[Tfug] Memory woes

[Christopher Robbins]

On 2/4/07, Jim March <1.jim.march at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/3/07, Christopher Robbins <robbinsc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > But all that has suddenly changed.  I recently installed SUSE 10.2x86-64,
> > and my computer has slowed down considerably.  The stupid *#@#$* thing
> > thrashes about and everything works at a
> > standstill.  I recently added a gig of memory, pushing the system to
> > 1.25gigs, and nothing's helped.  I don't know where to start digging,
> > because
> > everything seems screwy.  KDE processes are taking
> > 100-150 mb of memory.  I've got (at present time) 2 ssh connections, and
> > sshd is reporting 120mb of memory devoted to each process.  The mythtv
> > backend is swallowing another 400mb.
> >
> > I don't understand - this hasn't been a problem in the past.  I don't
> > think
> > it's a window manager issue either, though I do understand that my use
> of
> > KDE may be a factor...
> >
> > Any thoughts?
>
>
> Ummm...that's weird.
>
> I was running OpenSuse 10.2 on my weird old laptop - 2ghz P4, 768megs RAM,
> ancient 32meg ATI Radeon 7500 video card.  Ran fine, performance was right
> on par with both Ubuntu and Fedora Core 6 although I was running Gnome
> instead of KDE.  Damned stable, too.  I even tried it on a P3/450 with
> 384megs RAM, that one WAS with KDE, ran...well, not "great" but usable.  I
> was testing on an old "scrap" machine at a non-profit looking for an
> alternative to Win98 on volunteer basic-use boxes.

<scratches head>


That's what's mind-boggling.  I run SUSE in my office, on a machine that's a
bit older (1.8 ghz, 1.5 gig of RAM) and
that system blows the doors off this thing.  I can't wrap my head around
it.  And I've used it on older systems, but nothing
as slow as this has become.

I'm thinking the install went wrong?  Have you made sure it's got the right
> kernel in there?  Maybe make sure it's running a 64bit base?


It's running 2.6.18, x86_64 version.  I'm leaning towards the install being
borked.  I mean, running 'top',
everything looks out of whack.  Even things that shouldn't be sucking down
memory (non-leaking Firefox, ssh connections,
etc) are killing huge amounts of free memory.  Running a media player and a
torrent downloader has taken all but 10 mb of
available system memory.  This isn't right at all.

I've enjoyed Fedora Core 6 much more than OpenSuse 10.2 though, and found
> them equally stable.  Package management in FC6 is closer to "Debian
> grade"
> than that horrible YaST stuff...


Horrible YaST stuff?!?!?!   :)

I love YaST as a tool for everything else, though a quick .config edit at
times can be just
as easy.  I'll readily admit that the 10.x series has had more problems with
package
management than what it's been worth.  Things need work, though 10.2 has
been a
considerable upgrade since 10.1.

you might consider distro-hopping...FC6
> tends to run very modern kernels, I'm up into the 2.6.19 family right now
> and damn, it's still solid as a rock.


SUSE was my first distro.  I tried Fedora but it was crap compared to SUSE.
Like an old
girlfriend who won't take a hint, she's a hard woman to get rid of.  I've
tried Debian and it's derivatives, Fedora,
even Gentoo, but I've never been able to shake SUSE...It always Just Works
(TM) for me.  (minus this incident)

My take: OpenSuse isn't nice enough to be worth spending huge amounts of
> time on if it's gone screwy on you.


I'll give it another install...If things don't work out, perhaps I'll try
Gentoo again.

-Chris


-- 
Chris Robbins
Systems Programmer
Department of English - University of Arizona
http://www.homerengineeringcorp.net