CentOS - Aug 2010 - CentOS 5.5 latest revisions seem really slow

I recently updated to OpenOffice 3.2 and I noticed that it, and the
latest Evolution, seem to be incredibly slow for some operations.

E.g., in OO, about half the time when I'm editing something, it takes
anywhere from 10-30 seconds for OO to respond to a click on one of the
icons or menu items, and Evo is taking forever to format messages.

During these times the gnome-system-monitor icon on my panel is
showing almost no activity, and if I expand it to the full window, it
shows the same.

Is anyone else seeing this?

I'm running the x86_64 release on an Athlon II X4, 2.6GHz with 4GB of
memory and lots of available space in memory and on disk.

Thanks in advance.

Mark

On Sun, 2010-08-01 at 20:00 -0700, Mark wrote:
> I recently updated to OpenOffice 3.2 and I noticed that it, and the
> latest Evolution, seem to be incredibly slow for some operations.
Latest version for CentOS 5.5 is
openoffice.org-writer-3.1.1-19.5.el5_5.1
Where did you obtain 3.2 from?  That may be your slowness as on my 64
bit workstation I see none at all.  Loads in about 3 secs.

evolution-2.12.3-19.el5:
Now Evolution on my 32 bit workstation I have 1555 emails in it and it
is not slow, 8 different email accounts also, especially even though it
is GUI based instead of console.  About every 2000 mails I back it up
and start over again from 0.
> E.g., in OO, about half the time when I'm editing something, it takes
> anywhere from 10-30 seconds for OO to respond to a click on one of the
> icons or menu items, and Evo is taking forever to format messages.
Converting a *.doc file to *.pdf only takes about 3 secs.  What type of
Graphics card you have?  Yea I know weird question but can cause your
problem also.

<snip>
> I'm running the x86_64 release on an Athlon II X4, 2.6GHz with 4GB of
> memory and lots of available space in memory and on disk.
Looked at your memory usage? Is it swapping by chance? #free.  Have you
looked at top while using those apps?  What about spamd in Evolution?
Disable all non needed services.

Here is the memory for my 32 bit workstation for Evolution + spamd + a
few consoles/pine opened + firefox. & sometimes links & screen.  No
problem here what so ever. 
]#free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers
cached
Mem:        774648     755020      19628          0      68968
368716
-/+ buffers/cache:     317336     457312
Swap:      1572856         12    1572844

John

Mark wrote:
> I recently updated to OpenOffice 3.2 and I noticed that it, and the
> latest Evolution, seem to be incredibly slow for some operations.
> 
> E.g., in OO, about half the time when I'm editing something, it takes
> anywhere from 10-30 seconds for OO to respond to a click on one of the
> icons or menu items, and Evo is taking forever to format messages.
> 
> During these times the gnome-system-monitor icon on my panel is
> showing almost no activity, and if I expand it to the full window, it
> shows the same.
> 
> Is anyone else seeing this?
> 
> I'm running the x86_64 release on an Athlon II X4, 2.6GHz with 4GB of
> memory and lots of available space in memory and on disk.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Mark
I'm experiencing similar problems on a DELL Optiplex 740 with the same 
CPU (AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ @ 2.60 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 80 
GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 HD).  But in my case the slowness is not 
restricted to OO, but the whole systems is slowed down.  Even simple 
actions (e.g. starting a Gnome Console) bring the load up to over 2. 
Right after booting, the load is usually over 2, sometimes even up to 4. 
  The slowness can literally be seen during the boot process.  The 
problem occurs since kernel 2.6.18-194.el5.  I measured the boot times 
(from GRUB to gdmgreeter, booted with 'noapic'):


kernel 2.6.18-164.el5      1"03', load after boot: 0.5

kernel 2.6.18-194.el5      3"35', load after boot: 2.5
kernel 2.6.18-194.3.1.el5  3"30', load after boot: 2.3
kernel 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5  3"35', load after boot: 1.9


When shutting down from kernel 2.6.18-194.x, I often (around 7 of 10 
times) get the following error on the console:

---------------
[...]
Shutting down hidd: [  OK  ]
[  OK  ] Bluetooth services:[  OK  ]
Shutting down interface eth0:  BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 10s!
[ip:3539]

