bilijoe
December 18th, 2008, 08:05 AM
I am running 8.04 (I thought I was running 8.04.1, but System Monitor tells me I'm running 8.04), on a DELL Optiplex GX270 with a 2.8GHz Hyperthreading Pentium 4, 4Gb RAM installed (using 3.5 as the P4 is only 32 bit), and plenty of free disk space (over 200Gb).
For the last couple of months I have been experiencing progressively slower and slower response to just about everything. This is not dramatic. If I had never known this machine to run faster, I wouldn't even think there was a problem (based on the speed alone).
Recently, I have been experiencing system freezes (yup, you heard me, a Linux system, frozen hard as a rock--I didn't believe it either, and waited over an hour for the system to sort itself out and continue, but no luck). This happens most often when I have one or more Browser windows open (I use FireFox 3.0.5, installed from the Mozilla site), with multiple tabs in at least one window. It has also happened when FireFox is not running; once when OpenOffice was running, and once when Gimp was running. Usually when things freeze up the clock stops, as does the System Monitor Graph group (the little graphs SysMon will put in the panel). Once, I got what appeared to be the same [type of] freeze, but the clock kept running and so did the little graphs.
Is there any kind of troubleshooting, or maintenance, or benchmarking tool that might shed some light on what's happening? Does anyone have any idea what might be happening? Is there a Plug-in manager somewhere in the system that I can use to disable some or all of the plug-in type additions to see if the culprit is in a plug-in?
I've been meaning to update my system to the current version, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I almost always do a full "clean" [re]install when I update versions, though I agree with the sticky in this forum advising against routinely doing so; I guess it's just force of habit from being stuck in the Window$ world for far too long. Given that this system seems to be hanging for no apparent reason, would you gurus out there recommend that I do a full install when I update, or just do an incremental update and see what happens? (I've been meaning to switch tactics there too, but so far have done full installs--like I said, habit.)
Any help, or advice to help me understand/figure out what's going on here would be greatly appreciated.
For the last couple of months I have been experiencing progressively slower and slower response to just about everything. This is not dramatic. If I had never known this machine to run faster, I wouldn't even think there was a problem (based on the speed alone).
Recently, I have been experiencing system freezes (yup, you heard me, a Linux system, frozen hard as a rock--I didn't believe it either, and waited over an hour for the system to sort itself out and continue, but no luck). This happens most often when I have one or more Browser windows open (I use FireFox 3.0.5, installed from the Mozilla site), with multiple tabs in at least one window. It has also happened when FireFox is not running; once when OpenOffice was running, and once when Gimp was running. Usually when things freeze up the clock stops, as does the System Monitor Graph group (the little graphs SysMon will put in the panel). Once, I got what appeared to be the same [type of] freeze, but the clock kept running and so did the little graphs.
Is there any kind of troubleshooting, or maintenance, or benchmarking tool that might shed some light on what's happening? Does anyone have any idea what might be happening? Is there a Plug-in manager somewhere in the system that I can use to disable some or all of the plug-in type additions to see if the culprit is in a plug-in?
I've been meaning to update my system to the current version, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I almost always do a full "clean" [re]install when I update versions, though I agree with the sticky in this forum advising against routinely doing so; I guess it's just force of habit from being stuck in the Window$ world for far too long. Given that this system seems to be hanging for no apparent reason, would you gurus out there recommend that I do a full install when I update, or just do an incremental update and see what happens? (I've been meaning to switch tactics there too, but so far have done full installs--like I said, habit.)
Any help, or advice to help me understand/figure out what's going on here would be greatly appreciated.