Win 98 vs VL on old HP Pavilian, its not good? Success!

[phreon]

Hi,
I am trying to learn LINUX and downloaded Vector 5.9 Standard Gold. I have a HP with PIII at 500mhz, 384 mb ram, 20 gig drive. It is dog slow.
Have 4 gig root, 200 mb swap, 15gig home.

Surfing the web is slow, when I start Firefox the cpu usage goes to 99% and stays there. (I am using a system widget to watch it I found in the system menu.) There is no way to play a DVD, too slow. Other apps work well one at a time. The CPU seems to be always working fairly hard.

Win 98 seems to run well on this box. (Before I trashed it trying to set up a dual boot partition. :-} ) I could browse the web quickly and can play dvd's. I have heard that VL should be pretty fast on these older machins so I must be doing something wrong. I read that the swap file should be twice the ram but I ended up somehow with 190 mb swap. I watched it during firefox an swap was unused so I don't think its a swap issue.

Is there a command I can use to find the error of my ways. (ps -aux does not show any major hogs.)

thanks
P

[lagagnon]

You have already asked this question already under a different subject, and solutions have already been provided. Please post the output of the following commands to this thread when you are experiencing slowness:

fdisk -l (needs to be run as toot)
df -h
free
ps aux

[phreon]

Hi Lagagnon,
I was alerted on the "intro" forum that i should ask this somewhere else. I thought this might be a good place. Sorry for not following the rules.

I reinstalled after I got help from "Intro" forum to fix my partitions.

