System very slow

[olgarosh]

Hello,
At first I installed Kubuntu about 3 months ago with help from this forum. It was very fast.
In the past 2 weeks it has become painstakingly slow(sometimes taking 30 second or more just to switch between tabs or application windows). I am not sure if it's something I did or the endless stream of system updates( on average one per day) I've had to do.
Can anyone help me figure out how to get back to the original speed?
my version is 4.13.2 (32 bit version)
Amd Athloin processor
2GB ram
500GB hard disk space

[verndog]

Check your logs - syslog, kernlog, dmesg @ "/var/log" , for any tell-tail signs of trouble. Also xorg log may be causing trouble.

I have an Athlon X2, which isn't much faster, and I have not experienced any slowdowns using the latest LTS version.
I also keep my files slimmed down using Bleachbit.

[vinnywright]

some times this can happen when the free space starts to get to low ,,,,,,,,,please post the output of

df -h

and

free

VINNY

[olgarosh]

Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdc2        19G  7.9G  9.5G  46% /
none            4.0K     0  4.0K   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev            995M  4.0K  995M   1% /dev
tmpfs           202M  1.4M  201M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none           1008M  708K 1008M   1% /run/shm
none            100M   20K  100M   1% /run/user
/dev/sdc3       208G   16G  182G   8% /home

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2064300    1904760     159540      35176      37308     609988
-/+ buffers/cache:    1257464     806836
Swap:      3905532      50444    3855088

@verndog I found the logs.. but what do I do with them? I'm a total noob

[vinnywright]

is any application acting up , using a lot of CPU ,,,,open top in a konsole and look for excessive CPU usage ,,,,,, like this ......

vinny@vinnys-HP-G62:~$ top
top - 19:31:28 up 5 days,  2:47,  4 users,  [COLOR=#ff0000]load average: 0.06, 0.24, 0.42[/COLOR]
Tasks: 207 total,   2 running, 204 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s):  1.4 us,  0.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 97.9 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:   3843092 total,  3162632 used,   680460 free,   333700 buffers
KiB Swap:  4096536 total,        0 used,  4096536 free.  1746020 cached Mem

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND                                                    
23434 vinny     20   0 1336476 239744  51220 R   [COLOR=#ff0000]4.7  6.2[/COLOR]   0:43.17 firefox                                                    
17303 root      20   0  369612 116000  95836 S  [COLOR=#ff0000] 0.7  3.0[/COLOR]   9:05.27 Xorg                                                       
17840 vinny     20   0  624336   8344   6140 S   0.7  0.2   0:56.65 conky                                                      
24348 vinny     20   0   24952   1768   1168 R   0.7  0.0   0:00.81 top                                                        
12414 vinny     20   0  514116  25568  17468 S   0.3  0.7   0:02.72 konsole                                                    
17691 vinny     20   0 3181996  83312  39116 S   0.3  2.2   2:26.32 kwin                                                       
17700 vinny     20   0 3610264 166868  58252 S   0.3  4.3   1:22.79 plasma-desktop                                             
    1 root      20   0   33908   3200   1484 S   0.0  0.1   0:02.54 init                                                       
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.03 kthreadd                                                   
    3 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.75 ksoftirqd/0                                                
    5 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0H

the areas I tagged red are what to look at ,,,,,,,,,,,,,if something is running amuck it will be in the top slot of named programs .

you can post your out put from top but pleas place it between [CODE] tags ,,,,the # button at the top of the text reply box will insert them for you .

VINNY

[verndog]

Under System , there's a log viewer you can use, or just use Kate to view the files. You can zip them up and paste them back here.

