Gentoo is SLOW, or just feels like it is slow.

Message

Seph64 · Post by **Seph64** » Tue May 11, 2004 1:55 pm

So I booted into Gentoo today, to find that compiling programs looks like it's a chore for the OS to perform. I have Gentoo installed on a 40GB HDD, it's the 3rd HDD in my system, master on the secondary IDE chain. The slave on the secondary IDE chain is the CD-Writer drive.

Is there a command to tell what programs are using up CPU cycles? And is there anything you would suggest I do?

I got a ABIT NF7 nForce2 based motherboard
AMD Athlon2400+ 2ghz CPU oc'd to 2.1 ghz (running stable for at least 2 months now)
512MB of PC2700 DDR Kingston RAM
128MB ATI Radeon 9600 Pro
HDA: 120GB WD Special Edition 8MB cache HDD
HDB: 80GB WD HDD
HDC: 40GB WD HDD
Lite-On 52x/24x/52x CD-Writer

Andersson · Post by **Andersson** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:04 pm

Try the command top.

rewt · Post by **rewt** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:13 pm

You can use the command

Code: Select all

top

to see what is using CPU and how much
As to where your problem is, could be anything... maybe memory leaks in some software slowly eating it all away... how long has your machine been up?

Seph64 · Post by **Seph64** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:24 pm

not long, about an hour.

And it seems that hardly anything is using my CPU enough to bog down my system.

Andersson · Post by **Andersson** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:31 pm

Have you enabled dma on the hard disk? Otherwise search for hdparm on these forums.

Corax · Post by **Corax** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:42 pm

If your hardware and software is o.k. (check with top), you could try prelink. Especially with KDE applications it can help to reduce startup times... Read the prelinking guide from the gentoo docs.

Seph64 · Post by **Seph64** » Tue May 11, 2004 2:45 pm

Andersson wrote:Have you enabled dma on the hard disk? Otherwise search for hdparm on these forums.

It seems that DMA is enabled.

I haven't installed KDE yet, not sure if I want to. I am quite content with GNOME ATM.

crunchtime · Post by **crunchtime** » Tue May 11, 2004 3:25 pm

master on the secondary IDE chain. The slave on the secondary IDE chain is the CD-Writer drive.

That may well be the cause of your problem, the adage used to be that you never put a hard drive on the same controller as your CD-Rom. Due to limitations in the IDE spec, you take a speed hit when both are in use at the same time. .......

Although a single IDE channel can handle two connected devices, it's important to understand that these share the channel, which can only process a single request at a time. This means that when one device is active, the other is, by definition, inactive. In the event of two requests being made simultaneously, an IDE controller will give precedence to that made by the primary device. Furthermore, the chipset on some older systems will not support independent timing, with the result that both devices connected to an IDE channel will run at the speed of the slowest.

However I have found this to cause problems even when the CDrom is not being accessed.

Bottom Line: Try unplugging your CD-Rom drive to see if it improves the situation.

BlackEdder · Post by **BlackEdder** » Tue May 11, 2004 4:38 pm

Is your problem only with compiling programs? That just takes some time. If you don't want to compile programs then use a destribition like mandrake/redhat/debian/suse that uses binaries to install software. Although I must say once you got the most basic things installed you just get used to starting an emerge to install a program, doing something else and check if the program is done 10 minutes later