Here is the results from:
fdisk -l (needs to be run as toot)
df -h
free
ps aux
........................
root:# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 20.4 GB, 20490559488 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 39703 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        7750     3905968+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2            7751       39703    16104312    5  Extended
/dev/hda5            7751        8742      499936+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hda6            8743       39703    15604312+  83  Linux
vector://home/apirie
root:# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             3.7G  3.1G  428M  89% /
/dev/hda6              15G   50M   14G   1% /home
tmpfs                 187M     0  187M   0% /dev/shm
vector://home/apirie
root:# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        381124     271168     109956          0      10352     154936
-/+ buffers/cache:     105880     275244
Swap:       499928          0     499928
vector://home/apirie
root:# ps -aux
Warning: bad ps syntax, perhaps a bogus '-'? See http://procps.sf.net/faq.html
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.1  0.0    772   296 ?        Ss   15:58   0:00 init [4]     
root         2  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kthreadd]
root         3  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [migration/0]
root         4  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        SN   15:58   0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root         5  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [events/0]
root         6  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [khelper]
root        87  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kblockd/0]
root        88  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kacpid]
root        89  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kacpi_notify]
root       156  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [tifm]
root       157  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [ata/0]
root       158  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [ata_aux]
root       159  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [ksuspend_usbd]
root       162  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [khubd]
root       164  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kseriod]
root       181  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    15:58   0:00 [pdflush]
root       182  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S    15:58   0:00 [pdflush]
root       183  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kswapd0]
root       184  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [aio/0]
root       185  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [jfsIO]
root       186  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [jfsCommit]
root       187  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [jfsSync]
root       188  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [xfslogd/0]
root       189  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [xfsdatad/0]
root       989  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kpsmoused]
root       996  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kmmcd]
root      1013  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kjournald]
root      1068  0.1  0.3   2504  1204 ?        S<s  15:58   0:00 /sbin/udevd --d
root      2259  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:58   0:00 [kgameportd]
root      2330  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        S<   15:59   0:00 [kjournald]
root      2424  0.0  0.1   1708   572 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/sbin/syslo
root      2427  0.0  0.1   1664   404 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/sbin/klogd
root      2492  0.0  0.1   1656   512 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/sbin/acpid
81        2606  0.0  0.2   2268   784 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-d
root      2722  0.0  0.5   5992  1936 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd
root      2744  0.0  0.2   3120   860 ?        Ss   15:59   0:00 /usr/bin/kdm -n
root      2795  0.0  0.1   1648   448 tty1     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2798  0.0  0.1   1648   452 tty2     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2805  0.0  0.1   1648   448 tty3     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2814  0.0  0.1   1648   448 tty4     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2823  0.0  0.1   1648   444 tty5     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2832  0.0  0.1   1652   452 tty6     Ss+  15:59   0:00 /sbin/mingetty
root      2846  5.8  5.6  27904 21420 tty7     Ss+  15:59   0:38 /usr/bin/X :0 v
root      2849  0.0  0.3   3420  1276 ?        S    15:59   0:00 -:0           
apirie    2864  0.0  0.4   3196  1584 ?        Ss   16:00   0:00 /bin/sh /etc/xf
apirie    2887  0.1  0.5   4224  2144 ?        S    16:00   0:00 xscreensaver -n
apirie    2890  0.0  0.1   3460   588 ?        Ss   16:00   0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-ag
apirie    2895  0.0  0.1   2864   736 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-l
apirie    2897  0.0  0.2   2268   800 ?        Ss   16:00   0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-d
apirie    2899  0.0  2.1  14956  8132 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/bin/xfce4-
apirie    2902  0.0  1.4  14916  5516 ?        Ss   16:00   0:00 xfce-mcs-manage
apirie    2904  0.1  2.3  15528  8860 ?        S    16:00   0:01 xfwm4
apirie    2906  0.6  2.7  17176 10356 ?        S    16:00   0:03 xfce4-panel
apirie    2908  0.0  1.1  12644  4560 ?        S    16:00   0:00 Thunar --daemon
apirie    2910  0.0  0.3   2516  1176 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/libexec/ga
apirie    2912  0.3  3.1  52836 11976 ?        S    16:00   0:02 xfdesktop
apirie    2913  0.2  2.7  17372 10364 ?        S    16:00   0:01 /usr/libexec/xf
apirie    2918  0.0  1.5  13588  5932 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/libexec/xf
apirie    2919  0.1  2.6  17776 10032 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/libexec/xf
apirie    2954  0.0  0.3   2668  1276 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/bin/bash /
apirie    2955  0.0  0.4   3204  1604 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/li
apirie    2958  0.0  0.4   3248  1648 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/li
apirie    2963 14.4 13.5 154096 51472 ?        Sl   16:00   1:23 /usr/lib/firefo
apirie    2969  0.0  0.5   3876  2176 ?        S    16:00   0:00 /usr/libexec/GC
apirie    2975  1.8  2.3  16040  8796 ?        Ss   16:00   0:10 gkrellm
apirie    2983  0.0  0.0      0     0 ?        Z    16:00   0:00 [net] <defunct>
apirie    3038  1.8  2.9  19032 11404 ?        Ss   16:09   0:00 terminal
apirie    3039  0.0  0.1   2464   748 ?        S    16:09   0:00 gnome-pty-helpe
apirie    3040  0.1  0.5   3532  1948 pts/0    Ss   16:09   0:00 bash
root      3053  0.1  0.4   3020  1688 pts/0    S    16:09   0:00 bash
root      3070  0.0  0.2   2512   948 pts/0    R+   16:10   0:00 ps -aux
vector://home/apirie
root:#

I don't recognize all of the partitions fdisk -l reported.
But gkrelim shows the cpu gets pegged whenever I open a new web page.

Thanks
for the help.
P

[lagagnon]

OK. Your partitons look better now and you actually now have swap working. My only concern is that you only allowed 3.7GB for root and it is already 89% full, so you have very little room for temp files and for adding more software to the system.

However, that will not affect Firefox. I see from ps aux that Firefox is consuming 14% CPU just idling. That is way too high. Are you on some page with flash? Try the following and report back:

-kill all tabs in firefox and go to normal pages without flash, such as forums, whatever, and see what CPU % FF uses
-launch firefox from a terminal and report back any error messages you see.
-try seamonkey or opera browsers instead and see if you get better performance.

