System: PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage. But whenever I go to start a task: Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage. Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:> System: > > PIII 500Mhz > 128MB memory > 20GB drive > > Current CentOS 4.2 > Gnome GUI > > The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage. > > But whenever I go to start a task: > > Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox > > It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come > down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage. > > Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow? >Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM. If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20051230/863daae6/attachment-0001.sig>
At 08:18 AM 12/30/2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:>On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote: > > System: > > > > PIII 500Mhz > > 128MB memory > > 20GB drive > > > > Current CentOS 4.2 > > Gnome GUI > > > > The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage. > > > > But whenever I go to start a task: > > > > Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox > > > > It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come > > down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage. > > > > Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow? > > >Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work >correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM. > >If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is >simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes >things take forever :)Oh well... Since this is targeted as my DNS and mail server, I had better get more memory quickly! I had been using gnome's system monitor. And although it showed 43Mb of swap used (of 256Mb) it did not show any swap activity. I will try and figure out how to use top. thanks!