CPU 1:
Modules linked in: autofs4 hidp rfcomm l2cap bluetooth lockd sunrpc
ip_conntrack
_netbios_ns ipt_REJECT xt_state ip_conntrack nfnetlink iptable_filter
ip_tables
ip6t_REJECT xt_tcpudp ip6table_filter ip6_tables x_tables ipv6 xfrm_nalgo
crypto
_api cpufreq_ondemand powernow_k8 freq_table dm_multipath scsi_dh video
backligh
t sbs power_meter i2c_ec dell_wmi wmi button battery asus_acpi
acpi_memhotplug a
c lp sr_mod cdrom snd_hda_intel sg snd_seq_dummy snd_seq_oss
snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq snd_seq_device snd_pcm_oss snd_mixer_oss snd_pcm snd_timer
snd_page_allo
c snd_hwdep parport_pc tg3 k8_edac snd parport i2c_nforce2 floppy k8temp
shpchp
i2c_core edac_mc hwmon pcspkr soundcore dm_raid45 dm_message
dm_region_hash dm_m
em_cache dm_snapshot dm_zero dm_mirror dm_log dm_mod sata_nv libata sd_mod
scsi_
mod ext3 jbd uhci_hcd ohci_hcd ehci_hcd
Pid: 3539, comm: ip Not tainted 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5 #1
RIP: 0010:[<ffffffff8000c9f6>]  [<ffffffff8000c9f6>]
__delay+0x8/0x10
RSP: 0018:ffff810125741c60  EFLAGS: 00000297
RAX: 00000000539a8625 RBX: 0000000000001388 RCX: 0000000052518896
RDX: 000000000000012b RSI: ffffc2000006044c RDI: 000000000291ae58
RBP: 00000000393a7993 R08: 0000000000000002 R09: ffff810125741d1c
R10: 0000000000000018 R11: 000005e100000300 R12: 0000000000000002
R13: ffff810125741d1c R14: 000000000000004c R15: ffffffff80225929
FS:  00002b3ee841a800(0000) GS:ffff81010438d7c0(0000)
knlGS:0000000000000000
CS:  0010 DS: 0000 ES: 0000 CR0: 000000008005003b
CR2: 000000365a6cc640 CR3: 0000000122af0000 CR4: 00000000000006e0

Call Trace:
  [<ffffffff882444e7>] :tg3:tg3_readphy+0x77/0xdf
  [<ffffffff88246d90>] :tg3:tg3_setup_copper_phy+0x86a/0xb35
  [<ffffffff88247d62>] :tg3:tg3_setup_phy+0xd07/0xe39
  [<ffffffff80158813>] pci_bus_read_config_word+0x71/0x83
  [<ffffffff80158647>] pci_bus_write_config_dword+0x5f/0x6e
  [<ffffffff88248080>] :tg3:tg3_set_power_state+0x1ec/0x96e
  [<ffffffff88252c34>] :tg3:tg3_close+0x103/0x113
  [<ffffffff8022f4ea>] dev_close+0x53/0x72
  [<ffffffff8022e609>] dev_change_flags+0x5a/0x119
  [<ffffffff80262fd8>] devinet_ioctl+0x235/0x59c
  [<ffffffff80225d4f>] sock_ioctl+0x1c1/0x1e5
  [<ffffffff8004206a>] do_ioctl+0x21/0x6b
  [<ffffffff800300ca>] vfs_ioctl+0x457/0x4b9
  [<ffffffff800b7605>] audit_syscall_entry+0x180/0x1b3
  [<ffffffff8004c549>] sys_ioctl+0x59/0x78
  [<ffffffff8005d28d>] tracesys+0xd5/0xe0

[  OK  ]
Shutting down loopback interface:  [  OK  ]
[...]
---------------

The complete console of the boot process can be seen on 
http://pastebin.de/8808, the console output of the shutdown/reboot 
process is on http://pastebin.de/8809.  Bootcharts of the two boot 
processes can be seen on http://www.drosera.ch/kernelproblem/.

Memtest has been run w/o result.

Is there a way to narrow down the problem before posting a bug report?

Cheers

     frank

-- 
Frank Thommen - Structures IT Management and Support - EMBL Heidelberg
frank.thommen at embl-heidelberg.de - +49 6221 387 8353