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
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
On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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
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
On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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 cupsuse 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
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
On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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
On Friday 29 July 2005 11:21, Dotan Cohen wrote:
On 7/29/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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
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.
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: (210)-999-7484
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.
On 7/29/05, T. Horsnell tsh@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk 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
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.
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:tonynelson@georgeanelson.com ' http://www.georgeanelson.com/
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
On 7/29/05, Jakub Jelinek jakub@redhat.com 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
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
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
On 8/1/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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@astro.umd.edu 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@redhat.com To unsubscribe: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list
On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 akonstam@trinity.edu wrote:
On Mon, Aug 01, 2005 at 11:17:02AM +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote:
On 8/1/05, Peter Teuben teuben@astro.umd.edu 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
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
-
akonstam＠trinity.edu -
Dotan Cohen -
Jakub Jelinek -
Jim Cornette -
Peter Teuben -
Robert Locke -
Terry Horsnell -
Tony Molloy -
Tony Nelson -
William Hooper