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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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 Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 11:57 pm Post subject: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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I'm not saying my system is coming to a halt, but let me give you a run down of my system specs before I begin.
2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB ram.
160GB 5400rpm SATA HD (This is a notebook)
Nvidia 8600M GT
Now, I should really have NO problems with speed with this setup, but I still am. It's just ridiculous. DMA is enabled by default with SATA, so that can't be the issue. I'm pretty sure I've got the correct option enabled for my SATA chipset.
I want to give a few examples of how it is slow. Right now, I am typing this post, but I have a couple of other tabs open in firefox. If I click on another one there is about a 2-3 second delay before the page completely changes. I have no other applications running besides firefox. Why in the hell is there this delay? Furthermore, if I go to ESPN.com and move my mouse across the menu area the drop down boxes don't appear until one second after my mouse has passed over the menu.
Also, Compiz fusion wobbly windows are not smooth at all and neither is page scrolling in firefox. It's just very annoying. All of this becomes worse if I try to emerge anything. I dual boot Windows Vista and Vista FLYS with this setup. Why doesn't Linux?
kyle@genkyle ~ $ emerge --info
Portage 2.1.3.16 (default-linux/x86/2007.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.5-r0, 2.6.23-gentoo i686)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.23-gentoo i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz
Timestamp of tree: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 19:00:09 +0000
app-shells/bash: 3.2_p17-r1
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.2-r1
dev-lang/python: 2.4.3-r4, 2.5.1-r3
dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r6
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.9
sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.18.1-r2
sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61
sys-devel/automake: 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10
sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r1
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4
sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22
virtual/os-headers: 2.6.23
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo"
LANG="C"
LINGUAS="en_US en"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages --filter=H_**/files/digest-*"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/layman/xeffects"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X acl acpi alsa apache2 avahi berkdb bitmap-fonts cairo cdr cli cracklib crypt cups daap dbus dri dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd evo fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran gdbm gif glitz gnome gpm gstreamer gtk hal iconv ieee1394 ipod ipv6 ipw3945 isdnlog jpeg kerberos ldap lirc mad midi mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg mudflap musicbrainz mysql ncurses nfs nls nptl nptlonly nvidia ogg opengl openmp oss pam pcre pdf perl png pppd python qt3support quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sse ssl svg tagwriting tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1 type1-fonts unicode v4l vim-syntax vorbis win32codecs x86 xml xorg xv xvid xvmc zlib" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en_US en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
kyle@genkyle ~ $ glxinfo | grep -i direct
direct rendering: Yes
kyle@genkyle ~ $ glxinfo | grep -i opengl
OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 8600M GT/PCI/SSE2
OpenGL version string: 2.1.1 NVIDIA 100.14.19
OpenGL extensions:
genkyle kyle # hdparm -tT /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 6666 MB in 1.99 seconds = 3341.73 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 138 MB in 3.03 seconds = 45.49 MB/sec |
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PaulBredbury
Watchman
Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Posts: 7310
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:36 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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| SithMaddox wrote: | | This is a notebook |
So type its model into Google, sprinkle in the magic word "Linux", and see what other people say about it. Might need a BIOS update, who knows.
Last edited by PaulBredbury on Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:37 am; edited 1 time in total |
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zach9824
n00b
Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 37
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:36 am Post subject: |
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It can be any number of things. Some ideas:
Have a look at | Code: | | cat /proc/interrupts |
Based on that output you may want to | Code: | | emerge irqbalance && rc-update add irqbalance default |
Don't forget to disable the "in-kernel" irq balancing under processor type & features.
Also can you post the kernel config? Settings for:
IO Schedulers & Processor type and features
Lastly it appears that you haven't made use of the optimized CFLAGS setting for your processor, for example you may try:
| Code: | | CFLAGS="-O2 -march=prescott -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" |
I am sure that isn't your problem, however you most probably would see an increase in system response with that setting. Ofcourse changing that value now would require emerge -e system && emerge -e world, which may take some time. |
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likewhoa
l33t
Joined: 04 Oct 2006
Posts: 778
Location: Brooklyn, New York
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:08 am Post subject: |
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| for a laptop system you should really be using -Os and prelinking. Also set your CPU scheduler to deadline. just a few suggestions. |
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tarpman
Veteran
Joined: 04 Nov 2004
Posts: 1083
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 1:30 pm Post subject: |
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| likewhoa wrote: | | for a laptop system you should really be using -Os and prelinking. Also set your CPU scheduler to deadline. just a few suggestions. |
Prelinking for sure - for a Core 2 I think -Os is leaning a little too far towards trading away performance, though, considering its huge cache. Also, I'm interested in why you'd recommend deadline over, for example, CFQ.
