Hi there, I've recently installed SuSE 7.3 on my laptop. Generally everything is OK, but what annoys me is when the Cron jobs get going. Every night I have user "nobody" doing "find" to update the locate databases. When this happens the performance on my computer is dreadful. In KDE, when you try to do anything it is extremely slow. This also happens when, say, moving very large files or compling a kernel (but in that case the job is in the foreground). I would have thought this kind of thing could have happened happily in the background without me knowing about it? I was wondering if any one else had this problem, or whether it was something peculiar to my computer, and whether thare was anything simple to tweak that could fix this. Also when installing on my laptop (Sony FX101), when using CD1 the install would fail at the hardware probe. I used to use CD2 to boot up then, and then carry on with yast on CD1 (I have no floppy drive to add kernel modules). After install everything would be ok. Alternatively, if I used CD2, (plus yast2 on CD1 later), everything would be ok until reboot when it would stall at "SuSE PCMCIA services..." (or something similar) . To solve this, in SuSe 7.3, all I had to do was use manual install and then delete the "pcmcia" package when it came to package selection. For some reason, yast did not include this in the default selection, but using yast2 it was included using the same "default" selection. Doing it this way, at least your computer will reboot after install even if your PCMCIA is useless initially. (I'm sure you could tweak it after - I don't have any PCMCIA cards so I' not going to try!) Cheers Chris
I've recently installed SuSE 7.3 on my laptop. Generally everything is OK, but what annoys me is when the Cron jobs get going. Every night I have user "nobody" doing "find" to update the locate databases. When this happens the performance on my computer is dreadful. In KDE, when you try to do anything it is extremely slow. This also happens when, say, moving very large files or compling a kernel (but in that case the job is in the foreground). I would have thought this kind of thing could have happened happily in the background without me knowing about it?
I was wondering if any one else had this problem, or whether it was something peculiar to my computer, and whether thare was anything simple to tweak that could fix this.
Laptop hard disks are painfully slow. They generally spin at 4200rpm, compared to 10,000rpm or more for a modern desktop based drive. Your options are basically to clear as much clutter off the drive as possible so as to reduce the time the "big find" takes, and maybe to switch the find off altogether if you don't need it (or trust yourself to run it manually at convenient times). Also, you should make sure that DMA access to the drive is enabled if supported - that can make a huge difference. What does "hdparm -t /dev/hda" tell you?
Hello: I have bought an Airis 4482 TFT 14,1" laptop PC with the SIS 630 chipset few days ago. The installation process works fine until the point where I have to configure the x server. At this point choosing the default monitor and VGA card the screen turns black and there is no way back to the installation guide. Trying with a lot of different configurations changing monitor and resolutions, none of them have been successful. I have tried all of them and no one works. Finally I have installed Suse 7.1 without the x server so now is working only in text mode. Looking for others solutions I have run sax and sax2 in order to configure the x server from text mode but both of them have crashed. I really need a help, please! Thank you for your attention.
On Mon, 17 Dec 2001 19:36, Raúl Malpica wrote:
Hello:
I have bought an Airis 4482 TFT 14,1" laptop PC with the SIS 630 chipset few days ago. The installation process works fine until the point where I have to configure the x server.
Looking for others solutions I have run sax and sax2 in order to configure the x server from text mode but both of them have crashed.
I really need a help, please!
Thank you for your attention.
Hi Raúl, I think the only way to get that chip to work with LCD displays is via the frame buffer. Please refer to the following article. "Configure an unsupported graphic card using the framebuffer device" http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/wessels_easy_fbdev.html Regards, Graham Smith ----------------------------------------
I've recently installed SuSE 7.3 on my laptop. Generally everything is OK, but what annoys me is when the Cron jobs get going. Every night I have user "nobody" doing "find" to update the locate databases. When this happens
performance on my computer is dreadful. In KDE, when you try to do anything it is extremely slow. This also happens when, say, moving very large files or compling a kernel (but in that case the job is in the foreground). I would have thought this kind of thing could have happened happily in the background without me knowing about it?
I was wondering if any one else had this problem, or whether it was something peculiar to my computer, and whether thare was anything simple to tweak that could fix this.
Laptop hard disks are painfully slow. They generally spin at 4200rpm, compared to 10,000rpm or more for a modern desktop based drive. Your
the options
are basically to clear as much clutter off the drive as possible so as to reduce the time the "big find" takes, and maybe to switch the find off altogether if you don't need it (or trust yourself to run it manually at convenient times).
Also, you should make sure that DMA access to the drive is enabled if supported - that can make a huge difference. What does "hdparm -t /dev/hda" tell you?
This is the output from "hdparm -Tt /dev/hda" (kernel 2.4.10-4GB, physical RAM 64MB, swap size 128MB, CPU intel celeron 600 MHz) : /dev/hda: Timing buffer cache reads: 128 MB in 1.03s = 124.27 MB/s Timing buffered disk reads: 64MB in 3.65s = 17.53 MB/s With a custom 2.4.16 kernel, the values are slightly better:- Timing buffer cache reads: 128 MB in 1.02s = 125.49 MB/s Timing buffered disk reads: 64MB in 3.47s = 18.60 MB/s Any opinions would be appreciated. Thanks, Chris
This is the output from "hdparm -Tt /dev/hda" (kernel 2.4.10-4GB, physical RAM 64MB, swap size 128MB, CPU intel celeron 600 MHz) :
/dev/hda:
Timing buffer cache reads: 128 MB in 1.03s = 124.27 MB/s Timing buffered disk reads: 64MB in 3.65s = 17.53 MB/s
With a custom 2.4.16 kernel, the values are slightly better:-
Timing buffer cache reads: 128 MB in 1.02s = 125.49 MB/s Timing buffered disk reads: 64MB in 3.47s = 18.60 MB/s
Any opinions would be appreciated.
18MB/s is a damn sight better than I get from my Dell Inspiron 5000. I get around 12MB/s from the 18GB IBM drive my machine has. Conclusion: there's nothing much wrong with your disk setup. Your RAM looks tight (I have 512MB in my laptop and it sings along!) so if KDE et al is forcing swapping when the locate database is rebuilding that might explain your poor performance. Other than that, I'd suggest you are just expecting a bit too much from laptop hardware, which, by definition, has very limited internal bandwidth,
participants (4)
-
Chris O'Toole -
Derek Fountain -
Graham Smith -
Raúl Malpica