my machine is suddenly extremely slow

[Frédéric Bron]

> Using Fedora 18, KDE 4.10.2 on x86_64 laptop with kernel 3.8.11-200
> and nvidia proprietary drivers.
>
> I have two hard disk. One SSD with / and swap and one hybrid with /home.
> Recently, I remarked extremely long times (>60 s) to open some
> programs like firefox or dolphin, the latter being the most critical.
> I suspect disk access to slow down the machine as this happens when
> the processor is nearly idle.
> What can I check? Can I check the hard disks, how? Could it be something else?

I experience this very very slow behaviour again today each time I
need to access the disk. However, I ran hdparm as suggested by Roberto
and found no difference in hard disk speed compared to normal
behaviour. But I have launched libreoffice from command line becase it
was to slow to open dolphin and I found some errors in the terminal
(see below). Could this be of any help to diagnose the problem?

I now run kernel 3.9.4-200

Regards,

Frédéric

$ LibreOffice(10924)/kdecore (K*TimeZone*): KSystemTimeZones:
ktimezoned initialize() D-Bus call failed:  "Did not receive a reply.
Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply,
the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout
expired, or the network connection was broken."

LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le
module d'entrée / sortie : (translation: unable to create the
input/output module)
klauncher a retourné : Protocole «  » inconnu. (translation: unkown "
" protocole)
"
LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le
module d'entrée / sortie :
klauncher a retourné : Protocole «  » inconnu.
"
LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le
module d'entrée / sortie :
klauncher a retourné : Protocole «  » inconnu.
"
LibreOffice(10924): couldn't create slave: "Impossible de créer le
module d'entrée / sortie :
klauncher a retourné : Protocole «  » inconnu.
"
QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::begin: Paint device returned engine == 0, type: 3
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::save: Painter not active
QPainter::setRenderHint: Painter must be active to set rendering hints
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::setPen: Painter not active
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore
QPainter::restore: Unbalanced save/restore