[CentOS] slow GUI

Fri Dec 30 14:18:35 UTC 2005
William A. Mahaffey III <wam at HiWAAY.net>

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 ....

-- 
	William A. Mahaffey III
---------------------------------------------------------------------
	Remember, ignorance is bliss, but
	willful ignorance is LIBERALISM !!!!