Too many processes question.
Les
hlhowell at pacbell.net
Fri Jan 26 09:32:12 UTC 2007
On Fri, 2007-01-26 at 07:55 +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> I wrote:
> > So a "slow" computer is actually rarely to do with raw processor power.
> > It's much more likely to be some combination of the hard disk not using
> > DMA, or there being a memory hog on the system that is causing it to
> > swap a lot, or there being something running in the background that is
> > really accessing the hard drive a lot.
> >
> > You may have noticed that I like blaming the hard drive for speed
> > problems. Les, is the hard drive light on much?
>
> Les replied:
> > All the time (I'm pretty sure that is broken on this system, because I
> > can usually hear the drive spin up or the arm movement anyway). The
> > problem seems to be though, with all that stuff in memory, that my main
> > memory (only 256M on this machine) is pretty filled up. And I think
> > that 256M of OS and X is just way the heck too much.
> >
> > I really don't want too much going on, just X and its requriements, The
> > Kernal, the print stuff, the USB stuff and the CD and DVD. So what is
> > with 104 processes. Even Windows only shows 54 on my XP box, and I
> > thought Windows was a HOG.
>
> Well, one thing is that Unix has always worked with multiple small
> processes where Windows has wanted One Big Monolith. (And Unix has been
> less buggy for it).
>
> Having said that, Fedora does come with more stuff running than is
> always strictly necessary. To begin with, I'd recommend running
> system-config-services and seeing what is configured to run.
>
> You may want to turn off:
> * auditd, msctrans, setroubleshoot until you have trouble getting something to run and
> think SELinux might be a culprit
> * autofs
> * avahi-daemon
> * bluetooth, hidd and pand
> * CPUspeed if your CPU can't take advantage of power-saving
> * dhcdbd
> * diskdump and netdump
> * dund
> * there's no point having firstboot enabled any more
> * gpm if you rarely drop down to a virtual console
> * irda if you're not using infrared
> * irqbalance (I doubt you've got a hyperthreading or SMP system with
> 256 MB)
> * mdmpd and multipathd
> * netfs and netplugd
> * nfs, nfslock, rpcgssd, rpcidmapd, rpcsvcgssd
> * nscd
> * pscd
> * smb (Samba)
> * sshd
> * ypbind
> * yum-updatesd (this means you'd be responsible for running yum or
> similar to update the system -- every week at least)
>
> If there are no on-demand services, you can turn xinetd off, too.
>
> Not all of these may be there or turned on by default. And there may be
> other things that you've got installed and running that you don't use.
>
> Having looked into the services (and stopped ones you don't want -- it
> may be easiest to go to run-level 3 and back, or reboot), then run the
> top command. Press "shift-M", which sorts the entries by "RES", defined
> as "the non-swapped physical memory a task has used". Take a look at the
> largest processes. If you see something you're pretty sure you don't
> need, see if you can turn it off.
>
> Ask again if you need more help.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> James.
>
> --
> E-mail: james@ | Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you
> aprilcottage.co.uk | deal with are half-wits.
>
Thanks, James,
I knew Some of these and may have the majority turned off already. My
goal is a stripped simple system too use to demo somthing. This is a
great help.
Regards,
Les H
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