Why is Mandriva slow?

[sabashuali]

I am not sure if its me or its the system but
I think my computer is running slower than before.

I had a few lock-ups, well not exactly lock-up as the HDD kept churning away, but not much else was moving at all, when running Thunderbird. It generaly feels like the computer has slowed down. When I did have the 'lock-ups' I had to eventualy force a cold reboot by pressing the reset button. I did this four or five times and at each reboot opted for a file-system check.

I checked the system monitor (KDE system guard) and the memory usage.
See both images attached. I relly cannot make much sense of these but maybe someone can tell me whether the info in the images might suggest a problem....

Thanks for any comments.

 

[Anti-Trend]

Wow, that is horrible, sounds like you have a rogue process on your hands! Unfortunately Linux is no more invulnerable to badly written software than any other OS. However, this is still not a typical occurance. I can see from your process charts something is amiss, but what I'm interested in is a list of running processes. Try running the top command from a terminal and see what is hogging your resources. Also, if you wouldn't mind running the following commands and posting the resulting .txt files:

ps -A >> ~/processes.txt
su
hdparm -I /dev/hd* >> hdparm.txt
chmod 666 hdparm.txt

All the best,
-AT

 

[sabashuali]

Hi AT

To start with, I uninstalled Thunderbird. Just to be on the safe side. No problems there as I do not mind re installing and re-configin later.
I ran top first and X was taking most of the CPU time but not more than a few percents at the most. Then, I ran the other code you suggested but as I looked at your reply from my mail client, I missed some of the suggested code resulting in a less than full report. Will try and run later, when I get home and post.

Then I tried to run top again and..... woops, in came 'mhonarc' with a blazing 99% of my CPU's precious time. Aha, I thought! Gotcha! then it dropped to 43% and the system froze. Hence me writing from work..... :(

I am going to try and see if its possible to manually stop or even un-install mhonarc as I understand it is merely an HTML manipulation program for mail clients.

BTW - what is this -

chmod 666

? I do not like this combination of numbers! it's evil! :devil:
Also there is another refernce - /dev(il?)/hdd. :devilsdsd
I think this is becoming the equivalent of playing 'Stairway to Heaven' backwards...... :clown: :clown: :clown:

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Anti-Trend]

BTW - what is this - ? [chmod 666] I do not like this combination of numbers it's evil!
Also there is another refernce - /dev(il?)/hdd.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Hahaha, I thought you might say that. ;) 'chmod' means 'change mode', i.e. change the permissions of a file. Since that function of hdparm must be run as root, the subsequent report it generated wouldn't be able to be read or manipulated by a regular user (e.g. you). We're giving the chmod command a numerical set of privileges to designate to that report. '666' isn't beast privileges, but actually it's saying "give R/W privileges to the owner of the file, the group the file belongs to, and everyone else". That way you can manipulate the file even after you've logged out of the root account, upload it, delete it, etc. A little more info on the chmod command here and here. As for dev, it's not short for 'devil', it's short for device. But I'm sure you were just being facetious. :D

BTW, I concur that you should remove that mhonarc program, sounds like a likely suspect for the source of your problems.

 

[sabashuali]

But I'm sure you were just being facetious. :D

I am, altough this word always make me gigggle.... toilet humor...
I know very childish. Still some left in me I guess. :P

Thanks AT, I will try and 'ice' the 'muva' :guns: