System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM.
If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :)
At 08:18 AM 12/30/2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM.
If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :)
Oh well...
Since this is targeted as my DNS and mail server, I had better get more memory quickly!
I had been using gnome's system monitor. And although it showed 43Mb of swap used (of 256Mb) it did not show any swap activity.
I will try and figure out how to use top.
thanks!
Robert Moskowitz wrote:
At 08:18 AM 12/30/2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM.
If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :)
Oh well...
Since this is targeted as my DNS and mail server, I had better get more memory quickly!
I had been using gnome's system monitor. And although it showed 43Mb of swap used (of 256Mb) it did not show any swap activity.
I will try and figure out how to use top.
thanks!
Type in top from a shell prompt :-). Nice to leave running on a spare console or shell ....
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 09:09 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
At 08:18 AM 12/30/2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM.
If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :)
Oh well...
Since this is targeted as my DNS and mail server, I had better get more memory quickly!
I had been using gnome's system monitor. And although it showed 43Mb of swap used (of 256Mb) it did not show any swap activity.
I will try and figure out how to use top.
---- If all you need it for is to serve dns and mail there is no need to run a gui and the machine should be quite adequate at run level 3.
Install webmin to configure/monitor and use command line too. If vi is too cumbersome to learn, 'yum install emacs' as emacs is a bit easier to use.
Craig
At 09:20 AM 12/30/2005, Craig White wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 09:09 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
At 08:18 AM 12/30/2005, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 07:56 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
System:
PIII 500Mhz 128MB memory 20GB drive
Current CentOS 4.2 Gnome GUI
The system runs 'idle' at around 70Mb memory used and 4% cpu usage.
But whenever I go to start a task:
Start Gedit, Services tool, a Terminal window, Firefox
It takes a minute or so. CPU mayyyypeak at 100% briefly then come down. Memory has yet to exceed 100Mb usage.
Any pointers of where to look to see why it is slow?
Why it is slow is easy ... RHEL-4 (and therefore CentOS) doesn't work correctly in GUI mode with less than 256MB RAM.
If you run top and look, you will have lots of SWAP usage ... which is simulating system memory onto hard drive. This is VERY slow and makes things take forever :)
Oh well...
Since this is targeted as my DNS and mail server, I had better get more memory quickly!
I had been using gnome's system monitor. And although it showed 43Mb of swap used (of 256Mb) it did not show any swap activity.
I will try and figure out how to use top.
If all you need it for is to serve dns and mail there is no need to run a gui and the machine should be quite adequate at run level 3.
Once I set it up, I was going to change my run level to 3 (which script is that in?).
Install webmin to configure/monitor and use command line too.
webmin. From yum? ;-)
And of course run through SSH. What port(s) does it use?
If vi is too cumbersome to learn, 'yum install emacs' as emacs is a bit easier to use.
I earlier mentioned that I have my vi book handy:
"Learning the VI Editor" 4th edition ('88).
emacs is always a bit much.
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 10:54 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Once I set it up, I was going to change my run level to 3 (which script is that in?).
Just remember that you _can_ run X apps without having a local X server. You can display them remotely.
If you're concerned about the overhead, just don't run any KDE or GNOME apps. E.g., Motif NEdit is an option, and several other apps are GTK+ (no GNOME) as well.
And of course run through SSH. What port(s) does it use?
Port 22, although I'd _change_ your SSH port which removes about 98% of the script kiddie attacks.
You can login with "ssh -X" to setup the display so the X programs will appear locally.
I earlier mentioned that I have my vi book handy: "Learning the VI Editor" 4th edition ('88). emacs is always a bit much.
There are many other editors too, including nano (pico replacement), joe (Wordstar-like), etc...
At 11:40 AM 12/30/2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 10:54 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Once I set it up, I was going to change my run level to 3 (which script is that in?).
Just remember that you _can_ run X apps without having a local X server. You can display them remotely.
But you need an Xserver on your system (for XP?)
If you're concerned about the overhead, just don't run any KDE or GNOME apps. E.g., Motif NEdit is an option, and several other apps are GTK+ (no GNOME) as well.
OK...
And of course run through SSH. What port(s) does it use?
Port 22, although I'd _change_ your SSH port which removes about 98% of the script kiddie attacks.
Ah, what kind of wet blanket are you?
You can login with "ssh -X" to setup the display so the X programs will appear locally.
I use SSH's Tectia client on XP. I see the dialog box that has enabling X tunneling. But it says I need a passive X server running.
