Slow FC4, perhaps swap is to blame

Thu Feb 23 23:00:32 UTC 2006

On 2/23/06, Boris Glawe <boris at boris-glawe.de> wrote:
>
> John Degenstein wrote:
>
> >Alright, to begin here are my system specs:
> >Athlon 64 3200+
> >512 MB PC2100 DDR
> >200 GB SATA
> >160 GB IDE
> >Nvidia GF4 4000 (128MB)
> >
> >
>
> 512 MB is ok, but not very much for a 64 Bit Machine. It's not the
> reason for the problem. Also the slower Memory (2100 instead of  3200)
> is not the reason.
>
> >This is a problem I have been trying to fix for several months now,
> >and I am pretty sure it is the swap space on this computer has
> >something to do with it.  When I first start up the computer it is
> >blazing fast, and I have no problem filling 4 workspaces up with
> >resource intensive programs.  But as the days and weeks wear on the
> >computer gets progressively slower, to the point where simply
> >switching between workspaces with only 3 or 4 programs open becomes
> >incredibly slow.  The problem also seems to relate to programs that
> >use Java, such as azureus and qnext, it seems to me that there is some
> >kind of memory leak that builds up in the swap space over time.  Even
> >after the swap space has been filled I attempt to clear it by closing
> >all open programs, but this has no effect and it is beginning to drive
> >me crazy.
> >
> >I did manage to find a command which I somehow got to work at least
> >several times:
> >swapoff -a /dev/logVol00/_something_here
> >
> >
>
> This makes things faster, because you force your machine to use the
> available phyical ram instead of the swap. Your "out of memory " error
> messages are a corollary though if the machine doesn't have any swap
> space.
> Your problem is that some apps eat up all your memory. FC4 should have
> no problems running with 512 MB RAM and no swap.
>
> You have to find the program, which eats up all the memory.
>
> You can use the command top to find that out:
> -    run the command 'top'
> -    press 'F' (which allows you to choose the sort critieria)
> -    Choose RES by pressing 'q'. (RES is the ammount of memory in MByte
> which processes really use.  )
> -    press Enter which will bring you back to the process list. The list
> is now sorted by memory usage. See, which process uses all your memory.
>
> I guess, that it's you X Server, which uses all the memory. In this case
> it would help if you simply logged out, which causes the X Server to
> terminate and to release the memory. With the next login your X-Server
> will require only a few MByte RAM.
>
> >This command alleviated my problems immediately, but then I started to
> >get errors about running out of memory from new programs I was trying
> >to open so I enabled swap again with the command "swapon".  Another
> >possible source of my problems is the fact I am running PC2100 DDR
> >rather than the minimum that my motherboard supposedly supports,
> >PC2700, because of this I had to underclock some of the components on
> >my mobo so that the computer would boot.
> >
> >So I guess my main question is: is the swap space in Linux messed up,
> >or is it simply a problem from Java???
> >
> >
> >
> It's the problem of any one process, not necessarily java (though java
> is also a candidate for very high memory usage).
>
> Report us, which application needs such big amounts of memory and we can
> go on in the search for a solution.
>
> greets Boris
>
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>

Well my power went off for the first time in 2006, so my uptime was reset.
Right now I am running a lot of demanding processes to try and shorten the
amount of time it will take for my computer to begin slowing down again.

Daniel: Yes, I did do "swapon -a" and it worked, but the problem recurred,
and now I cannot get "swapoff -a" to work again.  I am beginning to think
that swapoff does solve my problem, but I dont think it clears the swap
space, so when I "swapon" the speed issues come back much faster than they
normally take to appear.

I had a few more ideas with regard to programs that could be hogging my
memory; gimp, the X server as suggested above, gaim, and firefox.

Ok here are a few more details for you guys.
# cat /proc/swaps
Filename                                Type            Size    Used
Priority/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol01         partition       1015800
258652  -1

Output of swap for the programs that could be eating all the resources
 PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  SWAP COMMAND
 3791 picomp31  15   0  352m 206m 7328 S  0.0 41.6   0:16.01 146m gimp
 3809 picomp31  15   0  402m  60m  14m S 22.7 12.1   3:45.22 342m java
 2929 picomp31  15   0  147m  48m  12m S  0.0  9.8   1:54.49  99m
firefox-bin
 2692 root      16   0  224m  30m 6468 R  0.6  6.2   1:32.81 193m X
 2861 picomp31  16   0  189m  11m 5132 S  0.3  2.3   0:13.05 178m gaim
 3806 picomp31  18   0 53944  436  436 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00  52m azureus

At this point I am not sure what to make of this data, so I guess I will
just wait a few days until my computer begins to slow down heavily again.

Thanks again,
John Degenstein
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