SithMaddox, are things any different if you use a non-compositing window manager instead? such as metacity or kwin instead of compiz?
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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:53 pm Post subject: |
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| zach9824 wrote: | It can be any number of things. Some ideas:
Have a look at | Code: | | cat /proc/interrupts |
Based on that output you may want to | Code: | | emerge irqbalance && rc-update add irqbalance default |
Don't forget to disable the "in-kernel" irq balancing under processor type & features.
Also can you post the kernel config? Settings for:
IO Schedulers & Processor type and features
Lastly it appears that you haven't made use of the optimized CFLAGS setting for your processor, for example you may try:
| Code: | | CFLAGS="-O2 -march=prescott -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" |
I am sure that isn't your problem, however you most probably would see an increase in system response with that setting. Ofcourse changing that value now would require emerge -e system && emerge -e world, which may take some time. |
What is the advantage of irq balance package vs the in-kernel irq balancing?
And yes, cflags make such a minimal impact on performance and I have had many packages broken by aggressive CFLAGS that I don't even bother anymore. I used to really go all out on them with leaf pointers and unroll loops, etc, etc. |
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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 5:55 pm Post subject: |
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| tarpman wrote: | | likewhoa wrote: | | for a laptop system you should really be using -Os and prelinking. Also set your CPU scheduler to deadline. just a few suggestions. |
Prelinking for sure - for a Core 2 I think -Os is leaning a little too far towards trading away performance, though, considering its huge cache. Also, I'm interested in why you'd recommend deadline over, for example, CFQ.
SithMaddox, are things any different if you use a non-compositing window manager instead? such as metacity or kwin instead of compiz? |
Care to explain the difference between the scheduling algorithms?
What is prelinking?
As far as the window manager, no, there is no difference in performance between compiz and metacity except that compiz seems worse at fullscreen video playback. |
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timeBandit
Bodhisattva
Joined: 31 Dec 2004
Posts: 2719
Location: here, there or in transit
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:15 pm Post subject: |
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| SithMaddox wrote: | | What is prelinking? |
What prelinking is, in your case, is not worth the hassle. It boosts application startup times but does exactly squat for responsiveness problems as you describe.
(See definition here. Avoid it until you're otherwise happy with your system, it's not 100% foolproof.)
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Super-short f.g.o checklist: Search first, strip comments, mark solved, help others. |
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Cyker
Veteran
Joined: 15 Jun 2006
Posts: 1746
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| likewhoa wrote: | | for a laptop system you should really be using -Os and prelinking. Also set your CPU scheduler to deadline. just a few suggestions. |
You can do that?! 
Or did you mean the IO Scheduler?
(Just checking  Not too happy with the new scheduler at the moment; If anything it's less responsive than the old one! The only improvement is under heavy load, where lower-priority tasks are still useable whereas before they'd never get any CPU time at all...) |
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zach9824
n00b
Joined: 12 Apr 2004
Posts: 37
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| Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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| SithMaddox wrote: |
What is the advantage of irq balance package vs the in-kernel irq balancing?
And yes, cflags make such a minimal impact on performance and I have had many packages broken by aggressive CFLAGS that I don't even bother anymore. I used to really go all out on them with leaf pointers and unroll loops, etc, etc. |
From the irqbalance project site - http://irqbalance.org/
irqbalance is a Linux* daemon that distributes interrupts over the processors and cores you have in your computer system. The design goal of irqbalance is to do find a balance between power savings and optimal performance.
I found with my dual core laptop the irqbalance dameon did a better job than the in-kernel balancing.
Also the CFLAGS I provided you are not aggressive by any means. The laptop specs you have provided are by today's standards considered "desktop replacment" status. However, I agree, this isn't causing the issue that you appear to be experiencing.
