Slow FC4, perhaps swap is to blame

[Bob Chiodini]

On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 12:21 -0600, John Degenstein wrote:
> Alright, to begin here are my system specs:
> Athlon 64 3200+
> 512 MB PC2100 DDR
> 200 GB SATA
> 160 GB IDE
> Nvidia GF4 4000 (128MB)
> 
> This is a problem I have been trying to fix for several months now,
> and I am pretty sure it is the swap space on this computer has
> something to do with it.  When I first start up the computer it is
> blazing fast, and I have no problem filling 4 workspaces up with
> resource intensive programs.  But as the days and weeks wear on the
> computer gets progressively slower, to the point where simply
> switching between workspaces with only 3 or 4 programs open becomes
> incredibly slow.  The problem also seems to relate to programs that
> use Java, such as azureus and qnext, it seems to me that there is some
> kind of memory leak that builds up in the swap space over time.  Even
> after the swap space has been filled I attempt to clear it by closing
> all open programs, but this has no effect and it is beginning to drive
> me crazy.
> 
> I did manage to find a command which I somehow got to work at least
> several times:
> swapoff -a /dev/logVol00/_something_here
> 
> This command alleviated my problems immediately, but then I started to
> get errors about running out of memory from new programs I was trying
> to open so I enabled swap again with the command "swapon".  Another
> possible source of my problems is the fact I am running PC2100 DDR
> rather than the minimum that my motherboard supposedly supports,
> PC2700, because of this I had to underclock some of the components on
> my mobo so that the computer would boot.
> 
> So I guess my main question is: is the swap space in Linux messed up,
> or is it simply a problem from Java???
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> John Degenstein
> 

John,

What does top tell you about the swap and memory use.  vmstat might give
some insight as well.

I would suspect that some application has a memory leak.

Bob...