I've been seeing a lot of random freezes on a number of Debian systems (testing and unstable) over the last few months. Resources shouldn't be an issue--one is a quad core system with 8GiB memory and very fast discs. But I regularly see X programs freezing for tens of seconds, even in konsole and konqueror and even kwin refusing to allow window switching with the entire desktop locked up. GNOME is no better.
On one system part of the problem was a fault on an NFS filesystem (blocking on writes for up to 5 mins due to an issue with the SAN hardware), but I still get the random regular freezes for tens of seconds even with this rectified. One thing I think causes issues is the sheer amount of crap current desktop applications feel the need to write. On a moderately busy system they are continually blocking on writes due to writing out their state each time I move the mouse! [only slightly exaggerated] Useless! I'm also suspicious of things like dbus. When the entire desktop freezes, is some shared service like this causing every program to block for some reason? Given the intermittent nature of things going wrong, it's difficult to trace or debug effectively. Simpler programs don't appear to suffer-- I've never seen xterm freeze up like konsole, but then it never writes out /any/ state at any time (as one might reasonably expect from a terminal emulator). The performance of modern desktop environments is I think a major issue, and I think that the main causes are very likely extremely simple to fix, especially if it's down to doing blocking writes at inappropriate times. Regards, Roger ----- With that kind of hardware you shouldn't be having resource problems, bloat ware or not... It could be, as mentioned before, a process hogging it all... But $ top Would show that... With drive write issues, have you ruled out hardware? A bad hard disk controller on your motherboard or failures with RAM, Buses, or the Proc could all be culprits... Do you have a way to swap parts with known goods, friends in a user or LUG group maybe that can loan compatible hardware for troubleshooting??? I was having horrible freeze ups awhile back, completely intermittent, I though PSU, Wall Current, RAM. I was swapping stuff left and right. Turned out PSU test fine, all the right digits and steady supply. Ended up having to replace Proc & Mainboard. Tried swapping out both ways and only clean fix was both... Best I could tell CAPS on board went and god knows why the Proc was acting up... TeddyB