What is your kernel timing? 1000HZ? 350HZ? |
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erik258
Advocate
Joined: 12 Apr 2005
Posts: 2650
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota, USA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 8:56 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
And yes, cflags make such a minimal impact on performance and I have had many packages broken by aggressive CFLAGS that I don't even bother anymore. I used to really go all out on them with leaf pointers and unroll loops, etc, etc. |
there is a middle ground between no optimization rather than excessive optimation. without changing march you may as well be using ubuntu or debian packages, since they're all compiled for i686 and therefore expect no more from processors than pentium 2 abilities.
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LinuxCommando.com is my blog for linux-related scraps and tidbits. Stop by for a visit! |
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likewhoa
l33t
Joined: 04 Oct 2006
Posts: 778
Location: Brooklyn, New York
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Cyker wrote: | | likewhoa wrote: | | for a laptop system you should really be using -Os and prelinking. Also set your CPU scheduler to deadline. just a few suggestions. |
You can do that?!
Or did you mean the IO Scheduler?
(Just checking Not too happy with the new scheduler at the moment; If anything it's less responsive than the old one! The only improvement is under heavy load, where lower-priority tasks are still useable whereas before they'd never get any CPU time at all...) |
yes, if you set your schedulers as modules and or switch schedulers from he grub line, i rather keep them as modules. I have a bash function to help me change between scheduler easily also to manipulate the fifo_batch, front_merges, read_expire, write_expire, & writes_starved values.
| Code: |
ios() {
case $1 in
cfq|deadline|anticipatory)
echo "switching scheduler to $1"
while read line; do echo $1 >$line; done < <(find /sys/block/ -type f -name 'scheduler')
if (($?>0)); then echo "error occurred.";fi
;;
-l|--list) echo "listing IO Scheduler(s) in use"
find /sys/block/ -type f -name 'scheduler' -exec cat {} \;
;;
fifo_batch|front_merges|read_expire|write_expire|writes_starved)
if (($#<2)); then
echo "not enough arguments giving, try again."
else
echo "changing $1 value to $2."
while read line; do echo $2 >$line; done < <(find /sys/block/ -type f -name "$1")
fi
if (($?>0)); then echo "error occurred.";fi
;;
*) echo "atleast one argument is needed. try again."
;;
esac
}
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andreac
n00b
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 14
Location: Mergo
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 4:37 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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| SithMaddox wrote: |
....
2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB ram.
160GB 5400rpm SATA HD (This is a notebook)
Nvidia 8600M GT
....
Right now, I am typing this post, but I have a couple of other tabs open in firefox. If I click on another one there is about a 2-3 second delay before the page completely changes. I have no other applications running besides firefox.
....
Furthermore, if I go to ESPN.com and move my mouse across the menu area the drop down boxes don't appear until one second after my mouse has passed over the menu.
|
With a system like this you should really go fast.
May be a memory problem, something may be using much of it, have you checked?
I read somewhere that Firefox can use MUCH memory in some situations,
if you close it the PC is still slow?
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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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| erik258 wrote: | | Quote: |
And yes, cflags make such a minimal impact on performance and I have had many packages broken by aggressive CFLAGS that I don't even bother anymore. I used to really go all out on them with leaf pointers and unroll loops, etc, etc. |
there is a middle ground between no optimization rather than excessive optimation. without changing march you may as well be using ubuntu or debian packages, since they're all compiled for i686 and therefore expect no more from processors than pentium 2 abilities. |
Another reason is that I don't know what march to use for a notebook core 2 duo. |
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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 7:17 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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| andreac wrote: | | SithMaddox wrote: |
....
2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo
2GB ram.
160GB 5400rpm SATA HD (This is a notebook)
Nvidia 8600M GT
....
Right now, I am typing this post, but I have a couple of other tabs open in firefox. If I click on another one there is about a 2-3 second delay before the page completely changes. I have no other applications running besides firefox.
....
Furthermore, if I go to ESPN.com and move my mouse across the menu area the drop down boxes don't appear until one second after my mouse has passed over the menu.
|
With a system like this you should really go fast.
