  >firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
>  >prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
>  >every time I open a new program?
>  >
>  
>  If you look in /etc/crontab, you will probably see something like:
>  
>  SHELL=/bin/bash
>  PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
>  MAILTO=root
>  HOME=/
>  
>  # run-parts
>  01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
>  02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
>  22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
>  42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
>  
>  
>  This tells cron to run stuff at regular intervals.
>  If you look in /etc/cron.daily/ you will see things like
>  
>  00-logwatch
>  00-makewhatis.cron
>  0anacron
>  logrotate
>  prelink
>  rpm
>  slocate.cron
>  tetex.cron
>  tmpwatch
>  yum.cron
>  
>  Looking at the prelink script, it goes round your system seeing if
>  there is any new stuff to prelink.
>  
>  Likewise 00-makewhatis.cron re-builds the 'whatis' database
>  
>  These are both disk-intensive (hence cache-consuming)
>  things which you may not want to do so frequently...
>  
>  Cheers,
>  Terry.
>   
Thanks, I may just turn down the frequency of those things.

Dotan Cohen
http://song-lirics.com/sl/artist/321/madonna-lirics.php

Dotan Cohen

[William Hooper]

Dotan Cohen wrote:
[snip]
>  So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload
> libraries
>  so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the machine
>  started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in firefox, which
>  opens another program. 
This has nothing to do with the running prelink process.

>  My question is, what can I do to prevent this from
>  happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers every time I open a new
>  program? 
Prelink is called from a cron script, not as a result of any action you
do.  If your machine is turned off at the normal time for the job to run,
it will be run about an hour after you start your machine.  The job only
prelinks that binaries that it needs too, so unless you have updated some
libraries or programs, the job should run quickly.

If you choose to disable prelink, you should change the
/etc/sysconfig/prelink configuration file.

-- 
William Hooper

[Tony Nelson]

At 10:12 AM +0300 7/29/05, Dotan Cohen wrote:
> Hi list,
> Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
> I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
> 74%-98% CPU usage.
>
>  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>
> So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
> so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
> machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
> firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
> prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
> every time I open a new program?
>
> Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
> know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
> lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
> sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
> swap partition. 
I don't think this is a a swap problem.  If it were, the process would be
out of memory, but instead it's using little memory but lots of CPU.
Prelink is supposed to be disk intensive, not CPU intensive, so maybe it's
a bug in prelink or something it uses.
____________________________________________________________________
TonyN.:'                       <mailto:[e-mail]>
      '                              <http://www.georgeanelson.com/>

[Jakub Jelinek]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 02:04:33PM -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
>  >
>  > PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  > 5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  
>  I don't think this is a a swap problem.  If it were, the process would be
>  out of memory, but instead it's using little memory but lots of CPU.
>  Prelink is supposed to be disk intensive, not CPU intensive, so maybe it's
>  a bug in prelink or something it uses. 
That's not true, prelink is actually fairly CPU intensive if it has
a lot of work to do.  Say if you upgrade glibc or some other library
everything or really many programs link against, then the next prelink cron
job will have a lot of work and what you show above is certainly not
unexpected in that case.  But that will happen only once after the upgrade,
if you don't upgrade anything the next day, it should take just a few
seconds (typically just stat 3-5 thousand files).  If you upgrade just some
rarely used library or just a package with binaries, not libraries, it
should be pretty quick as well.

	Jakub

[Dotan Cohen]

On 7/29/05, Jakub Jelinek <jakub(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 02:04:33PM -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
>  > >
>  > > PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  > > 5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  >
>  > I don't think this is a a swap problem.  If it were, the process would be
>  > out of memory, but instead it's using little memory but lots of CPU.
>  > Prelink is supposed to be disk intensive, not CPU intensive, so maybe it's
>  > a bug in prelink or something it uses.
>  
>  That's not true, prelink is actually fairly CPU intensive if it has
>  a lot of work to do.  Say if you upgrade glibc or some other library
>  everything or really many programs link against, then the next prelink cron
>  job will have a lot of work and what you show above is certainly not
>  unexpected in that case.  But that will happen only once after the upgrade,
>  if you don't upgrade anything the next day, it should take just a few
>  seconds (typically just stat 3-5 thousand files).  If you upgrade just some
>  rarely used library or just a package with binaries, not libraries, it
>  should be pretty quick as well.
>  
>          Jakub
>   
The thing is, on this machine, with FC4, it is _always_ sluggish, and
often slows to a crawl. It didn't do that in FC3 or -that other- OS.
I'll add that swap partition tomorrow and see how much it helps.
Thanks, all.

