[SOLVED] Kubuntu almost unusable

[oldgeek]

For the past few days, Kubuntu has become glacial. Not only does it take a long time to load anything, but also to close a program. It frequently freezes when I'm working on something as well. Today, after getting a physical maintenance job with a technician (they don't work on Linux) and trying it out again, it is as slow as ever. I tried to update the machine (new Linux kernels came in) using Alacritty, but it got hung up on trying to configure libc6-dev and gave up. Same thing happened on UcareSystem Core, so I finally ended up using Discover, which is taking forever. Really, my backup netbook (Atom processor, 2 Gb memory running Elive 32-bit) is faster than my regular machine, which is i3-7800 and 16 Gb memory. Should I wipe this out and re-install? I have btrfs so I'm backed up. Or is there something less drastic to do?

I'm retired so I have plenty of time to fiddle around.

[claydoh]

Without looking at the memory/swap and cpu usage, ity is hard to say what it could be
No idea what alacrity or ucare are, but I would look for processes that are taking up cpu, or maybe ram/swap - a memory leak where a rouge process is sucking it all up, and heavy swap usage will slow a machine to a crawl, even on an SSD

Or restore a snapshot from before this started to rear its head, and see if updating goes more smoothly.
the libc6-dev issue is difficult to determine without the actual full set of error messages when it barfs, and could be a clue.

/me looks a few things up...
for what it is worth, Discover, apt in the terminal, or ucare (which is just running some apt commands via scripts etc) are all using the same tools to install and remove packages, so a problem with one is pretty much guaranteed to show up in the others. Apt just gives the best error messages.

[oldgeek]

Alacritty is a fast terminal program. uCareSystem is an small update and cleaning system. I rarely use Discover for updates, just as a software store. The error message for libc6-dev said that it couldn't be configured because of dependency issues. It seems that the update to kernel 5.4.0-48 has done the trick, as it's running normal now. At least I hope so. Thanks for your response.

[jlittle]

Baloo can do this, has done it to me. Try disabling file search in system settings, and see if the contents of ~.local/share/baloo are reasonable; more than 50 MB or so is not.

[oldgeek]

I disabled the file search, and it does seem to have made a difference (so far). However, after looking at the file you indicated it shows 3.2 GiB, so I guess that's not reasonable. So what does this mean, and how do I get it down to a reasonable number? And, what would I need Baloo for?

[claydoh]

baloo is the file search database and indexer. Most of the time it works fine, but if one has a yuuuge number of files drive it can get a bit large, but not Gb normally.
I have multiple drives manually added to the indexer, and the size is just under 200Mb.

I do use the search tool frequently, particularly for file content but it can be adjusted, to not index the full contents, or to restrict what folders are searched.
The stock setting is full indexing of the home dir, but excluding hidden files/folders (ie config files)


You should be able to delete the baloo directory, and re-enable the search\, and see if it grows again.

[GreyGeek]

I turned Baloo off because of that. I installed "locate", and its maintenance tool "updatedb", which runs as a cron in the background about once a day. VERRRRY fast. I use "locate something", where "something can be the entire name of the folder or file I am looking for, or, it can be a piece of the name. man locate explains it all.

For serious searching of text files I use Kate, which allows me to select a folder and search all files inside of it for a word, partial word, or a phrase. It puts the file names in a narrow vertical column on the left side (if you choose that format), and hits in a small lower panel on the right side, and above the hits is a larger editor panel. I can jump from find to find with a click of the mouse.

A side thought: how much space is left on your drive? When they fill beyond 90% they have a tendency to slow down. Or, you may have some bad RAM.

[oldgeek]

I don't think I ever use the search function, except in Muon once in a blue moon, or even Discover occasionally. I have about 200 GiB free in a 500 GiB HD, and according to HD Sentinel it's in top shape. By the way, I don't know if this has anything to do with Baloo, but when I update by terminal it seems to take a long time reading through the database after the packages are downloaded. Finally, do I delete the whole baloo directory under .local/share/ or just the index?

[jlittle]

(Note, you've definitely found a severe cause of slowness.)

Clear the directory. You should do that even if you want to continue to use baloo, because the index is screwed up. The next time baloo uns, it rebuilds from scratch no trouble. IME it might be good for a few days, before screwing up again; and there were a variety of screw ups. One of them was writing tens of MB/s continuously, that's a few TB per day, and I abuse my SSD enough without that, so baloo stays off.

[oldgeek]

That seems to have done the trick, and things seem to be running as they should. I appreciate the help from all who responded.