Slow FC4, perhaps swap is to blame

[Robert F. Chapman]

This is just the opposite problem that I have.  When I first boot up
it seems that everything is slow. I click on the applications tab and it
can take 30 seconds before it shows up.  I start a desktop app and again
it will take 30-50 seconds before it comes up.  Once I have run a few
apps etc. and things are cached, then the problem seems to go away.
Until my memory fills up. 

Why is Gnome so unresponsive before things are cached. I'm running a
2GHz system with 512Megs of RAM, and 7200 rpm PATA 133 hard drive.

Robert
  
On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 10:41 -0800, Daniel Buggie wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 12:21 -0600, John Degenstein wrote:
> 
> > This is a problem I have been trying to fix for several months now,
> > and I am pretty sure it is the swap space on this computer has
> > something to do with it.  When I first start up the computer it is
> > blazing fast, and I have no problem filling 4 workspaces up with
> > resource intensive programs.  But as the days and weeks wear on the
> > computer gets progressively slower, to the point where simply
> > switching between workspaces with only 3 or 4 programs open becomes
> > incredibly slow.  The problem also seems to relate to programs that
> > use Java, such as azureus and qnext, it seems to me that there is some
> > kind of memory leak that builds up in the swap space over time.  Even
> > after the swap space has been filled I attempt to clear it by closing
> > all open programs, but this has no effect and it is beginning to drive
> > me crazy.
> > 
> > I did manage to find a command which I somehow got to work at least
> > several times:
> > swapoff -a /dev/logVol00/_something_here
> > 
> > This command alleviated my problems immediately, but then I started to
> > get errors about running out of memory from new programs I was trying
> > to open so I enabled swap again with the command "swapon".  Another
> > possible source of my problems is the fact I am running PC2100 DDR
> > rather than the minimum that my motherboard supposedly supports,
> > PC2700, because of this I had to underclock some of the components on
> > my mobo so that the computer would boot.
> 
> Swap performance could be impacted by how your swap partitions are set
> up (for example, multiple swap partitions on the same physical disk with
> equal priority could cause your drive to thrash). How do you have your
> swap space set up?  Since you are using Logical Volume, please also
> include what PV the swap space is on. Perhaps fine tuning your swap
> space could at least delay the memory leak issues.
> 
> Beyond that, have you tried "swapon -a" after your swapoff command?  If
> your intent was to clear the swap space by removing it from the system,
> why not add it back in?
> 
> 
> Daniel
>