[olgarosh]

Tasks: 184 total,   1 running, 182 sleeping,   0 
%Cpu(s): 10.7 us,  4.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 84.7 id,  0.0
KiB Mem:   2064300 total,  1874744 used,   189556
KiB Swap:  3905532 total,        0 used,  3905532

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S 
 2328 hannabe+  20   0 1746844 120304  15728 S 
 2317 hannabe+  20   0  115464  16328   9664 S 
 1218 root      20   0  118908  77340  52168 S 
 2082 hannabe+  20   0  886572 307444  44164 S 
 2632 hannabe+  20   0  121672  24056  17588 S 
 2331 hannabe+  20   0    7644   3864    700 S 
 2654 hannabe+  20   0    6752   1356    948 R 
   44 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
 2031 hannabe+  20   0  243544  39272   5824 S 
    1 root      20   0    4592   2544   1376 S 
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
    3 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
    5 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
    7 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
    9 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S 
   10 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S 
   11 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   12 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
   13 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   14 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   15 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   16 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   17 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   18 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   19 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   20 root      20   0       0      0      0 S 
   21 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   22 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S 
   23 root      20   0       0      0      0 S

[Simon]

Check your hardware too.

If you cannot find an issue with a process slowing your system down, you might have a hardware failure issue as I did over a year ago. I thought it was something software related until I figured it was my graphics card. I pulled the card and ran straight VGA off the mobo, the system came back to life. I replaced the card and got back to work. Point is that some hardware doesn't just go out all at once and they will cause issues with the system before they break down.

[NickStone]

You mentioned that it slows right down when opening up new tabs, does that mean that it is happening when you run a web browser? If, so which browser are you using and also if your using Firefox or Chrom(e)ium are you using any extensions. Both of these web browsers are memory hoggers and in some cases the extensions for these two browsers can cause issues with memory.
Try disabling the extensions and activating them one at a time to see which one is maybe causing the slow down.

Edit: I also noticed that you said that you have been receiving updates on an almost daily basis, this could also be causing the problem because every time you download software (or updates) it stores that file in the software cache and over time will increase and reduce disk space. To clear the cache type in your terminal

sudo apt-get clear

You can always install bleachbit which will clear not only the cache for you but also remove all over unnecessary files there by freeing up disk space.

[olgarosh]

I can see the log files but I can't save or zip them from Kate. Last night the PC froze for over half an hour trying to zip the files. It slows to a crawl when loadin Muon or the system updater. So that's why I don't think it's Firefox. Besides I've already disabled a bunch of extensions since I figured out they were slowing it down. I'll gladly try a faster browser if anyone can recommed one?

[GreyGeek]

Is desktop indexing consuming CPU and/or memory?
Running top in a Konsole and resizing it till just the first few lines of the processes show (cpu & %mem), you should be able to see which process is taking all the processing time or memory, as vinny showed.

[Teunis]

Top is a fine application, htop is even better.

But KDE's build in systems monitor is easier, just press Ctrl+Esc.

I agree with the other posters the problem is likely caused by either a lack of available RAM or a process hogging the CPU.

If you can, see what happens when running a Live CD or USB.

[SteveRiley]

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       2064300    1904760     159540      35176      37308     609988
-/+ buffers/cache:    1257464     806836
Swap:      3905532      50444    3855088

You have 2 GB of RAM but only 160 MB is free... that seems pretty low. Unfortunately, in the output you posted from top...

Tasks: 184 total,   1 running, 182 sleeping,   0 
%Cpu(s): 10.7 us,  4.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 84.7 id,  0.0
KiB Mem:   2064300 total,  1874744 used,   189556
KiB Swap:  3905532 total,        0 used,  3905532

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S 
 2328 hannabe+  20   0 1746844 120304  15728 S 
 2317 hannabe+  20   0  115464  16328   9664 S 
 1218 root      20   0  118908  77340  52168 S 
 2082 hannabe+  20   0  886572 307444  44164 S 
[I]{...remaining lines snipped...}[/I]

...the important information is cut off. Namely, the amount of memory used by the processes. See how Vinny's output is wider? We need to see everything. Please run top -o %MEM to sort by amount of memory used.

[millusions]

start KsysGuard
press CPU to sort by cpu usage
then
Memory to see mem usage
you should than be able to see whats chewing up your resources

[olgarosh]

I can't figure out how to resize to a wider output in top?

In KsysGuard: pluginloader.exe takes 89% of CPU and Firefox hogs the memory.

How do I know which plug in is it loading? is it possible that it's flash?
but then how can I watch videos without it?

Thanks