May be a memory problem, something may be using much of it, have you checked?
I read somewhere that Firefox can use MUCH memory in some situations,
if you close it the PC is still slow? |
Right now I'm using about 600MB of memory with firefox taking up 100MB of that. ESPN.com really slows down my computer... |
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BitJam
Advocate
Joined: 12 Aug 2003
Posts: 2508
Location: Silver City, NM
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broken_chaos
Guru
Joined: 18 Jan 2006
Posts: 370
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Thu Nov 01, 2007 11:13 pm Post subject: Re: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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| SithMaddox wrote: | | Right now I'm using about 600MB of memory with firefox taking up 100MB of that. ESPN.com really slows down my computer... |
Just how are you counting that 600M? I've got a system with reasonably similar specs (a little faster CPU/hard drive, and a bit older a graphics card), and here's my output of free -m:
| free -m: | total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2011 1214 796 0 13 1015
-/+ buffers/cache: 185 1825
Swap: 0 0 0 |
the line you want is the one that says "-/+ buffers/cache, NOT just the "Mem" line. The Mem line is counting all the cached/buffered data that's in RAM (read from hard drive, kept in RAM for quick access), and the other line is just the *actively* used memory. Depending on desktop environment/programs running in the background, anywhere from 150M to about 400M actively used is acceptable.
As far as Firefox goes, which seems to be your only real issue with performance you've mentioned (Compiz is flaky normally).. Emerge Firefox with USE="moznopango" and turn off smooth scrolling in the preferences. This may fix a lot.
Also, your system looks selectively out-of-date... Glibc 2.5, GCC 4.1.1. Both of these were upgraded at least weeks ago in portage... You may wish to consider upgrading your installed packages. |
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SithMaddox
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Posts: 149
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 12:52 am Post subject: Re: Gentoo/Linux is just slow and unresponsive |
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| broken_chaos wrote: | | SithMaddox wrote: | | Right now I'm using about 600MB of memory with firefox taking up 100MB of that. ESPN.com really slows down my computer... |
Just how are you counting that 600M? I've got a system with reasonably similar specs (a little faster CPU/hard drive, and a bit older a graphics card), and here's my output of free -m:
| free -m: | total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2011 1214 796 0 13 1015
-/+ buffers/cache: 185 1825
Swap: 0 0 0 |
the line you want is the one that says "-/+ buffers/cache, NOT just the "Mem" line. The Mem line is counting all the cached/buffered data that's in RAM (read from hard drive, kept in RAM for quick access), and the other line is just the *actively* used memory. Depending on desktop environment/programs running in the background, anywhere from 150M to about 400M actively used is acceptable.
As far as Firefox goes, which seems to be your only real issue with performance you've mentioned (Compiz is flaky normally).. Emerge Firefox with USE="moznopango" and turn off smooth scrolling in the preferences. This may fix a lot.
Also, your system looks selectively out-of-date... Glibc 2.5, GCC 4.1.1. Both of these were upgraded at least weeks ago in portage... You may wish to consider upgrading your installed packages. |
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2023 1414 609 0 267 649
-/+ buffers/cache: 497 1526
Swap: 494 0 494 |
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pigeon768
l33t
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 683
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| Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 3:51 am Post subject: |
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| SithMaddox wrote: | | Another reason is that I don't know what march to use for a notebook core 2 duo. |
Once you update to gcc 4.2.x use -march=native
Until then, I believe it's -march=prescott that you should be using.
And whoever said -Os is generally worse than -O2 for core 2 duos is right - they have massive caches. |
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choogi
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 105
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| Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 7:18 am Post subject: |
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| I've been following this thread for a little while now. I have almost the same specs. What have you done with your gentoo install? Is it feeling any more responsive? It usually takes about 2-3 seconds for my firefox to fire up after I click the icon. |
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Pazuzuzu
n00b
Joined: 21 Feb 2005
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:27 am Post subject: |
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I also found that my Firefox was painfully slow on Gentoo, especially compared to similar machines I've used recently running Fedora. I found that switching to firefox-bin (the precompiled version) helped quite a bit - perhaps because of the removal of Pango?
Does anyone know the how Firefox is configured and with what CFLAGS etc for the firefox-bin package? |
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