Very Computer

Linux is veeerrrrry slow to do anything on the desktop, KDE or Gnome.
Windows/programs take forever to open.

Where do I look for the reason for the slowness?  Surely there is a setting I am
missing or have done badly.  (I would prefer to work in command line or Gnome, KDE
reminds me too much of Windows.)  

It identified the video card on install (Matrox G400) and the Viewsonic monitor was
listed, IIRC.  It runs OS/2, occasionally WinNT, and I put in a second HD just for
Linux.  Actions on the other OSes are speedy enough.  Would the second HD set up as
slave be that much slower than the first?  The diagram for jumpers to set it up as
slave was pretty clear. It's a 10 GB Western Digital and the old one is a 20GB IBM,
but both purchased at about the same time 2-1/2 years ago.

Things work okay so, the printers are fine, the cable modem is fine, ir
recognizes/reads from the CD and the SCSI CD-R.  

Suggestions for hunting are appreciated.  

Judy Russell

# man renice

Also, if you are more adventurous, you could always compile a
pre-emptive kernel.  I have run a low-latency/pre-emptive kernel (two
patches) and I noticed a bit more 'snappiness' overall on my desktop.

Chris Parker

I have an amazingly similar set up to yours (600 MHz P3, 256 M, G400).  I recently
upgraded from RH 7.2 to RH 7.3.  I am not seeing the same slowness you are seeing.  I
would be suspicious of the second drive.  Is it on the same cable (ie., IDE port) as
the CDRom?  If the CDR is the master and the HD is the slave, you are probably limiting
the HD to CD speed settings.  If you look in the messages log in /var/log there are
typically some boot up messages about the HD set up.  You might look in
/etc/sysconfig/harddrive (ummm, that's close but probably not exactly correct -- not at
my Linux box right now) to see what hdparm settings are being used for the second
drive.

Holler for more help if these thoughts don't get you on the right path.

Joe Henley

No, not on the same cable as the CD, slave on the first cable. There was something in
the install  guide that said Linux had to be on the first if there were two IDE
controllers, but could be either master or slave on just the one controller.  So the
CD is on one controller, the two HD's are on the other.  The CD-R is separate,
external on an Adaptec SCSI card.

I read the sysconfig/harddisks and the man hdparm and it suggested the default for
the Western Digital was probably wrong, that I should set something called

MULTIPLE_IO=16  

to 4 to 8 on the Western Digital drive.  It also warned that messing with hd
parameters could destroy things.  

Except, I have no clue as to how/where to change that setting, how to back it up
before changing that setting, and how to restore the backed up version if the change
makes the system unbootable.  I do know that I need to know things first. Fixing that
will therefore have to wait until I know more.  I don't want to reinstall from
scratch.

I will save your email.

Quote:> I read the sysconfig/harddisks and the man hdparm and it suggested the
default for
> the Western Digital was probably wrong, that I should set something called
> MULTIPLE_IO=16
> to 4 to 8 on the Western Digital drive.
...
> Except, I have no clue as to how/where to change that setting, how to back
it up
> before changing that setting,

Reboot.

--
Rex Dieter
Computer System Administrator
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
University of Nebraska Lincoln