Jakub, as I see you write from a redhat address, would you be
interested in what tops 'top' when it gets so sluggish? I would do it
in bugzilla, but the last time I tried to navigate bugzilla I got
tangled up (histabahti lemi shmevin) and vowed not to go back.

Dotan
http://song-lirics.com/sl/artist/109/carlisle-belinda-lirics.php

[Jim Cornette]

Jakub Jelinek wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 29, 2005 at 02:04:33PM -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
>   
>
> >>PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
> >>5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
> >>      
> >>
> >I don't think this is a a swap problem.  If it were, the process would be
> >out of memory, but instead it's using little memory but lots of CPU.
> >Prelink is supposed to be disk intensive, not CPU intensive, so maybe it's
> >a bug in prelink or something it uses.
> >    
> >
>
> That's not true, prelink is actually fairly CPU intensive if it has
> a lot of work to do.  Say if you upgrade glibc or some other library
> everything or really many programs link against, then the next prelink cron
> job will have a lot of work and what you show above is certainly not
> unexpected in that case.  But that will happen only once after the upgrade,
> if you don't upgrade anything the next day, it should take just a few
> seconds (typically just stat 3-5 thousand files).  If you upgrade just some
> rarely used library or just a package with binaries, not libraries, it
> should be pretty quick as well.
>
> 	Jakub
>
>   
>  
I stopped the cronjob and have not run prelink since mid June before 
today. The reason that I disabled the cronjob was the increase in 
CPUspeed and elevated temperatures. This was also when using the test 
distribution where updates happened frequently. I unprelinked everything 
in June, but decided to try it out again because of the discussion. It 
seems to run up and down on CPU usage whether ran from the commandline 
or ran from the cronjob.
Is there a way to prevent prelink from exceeding 80 percent CPU usage? 
This is mainly asked because it puts a laptop up to full speed and 
elevated temperatures. It takes resources that can be used by other 
programs while it is running.
I imagine the program is highly optimized and coded efficiently. Just an 
idea to limit CPU usage to 80 percent maximum.

Thanks,
Jim

-- 
Windows: The answer to a question nobody has ever asked.

[Peter Teuben]

>  Hi list,
>  Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
>  I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
>  74%-98% CPU usage.
>  
>   PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>   5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  
>  So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
>  so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
>  machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
>  firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
>  prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
>  every time I open a new program?
>  
>  Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
>  know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
>  lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
>  sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
>  swap partition. 
I had reported on a similar problem, and finally paid attention to the
output of "df" which showed 0 usage of swap. In fact, total was 0 too,
i.e. i had no swap despite that it was installed with swap. Turned
out the /etc/fstab file had a rather curious line in it:

LABEL=   swap                    swap    defaults        0 0

where the = sign was followed by 15 0xAA characters (that dind't print
in the cut&paste above)!! So, no wonder. I suspect it is something in
the installed that is broken, since i install redhat systems fairly
regularly, or i overlooked a new(?)  requirement that partitions be
labeled.

Anyways, after hardcoding
/dev/hda5                swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
and running 'swapon' i'm back in business.  e2label and making a nice label
of course also would do the job.

I only have 640MB on this laptop, so i guess a swap is pretty important, 
although you don't often run into this problem and it can take weeks before
you figured it out.

peter

[Dotan Cohen]

On 8/1/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  I had reported on a similar problem, and finally paid attention to
> the
>  output of "df" which showed 0 usage of swap. In fact, total was 0 too,
>  i.e. i had no swap despite that it was installed with swap. Turned
>  out the /etc/fstab file had a rather curious line in it:
>  
>  LABEL=   swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  
>  where the = sign was followed by 15 0xAA characters (that dind't print
>  in the cut&paste above)!! So, no wonder. I suspect it is something in
>  the installed that is broken, since i install redhat systems fairly
>  regularly, or i overlooked a new(?)  requirement that partitions be
>  labeled.
>  
>  Anyways, after hardcoding
>  /dev/hda5                swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  and running 'swapon' i'm back in business.  e2label and making a nice label
>  of course also would do the job.
>  
>  I only have 640MB on this laptop, so i guess a swap is pretty important,
>  although you don't often run into this problem and it can take weeks before
>  you figured it out.
>  
>  peter
>   
Thank you Peter. I will look into this as soon as I get home (at the
university at the moment).