I earlier mentioned that I have my vi book handy: "Learning the VI Editor" 4th edition ('88). emacs is always a bit much.
There are many other editors too, including nano (pico replacement), joe (Wordstar-like), etc...
Oh Wordstar!! My favorite word processor -- not.
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 11:44 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
But you need an Xserver on your system
Correct.
(for XP?)
Yes: http://x.cygwin.com/
I've been using it for several years now. Cygwin/X goes on _all_ my Windows NT/2000/XP systems as standard. Have since the late '90s.
I use SSH's Tectia client on XP. I see the dialog box that has enabling X tunneling. But it says I need a passive X server running.
It's much easier if you just use the OpenSSH client from within Cygwin itself.
Oh Wordstar!! My favorite word processor -- not.
It's just an option if you still know the key bindings. Most Borland IDE developers of the DOS-era did.
On Friday 30 December 2005 12:22, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 11:44 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
But you need an Xserver on your system
Correct.
(for XP?)
Yes: http://x.cygwin.com/
I'll second that. Cygwin with X and SSH tunnelling works very well and very stably.
At 12:22 PM 12/30/2005, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 11:44 -0500, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
But you need an Xserver on your system
Correct.
(for XP?)
Yes: http://x.cygwin.com/
I've been using it for several years now. Cygwin/X goes on _all_ my Windows NT/2000/XP systems as standard. Have since the late '90s.
I use SSH's Tectia client on XP. I see the dialog box that has enabling X tunneling. But it says I need a passive X server running.
It's much easier if you just use the OpenSSH client from within Cygwin itself.
Then I will have to figure out how it does tunnelling of apps (I use SSH as my VPN client, and I was the IPsec co-chair :) ).
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 10:44, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Just remember that you _can_ run X apps without having a local X server. You can display them remotely.
But you need an Xserver on your system (for XP?)
The free Cygwin one works fine. Start it with export DISPLAY=:0 Xwin -multiwindow & Then ssh -Y to the remote box and start an X app by typing its name and a window will open locally.
Just out of curiosity, would NX be an option here? I've been pretty happy with running the NX client on XP boxes and NXserver/FreeNX on our development server (Dual P4 Xeon 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM) but that's not comparable to the box in question. I have used NX to run an XFCE desktop remotely on a less robust system (PIII 800, 128 MB, I think) and it was usable.
Just my $.02.
On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 12:19, Jay Leafey wrote:
Just out of curiosity, would NX be an option here? I've been pretty happy with running the NX client on XP boxes and NXserver/FreeNX on our development server (Dual P4 Xeon 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM) but that's not comparable to the box in question. I have used NX to run an XFCE desktop remotely on a less robust system (PIII 800, 128 MB, I think) and it was usable.
I'd expect NX to be more of a load on the server than running X on it's console. It basically has to keep a whole screen image on the server and do computations about the fastest way to send changes to the client. That's great when bandwidth or network latency is an issue - not so great when your problem is server ram or cpu.
Unfortunately CentOS does exactly what it says on the tin. Use the box as a router/proxy in text mode or get more ram.
__________________________________________ Yahoo! DSL Something to write home about. Just $16.99/mo. or less. dsl.yahoo.com
On Friday 30 December 2005 08:44 am, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
Oh Wordstar!! My favorite word processor -- not.
joe is still my favorite editor.
I even use it on my gui-driven desktops. Since it doesn't know what a mouse is, it's got great keyboard shortcuts for everything.
And it's modeless <smile>.
Jeff
Jeff Lasman blists@nobaloney.net wrote:
joe is still my favorite editor. I even use it on my gui-driven desktops. Since it doesn't know what a mouse is, it's got great keyboard shortcuts for everything. And it's modeless <smile>.
My point was, and continues to be, that there are many different editors -- enough for anyone's tastes!
emacs, joe, nano (pico), vi, etc...
On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 13:53 -0800, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
Jeff Lasman blists@nobaloney.net wrote:
joe is still my favorite editor. I even use it on my gui-driven desktops. Since it doesn't know what a mouse is, it's got great keyboard shortcuts for everything. And it's modeless <smile>.
My point was, and continues to be, that there are many different editors -- enough for anyone's tastes!
emacs, joe, nano (pico), vi, etc...
Heresy I tell you, vi is the ONLY editor ... all the others are just cheap imitations :P
-
Bryan J. Smith -
Craig White -
Jay Leafey -
Jeff Lasman -
Jim Smith -
Johnny Hughes -
Lamar Owen -
Les Mikesell -
Robert Moskowitz -
William A. Mahaffey III