Linux Mandrake minor problem

Hello:

Last night I was using Linux Mandrake 7.2 on this here computer, I had XMMS running, a couple of Konqueror windows open, a terminal window open, and Knapster running. While I was surfing the web suddenly everything on my computer became very slow. My mouse pointer would take a number of seconds before moving across the screen, and my hard drive became really active using up lots of swap space. I tried shutting down a few programs but that didn't fix it. This continued for about 25-30 minutes and then stopped and everything went back to normal. What is going on? Linux has done this to me a couple of times before. Is this normal? My computer should be plenty fast enough for Linux (800 MHz Thunderturd, 128Mb RAM, 32Mb Geforce2 video card, twin overhead cams, hehehe, just kidding on the last bit). Any help would be appreciated.

Try defragging, also is your linux in its own partition or is it installed on your windows (if you have one) partition?

------------------
"Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." - Professor Frink

Quote:

---

Originally posted by sludge:
Try defragging, also is your linux in its own partition or is it installed on your windows (if you have one) partition?

---

Unfortunately unless he installed Linux on a FAT32/16 partition, there is no way to defrag a Linux ext2 partition.



------------------
------
Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

No wonder i could never figure out how to do it https://www.sharkyforums.com/images/.../2005/06/6.gif

------------------
"Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive, but I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them." - Professor Frink

Linux has it's own partition. I have a 30Gb hard drive split between WinME and Linux Mandrake. You mentioned defragging linux? I though linux never needed to be defragged because of its different file structure, or something like that.

Sorry, double post.

[This message has been edited by blppt (edited December 04, 2000).]

Quote:

---

Originally posted by J. Spaceman:
Linux has it's own partition. I have a 30Gb hard drive split between WinME and Linux Mandrake. You mentioned defragging linux? I though linux never needed to be defragged because of its different file structure, or something like that.

---

Thats what i hear. If jtshaw ever comes back, i'm sure he can tell you why.

BTW---i get mouse stuttering too. I think it has something to do with the fact that Linux has no apparent 2d acceleration features for new video cards in X. So your cpu is straining. I have a P3-700E@868, 256megs, SBLive, and a Voodoo3 for reference.



------------------
------
Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

Heh, ok Pat, I will try to explain:

The nature of an ext2 partition means it doesn't need to be defragged... ext2 isn't a "table" like partition type like FAT is. The way ext2 works is it has a certain number of nodes, called INODES. Everytime a piece of data is put on the harddrive it gets an INODE and is placed on the drive. The data never has to be split up in blocks like in the FAT table (ie when you save a file to disk on ext2 it stays in original form). The reason why FAT needs defragging is sometimes when a file is put into multiple blocks they are not placed adjacent on the disk or they are put in the wrong order. Defragging puts them back in the correct order and as adjacent as possible.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. When you defrag FAT partitions you can also put things on disk such that it will be found and read faster. However, FAT requires a finite blocksize and will only allow one file (or one part of a file) per block. This means if you put 10 2k files on a FAT disk that has 4k blocks the files will take up 40k worth of space instead of 20k like they would on an ext2 partition. I think in benchmarking a completely optimized FAT partition might be slightly faster reading then an ext2 partition but it is not something the end user will be able to readily tell.

Back to your original problem with slowdown in Xwindows. It is very possible that Pat is correct and you are getting no 2D acceleration from your video card, thus the processor is working hard on all the applications open as well as rendering the graphics. To test a theory like that you could scale down the color depth and/or resolution and see if that helps. If it doesn't then it could be one of your programs you have running has a memory leak or is just plain poorly written. Linux programs are certainly not perfect, many of them are in various forms of beta release and the developers for most of them are doing it as a side project. That is why it is fairly important to keep up with new releases on programs for Linux. Maybe some of the money that big companies like Intel, IBM, HP, ect. are pumping into linux development will go to some of the smaller developers so they can sit down and really work hard on there programs to get them optimized and bug-free.

------------------
My box said "WindowsME/2000 or better" so I installed Linux.

[This message has been edited by jtshaw (edited December 04, 2000).]

Fat16 is a very inefficient file system for partitions over 2 Gigs I think it is...


------------------
Now sporting a pIII 733 flip-chip on an i815 256M 133 fsb rig under a Golden Orb...

