stephan beal wrote:

On Sunday 20 August 2006 17:41, Jonathan Puthoff wrote:

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My Dell Inspiron lappy (running freshly-installed and updated SUSE 10.1) experiences momentary freezes at seemingly random intervals. Symptoms appear as freezes of 2-4 seconds and possibly a spike in CPU usage. Keystrokes and mouse motions made during the beginning of this period are still reflected after the lock-up terminates. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Perhaps there is a log file somewhere that yield some info? I was running SUSE 10.0 just fine, no problems. . .

Are you running Firefox? My boxes often do this when i load new pages with Firefox, and it annoys the hell out of me.

It must be a Mozilla thingy because I also see this behaviour in Thunderbird. Sandy -- List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com

Jonathan Puthoff wrote:

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My Dell Inspiron lappy (running freshly-installed and updated SUSE 10.1) experiences momentary freezes at seemingly random intervals. Symptoms appear as freezes of 2-4 seconds and possibly a spike in CPU> usage. Keystrokes and mouse motions made during the beginning of this period are still reflected after the lock-up terminates. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Perhaps there is a log file somewhere that yield some info? I was running SUSE 10.0 just fine, no problems. . . Are you running Firefox? My boxes often do this when i load new pages with Firefox, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Yes. Yes, I am. Constantly, too come to think of it. There is some strong correlation here.

I still don't get it, though. Maybe I will try Konquerer for a while and see if a difference makes itself apparent.

Thanks everyone!

I have been running Firefox and Thunderbird since they first appeared (way back!) on every version of SuSE since that time and I have never experienced this "freezing". I am currently running Firefox 3.0a1 and Thunderbird 2a1, both dated 20/08/06, without a single hiccup. So the answer to your problem(s) is not Firefox or Thunderbird. However, I have to add this: I have never run FF or TB which come as part of the SuSE installation- I always install FF and TB from the Mozilla site itself (the nightly builds, to be specific). Cheers. -- This computer is environment-friendly and is running on OpenSuSE 10.1

Jim Sabatke wrote:

Basil Chupin wrote:

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Jonathan Puthoff wrote:

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My Dell Inspiron lappy (running freshly-installed and updated SUSE 10.1) experiences momentary freezes at seemingly random intervals. Symptoms appear as freezes of 2-4 seconds and possibly a spike in CPU> usage. Keystrokes and mouse motions made during the beginning of this period are still reflected after the lock-up terminates. Has anyone else experienced this problem? Perhaps there is a log file somewhere that yield some info? I was running SUSE 10.0 just fine, no problems. . . Are you running Firefox? My boxes often do this when i load new pages with Firefox, and it annoys the hell out of me.

Yes. Yes, I am. Constantly, too come to think of it. There is some strong correlation here.

I still don't get it, though. Maybe I will try Konquerer for a while and see if a difference makes itself apparent.

Thanks everyone!

I have been running Firefox and Thunderbird since they first appeared (way back!) on every version of SuSE since that time and I have never experienced this "freezing".

I am currently running Firefox 3.0a1 and Thunderbird 2a1, both dated 20/08/06, without a single hiccup.

So the answer to your problem(s) is not Firefox or Thunderbird.

However, I have to add this: I have never run FF or TB which come as part of the SuSE installation- I always install FF and TB from the Mozilla site itself (the nightly builds, to be specific).

Cheers.

Still could be Firefox or Thunderbird. Slashdot has reported numerous times on the memory leaks that the Mozilla folks admit to. I have learned to recognize the symptoms of impending thrashing and kill both programs. If I don't, it can take (quite literally) hours to bring one of them to the front and kill them without resorting to the ctrl-alt-esc solution. If I'm running basically just those two programs, there seems to be a point at about 280MB of swap memory where the response curve goes bad seemingly exponentially.

I know many of you don't have this problem, but it does occur and is probably explained by different web sites or media types used.

Well, I am not sure if Mozilla folk actually admit to having or causing the problem but I have just gone "fishing" in the Mozilla Forums and my reading of things is that the main cause of "freezing" or slowing down is Javascript used on websites. The Javacript cause massive memory usage leaving little for anything else, and if you have only a small amount of RAM then..... :-( . Also, it seems that using Google Toolbar causes a problem (there is something in it that needs switching off, or something :-) ). Re the problem caused by Javascript it appears that many commercial sites use 3rd party provided Javascripted inserts which are not necessary for the proper functioning of the website. There is an extension available for FF called NoScript which allows "you", the user, to configure FF to either accept such script(s) or not. This is also an additional security layer for FF. The extension can be obtained at: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/722/ (And there is also a browser which incorporates this extension into the browser itself and this browser can be obtained at: http://www.noscript.net/whats ) This is my interpretation of what is stated in the bits of the forum I read so it would be up to "you" to check out my conclusions by reading the complaints and the responses to them in the forum(s). Go to http://forums.mozillazine.org and do a search for "memory leak" in the Forums and/or the Knowledgebase (righthand side of screen). If anyone wants to read about memory leakages and how to avoid this, and about why Firefox may be prone to hanging then here are the URLs to check out: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_Firefox and http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_hangs Cheers. --

On Sunday 20 August 2006 23:38, Basil Chupin wrote:

I have been running Firefox and Thunderbird since they first appeared (way back!) on every version of SuSE since that time and I have never experienced this "freezing".

