OpenSuSE system slowing down

English Applications
1

Recently my system has been slowing down. It seems the longer the system is installed and the more updates I do, the slower my system gets. It takes a few minutes to get to a useable desktop (XFCE) and webpages (Youtube, specifically) takes ages to load. I’ve tried Firefox, Opera, and Chrome and they all vary with speeds, but are nowhere in comparisson to windows 7 or a fresh OpenSuSE install.

I am running light applications, like XFCE, mousepad instead of gedit, xfce-terminal instead of gnome-terminal, and thunar instead of nautilus, but the whole system has been dragging lately. I’m running the tumbleweed respoitory with the latest updates. I have also disabled a lot of the unnecessary services and firewalls. I have conky running so I can see what’s going on and my swap space is never used and my RAM is never maxed out. When am I missing here?

2

How much memory do you have? Run top and see what’s using up the most memory/CPU time. See if there are any rogue processes taking up a lot of resources. Post the results here (in

tags).

3

In conky I have top running, but I run it occasionally in a terminal just because I’m curious. Mostly all I see taking up memory is Firefox and Xorg. I have 1GB in the netbook, which is the reason I use XFCE.

4

What’s conky? Why don’t you post the results of top here?

5

Since you mention Konqy: is nepomuk/strigi running? I use KDE and had to turn them off.

6

Another thought, if you install and want a light installation, don’t first install one of the heavy hitters like Gnome or KDE, just begin and end with the lightweight DE of your choice.

7

Conky is a light-weight system monitor. Conky - Home

I’m going to post the results of top here in a few minutes after I give firefox some usage. I was booted in Windows 7 to make that post.

-edit-
Here’s the results of running top.

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
1355 root 20 0 119m 19m 11m S 6 2.0 0:37.83 Xorg
2815 dave 20 0 713m 164m 39m S 5 16.6 1:24.04 firefox
1979 dave 20 0 209m 6464 4976 S 3 0.6 0:11.98 conky
6390 dave 20 0 174m 18m 11m S 2 1.9 0:01.17 Terminal
1306 root 20 0 98784 6516 5248 S 1 0.6 0:00.51 NetworkManager
50 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 1 0.0 0:00.11 kworker/u:5
936 messageb 20 0 28328 1736 824 S 1 0.2 0:00.80 dbus-daemon
2058 dave 20 0 338m 36m 10m S 1 3.7 0:03.73 gmixer
614 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.92 kworker/0:3
1505 root 20 0 26524 2800 2276 S 0 0.3 0:00.23 wpa_supplicant
1926 dave 20 0 55912 2632 1916 S 0 0.3 0:02.12 xscreensaver
6403 dave 20 0 8716 1136 816 R 0 0.1 0:00.09 top
1 root 20 0 12460 804 664 S 0 0.1 0:01.04 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 ksoftirqd/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 ksoftirqd/1
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.81 kworker/0:1
12 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1
13 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
14 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper

8

Actually, let me ask: have you got both Gnome and KDE installed on the netbook?

9

No. I did a network install and for this I just installed XFCE and possibly whatever dependencies transfer from gnome for applets. As of now, I don’t think I have a single KDE library or program installed.

I should also mention that I don’t have any special gtk theme engines installed. I’m using the basic XFCE bluecurve theme. So I’m not using any Aurora engine or Equinox engine with flashy animations.

10

How about wrapping that in CODE tags?

11

Please wrap that in CODE tags.

12

OK I misread/misunderstood that completely.

13

Sorry about not wrapping it in code previously. I didn’t know that feature also applies to command line queries. I got another Top report, this time there’s something I’ve never seen or noticed before: kworker

-edit-
False alarm. Kworker seems to be a kernel thing, not a KDE program.

Tasks: 134 total,   2 running, 132 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  2.8%us, 18.8%sy,  0.0%ni, 65.2%id, 13.2%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:   1011384k total,   840440k used,   170944k free,    35100k buffers
Swap:  1716220k total,     1096k used,  1715124k free,   348632k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                
   50 root      20   0     0    0    0 D   33  0.0   0:01.60 kworker/u:5                            
 1355 root      20   0  117m  20m  11m S    3  2.1   1:46.36 Xorg                                   
 1979 dave      20   0  209m 6464 4976 S    3  0.6   0:30.85 conky                                  
 2815 dave      20   0  766m 193m  40m S    3 19.6   4:30.42 firefox                                
 2058 dave      20   0  338m  36m  11m S    1  3.7   0:09.87 gmixer                                 
   26 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.70 kworker/1:1                            
  614 root      20   0     0    0    0 R    0  0.0   0:01.80 kworker/0:3                            
 1926 dave      20   0 55912 2632 1916 S    0  0.3   0:04.71 xscreensaver                           
 1949 dave      20   0  160m  12m 6164 S    0  1.3   0:04.21 xfce4-power-man                        
 6914 dave      20   0  174m  18m  11m S    0  1.9   0:01.93 Terminal                               
 6931 dave      20   0  8716 1128  816 R    0  0.1   0:00.22 top                                    
    1 root      20   0 12460  756  664 S    0  0.1   0:01.05 init                                   
    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd                               
    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.02 ksoftirqd/0                            
    6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0                            
    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0                             
    8 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/1                            
   10 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.08 ksoftirqd/1                            
   11 root      20   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:01.62 kworker/0:1                            
   12 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/1                             
   13 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuset                                 
   14 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper                                
   15 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S    0  0.0   0:00.00 netns
14

I’m not sure what kworker is, but you show four instances of it and it looks unusual. Maybe someone else has an idea why this would be so busy.

15

By the way, Xfce isn’t as light weight as it used to be. You might want to try one of the others such as LXDE.

16

I’ve been trying to go with openbox, but haven’t been able to use any other window manager at all in opensuse. I’ve been able to install and use LXDE, but I’d like just plain openbox. I have another thread for this issue here: cant switch window managers

I just stuck with XFCE because I gave up on trying to get openbox working.

17

Simply putted kworker = kernel worker. Bunch of dedicated threads to do work while supposedly other parts of the system can go on there own. If it’s the persisting thing that eat CPU one could try something like powertop it can even gives some suggestion for better power savings(that’s it’s main point). Well, power top is good to have on laptop/netbook even if one does not have problems with kworkers :slight_smile:

18

On 2011-04-23 21:36, DupermanDave wrote:
> I’m running the
> tumbleweed respoitory with the latest updates.

Which means you no longer have 11.4, you now have Tumbleweed.
You should be asking in the tumbleweed repo.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

19

Well, since starting this thread my system has been fine. I did an update this morning which I THOUGHT was all for today, come to find out immediately after posting those top reports there were 180MB more updates for me. I did the new updates and so far things are good. I didn’t see anything in the updates that could have affected performance, unless it was the new kernel.

20

I think I also botched my SuSE install. I think I may not have done the tumbleweed switch properly. I think I’ll reinstall from the net install and leave it at 11.4 instead of tumbleweed.