I’ve some problem with openSUSE 64bits and more precisely extreme slowness.
At first, it was during the Installation (net install), each action (click on a button for example) was followed by a global freeze (though mouse was not). The entire configuration (the first part of installation) took me about 1 hour… At that time, i was thinking “ok it’s just installation, it will be fast and smooth in the end…”
I was wrong, the system is as slow as the installation but weird thing: it’s only when I log on that the system slow down. I mean the booting process doesn’t seem slow and I’ve not seen any errors. So what’s going on ?
I don’t know if it’s the cause or the consequence but i noticed that my cpu was always at 90+ % except when I don’t do anything (useful isn’t it?) so it may be because the system doesn’t manage my cpu the right way. (it’s just an hypothesis)
now helpful configuration information:
Software:
I tried to install openSUSE 11.4 64bits with the net install downloaded yesterday from the official website. I chose Gnome. I don’t have swap (see hardware below) and I have a different partition for / and /home
Kernel: 2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop
Hardware:
Asus X5BVN laptop
Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 @2GHz
4GB DDR2 RAM (enough ram -> no swap)
nVidia GT240M 1GB
Intel WiFi Link 5100
Atheros AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet (odd thing: during the installation it wasn’t this name)
# | Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
--+----------------------------------+----------------------------------+---------+---------+----------+--------+-----------------------------------------------------------------+--------
1 | Updates-for-openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0 | Updates for openSUSE 11.4 11.4-0 | Yes | Yes | 99 | rpm-md | [Index of /update/11.4](http://download.opensuse.org/update/11.4/) |
2 | openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0 | openSUSE-11.4-11.4-0 | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | [Index of /distribution/11.4/repo/oss](http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/) |
3 | repo-debug | openSUSE-11.4-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | [Index of /debug/distribution/11.4/repo/oss](http://download.opensuse.org/debug/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/) |
4 | repo-debug-update | openSUSE-11.4-Update-Debug | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | [Index of /debug/update/11.4](http://download.opensuse.org/debug/update/11.4/) |
5 | repo-non-oss | openSUSE-11.4-Non-Oss | Yes | Yes | 99 | yast2 | [Index of /distribution/11.4/repo/non-oss](http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/11.4/repo/non-oss/) |
6 | repo-source | openSUSE-11.4-Source | No | Yes | 99 | NONE | [Index of /source/distribution/11.4/repo/oss](http://download.opensuse.org/source/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/) |
Third I want for you to run a program in terminal.
and see on system monitor how long takes and how resources it needs (ALT+F2).
The terminal isn’t smooth and top takes 6-20% of CPU (just top running)
ls -al /etc/* take 82%, upowerd and kworker appears sometimes during the ls with some CPU usage (8-60%)
First question have you installed all updates which are sent you?
Secont in your repos I can not see packman repo. You have not installed. Try to install it.
> The terminal isn’t smooth and top takes 6-20% of CPU (just top
> running)
> ls -al /etc/* take 82%, upowerd and kworker appears sometimes during
> the ls with some CPU usage (8-60%)
I would try another suse version, an 11.3 live, or 11.2. Perhaps, before
that, try booting in text mode, type a 3 on the grub screen and enter.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
> On 2011-04-17 16:36, stamostolias wrote:
>> Secont in your repos I can not see packman repo. You have not
>> installed. Try to install it.
>
> Pray, what for?
>
I also do not see how the packman repo should be related in any way.
If at all it might be an idea to add the nvidia repository and install the
proprietary nvidia driver. It might well be that the system has problems
with the nouveau driver for the graphics card.
Another application which can slow down the system when running gnome is
tracker running its indexer in the background and consuming noticable
amounts of the cpu’s.
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.1 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
Ok so I’ve installed nvidia repos and then nvidia drivers.
There were some strange errors:
head: cannot open `/etc/X11/xorg.conf` for reading: no such file or directory
SaX2 generated xorg.conf not available !
grep: etc/X11/xorg.conf: no such file or directory
Warning! MD5DIR is not set: you probably called this script outside SuSEconfig...!
Using MD5DIR="/var/adm/SuSEconfig/md5"...
No changes for /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers
No changes for /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config
...]
After reboot, everything’s fine. I don’t know how nouveau was messing up the system but now that’s good…
I switched to openSUSE because i had problem with it on Fedora (black screen, tested a lot a things) and the first problem i have on openSUSE is about… nouveau/ nVidia drivers ! it’s kind of funny, don’t you think?
