The problem is, every now and again, my computer will just slow down all of the sudden. It will take long for windows to minimize, long to switch between virtual desktops, long for windows to open up from the task bar when clicked on, and so on. Additionally, the time slows down on the machine. It will take like 5 seconds for one second to tick by on my computer clock. I have compiz fusion effects enabled, but this problem happened right after I installed SUSE 11.1 about a month ago when I didn’t have any desktop effects enabled. The problem will go away after a reboot, but then I have to reset the time.
Reflecting on this, do you think it could be pulse audio causing the problems? I don’t know how it relates to graphics, but I have been experiencing problems with it. Every time I boot up, sound won’t play (neither in amarok or firefox). In fact, not only does sound not play in youtube videos and such, but the videos play at a super fast speed. These problems continue until I kill pulsaudio. Then sound works fine and videos play fine. I’m not sure what causes the slowdown, but I believe it happens when I start playing music on amarok (but not every time I play music on amarok). I don’t know, but I uninstalled pulse anyways, so we’ll see if that was a contributing factor.
> Reflecting on this, do you think it could be pulse audio causing the
> problems? … I don’t know, but I uninstalled pulse
> anyways, so we’ll see if that was a contributing factor.
wait a few days and you can answer your own question–please post the
answer.
No good, that wasn’t the problem. The slowdown just happened again today. Slow graphics, clock slowed down to a practical halt. I didn’t run any different programs or do anything out of the ordinary, so I’m stumped.
rks171 wrote:
> No good, that wasn’t the problem. The slowdown just happened again
> today. Slow graphics, clock slowed down to a practical halt. I didn’t
> run any different programs or do anything out of the ordinary, so I’m
> stumped.
>
>
just for fun: do you have any of these already loaded: KDE3, Gnome, Xfce?
if so log out and switch to one of those for a few days (or until the
slow down comes again)…yes, i know you will be lost without KDE4,
but give it a try…
or, if you had rather just turn off desktop effects, and turn
off/disable beagle, and switch from using FF to konquero…you can do
all those one at a time, until the slow down stops…
and, if you are running stuff in the background (torrents, SETI, etc
etc etc…kill them also…one at a time…ok, and Skype even when
‘just sitting’ can be a huge hog if it is being used by the Skype
network to move traffic around…
In attempts to disrupt my work environment as little as possible, I started by stopping skype, but the slowdown has returned, so that wasn’t the problem. I guess I’ll move on to one of the other suggestions. I ran top soon after the slowdown and here’s the output. You could see Xorg really sucking up the resources, but it doesn’t always. yauap pretty much stays around 20-30%. Firefox pops up occasionally and takes up about 20%.
> Xorg really sucking up the resources, but it doesn’t always.
and your slowdown is also “not always”, right?
i’m gonna crawl out on a limb and PREDICT: when you switch to Gnome or
Xfce, turn off desktop effects, compiz and beagle you are gonna see a
consistently more nimble and responsive environment…
despite current beliefs, it requires CPU, RAM and GPU resources to
render eye-candy to the screen…even in Linux…
> Xorg really sucking up the resources, but it doesn’t always.
and your slowdown is also “not always”, right?
No, I mean, when the computer is slow, Xorg is not always sucking up 80%. When the computer slows down, it stays slow until it is rebooted. So what I meant was that Xorg was using 80% for a moment, but even after it wasn’t pulling that much resources, the computer was still slow.
When I start up the machine, the computer is nimble and responsive even with KDE and desktop effects. And it can stay that way for a whole day or whole days at a time - even if I’m running 3 firefox windows, Virtualbox, and playing music with Amarok. It seems to be completely random when the computer slows to nothing. I could understand desktop effects slowing the graphics down, but what confuses me is why does the time slow down? It will take like 5 seconds for 1 second to go by in Linux. An hour will go by and only a few minutes on the PC clock will tick by.
I started using gnome on Friday and I’ll continue doing that to see if the problem is coming from KDE.
Alright, I’ve been working in Gnome the last two days and just now, the slowdown came back. Time is running slow and graphics are slow to respond, so it looks like it wasn’t KDE or the desktop effects that were the problem. So it looks like the last thing to try is switching from firefox to konqeror. I’ll do that and get back with the results… shouldn’t take more than a few days to see.
I do not have any temperature measurement capabilities (at least, nothing shows up in My Computer). I thought of that also. I recently bought a new video card that is passivly cooled and thought it may be overheating after a while. However, 1. this problem has occured before buying a new video card (just not as frequently) and 2. As soon as I restart the computer, the problem goes away and may work fine for several more hours (I’m not allowing the computer to sit turned off and cool down).
I’m trying out not using firefox right now, but I don’t like Konqueror for web browsing, so that wouldn’t be a good long term solution. I may find myself switching back to Windows XP again in the near future. :\
rks171 wrote:
> I do not have any temperature measurement capabilities
since i have real idea i ‘give up’ except to add:
see if you have the patience to install and setup lm_sensors, i did it
months ago and don’t remember how…it was pretty easy and i have now
full monitoring of cpu/gpu…oh, and there is hddtemp that reports
disk temp…
a google on this string should get you started:
site:opensuse.org lm_sensors hddtemp
but, unfortunately this might turn out to be a dead end…to me, it
now sounds like a hardware issue…if others here know of a way to do
present your symptoms (after hours of use the CLOCK slows by a factor
of five, and stays slow until rebooted) with software they should
speak up!