Extremely laggy system - unexplained high CPU load

This forum is dedicated to advanced help and support :

Ask here your questions about advanced usage of Mageia. For example you may post here all your questions about network and automated installs, complex server configurations, kernel tuning, creating your own Mageia mirrors, and all tasks likely to be touchy even for skilled users.

Extremely laggy system - unexplained high CPU load

Postby ca-on-adam » Sep 27th, '17, 08:06

Hello,

I just tried twice to install Mageia 6 32-bit (Netinstall) on an Acer Travelmate 4000. Both times, there was nothing wrong during the install, but immediately after reboot the CPU fan on this laptop was running constantly. The system is so laggy that I had trouble typing in my username and password because some keystrokes were being missed.

When I finally got in, I ran top and the CPU load was around 3.20, yet no process in the list was using more than 1% CPU. The laptop only has 512MB of RAM so I did not select any desktop when installing, and set Xorg not to start at boot time.

I first suspected the non-free radeon driver that the Installer configured, so I tried booting with "nomodeset" added to the kernel boot parameters. Still no improvement. I then tried "nomodeset" plus "radeon.runpm=0" based on a quick Internet search of how to disable the radeon driver. It made no difference.

I tried re-installing, except this time I manually chose "Xorg-->vesa" as the driver. But upon reboot, the system was still extremely laggy. I tried booting to recovery mode, where the only processes were sh, systemd-journal and systemd-udevd. Based on that and the continued high cpu-load, I feel that there is some kernel module that is causing this behaviour.

Is there anything I can do to diagnose the problem? The high load doesn't occur on whatever configuration the kernel has in the Installer. It only happens in the installed system.
ca-on-adam
 
Posts: 57
Joined: Aug 31st, '11, 13:33

Re: Extremely laggy system - unexplained high CPU load

Postby morgano » Apr 4th, '18, 22:35

Sorry no one answered yet...
Did you solve this, how?
If not, tried live version?
Mandriva since 2006, Mageia 2011 at home & work. Thinkpad T40, T43, T400, T510, Dell M4400, M6300, Acer Aspire 7. Workstation using LVM, LUKS, VirtualBox, BOINC
morgano
 
Posts: 1306
Joined: Jun 15th, '11, 17:51
Location: Kivik, Sweden

Re: Extremely laggy system - unexplained high CPU load

Postby JoesCat » Jun 27th, '18, 21:50

The symptoms you describe, I suspect you are heavily using the harddrive /swap partition a lot because you simply do not have sufficient RAM to work with.

Check the disk-drive light to see if it's seldom running or running almost continuously.
I suspect you will see the harddrive is running the swap partition a lot (you should see the light on most of the time).

I think you may see it challenging to run Mageia in command line mode with just 512mb, plus you mention trying some graphics drivers.
With some computers, particularly laptops, 512mb was a selling feature explaining "lots of memory", but in reality, some of that memory is subtracted for use by the video. The Acer Travelmate 4000 video spec is 1280 x 800 (16), or 16MB for graphics, so you're now looking more like 512-16=496MB of RAM to work with.

See if you can add more memory. I don't think you'll be satisfied with 1G. Aim for 2G or 4G if you can.
If the RAM option isn't available to you, try take a look at the latest Puppy Linux, it might be ok for your needs, but it will fit ok in 512mb.

Hope this helps.

...was looking at some notes....try see if Mageia4 runs ok (works ok in 512mb mini-laptop - did not try mageia5 so don't know).
User avatar
JoesCat
 
Posts: 177
Joined: Sep 15th, '11, 04:27
Location: Richmond, BC, Canada


Return to Advanced support

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest