FC2 GUI on Intel Celeron 500MHz very slow

[Wong Kwok-hon]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2004 11:49:31 -0800, Kshitij Velhal <kvelhal at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks James for you time and effort...
> 
> The typical application mix that I run includes Firefox browser (2-3
> windows no tabs), yahoo messenger, evolution, GNUCash, 1-2 Terminals,
> occasionally openoffice programs and gqview
> 
> The hard disk is quiet old say @3-4 years. Motherboard doesn't support
> latest and graetest hard disks. So will have to bear with it. Is Hard
> disk the culprit?
> 
> Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 17:56:22 +0000
> From: James Wilkinson <james at westexe.demon.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: FC2 GUI on Intel Celeron 500MHz very slow
> To: fedora-list at redhat.com
> Message-ID: <20041210175622.GB13366 at howells.westexe.demon.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> 
> 
> Kshitij Velhal has been having performance problems.
> > For **hdparm**
> > [root at localhost root]# hdparm /dev/hda
> >
> > /dev/hda:
> >  multcount    = 16 (on)
> >  IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
> >  unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
> >  using_dma    =  1 (on)
> >  keepsettings =  0 (off)
> >  readonly     =  0 (off)
> >  readahead    = 256 (on)
> >  geometry     = 29777/16/63, sectors = 30015216, start = 0
> 
> Looks good.
> > For **vmstat**
> 
> I'm slightly hampered here by not knowing what's going on, but...
> 
> The swap columns are (as expected) 0. That's good.
> 
> (I'm snipping some lines of vmstat output, by the way... And you'll find
> this a lot easier to follow in a fixed-width font!)
> 
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
> >  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
> >  5  0    912   3016  35732 247928    0    0    70     0 1276  1255 31 12 51  6
> >  3  1    912   3064  35484 245932    0    0  1018     0 1246  2056 35 16  0 50
> >  1  0    912   2864  35404 243756    0    0   846   320 1221   785 52  8  0 40
> >  1  0    912   2648  35176 241764    0    0   474     0 1188   750 74  7  0 19
> >  3  0    912   3108  34812 240480    0    0   174   147 1163   929 83  7  0  9
> >  2  0    912   3488  34300 236852    0    0    42     0 1134   761 87 10  0  4
> 
> A quick peak of activity here. Notice how the wa(it) column is high as a
> lot's being read in from the disk (the CPU figures are percentages). At
> that point, you're dependent on a lot of reads from the disk. But the
> processor's being stretched too.
> 
> Watch the way the cache goes down in size: as Linux loads blocks from
> the disk, it reclaims pages from cache so it has somewhere to put them.
> This is normal usage, and shows how the cache can be used as a supply of
> free memory.
> 
> How old is that disk you've got in there?
> 
> The next few lines (snipped) show a system that's busy, but not too
> busy: there's a lot going on, but you're not using all the CPU, nor yet
> are you limited on disk speed.
> 
> Then you get to this lot...
> 
> >  0  1    912   8624  34220 235584    0    0  1132     0 1180   901 48 14  0 38
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
> >  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
> >  0  2    912   3256  34212 239956    0    0  2564   236 1189   796 29  6  0 66
> >  1  0    912   4612  32516 240164    0    0  4234     0 1299  1323 14  9  0 78
> >  0  2    912   6968  30752 239180    0    0  2954   668 1282   860 17  8  0 75
> 
> This is the start of a lot of similar lines. Your system is waiting on
> the disk a *lot*.
> 
> And then you get periods like:
> 
> > procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- --system-- ----cpu----
> >  r  b   swpd   free   buff  cache   si   so    bi    bo   in    cs us sy id wa
> >  1  0    912   8576  24428 240644    0    0    84     0 1164  2313 55 22 22  2
> >  1  0    912   4864  24444 240664    0    0     2   376 1144   738 86  9  0  5
> >  3  0    912   3172  24444 240708    0    0     0     2 1127   781 95  5  0  0
> >  3  0    912   3216  24284 236908    0    0     2   513 1105  1050 89 12  0  0
> 
> Finally you're seeing the CPU becoming the limitation. The us ( = user =
> stuff like Evolution and Gnome) column is in the eighties and nineties.
> But it doesn't last much longer than the eight seconds I've shown.
> 
> On this showing, you're using a lot of the CPU power you've got, but
> you're pushing the disk.
> 
> I think we need to know more about an average application mix that
> you're trying to run.
> 
> Sorry I can't help more,
> 
> James.

Upgrade the CPU to Pentium 3 because C500 is lower class and I think
your mother board can affort it... And how about your memory? How size
do your computer have ?

Ringo