[Dclug] Re: [Novalug] Hangs

[Mike Vore]

Matt Bidwell wrote:
> Navy Dragon wrote:
>> I've been experiencing some annoyances lately when my computer is
>> under heavy loads.  Frequently, when the CPU is at 100%, then my
>> entire system (at least under XFCE) sporadically hangs for a second or
>> two.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think this started happening once I
>> added an additional 2GB of memory to my existing 2GB.  Here is the
>> output of uname -srvmpio:
>>
>> Linux 2.6.22-gentoo-r8 #1 SMP Sun Oct 28 18:57:18 EDT 2007 x86_64 AMD
>> Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
>>
>> I was wondering if maybe there is some particular setting or something
>> I can do to improve responsiveness while under heavy loads?  I tried
>> compiling a new kernel recently that had the options PREEMPT_VOLUNTARY
>> and PREEMPT_BKL both turned on.  From what I could gather, these
>> options are supposed to improve responsiveness on desktop systems (of
>> which mine is), however they seemed to have little effect.
>>
>> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
>>

> Dumb question, but have you tried to look at top when this happens?
> 

It's been a while since I played with memory and disk space, but yes do look
at top, and pay attention to swap space. With that much memory you shouldn't
need to do much swapping, but if you do it will take more disk swap space.

Linux (and Solaris) uses all memory that it can for disk buffer, so if you've
been doing lots of disk read/write it will need to be flushed to disk - that
takes time. I once had a Solaris client that had problems similar to yours,
even the SE from Sun didn't recognize that symptom till I mentioned it, and
there was a fix but I don't remember what it was.

-- 
Mike Vore
   http://www.OhMyWoodness.com
   http://www.OhMyWoodness.com/blog  (new - update your Bookmarks)