640MB on the laptop!?! My Desktop doesn't have that:)

Dotan
http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/105/cannibal_corpse.php 
Cannibal Corpse Song Lyrics

On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 11:17:02AM +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>  On 8/1/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  > I had reported on a similar problem, and finally paid attention to the
>  > output of "df" which showed 0 usage of swap. In fact, total was 0 too,
>  > i.e. i had no swap despite that it was installed with swap. Turned
>  > out the /etc/fstab file had a rather curious line in it:
>  > 
>  > LABEL=   swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  > 
>  > where the = sign was followed by 15 0xAA characters (that dind't print
>  > in the cut&paste above)!! So, no wonder. I suspect it is something in
>  > the installed that is broken, since i install redhat systems fairly
>  > regularly, or i overlooked a new(?)  requirement that partitions be
>  > labeled.
>  >  
This is not true. Partitions may be, but do not have to be labeled.

>  > Anyways, after hardcoding
>  > /dev/hda5                swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  > and running 'swapon' i'm back in business.  e2label and making a nice
> label
>  > of course also would do the job.
>  > 
>  > I only have 640MB on this laptop, so i guess a swap is pretty important,
>  > although you don't often run into this problem and it can take weeks before
>  > you figured it out.
>  > 
>  > peter
>  > 
>  
>  Thank you Peter. I will look into this as soon as I get home (at the
>  university at the moment).
>  
>  640MB on the laptop!?! My Desktop doesn't have that:)
>  
>  Dotan
>  http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/artist_albums/105/cannibal_corpse.php 
>  Cannibal Corpse Song Lyrics
>  
>  -- 
>  fedora-list mailing list
>  fedora-list(a)redhat.com
>  To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list 
-- 

=======================================================================
If a thing's worth doing, it is worth doing badly.
		-- G.K. Chesterton
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: [phone]

[Peter Teuben]

On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 akonstam(a)trinity.edu wrote:

>  On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 11:17:02AM +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>  > On 8/1/05, Peter Teuben <teuben(a)astro.umd.edu&gt; wrote:
>  > > I had reported on a similar problem, and finally paid attention to the
>  > > output of "df" which showed 0 usage of swap. In fact, total was 0
> too,
>  > > i.e. i had no swap despite that it was installed with swap. Turned
>  > > out the /etc/fstab file had a rather curious line in it:
>  > > 
>  > > LABEL=   swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  > > 
>  > > where the = sign was followed by 15 0xAA characters (that dind't print
>  > > in the cut&paste above)!! So, no wonder. I suspect it is something in
>  > > the installed that is broken, since i install redhat systems fairly
>  > > regularly, or i overlooked a new(?)  requirement that partitions be
>  > > labeled.
>  > > 
>  This is not true. Partitions may be, but do not have to be labeled. 
good. But my real point is that i think i then ran into an installation
bug. It will be hard to reproduce though (well, it being a lot of work
on a production machine for me). But i'll be a good citizen and search
for it on bugzilla and file a "bug".

peter

[Robert Locke]

On Mon, 2005-08-01 at 02:30 -0400, Peter Teuben wrote:
>  > Hi list,
>  > Once again my FC4 box (Duron 1200mHz, 512 ram) has crawled to a halt.
>  > I quickly top'ed and found a process prelink that varied between
>  > 74%-98% CPU usage.
>  > 
>  >  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
>  >  5202 root      39  19 11724 9280  536 R 89.9  1.9   0:23.59 prelink
>  > 
>  > So I googled for prelink and now know that it helps preload libraries
>  > so that progreams can start faster. Which is senseable because the
>  > machine started slowing down when I clicked 'manage bookmarks' in
>  > firefox, which opens another program. My question is, what can I do to
>  > prevent this from happening again? Do I have to ust cross my fingers
>  > every time I open a new program?
>  > 
>  > Could this be related to the fact that I have no swap partition? I
>  > know that I should probably add one, I guess that I've just been too
>  > lazy to learn how. Will adding a swap partition make the machine less
>  > sluggish? For this 512 ram machine, I was thinking of adding a 2 gig
>  > swap partition.
>  
>  I had reported on a similar problem, and finally paid attention to the
>  output of "df" which showed 0 usage of swap. In fact, total was 0 too,
>  i.e. i had no swap despite that it was installed with swap. Turned
>  out the /etc/fstab file had a rather curious line in it:
>  
>  LABEL=   swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  
>  where the = sign was followed by 15 0xAA characters (that dind't print
>  in the cut&paste above)!! So, no wonder. I suspect it is something in
>  the installed that is broken, since i install redhat systems fairly
>  regularly, or i overlooked a new(?)  requirement that partitions be
>  labeled.
>  
>  Anyways, after hardcoding
>  /dev/hda5                swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
>  and running 'swapon' i'm back in business.  e2label and making a nice label
>  of course also would do the job. 
Careful, not e2label....  To re-create the label on the swap device it
appears that we have to actually recreate it with "mkswap -L
labelname /dev/partitionname"


But, I suspect you might be right about an anaconda anomaly.....

--Rob