On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 18:13 -0500, Doug Purdy wrote: > Monday 04/02/2008 at 14:05, Phil Meyer wrote: > > Tim wrote: > > > On Sun, 2008-02-03 at 21:57 -0500, Doug Purdy wrote: > > > > > >> Since before Dec 25 both my FC2 and my F7 computers have been running > > >> super slow. Both machines also have XT and that ran fine in informal > > >> tests this weekend, that is, XT responded well and exhibited no > > >> slowness or crashes. > > >> > > > > > > "XT"? > > Boy, what a mistake! I should have typed XP. > > > > If it weren't two computers, cooling would have been the first thing to > > > spring to mind (it could still be, if you're in a hot environment). > > > Things like fans and heatsinks gunked up with fluff stops them working > > > right, and some systems will slow the CPU down to stop it burning out. > > The Fedora 7 computer is now clean and the casing is off. The power > supply exhaust is noticeably cooler. The Fedora Core 2 computer is still > running fine. > > > > The other thing that springs to mind with two computers, is whether > > > you've been compromised. You could check for a rootkit, but this is > > > just a wild stab in the dark. > > This sounds tougher to check so I'll do the easy verifications first. > > > > Taking minutes to finish booting could also point the finger at name > > > resolution not working, if you have services that need to know their > > > network addresses. > > Tim, the FC2 computer is just a normal desktop install and it's not > providing nor using shared directories or databases. There are only 8 > computers and a network printer on this home LAN. See below, cpu cycles > and memory appear to be being gobbled up somewhere. > > > > > > > > Another thing to look at is memory. On systems with 256MB or less, > > applications will get totally paged out over night during cron activity. > > > > When these applications attempt to run the next day, they can take > > minutes to page back in, depending upon HD speeds and application size. > > > > Rebooting appears to solve the problem only because there is nothing > > cached in memory and the system can load new things without having to > > reorganize physical memory. > > > > XP will not show the same symptoms on these systems because it does not > > run the same level of disk heavy cron jobs (logwatch, updatedb, > > makewhatis, and prelink). > > > > XP also does not have a very robust paging system and can simply fail > > applications when physical memory is exceeded. > > > > All I am suggesting, is that there is a good reason that the Fedora > > developers have moved the recommended memory requirement to 512MB. > > Fedora, and many other Linux distros can be made to run in 128MB or even > > less, but you have to know what you are doing, and limit what you use it > > for. > > > > In general, memory helps all UNIX/Linux based systems. The more memory > > the better, and 2GB desktop systems are becoming common place. > > > > Good Luck! > > Thanks Phil! Memory does seem to be the problem on the 1.2gig Fedora 7 > computer. With System Monitor the only application running, memory usage > climbs continuously at about 10 megs a minute. It's now into the swap > file for 230 megs. CPU usage is about 25% even though System monitor is > only using 2-6%. The 760 meg Fedora Core 2 computer is still acting > normally and reporting memory and CPU usage in agreement with the > processes reported by System Monitor. > > How do I investigate what invisible process is using the CPU and memory? Try "top" first and see if that shows it. If you got rootkitted, then it may not show the guilty process. Go fetch a copy of ckrootkit and run it: http://www.chkrootkit.org/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer rstevens@xxxxxxxxxxxx - - CDN Systems, Internap, Inc. http://www.internap.com - - - - You possess a mind not merely twisted, but actually sprained. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