Thanks everyone, really !
EDIT: i’m cursed… Xorg, gnome-system-monitor, zenity: here is a list of program that take up to 80% of CPU. nVidia drivers has solved a problem but it seems there is something else…
i would wait with installing packman until the reason for the slow system
is determined and the problem solved. there’s no way packman can make any
system faster; it’s only for applications & codecs that aren’t included in
openSUSE repos, mainly due to legal reasons. adding packman at this stage
might make it more difficult to figure out what’s not working properly.
>
> robin_listas Wrote:
>> Pray, what for?
>>
>
> We are also here to guide user and to say that we can fill some gaps. I
> saw that packman was missing, what to say? Not to install?
>
no, but not at this point, in this connection. your answer must have
created the impression that installing packman would have something to do
with system speed, or the lack of it.
>
> Ok so I’ve installed nvidia repos and then nvidia drivers.
> There were some strange errors:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> head: cannot open /etc/X11/xorg.conf for reading: no such file or
> directory
> SaX2 generated xorg.conf not available !
> grep: etc/X11/xorg.conf: no such file or directory
> Warning! MD5DIR is not set: you probably called this script outside
> SuSEconfig…! Using MD5DIR="/var/adm/SuSEconfig/md5"…
> No changes for /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers
> No changes for /etc/X11/xdm/xdm-config
> …]
> --------------------
>
>
> After reboot, everything’s fine. I don’t know how nouveau was messing
> up the system but now that’s good…
> I switched to openSUSE because i had problem with it on Fedora (black
> screen, tested a lot a things) and the first problem i have on openSUSE
> is about… nouveau/ nVidia drivers ! it’s kind of funny, don’t you
> think?
>
> Thanks everyone, really !
>
Yo can ignore this messages, it is normal. For example the xorg.conf does
simply no longer exist by default with modern x servers.
Nouveau has still along way to go, which is not the fault of the developers,
it is just that they have to reverse engineer what nvidia does not provide
as information to the free software community. It seems so far to work well
with some, but not with all nvidia cards.
It is not unusual that you have the same or similar problems with different
distros, after all they all are GNU/Linux plus the software used and if some
part of linux or the desptop environment has problems you see the same
problems in openSUSE, ubuntu, fedora …
Glad to hear you solved it.
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.1 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
I haven’t completely solved my problem. It’s much more faster but when i open a window or a menu, i still have a freeze…
Nouveau isn’t really ready to use, and some distros use it knowing that = possible problem for lambda user. I think it’s a bad decision. Vesa is enough at first, and if users want to have something better, they must choose the one they want. Fedora, Ubuntu and openSUSE use nouveau as default when a nVidia graphics card is detected, which can lead to problems (like mine)… So Nouveau is a good thing (that must have been developed earlier) but it must not be used directly.
>
> I haven’t completely solved my problem. It’s much more faster but when i
> open a window or a menu, i still have a freeze…
>
Can you disable desktop effects (if they are enabled) to see if it is
somehow related. Logout and login after you disbled the effects to have a
clean test situation.
Since you use Gnome I asume you are using compiz?
–
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.1 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram
Can you disable desktop effects (if they are enabled) to see if it is
somehow related. Logout and login after you disbled the effects to have a
clean test situation.
Since you use Gnome I asume you are using compiz?
Desktop effects were not activated. And I don’t think i’m using compiz right now (i might use it in the future…)
Have you disabled KMS and blacklisted Nouveau yet?
Nouveau wasn’t blacklisted, now it is but I still have my problem of slowness.
Right now, prepare_preload takes about 98% of CPU. I’ve searched for this process on the forum and it seems it can be problematic (slow down). Any idea ?
> Right now, prepare_preload takes about 98% of CPU. I’ve searched for
> this process on the forum and it seems it can be problematic (slow
> down). Any idea ?
i remember having this problem quite a while ago. at that time i got
temporary relief killing that preload process, which didn’t come up again.
if i remember correctly, this was an issue on these forums or the mailing
list, also a bug report, which eventually got solved. (sorry, too lazy to
go and look that up now; don’t even remember when exactly it happened.)
at present a similar preload process starts when booting into KDE (4.6.2),
using one full CPU for a few mintes, then shuts down. how long did you let
it run? i’m pretty sure you can kill that preload process w/o much
negative effect; something or other won’t be pre-loaded and take more time
loading, i guess. if it keeps happening, with a fully updated system, i’d
start looking around where it gets started and write a bug report…
