Optimizing? (Solved)

[bgraybr]

My computer takes about 5 minutes to boot up, and the CPU usage jumps up to almost 100% and my computer freezes when I watch videos on a site like Youtube. I'm using LXDE, and I have a 4 GB swap partition (its shared between two operating systems) and that helps a lot, but my computer is still slower than I'd like it to be. Any specific advice on how to speed it up?

Another question - I've repartitioned my hard drive about 5 times. Will this slow down my computer in any way? It feels like its getting slower every time I install a new operating system.

Here's some info:

BIOS Version: 84.05

IDE0 Master: ST9120822A-(PM)
IDE0 Slaver: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530A-(PS)

CPU Type: AMD Turion 64X2 Mobile Technology TL-50
CPU Speed: 1600 MHZ

Cache RAM: 512 KB

Total Memory: 2048 MB
        Slot 1: 1024 MB
        Slot 2: 1024 MB
        Video: 128 MB

Generic PnP Monitor on ATI Radeon Xpress 1150
1280 x 800 pixels
32 bit colors

[Daniel]

2 suggestions: 1, when your cpu usage jumps to 100% you could use htop to see which processes are using the most cpu cycles. 2, I'm not sure but it *could be* that your /tmp folder is full or close to full. Go to / in your file manager, right-click on the /tmp folder and go to properties. There is probably something there that shows how much space /tmp is using up and how much is left.

EDIT: / *could be* almost full also.

[sparkyhall]

5 minute boot time and you say that a 4GB swap helped a lot when you have 2GB of ram!!

Something very wrong here unless you load hundreds of apps at start up. My old IBM TP600 (300MHz 448MB ram) boots in less than 2 miunutes I think. It sounds like something is hanging during the boot process so I would start by trying to figure out why it takes so long to boot by enabling verbose at boot and looking in the log files for clues. It may also be worth checking that your CPU is running at full speed and not stuck in some slow low power mode.

Which version of VL are you using?

[M0E-lnx]

I can see where a 1.6GHz CPU with only a 512K cache would lag a bit during boot, but 5 minutes is just off the charts. There is really something else going on in there. 4GB swap is an overkill to. You should only make your swap twice as big as your ram when your ram is only 512 MB. Anything after that should match the same size as your ram. I have a laptop with 3GB of ram with no swap and it does just fine.

[MikeCindi]

With the filesystems that are offered in VL's setup the current kernel will only recognize 2Gb of a swap file/partition. The other 2Gb in you swap are unused.

@M0E-lnx: AMD has used a smaller cache sizes on their processor vs. Intel but "boast" faster FSB speeds. Thus I wouldn't expect that to be a problem for bgraybr.

[M0E-lnx]

I've never owned an AMD myself, but have used them temporarily and I can definitely feel the difference.

I know the cache size and FSB speed aver important to the overall system performance.
Still, a 5 minute boot time is simply surprisingly slow.

[bgraybr]

It sounds like something is hanging during the boot process so I would start by trying to figure out why it takes so long to boot by enabling verbose at boot and looking in the log files for clues. It may also be worth checking that your CPU is running at full speed and not stuck in some slow low power mode. Which version of VL are you using?

I'm using Vector Linux 6.0, Final.
How would I check to see if my CPU is running at full speed?

I'll reduce the size of my swap file, I someone got this idea that a large swap file would have the same effect as increasing my RAM.

[bgraybr]

Hmm... I checked my  CPU speed and its running exactly at the speed its I posted above.

[GrannyGeek]

A swap file is slower than RAM because the swap file uses the hard drive when RAM is insufficient. RAM is much faster than reading from/writing to the hard drive.

I think using the tmpfs as swap uses RAM instead of writing to disk, but you have to have enough RAM to devote some to swap (tmpfs). If you're short on RAM, tmpfs isn't an option, so you have to go with the slower swap partition. If you have enough RAM, swap will rarely be used anyway.
--GrannyGeek

[MikeCindi]

Still, a 5 minute boot time is simply surprisingly slow.

Agreed; I have a dual P3 1GHz with 1.5Gb RAM and it's up and going in about 2 minutes and would be faster but it's a Compaq server so it goes through a lot of checks whenever I have to (re)boot it.

@bgraybr: try watching all the boot messages and see if there is one (or more) that takes more than a few seconds to process. Then post the message here. I would agree with sparkyhall that something is hanging during boot.