2005-12-27 11:39 +0100, Kjetil Kjernsmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Hi all! > > One of my systems has a really severe performance problem. > > [...] > > It is my father's system, so I'm not bothered with it too often, but the > performance is insanely bad. When it does updatedb, the system pretty > much freezes for the time it takes to scan the disk. Firefox takes more > than a minute to start, and a regular apt-get upgrade with trivial > security fixes makes the load go to above 5. My own system is similar > to this system, but has a somewhat slower CPU, and performs well. It is > definitely not because it doesn't have the hardware. > > So, well, I have a system here that borders on unusable and no idea how > to fix it. Where would you start if you had a *really* slow system?
Given the three scenarios you give, specially the first and maybe also the third, disk access is a likely candidate. Check with hdparm whether the HDD-chipset is using the best transfer mode available (some DMA mode, given the hardware). As for sluggishness with X, I also seem to have the problem sometimes, specially when starting X. I had the impression that some time ago it was a couple of seconds at most that the screen stayed blank while loading xdm, but now it seems to be in the slow end of the 5-10 s range, so it is clear that I can't give any advice on that side of the issue. -- Gonzalo HIGUERA DÍAZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
