On Fri, 31 Mar, Philippe De Ryck wrote: > On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 23:19 +0100, N.Pauli wrote: > > On Thu, 30 Mar, Philippe De Ryck wrote: > > > On Thu, 2006-03-30 at 11:45 +0100, N.Pauli wrote: > > > > Dear All, > > > > > > > > All of a sudden my machine has become incredibly slow to boot up and to > > > > launch anything - boot up took over 5 minutes and launching an app like > > > > Mozilla or OpenOffice can take just as long. All the > while > > > the harddisk drive light is burning constantly. It is as if there is some > > > process that never completes, takes a long time to time out and restarts > > > itself whenever I launch an app. Once I'm in, apps > seem > > > to run fairly normally. I've looked at 'top' and can't see any culprit > > > there. I had this happen once before and it was solved by making sure > > > that nothing was plugged in to a usb port while booting > up or > > > even logging on. The last significant things I have done prior to this > > > happening do a normal update and upgrade using Synaptic and install > > > Liferea. > > > > > > > > Can anybody give me any clues on where I can start looking to resolve > > > > this? The machine is a 1100 Mhz Intel Celeron with 256 Mb RAM so it > > > > shouldn't be struggling. I'm running Debian GNU/Linux testing > > > / unstable and the 2.6.12-1-386 kernel. > > > > > > > > Just an idea, but you might look into HDD-trouble. See what "hdparm > > > -tT /dev/..." says. See what "smartctl -a /dev/..." says (good > > > explanation can be found here: > > > http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6983). > > > > > > Maybe a monitor for disk activity can be useful too (gkrellm for example > > > shows activity and speed). > > > > > > Good luck > > > > > > Philippe De Ryck > > > > > > > > Philippe, > > > > That article on SMART Control was worth the price of admission alone! I'm > > going to run the short test over night and see if that brings up anything > > because all the other signs are healthy - yet the disk > hangs for minutes on end at the slightest provocation. I tried to run the > short (2 minute) test during the day but gave up after 40 minutes. > > > > Nigel > > > > Nigel, > > I found the article very useful too! > > You say your disk hangs but all the attributes indicate a healthy disk. > One way to know this for sure is to put your disk in another machine. If > it works fine, you can exclude the disk. If it still hangs, you probably > know for sure that the disk (or the content) is screwed. > > I've had some bad experience with an NVIDIA nforce2 chipset (incredibly > slow) but since you haven't changed anything important on your setup, > that wouldn't be the case. It might be another component that's failing. > > What does 'hdparm -tT /dev/hda' say? Are the speeds reasonable?
Thanks for the suggestion, Philippe. Here's the output: ** debianoak:/home/nbp# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 1192 MB in 2.00 seconds = 595.20 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 6 MB in 3.24 seconds = 1.85 MB/sec ** That looks reasonable to me - very fast from the cache and a lot slower when it has to be buffered (on the hard drive, presumably). But, what do I know!? Following up Listrcv's suggestion I had a good look in /var/logs/syslog and it looks as if it may be something to do with gconf2 being upgraded. This is from my notes: ################################################################################################################ # According to Synaptic's history, at 12:19 on 29/03/06 the following upgrades happened: # gconf2 (2.12.1-9) to 2.12.1-12 # gconf2-common (2.12.1-9) to 2.12.1-12 # These are the lines from syslog that bracket that time. ################################################################################################################ Mar 29 11:34:01 localhost -- MARK -- Mar 29 11:39:01 localhost /USR/SBIN/CRON[7813]: (root) CMD ( [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -r -0 rm) Mar 29 11:54:01 localhost -- MARK -- Mar 29 12:09:01 localhost /USR/SBIN/CRON[8549]: (root) CMD ( [ -d /var/lib/php5 ] && find /var/lib/php5/ -type f -cmin +$(/usr/lib/php5/maxlifetime) -print0 | xargs -r -0 rm) Mar 29 12:17:01 localhost /USR/SBIN/CRON[8753]: (root) CMD ( run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly) Mar 29 12:34:01 localhost -- MARK -- Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): starting (version 2.12.1), pid 9209 user 'root' Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0 Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/root/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1 Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2 Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3 Mar 29 12:35:15 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4 Mar 29 12:35:45 localhost gconfd (root-9209): GConf server is not in use, shutting down. Mar 29 12:35:45 localhost gconfd (root-9209): Exiting Mar 29 12:37:28 localhost init: Trying to re-exec init Mar 29 12:37:39 localhost init: Trying to re-exec init Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): starting (version 2.12.1), pid 9935 user 'root' Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0 Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/root/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1 Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2 Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3 Mar 29 12:37:57 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4 Mar 29 12:38:27 localhost gconfd (root-9935): GConf server is not in use, shutting down. Mar 29 12:38:27 localhost gconfd (root-9935): Exiting # # # Carried on in this vein FOR OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF till... # # Mar 29 14:09:41 localhost gconfd (nbp-16076): GConf server is not in use, shutting down. Mar 29 14:09:42 localhost gconfd (nbp-16076): Exiting Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): starting (version 2.12.1), pid 16156 user 'nbp' Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0 Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/nbp/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1 Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2 Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3 Mar 29 14:09:46 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4 Mar 29 14:09:53 localhost gconfd (nbp-16156): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/nbp/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 0 ################################################## # End of extract from syslog ################################################# It was after that upgrade that my slowness problems started and gconf began to feature so heavily in syslog. There seems to be a repeating pattern of resolving an address to do with gconfd first for user root and then user nbp - and making a real meal of it. Any ideas anyone? I'm going to try and find out more about what gconf does. Nigel -- Nigel Pauli Network Manager St. John's School, Northwood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
