Gentoo very slow

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

I'm running Gentoo Linux with a 2.6.5 kernel, KDE3.2.2. The trouble is it's very slow, and unresponsive.

I timed some application load times:

44 seconds to load a local HTML file in Firefox
4 seconds to launch a Konsole
27 seconds to launch modprobe.conf in Kwrite
3.5 seconds to launch Konqueror file browser after clicking "Home" on the taskbar.

These times are much slower than their equivalents in Knoppix. It takes "only" 28 seconds to launch the same HTML file in Mozilla (which I thought should be slower than Firefox).

I know Knoppix runs from a RAM disk (which should be faster), but everything has to be decompressed from a CD (which should be a lot slower).

I tried installing the love patch for the kernel, but this made no noticable difference (though I didn't time anything).

I've searched this and many other forums for performance tips, but haven't been able to make any improvements.

Some brief system details:
AMD K6-II 500MHz
256MB RAM
512MB Swap
ReiserFS on root partition
I have DMA enabled on the HD
Voodoo3 graphics card

I installed Gentoo as Stage 3, and have only installed Firefox, and xine-ui as extra applications after the KDE installation.

One thing I have noticed in KDE System Guard is that there are 4 entries for firefox-bin in the process table. Can't understand why it would need this.

I can olny think its something to do with how I've set things up or faulty settings when compliling. I did compile the kernel and KDE myself. My make.conf file looks like this.

CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
USE="-gtk -gnome qt kde dvd alsa cdr"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.mirror.sdv.fr http://ftp.gentoo.skynet.be/pub/gentoo/ ftp://mirrors.sec.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/gentoo/ http://128.213.5.34/gentoo/"

And my make.defaults file:

GRP_STAGE23_USE="ipv6 pam tcpd readline nls ssl gpm perl python berkdb acl ncurses"

USE="x86 oss apm arts avi berkdb crypt cups encode foomaticdb gdbm gif gpm gtk gtk2 imlib
jpeg kde gnome libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis
opengl pam pdflib png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang spell ssl
svga tcpd truetype X xml2 xmms xv zlib"

ARCH="x86"
COMPILER="gcc3"
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"

Any help speeding things up would be great.

Bob

dpst · n00b Joined: 04 May 2004 Posts: 22 Location: Bulgaria

You can try changing your CHOST to:

az_zel · n00b Joined: 12 May 2004 Posts: 69

I notice some of the things that you mention are network related. I recently had the same problem and was able to fix it by commenting out the first line in /etc/resolv.conf. It seems (for some obscure reason) that there might be a problem with the name servers. Try it and see what happens. Disabling ipv6 (if you have it on) might be another reason.

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

First, thanks for the tips.

It took 68 (sixty-eight) hours to complie KDE. Not very keen to do it again, but if you really think it'll help...I'll give it a try if I can't get it improved any other way.

I don't think I have ipv6.

mopmop · n00b Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 71 Location: Oslo, Norway

skip kde all together and swtich to fluxbox, that could save you alot of memory and cpu. And recompile with the above CHOST setting. (or i586 ?) and perhaps -march=k6 in USE?

mopmop · n00b Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 71 Location: Oslo, Norway

Fluxbox was just an example btw, my point was that KDE and GNOME are really heavy, but IceVM and fluxbox for instance are lightweight wm's. And yes recompiling does help. I did it on my 300Mhz box and it speeded up things noticably. (Spent 6 DAYS on "emerge -e world")

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

I'm sure it said somewhere not to put -march=k6. Can't remember if it was the Gentoo manual or in a config file itself, which I why I never did that. Is it actually OK to do then?

If I do re-compile, should I put i586 or i686 in CHOST?

I take the point about fluxbox etc, but I really wanted to keep KDE though. I really like the look of it, and when I get everything setup, I'd like to try and get the kids using it rather than M$-Windows, so what it looks like is very important...and it runs (almost) fast enough in Knoppix. That's the strange thing really. I thought creating a premanent, optimised solution would be faster than Knoppix.

mopmop · n00b Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 71 Location: Oslo, Norway

I know, there was something about not putting march=k6 in some file, and at first i had the "gentler" version, dont rembember exactly which.

You might want to read this thread, where I got the advice about putting march=k6
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=177296&highlight=

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

Yes, that link's very interesting...

It does say in make.conf.example

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

Update - looking through the Gentoo installation handbook, it says:

Maedhros · Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 7:44 pm Post subject:

Anarcho · Advocate Joined: 06 Jun 2004 Posts: 2970 Location: Germany

I have 4 PC's here with Gentoo. I did one Stage1 Install and 3 Stage3 installs.
I changed the CHOST at every install (Stage1: Athlon 3200 XP, Stage3: Pentium 3 Notebook, Athlon 2000 XP, Duron 800)
I encountered no problems (but did never a emerge -e world...)

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

/etc/hosts contains:

127.0.0.1 localhost

everything else is commented out.

mariux2 · Apprentice Joined: 16 Sep 2003 Posts: 242

what does hdparm /dev/hdX tell you?
Where X is a, b, c or d, depending on where your harddrive is placed...

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

hdparm is one of the first things I checked. FWIW, output is:

multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 1 (32-bit)
unmaskirq = 1 (on)
using_dma = 1 (on)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 256 (on)
geometry = 39703/16/63, sectors = 40020624, start = 0

raoulduke · n00b Joined: 26 Sep 2003 Posts: 58

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

My IP? I thought 127.0.0.1 was my IP

I'm on a LAN of 1 pc & one broadband router. The router gives me an IP of 168.0.0.2. Is that what you mean?

My host name is "endor". So from this, would I add:

168.0.0.2 endor

?Not sure if I'm reading this right.

Maedhros · Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2004 9:39 pm Post subject:

Yup, that sounds right. Everybody's IP address is 127.0.0.1, but to connect to other computers (or rather, for others to connect to you) you need an external IP, so it is perfectly possible to have more than one IP address. My router/firewall has three - 127.0.0.1, 192.168.66.3 for the local network, and 192.168.49.1 for its other network card.
_________________
No-one's more important than the earthworm.

Lews_Therin · l33t Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 657 Location: Banned

bobhesketh · n00b Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Scotland

YIPPEEE...

Set hosts file to read

127.0.0.1 localhost endor

What a difference

modprobe.conf now loads KWrite in 6 seconds (from 27seconds)
and that html file loads in Firefox in 13 seconds (from 44 seconds)

Most other apps seem a lot more responsive too.

I never would have believed that would make such a difference. (Hmmm, whether to run a re-compile as well...)

Thanks for the help

Bob

aethyr · Veteran Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 1085 Location: NYC

I was wondering why people seem to keep running into this problem recently. I noticed that the new installation guide has no information regarding this, while the old one said:

"Note: If you are on a DHCP network, it might be helpful to set localhost to your machine's actual hostname. This will help GNOME and many other programs in name resolution."

http://web.archive.org/web/20030602200935/www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml

[edit] Filing a bug report now.
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=53188