RE: slow and slower

["Alan Ruuska" <AwRuuska net1plus com>]

Hi Floyd,

I'm a newbie , so I can't really answer your question. But I do have an old
($40.00!) i486-Dx33 up and running. I installed all the RPM's in RH 5.2
except those related to Apache and those related to local networking (this
is a home computer set up to learn some Linux). X windows runs great (Yes
not nearly as fast as performance on my P-II 266, but not bad.) I did not
expect much from a box with only 8 Meg of ram. Heck, I didn't really expect
it to work at all.  And it didn't at first. My first install attempt was
with a 540 Meg hard drive installed. The install took forever (went to bed
at 2:00 am and finished later), and in the end it failed.

So, I deleted games, sound, Apache, networking, most graphics, and a bunch
of other stuff. The install finished, but I couldn't get Xfree86 configured
right. And had other problems.

I thought I'd had to leave out a lot of interesting stuff, so abandoned my
original low cost objective and installed a WD 6.4 gig hard drive. The
install was a piece of cake, speed is good, and I'm still working on 8 Meg
of ram.(STB Horizon video card, Logitech MC-43 mouse, Mitsumi CD-ROM)

AwRuuska Net1Plus com <mailto:AwRuuska Net1Plus com>

  _____

ALAN RUUSKA

206 Lunenburg Road

West Townsend, Massachusetts 01474-1134

USA

  _____



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael L. Starnes [mailto:mstarnes nmteleport com]
> Sent: Monday, February 15, 1999 1:34 PM
> To: redhat-install-list redhat com
> Subject: Re: slow and slower
>
>
> P Isaacs wrote:
> >
> > Well I have had this product for one week now and have yet too
> get it to run
> > smoothly.
> >
> > Here is the low down I successful installed RH 5.2 on Tuesday.
> > on Dell 450/m -468 50mhz, with 500mb HD. 16mb of ram
> > It has a 14inch VGA monitor and S3 video chipset
> > I partinoned the HD into 3 sections with a 100mb swap file
> >
> > And well this thing creeps along. Very, very slowly. Most apps perform
> > terribly and Xwindows runs at a very scary slow pace. Is this normal?
> >
> > I turned off all network, sound and webstuff so I'm not running
> any special
> > stuff.
> >
> > Can anybody help me figure out why this is performing do
> poorly. Is there a
> > place to start looking for answers.
> >
> > PLEASE DON'T EMAIL BACK TO UPGRADE THE RAM. I ALREADY KNOW THIS.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Floyd
>
> Floyd and All,
>
> I'm using a 486DX2-66 with 20 megs of ram and 1.3 gig hard drive. After
> my first install I had very slow response in X and some other problems
> too (I think). Seemd like it had problems accessing the hard drive.
>
> Later learned that I had the LBA mode in bios disabled. Also, during
> install I kept getting "Error reading header at xxxxxx". Made it through
> install by backing up and trying again. Don't think I had a clean
> install though.
>
> I reinstalled with LBA mode enabled and replaced the cd-rom drive (cause
> of the error reading header) and things are much better now. However,
> seems like X and Netscape load faster and run better when I am logged on
> as root. Don't know why it slows down when logged on as me. Anybody have
> comments on this?
>
> Try logging in on a VC and type "top (enter)". Top is a program that
> shows usage of cpu, memory and swap for all the processes running on the
> system. Take a look at things then go to another VC and start X and
> maybe some X apps. Then go back to the VC that has top running and
> notice the changes in usage of cpu, memory, swap. Should help you see
> what's going on.
>
> Since I'm using a 486 I don't expect miracles but would like to see some
> improvement over the same system running dos/win3.1.
>
> Sorry I don't have more to say. I'm new at this.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike
>
>
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