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!