Linux

wargand · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 6:31 pm **Post subject:**

Interesting. Never heard of such thing. I could think of reasons why the bootup takes that long. But not if you really re-installed it. If you did not correctly, it sounds like a terrible timeout. Could it be that your system thinks it has internet connection when it actually has not? It might try to resolve some DNS but cannot. So it has to wait for a timeout. This can happen several time, when the mail system is started, ntp and so on. Try open a shell and ping some address, e.g. ping http://www.dead-donkey.com ;-)

Then try to in a numerical address. Finally try the same with -n, e.g. ping -n <some ip>. See any differences? The thing with you mouse is strange, but if you use KDE, who knows what this bloat is doing.

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 7:44 pm **Post subject:**

The thing I do not understand is that nothing has changed since friday when all was fine, net connection is still fine.

I cannot open anything, when I click a button or whatever it takes an age to register it, and a double click will not work. I t is all speedy initially and then the KDE 3.whatever screen comes up and starts to load all the shit along the bottom, and as soon as it hits "Loading the panel" it starts to grind to a halt. I am no expert on Linux, so I thought I would try some of the other shit like Gnome etc, but still the same shit.

You got any suggestions cos the shit I find online is not very plentifull, and what I do find is not really relevant? I wanna use Linux over windows, but it must be a fairly user friendly interface for the other less IT literate members of the family, again, any suggestions?

You know what makes things even worse, the kids and the missus said Lindows looks "nice" and want me to use it, but what I have heard from a few others has made me hesitant LOL I do not care if a Linux OS does not run any faster than Windows, I just want and need the stability.

wargand · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 8:04 pm **Post subject:**

TaKYoN wrote:

The thing I do not understand is that nothing has changed since friday when all was fine, net connection is still fine.

This also might be a sign for a timeout due to a net problem. You might have a DNS-Server in your /etc/resolv.conf which worked till friday and died afterwards. So your configuration is the same, but whenever a program tries to resolve an address it blocks till it gets a timeout.

TaKYoN wrote:

I cannot open anything, when I click a button or whatever it takes an age to register it, and a double click will not work. I t is all speedy initially and then the KDE 3.whatever screen comes up and starts to load all the shit along the bottom, and as soon as it hits "Loading the panel" it starts to grind to a halt. I am no expert on Linux, so I thought I would try some of the other shit like Gnome etc, but still the same shit.

When you are in X (KDE) can you go back into a console (pressing alt-ctrl F1, F2, F3....)? Is it still slow? Really hard to help from afar. Do you see something fishy in you logfiles? And you installed Gnome with the same effect? I am 90% sure it is a net problem. What does your /etc/hosts say? /etc/resolv.conf? What processes do you start at bootup?

TaKYoN wrote:

You got any suggestions cos the shit I find online is not very plentifull, and what I do find is not really relevant? I wanna use Linux over windows, but it must be a fairly user friendly interface for the other less IT literate members of the family, again, any suggestions?

I use WindowMaker ;-)

TaKYoN wrote:

You know what makes things even worse, the kids and the missus said Lindows looks "nice" and want me to use it, but what I have heard from a few others has made me hesitant LOL I do not care if a Linux OS does not run any faster than Windows, I just want and need the stability.

For Lindoze read this:
http://linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/20 ... 0126RVDTSW

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:56 pm **Post subject:**

How can I look into these files when the bloody thing wont work? Oh and BTW that alt and f keys dont work either, the box comes up eventually but is just as slow.

wargand · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 10:06 pm **Post subject:**

TaKYoN wrote:

How can I look into these files when the bloody thing wont work? Oh and BTW that alt and f keys dont work either, the box comes up eventually but is just as slow.

That's why I asked you whether you can get into a console with alt-ctrl <function key>

That this does not work for you really surprises me. What abount alt-crtl-backspace? This should kill your X. When you install your linux, can you somewhere tell it in the installation dialog _not_ to start X automatically?