I have been ignoring this thread because I didn't think I had the problem, but yes I have. The problem (IMO) is due to DNS lookups that may not be working or that have long delays. This is with Firefox which I am using but would probably also happen with Moz or Thunderbird. Doesn't happen for me very often but it is almost always a DNS lookup delay.

Basil Chupin wrote:

Bruce Marshall wrote:

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On Sunday 20 August 2006 23:38, Basil Chupin wrote:

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I have been running Firefox and Thunderbird since they first appeared (way back!) on every version of SuSE since that time and I have never experienced this "freezing".

I have been ignoring this thread because I didn't think I had the problem, but yes I have.

The problem (IMO) is due to DNS lookups that may not be working or that have long delays. This is with Firefox which I am using but would probably also happen with Moz or Thunderbird.

Doesn't happen for me very often but it is almost always a DNS lookup delay.

The first thing to try in such, or similar, cases is to zap the FF cache. When it recreates itself this more often than not fixes such hassles.

Well, further to what I stated here and what others have stated, I now have also suddenly started to experience brief "freezings" :-( . But I also noticed that these occur when smart is trying to update the channels - unsuccessfully at this time 'cause the SUSE server(s) is/are down. (For what it's worth: I was watching a DVD and for the first time ever the picture would "freeze" momentarily. Again, this was occurring while smart was trying to update the channels.) Cheers. -- This computer is environment-friendly and is running on OpenSuSE 10.1

Nick Zentena wrote:

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 10:29, Basil Chupin wrote:

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But I also noticed that these occur when smart is trying to update the channels - unsuccessfully at this time 'cause the SUSE server(s) is/are down.

(For what it's worth: I was watching a DVD and for the first time ever the picture would "freeze" momentarily. Again, this was occurring while smart was trying to update the channels.)

Check the DMA settings.

No, the DMA settings are correct :-) . There is a long thread in this forum where I had the hassle I was having with DMA not being set in 10.1 discussed- and finally resolved (by putting thru a fix in /etc/sysconfig/ide) so the DMA is not the cause :-) . Of course the "freezing" of the DVD could have been caused by the DVD itself. I notice that xine, which is what I use to view DVDs, is rather sensitive to surface imperfections of DVDs and often just stops playing the DVD (at some most dramatic moment :-) ) and gives an error message. Also, there have been rare times when it just will not play a DVD at all. Have one right now (which I have to return to the rental place later today) called "Maximum Overdrive" with Emilio Esteves; starts, goes for about 20 seconds and then xine just exits. Cheers. -- This computer is environment-friendly and is running on OpenSuSE 10.1

stephan beal wrote:

On Tuesday 22 August 2006 16:42, Nick Zentena wrote:

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On Tuesday 22 August 2006 10:29, Basil Chupin wrote:

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But I also noticed that these occur when smart is trying to update the channels - unsuccessfully at this time 'cause the SUSE server(s) is/are down.

(For what it's worth: I was watching a DVD and for the first time ever the picture would "freeze" momentarily. Again, this was occurring while smart was trying to update the channels.) Check the DMA settings.

You can work around this by starting your smart tools with a higher 'nice' setting. e.g.:

nice -+19 smart ...

That will run it at a lower priority and your videos are less likely to skip. i use this all the time when copying using scp, because scp takes up so much CPU and causes videos to pause/skip.

Ouch, Stephen, sorry about not replying to you earlier (I had overlooked your message unitl now). Many thanks for this suggestion. I can assume that this will also "increase" any access another computer has to the DSL so that it has more of the broadband allocated to it for, say, browsing while smart is in action? Cheers. -- This computer is environment-friendly and is running on OpenSuSE 10.1

On Tuesday 29 August 2006 07:27, Basil Chupin wrote:

Many thanks for this suggestion. I can assume that this will also "increase" any access another computer has to the DSL so that it has more of the broadband allocated to it for, say, browsing while smart is in action?

For network resources, you could have a look at "tc" and friends. It can let you allocate bandwidth based on almost any criteria. It's not terribly easy to understand when you look at it the first time, but it gives you a very high level of control over your network cards There are some gui tools, for example http://freshmeat.net/projects/ktctool/ but I've never looked at them, so I don't know how good they are. Might be worth a glance though

Jonathan Puthoff wrote:

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SUSE 10.1) Symptoms> appear as freezes of 2-4 seconds and possibly a spike in CPU this> period are still reflected after the lock-up terminates. Has anyone else . . I would check the following:

zmd/rug

beagle

cron job like updatedb/find

So sorry, could you please be more specific? Are you saying that the periodic refreshing of zmd services might cause this? How can this be stopped?

Yes. Every time zmd "wakes up", it is likely to throttle your machine. Solution is to remove zmd and use something sane like fou4s, apt, or smart.

Also, I sorta had the notion that Beagle might cause it, so I have deactivated it where possible. Perhaps it is still running in some global sense I am not aware of?

Run `ps ax | grep beagle` Also, it has a cron job that runs. When I first installed 10.1, it spent an hour grinding my laptop's hard drive before I finally killed and uninstalled it. I recommend removing it entirely, just to make sure it's all gone.