[Solved] Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

[jimnclark]

Hello everyone, I am new to kubuntu and appreciate you taking your time to read this. I just got a new laptop (Dell inspiron M5010 with AMD Tri-core processor and 6GB ram) and it seems that kubuntu (natty 32-bit) boots very slow. I have noticed that when i examine how the system is running, the computer only ever uses between 0.3GB and 0.5GB or its ram (also not using swap space at all) and I am beginning to think that is the problem. I looked around and found some information about the PAE kernel needed to run more than 4GB of ram on a 32 bit operating system but it looks like I have that already. Anyone know if that is the problem and if it is, what I can do about it? I am dual booting with windows 7 and it seems to find and use the ram and it runs and boots very quickly...

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

Without some more examination, it's hard to say what is causing your issue but it's possible you're seeing normal memory use and the slowness is caused elsewhere.

Try opening a terminal and typing top and see what doing.

Before we get any further into it, I have to ask why you installed 32bit version on a new 64bit machine with 6GB RAM? Even the default windows version from Dell is 64bit.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

First I originally tried to install 64bit versions of both kubuntu and Ubuntu 11.10 but neither of those would recognize that Windows was even on the system and wanted to reformat the whole hard drive for install. When I went looking for alternatives I found a few articles that mentioned that if I needed full compatability with programs and devices I was better off with a 32 bit version. So I tried the 32 bit versions of 11.10 and still no luck. I was able to get 11.04 to recognize windows so I was able to partition the harddrive and not hurt the windows installation but the whole process was very slow and booting still takes a long time. If you think i need to switch back and try the 64 bit version I would be happy to do that.

When I use the top command this is what it shows:
top - 13:11:49 up 4:30, 2 users, load average: 0.10, 0.21, 0.42
Tasks: 153 total, 2 running, 149 sleeping, 0 stopped, 2 zombie
Cpu(s): 2.8%us, 1.4%sy, 0.0%ni, 91.5%id, 4.3%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 5921892k total, 1134952k used, 4786940k free, 38268k buffers
Swap: 1951740k total, 0k used, 1951740k free, 528224k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
941 root 20 0 188m 131m 20m R 5 2.3 7:32.52 Xorg
1484 jim 20 0 293m 53m 31m S 2 0.9 6:37.07 plasma-desktop
2616 jim 20 0 121m 20m 15m S 2 0.4 0:06.56 konsole
1488 jim 20 0 277m 24m 16m S 1 0.4 4:37.10 knotify4
2333 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.79 kworker/u:1
2479 jim 20 0 435m 122m 31m S 0 2.1 2:09.20 firefox
2594 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.14 kworker/2:1
2672 jim 20 0 2632 1148 852 R 0 0.0 0:00.61 top
1 root 20 0 3028 1820 1236 S 0 0.0 0:00.77 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.18 ksoftirqd/0
6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
7 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.19 ksoftirqd/1
11 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/2
13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.09 ksoftirqd/2
14 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset
15 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
16 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.03 sync_supers
19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 bdi-default
20 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd
21 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kblockd
22 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
23 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
24 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_hotplug
25 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_sff
26 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 khubd
27 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 md
28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khungtaskd
29 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kswapd0
30 root 25 5 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksmd
31 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 fsnotify_mark
32 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 aio
33 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ecryptfs-kthrea
34 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 crypto
38 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthrotld

I am not sure how to read this or what it means although it does look like it is using more ram than I thought so maybe my problem is elsewhere.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

I'd bet most or all of those articles are out of date. Things change in the linux world exponentially faster than in the windows world. An article 3 months old is old.

Your printout looks normal and mem usage seems right. I'd look next to see if you have a hardware issue that's logging continually. This sometimes occurs and will slow down your desktop but not really show up in mem or cpu usage (it's logging constantly to the hard drive).

Open a terminal window and type dmesg. Then wait 10-20 seconds and do it again. If there's a continuously repeating error message, we'll know where to look next.

I've been using 64bit for two years and the only program not available in native 64bit was skype and even that's available now.

The failure to recognize the windows partition is that fault of the installer and not related to 32 vs. 64 bit. The same new install for 11.10 doesn't install to my system either at this point so I think it's quite buggy.

If you want to go ahead and try 64bit, my suggestion would be to burn and boot a Gparted LiveCD (or USB drive) and partition and format your new linux partitions in the free space and when done, install the 64 bit version and select manual partitioning in the installer menu and select your new partitions.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

I went ahead and changed to 64bit 11.04. Seems to work just fine and I have been able to find all the programs I want.