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 10:51 pm **Post subject:**

Right, I have yet again installed it, altho this time I specifically did not install KDE, just gnome, and I have got a semi usable system ATM, very slow and keeps freezing for a few seconds at a time. One thing I have noticed is that the HD does not access straight away when asked, for example, I tell it to launch Mozilla, it will just sit there for a while and then slowly load the app, in little bits.

I am a totally lost ATM in regards to config files and logs, so just tell me what ya want and where I could find it, cheers.

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 10:56 pm **Post subject:**

I prefer KDE, only because gnome crashes all the time at uni. :cry:

wargand · **Posted:** Mon Feb 09, 2004 10:57 pm **Post subject:**

Strange. You have one IDE disk? What does 'hdparm -d /dev/hda' say? This would show you whether your HD is in DMA mode. However I doubt this could be responsible for long freezes. Then tell me what is the content of /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 12:18 am **Post subject:**

hosts just says
127.0.0.1 localhost

resolv.conf says
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 62.30.112.39
nameserver 194.117.134.19
nameserver 62.30.0.39
search meanmachine local

hdparm -d /dev/hda says
using_dma = 1 (on)

But those hda files I have several of, hda, hda1, hda2, hda5, hda6 and hda7 if that makes any difference? They all say the same.

Also, now when I click the main menu button all my apps are gone, I have an entry for run applications but none of the cats above, like network etc...

Oh and BTW I have just the one drive.

wargand · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 12:38 am **Post subject:**

hosts is ok,
hdparm is ok, too.

BUT as I suspected, resolv.conf seems to be wrong. If I use your nameserver I get no response. Ok, this does not mean they are wrong for you, too. They might be refusing me, however, I can telnet to them, so this is unlikely. Where did you get this numner? Anyways, you can remove the line 'nameserver 127.0.0.1', since I doubt that you are running your own nameserver on your machine. Is one of the other numbers the external IP of your machine? This line would be superfluous, too.

Try: ping heute.cs.tu-berlin.de
What is the response?

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 12:51 am **Post subject:**

We will have to continue this 2moro, my missus is ill so I am off to bed to look after her.

Btw thanks ofr all ya help mate, it is weird to be a nebie again LOL Oh I also fixed me main menu problem.

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 4:32 pm **Post subject:**

How the hell do I edit that resolv.conf file? It just keeps giving me shit about not having permission.

None of those IP's are my IP either.

wargand · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 4:53 pm **Post subject:**

Hi, as "root" of course. There are a few things even under Linux you have to do as root ;-)

But still, the results of 'ping heute.cs.tu-berlin.de'?

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 5:39 pm **Post subject:**

Hmm, i re-installed again to get a fresh start, and only installed the normal stuff again, but if I start with icewm it all runs real well with much fewer freezes. I have noticed one thing tho, this icewm has a cpu load monitor next to the clock and when the system freezes for a few seconds the CPU jumps to 100% for that period, anything to do with my athlon cpu and ram being slightly overclocked perhaps?

Pings are coming back like this
4 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=154 ttl=237 time=35.0 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=155 ttl=237 time=33.5 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=156 ttl=237 time=33.6 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=157 ttl=237 time=34.6 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=158 ttl=237 time=34.2 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=159 ttl=237 time=34.5 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=160 ttl=237 time=33.6 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=161 ttl=237 time=33.0 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=162 ttl=237 time=34.4 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=163 ttl=237 time=38.0 ms
64 bytes from heute.cs.tu-berlin.de (130.149.19.19): icmp_seq=164 ttl=237 time=34.0 ms

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 5:50 pm **Post subject:**

I have also noticed, altho I may be assuming too much here, that it has an icon for the ethernet card that lists, again I assume, all the connections, and this has a few times been empty and all my net access etc has been down.

Damn this icewm is really shit LOL, guess I am too used to my icons and eye candy.

wargand · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 5:51 pm **Post subject:**

Ok. This rules any DNS problem out. Your resolv.conf is ok.

With 'top' you get a process list where you can see what process uses what amount of CPU/memory.