Last time I checked FAT16 couldn't work on a partition over 2 gigs...


------------------
My box said "WindowsME/2000 or better" so I installed Linux.

Is it possible that my linux system temporarily slowed down because of cron? I mentioned my problem to someone on IRC and they said that the computer could have been doing a 'cron job'. What is cron exactly? Some sort of system checker?

As for my video card. I tried running Soldier of Fortune in Linux a little while ago and it ran but very slowly. The graphics were really choppy. I've read that I need to download a 3D driver or something from my video card manufacturer's WWW site (Nvidia). I notice in X windows that when I minimize windows it is slightly slower than when I minimize in WinME. Is linux not taking full advantage of my video card? I have an ASUS Geforce2 MX with 32Mb of memory.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by jtshaw:
Heh, ok Pat, I will try to explain:

The nature of an ext2 partition means it doesn't need to be defragged... ext2 isn't a "table" like partition type like FAT is. The way ext2 works is it has a certain number of nodes, called INODES. Everytime a piece of data is put on the harddrive it gets an INODE and is placed on the drive. The data never has to be split up in blocks like in the FAT table (ie when you save a file to disk on ext2 it stays in original form). The reason why FAT needs defragging is sometimes when a file is put into multiple blocks they are not placed adjacent on the disk or they are put in the wrong order. Defragging puts them back in the correct order and as adjacent as possible.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. When you defrag FAT partitions you can also put things on disk such that it will be found and read faster. However, FAT requires a finite blocksize and will only allow one file (or one part of a file) per block. This means if you put 10 2k files on a FAT disk that has 4k blocks the files will take up 40k worth of space instead of 20k like they would on an ext2 partition. I think in benchmarking a completely optimized FAT partition might be slightly faster reading then an ext2 partition but it is not something the end user will be able to readily tell.

Back to your original problem with slowdown in Xwindows. It is very possible that Pat is correct and you are getting no 2D acceleration from your video card, thus the processor is working hard on all the applications open as well as rendering the graphics. To test a theory like that you could scale down the color depth and/or resolution and see if that helps. If it doesn't then it could be one of your programs you have running has a memory leak or is just plain poorly written. Linux programs are certainly not perfect, many of them are in various forms of beta release and the developers for most of them are doing it as a side project. That is why it is fairly important to keep up with new releases on programs for Linux. Maybe some of the money that big companies like Intel, IBM, HP, ect. are pumping into linux development will go to some of the smaller developers so they can sit down and really work hard on there programs to get them optimized and bug-free.

---

Thanks for the explanation! That was quite informative. If only winamp would start releasing betas for linux, i'd be very happy. Thats the only problems i really have right now is XMMS stuttering when i minimize it, and a rather crappy equalizer (nothing over 6k does much at all).


------------------
------
Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

On the video card note...make sure you are running XFree86 4.0.1 and get the stuff from nVidia.com. I have a TNT2 and it works just peachy in Linux (probably not as fast as it might do 3D in Windows but I haven't tested it).

Cron is a command schedular. Basically, it makes task happen at certain times. It could be that cron happened to start up a task that slowed your system down...I didn't even think of that possiblity.

About XMMS...the equalizer really does suck doesn't it...I run my computer through my home stereo system so I don't really need it but I know exactly what you mean. I haven't experienced any stuttering though, but I guess I don't minimize it much, I usually just throw it in another desktop pane.

------------------
My box said "WindowsME/2000 or better" so I installed Linux.

I have XFree86 4.0.1 running, but I'm not sure which drivers I need to download from Nvidia. They have about a few dozen different drivers for various distros of linux and various Nvidia chipsets. I don't see any for the Geforce2 MX, nor for Mandrake linux 7.2. Plus I am unsure about which type of file I should download (.rpm, .tar.gz, src?).
On another note, XMMS doesn't stutter when I minimise it, and yes, the equalizer leaves alot to be desired.

I used the NVIDIA_kernel_0.9-5.tar.gz. Just uncompress that (tar xzvf <FILENAME> ). Go into the directory that it creates and read either the install file or the readme to see what to do next.

------------------
My box said "WindowsME/2000 or better" so I installed Linux.