On Fri, 2007-01-26 at 07:55 +0000, James Wilkinson wrote: > I wrote: > > So a "slow" computer is actually rarely to do with raw processor power. > > It's much more likely to be some combination of the hard disk not using > > DMA, or there being a memory hog on the system that is causing it to > > swap a lot, or there being something running in the background that is > > really accessing the hard drive a lot. > > > > You may have noticed that I like blaming the hard drive for speed > > problems. Les, is the hard drive light on much? > > Les replied: > > All the time (I'm pretty sure that is broken on this system, because I > > can usually hear the drive spin up or the arm movement anyway). The > > problem seems to be though, with all that stuff in memory, that my main > > memory (only 256M on this machine) is pretty filled up. And I think > > that 256M of OS and X is just way the heck too much. > > > > I really don't want too much going on, just X and its requriements, The > > Kernal, the print stuff, the USB stuff and the CD and DVD. So what is > > with 104 processes. Even Windows only shows 54 on my XP box, and I > > thought Windows was a HOG. > > Well, one thing is that Unix has always worked with multiple small > processes where Windows has wanted One Big Monolith. (And Unix has been > less buggy for it). > > Having said that, Fedora does come with more stuff running than is > always strictly necessary. To begin with, I'd recommend running > system-config-services and seeing what is configured to run. > > You may want to turn off: > * auditd, msctrans, setroubleshoot until you have trouble getting something to run and > think SELinux might be a culprit > * autofs > * avahi-daemon > * bluetooth, hidd and pand > * CPUspeed if your CPU can't take advantage of power-saving > * dhcdbd > * diskdump and netdump > * dund > * there's no point having firstboot enabled any more > * gpm if you rarely drop down to a virtual console > * irda if you're not using infrared > * irqbalance (I doubt you've got a hyperthreading or SMP system with > 256 MB) > * mdmpd and multipathd > * netfs and netplugd > * nfs, nfslock, rpcgssd, rpcidmapd, rpcsvcgssd > * nscd > * pscd > * smb (Samba) > * sshd > * ypbind > * yum-updatesd (this means you'd be responsible for running yum or > similar to update the system -- every week at least) > > If there are no on-demand services, you can turn xinetd off, too. > > Not all of these may be there or turned on by default. And there may be > other things that you've got installed and running that you don't use. > > Having looked into the services (and stopped ones you don't want -- it > may be easiest to go to run-level 3 and back, or reboot), then run the > top command. Press "shift-M", which sorts the entries by "RES", defined > as "the non-swapped physical memory a task has used". Take a look at the > largest processes. If you see something you're pretty sure you don't > need, see if you can turn it off. > > Ask again if you need more help. > > Hope this helps, > > James. > > -- > E-mail: james@ | Remember, half-measures can be very effective if all you > aprilcottage.co.uk | deal with are half-wits. > Thanks, James, I knew Some of these and may have the majority turned off already. My goal is a stripped simple system too use to demo somthing. This is a great help. Regards, Les H