[overthere]

Is it possible that dma needs to be turned on?..I think I did that to a p3 650 with 384 and it played commercial dvd without dropping frames full screen...I think the code was..

hdparm -d1 /dev hdx -where x is the letter ie hdc

If I recall correct this is not a rebootable command and I added it to rc.local? in the rc.d folder in etc

just a thought..I felt that vector5.9 std was an improvement to that box over win98 and linux replacements for the win-freeware I ran on it were mostly covered.

you may try the opera browser also..I feel it is a little quicker on older computers..I am useing it on this old laptop which is considerable slower

hope that helps
cheers

[phreon]

Thanks again Lagagnon,

I tried your suggestions as followes:

-kill all tabs in firefox and go to normal pages without flash, such as forums, whatever, and see what CPU % FF uses
Firefox with a single tab with no flash used 32% of CPU.

-launch firefox from a terminal and report back any error messages you see.
Terminated earlier FF and relaunched from Terminal Win was really slow. No errors but the Terminal never gave me a curser after that. No way to type new commands. Had to "cont c" and it killed the FF process.

-try seamonkey or opera browsers instead and see if you get better performance.
Seamonkey used 34% of CPU.

This machine does not like to surf the web.

Opera uses 15% of the CPU.

P

[lagagnon]

Well I am stumped. I have never seen such poor performance of browsers even on older equipment such as that - I install VL5.9 to such vintage machines frequently. As "overthere" suggested try this command (as root):

hdparm -v /dev/hda

is DMA on?

[phreon]

I forgot to thank Overthere for his suggestion, I did try it and it shows DMA as on.

FF still runs pretty slow and ps -aux shows it, with just the VL forum page, using 34% of the CPU.

I just checked the CPU and its running at 550 Mhz so its not in a slow mode or anything.

I am going to reload Win 98 and compare the performance. I still feel like I am missing something in VL though because I can play DVD's in 98. I will reload VL again later and try to make a dual boot machine.

Thanks for everyones suggestions.
P

[budulay]

Hi,
I use Firefox on much older computer, but it works reasonable...

Just a guess:
Maybe it's video card issue.
What is your video card?
What driver it uses?

I have Neomagic Magicgraph card, and the driver is "not so good as it could be" as far as I could judge. DRI doesn't work, high resolution video(more than about 500x500) don't play, either.
Maybe you have same issue.

[phreon]

Thanks for the tip Budulay.

The machine has a NVIDIA RIVA TNT graphics card with 8MB of SDRAM. I don't know how good the card is. When I installed VL there appeared to be a lengthy delay as VL probed the card. I think VL had to use a generic solution for the card during install. I do not remember exactly what the install reported but i had to say OK to a bunch of video screens to get through that part.

Any way, I will keep on banging at it.

P

[The Headacher]

No errors but the Terminal never gave me a curser after that. No way to type new commands. Had to "cont c" and it killed the FF process.

This is normal. If you want to start firefox from a terminal and keep using it the terminal to start other programs, you have to make sure it's backgrounded:

Code:

firefox &

If you don't, the shell waits for the program to complete (close) before it gives you control back.

[caitlyn]

There are some very lightweight browsers packaged for VL:  Dillo, Netsurf, and eLinks.  They all have very limited capabilities compared to Firefox but for simpler web pages they work well and are really fast.  That could be a workaround until you figure out what's wrong.  Netsurf and possibly eLinks are in the testing repository.

[phreon]

I have another NVidia 32 Mb video card that I am going to try. Will VL see the new card and install it or do i have to do something in Vl to install it? Can I use Windows drivers from the manufacturer? (total nube question?) I have seen posts that mention Windows wrappers, I made a guess that w wrapper was a Windows driver. (The nubieness just keeps on coming.)

Thanks
P

I just put in the new video board and there is no difference. GKrellm shows my cpu as pegged 99 to 100% running FF with a single utube tab.

[caitlyn]

If the card uses the same driver as your old card you don't need to do anything.  No, you cannot use Windows drivers.  ndiswrapper refers to wireless drivers only and it is something I'd only ever use in a last resort.  You want to use native Linux drivers if at all possible.

If the new nvidia card uses a different driver that your old card you will need to install the vlnvidia package to make it work.

[phreon]

Thanks Caitlyn,
Now I just need to figure out where to find the NVidia LINUX driver. I searched Google and there are only Windows drivers. Is there a generic NVIdia driver for Linux?

After that I will ask you how to install it. (gslapt? ... a little knowledge is dangerous.)

P