So I went ahead and ran the dmesg command twice about 20 seconds apart and what I got is in the two text attachments marked FirstRun and SecondRun.

I hope you understand what it all means. There is a lot of information there. I sometimes can't tell what is an error and what is just general information. Thanks again for your help, I think I will be a lot happier with the 64 bit once it is up to speed.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

This:

wl0: wlc_recv: dropping a frame with invalid src mac address, a2: 00:00:00:00:00:00

is a networking error. There is a current bug with wpa/wpa2 that could be it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/882751

Also, are you running bluetooth and wifi together? i didn't see any bluetooth notifications but wanted to check.

You might try turning off WPA as a test and see if it goes away. This is logging these errors to your hard drive and could be part of the slowdown.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

How do I turn off WPA?

Oh and no I am not using bluetooth.

[kernelbasher]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

How do I turn of WPA?

The encryption is set at the router/access point, so you would have to turn it off there, then you could make unencrypted connections. Not that I would recommend that.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

Note I said; as a test. I doubt the hacker world will descend upon this one connection during the ten minutes or less it takes t turn it off and back on again.

Jim - as basher said, it's in your router settings. Disconnect from your wifi connection, turn off security in your router, re-connect, and report results.

Another actually simpler method is to disconnect the wifi on your computer and use a hard-wired connection to the router.

Either way, see if the error in dmesg goes away and if there's any change in your performance.

Really, unless your hard drive is very slow and this error is logging an awful lot it seems like there must be something else contributing to the performance problem. Your machine is certainly powerful enough.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

Well I didn't need to try and disconnect WPA because after I updated my wireless driver to the broadcom driver the error went away. I am wondering about the IRQ 19 and 18 issues that my computer seems to have problems with. Any chance that might be causing my slowdowns. It tells me to try booting with the irqpoll option but I have no idea where that is or what that does. Anyway I included a recent dmesg so you can look at it again if you like.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

kernel boot options are added to /etc/default/grub. Change the line that says;

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

to

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="irqpoll quiet splash"

then run update_grub. Both have to be done as root, so in a terminal

kdesudo kate /etc/default/grub

to edit the file, then

sudo update_grub

and reboot. Often desktop slowness is caused by poor video performance. To test your current setup, install gtkperf and run it. Post your number. Also, you can try disabling desktop effects and see if it "feels" different. The fix for this usually means installing the correct video drivers and tweaking for best performance.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

Ok, I am not sure why or what the irqpoll option did but it changed my boot time from 4:45 down to 0:22. Awesome. Is there anything I need to worry about with that option enabled? Thanks again, my computer is working great now.

Also I did check my desktop effects and the computer tells me that they are not enabled but then it doesn't give me a reason.
Also I ran the GTKperf test and this is what it said

GtkPerf 0.40 - Starting testing: Mon Oct 31 23:58:38 2011

GtkEntry - time: 0.04
GtkComboBox - time: 5.76
GtkComboBoxEntry - time: 5.59
GtkSpinButton - time: 0.22
GtkProgressBar - time: 0.28
GtkToggleButton - time: 0.88
GtkCheckButton - time: 0.86
GtkRadioButton - time: 0.88
GtkTextView - Add text - time: 1.32
GtkTextView - Scroll - time: 1.26
GtkDrawingArea - Lines - time: 0.42
GtkDrawingArea - Circles - time: 0.52
GtkDrawingArea - Text - time: 0.93
GtkDrawingArea - Pixbufs - time: 0.19
---
Total time: 19.17

[oshunluvr]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

I don't think the irqpoll will cause any problems. Likely, there's a piece of hardware that doesn't get along with the kernel. Usually in a year or so, you won't need he irqpoll option but unless some other problem crops up - might as well leave good enough alone.

Your gtkperf numbers are not great so the system checks your video performance when logging into the desktop and disables effects because it would be too slow. I have an nvidia 8800gt card with desktop effects enabled my gtkperf number is around 6.

It probably has an ATI video chip? You need to get the exact model of video in your laptop and search for which driver to install and how to set it up the best performance. You probably don't have opengl enabled and won't be able to until you get the proprietary driver installed. I can't help you there because I'm strictly an nVidia guy.

[jimnclark]

Re: Kubuntu slow, not using RAM

Yeah it is an ATI video card. Thanks so much for your help. As for the video I will look into it and see if I can find the driver and the settings but I am extremely happy with the speed of the laptop now. Thanks!