My top output currently looks like this:

top - 17:56:41 up 22 days, 6:10, 4 users, load average: 1.36, 0.61, 0.42
Tasks: 78 total, 2 running, 76 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 35.3% user, 29.1% system, 0.0% nice, 35.6% idle
Mem: 514464k total, 509468k used, 4996k free, 59288k buffers
Swap: 1004020k total, 46932k used, 957088k free, 320416k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2037 root 9 0 293m 21m 15m S 7.9 4.2 32:46.46 X
29365 root 15 0 1024 1024 736 S 4.0 0.2 0:09.61 gawk
26081 wargand 9 0 1056 960 884 S 2.6 0.2 0:25.38 wmmon

.... many more lines.

wargand · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 6:06 pm **Post subject:**

TaKYoN wrote:

all my net access etc has been down.

*sigh* Whenever I think I can rule out something....
In that case I still can be a DNS problem.
You said you have
127.0.0.1 localhost
in you /etc/hosts.

Have you given your machine a name? Suppose so. It should be in /etc/hosts too. Try adding:

127.0.0.1 <the name you gave your machine> <alias>

e.g.

127.0.0.1 tak.dead-ape.com tak

and/or

<your external ip> <the name you gave your machine> <alias>

Reason is, some brain dead programs might not refer to the machine they are running on as 'localhost', but your machines name. If now this name with its address is not found in /etc/hosts it tries to resolve it through your DNS server. If for some reason you network is down, it sends this requests into nirvana and waits for an answer until a timeout occurs. It is not unlikely that this happens more often with heavy weight bloats like KDE than with more or less light weight managers like icewm.

TaKYoN · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 6:11 pm **Post subject:**

You want me to get a copy of my list? Is top entered from the console or whatever it is called, or can I just click that link in the tray?

Using icewm the freezing problem is worse when I load up a webpage and then try to scroll, either using mouse wheel or scroll bars.

It is hard to tell but I believe the console or whatever does not seem as badly affected.

BTW I switched me cpu back to normal speed and no difference, so that rules that out. I ran a few tests and have confirmed my cpu and ram are fine, my HD checks out fine too, so I am lost, altho I was to begin with LOL

Linux also did not recognise my usb webcam so I unplugged it, still no luck. All other hardware is, as far as I can tell, working fine.

TaKYoN, still in need of help, now back on XP for the time being as it is way faster than linux currently LMFAO Never thought I would say that after the good shit I heard about Linux.

P.S. what are the chances of a different "flavour" of Linux working better? I do not know any other versions that are suitable for me so that is why I ask.

wargand · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 6:24 pm **Post subject:**

TaKYoN wrote:

You want me to get a copy of my list? Is top entered from the console or whatever it is called, or can I just click that link in the tray?

Yep, from the console. And no, don't need a copy. Just look whether you see somethin with unusual > 50% CPU and/or memoty.

TaKYoN wrote:

Using icewm the freezing problem is worse when I load up a webpage and then try to scroll, either using mouse wheel or scroll bars.

Now it becomes ridiculous. I refuse to believe that somehow the interrupts of your network card and your mouse clash. But this is easy to test. What happens when you unload the module of your network card? Still slow?

TaKYoN wrote:

It is hard to tell but I believe the console or whatever does not seem as badly affected.

Again a hint of a strange network/card configuration.

TaKYoN wrote:

I am lost, altho I was to begin with LOL

Me too.

TaKYoN wrote:

TaKYoN, still in need of help, now back on XP for the time being as it is way faster than linux currently LMFAO Never thought I would say that after the good shit I heard about Linux.

*sigh*

TaKYoN wrote:

P.S. what are the chances of a different "flavour" of Linux working better? I do not know any other versions that are suitable for me so that is why I ask.

Always worth a try. You tried Mandrake? Perhaps RedHat. But if there is somewhere a hidden hardware problem...... I must say, I am currently out of ideas.

spudthedestroyer · **Posted:** Tue Feb 10, 2004 6:27 pm **Post subject:**

Quote:

I just ran Knoppix and it was great, it could not read my NTFS partitions, but I assume that is cos they are NTFS.

Just noticed this, Knoppix could read my NTFS drives fine, it just couldn't write jack to them

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