After a long battle with technology, Erich Newell wrote:
Please don't top-post, and trim your posts. Fixed:
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 1:33 PM, Josef Lowder <joe@actionline.com> wrote:
>> My system seems to have slowed down quite a bit (even when I don't
>> have any programs running) and I can't figure out why.
You'll have to quantify this and be specific for anyone to help you. There
are always *a lot* of processes running on any modern box.
>> When I run 'top' I can only see the top 50 or so entries on my monitor
>> and I don't know how to see what else might be there farther down the
>> list.
"man top" for starters.
>> And when I do 'ps -ef', how can I tell which, if any, of those processes
>> could or should be eliminated?
Basically, if it's init, a kernel thread, X, or your WM/DE, you don't want to
kill it. "ps auxw" provides more info in a better way then "ps -ef" IMHO.
Take a look at the %CPU, %MEM, and RSS columns in ps auxw output to see how
much CPU, total RAM, and how much of that memory is Resident for each
process.
>> xfs 3003 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:00 xfs -port -1 -daemon
>> -droppriv -user xfs
Font server. In general, you shouldn't need this, but some distros start one
up for hysterical raisins. This doesn't use much in the way of resources.
>> root 3033 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:05:21 hald
hald. Right.
>> root 3189 3180 69 Mar07 tty7 7-01:53:38 /etc/X11/X -deferglyphs
>> 16 :0 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-K9voZd
Look how much CPU time X has used. This is actually normal since X does a
lot, but there are some distros with buggy X where X calls gettimeofday()
over and over and over again for no reason. You can see this by attaching
strace to X for a little while and eyeball-grepping the output. Or by
restarting X and seeing if X suddenly gets a lot faster.
>> root 3190 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:01:00 nifd -n
>> nobody 3252 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:00 mDNSResponder
Interesting. There's no ebuild matching "nifd" here....
>> root 3699 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:00 /opt/win4lin/bin/vnetd
>> clamav 3775 1 0 Mar07 ? 00:00:08 /usr/bin/freshclam
>> --config-file=/etc/freshclam.conf --quiet --daemon
win4lin? Are you using that? Also, you probably don't need to run clamav if
your box isn't running SMTP/POP services.
>> joe 17264 17244 0 12:24 ? 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/startkde
>> joe 17371 17370 0 12:24 ? 00:00:00 gnome-volume-manager
Why have both KDE and GNOME at the same time? Also, you need to figure out
whether you want to solve security problems first or solve WM/DE slowdowns
first. They're probably totally orthogonal.
> FTP is also good for file distribution situations that require no
> security...but in these instances I still recommend bit torrent and seeding.
> Its more "net-friendly".
...unless your ISP has throttled all torrent traffic to 0.1% of available
bandwidth to FIGHT TEH P1R4TES, because the only people using torrents are
downloading pr0n and w4r3z. Seriously, I tried to download Planeshift (Free
game, freely distributable, etcetera) using their torrents a few months back,
and despite multiple seeders, got less than 1M downloaded over 8 hours. Lots
of ISPs now hate torrent traffic and throttle it. FTP gets a free pass.
Torrents are more technically friendly, but right now, FTP is more socially
friendly.
--
"Bother," said Pooh. "Eeyore, ready two photon torpedoes and lock
phasers on the Heffalump; Piglet, meet me in transporter room three."
My blog and resume:
http://crow202.dyndns.org:8080/wordpress/
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
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