Ubuntu 8.04 - heavy load on ram + CPU ???

[poiiop]

Hi

Installed a clean 8.04 on a 3Ghz, 2GB PC but the system is not running smoothly.

Have installed the following:
Proftpd ftp program
VMware Server
Citrix Client
Azureus incl. JAVA
SAMBA server
Visual effect is on normal
and ... I have open for 3.party software

When I start the PC, the ram used is almost immediately above 1GB - and I have not startet anything except SAMBA and Proftpd. Right now Azureus and firefox is the only programs started, and the free -m show this after a while:

total__used___free___shared___buffers__cached
2025___1967___57_____0________98_______1388

A top show this:

top - 11:25:39 up 1:11, 3 users, load average: 0.28, 0.43, 0.52
Tasks: 123 total, 2 running, 121 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 45.0%us, 4.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 50.0%id, 0.7%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.3%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 2074228k total, 2016820k used, 57408k free, 115900k buffers
Swap: 6072528k total, 0k used, 6072528k free, 1405296k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5203 root 20 0 283m 64m 9116 S 19.6 3.2 4:28.89 Xorg
5864 axl 20 0 206m 78m 26m S 18.6 3.9 2:47.79 firefox
5783 axl 20 0 1238m 88m 23m S 8.7 4.4 3:41.58 java
5716 axl 20 0 24324 16m 6868 S 1.3 0.8 0:21.68 compiz.real
6119 axl 20 0 66276 19m 10m R 0.7 0.9 0:03.36 gnome-terminal
1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.26 init
2 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd
3 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/0
4 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.04 ksoftirqd/0
5 root RT -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0
6 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.08 events/0
7 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
42 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.26 kblockd/0
45 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid
46 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify
112 root 15 -5 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kseriod
146 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 pdflush
147 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.16 pdflush


All to often the CPU goes near 100% and my CPU fan is speeding up to max RPM. The CPU usage is Xorg, Gnome-system-mo, Firefox etc.

Is is wrong to turn on the 3. party software ?? Any hints to reduce the heavy load ??

[ibuclaw]

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
5203 root 20 0 283m 64m 9116 S 19.6 3.2 4:28.89 Xorg
5864 axl 20 0 206m 78m 26m S 18.6 3.9 2:47.79 firefox
5783 axl 20 0 1238m 88m 23m S 8.7 4.4 3:41.58 java
5716 axl 20 0 24324 16m 6868 S 1.3 0.8 0:21.68 compiz.real
6119 axl 20 0 66276 19m 10m R 0.7 0.9 0:03.36 gnome-terminal
1 root 20 0 2844 1688 544 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.26


Looks like it is almost certainly azureus that is giving the most burden on the system.

How to tweak it, I'm not too sure.

But you'll have to keep disk I/O to a minimum, and maybe try setting your swappiness to a low value.

Regards
Iain

[mcduck]

First, based on the free -m output your are using 1967MB of memory, out of which 98MB is buffers and 1388MB is cached data. So your system and programs are actually using only 481MB of memory.

Linux/Unix uses all available RAM. The part that is not needed by system or running programs is used as disc cache to give more performance. RAM should be used, you don't get any benefits from having unused memory. If some program needs more memory some cached data is just dropped to free more RAM.

When you use the "free -m" to check the memory usage you should read the "+/- buffers & cache"-line. That's what's telling you how much RAM your system and programs are really using.

What comes to CPU use, Firefox can use a lot of CPU power if you are surfing on web sites that use Flash. That's normal, its just the way Flash is. Java is another CPU hog, that's why I'd recommend avoiding Azureus and other Java apps as long as there is better alternatives around.

Running any virtual machines _will_ definitely take a lot of memory and CPU power. So if you start WMware Server you should expect hight memory & CPU usage.

Now, whay do you mean by tunrning on 3rd party software? Enabling the 3rd party software repository? Only thing that does is that it allows you to install 3rd party software from the repositories if you want. The actual change enabling that is just adding a line or two of text in a text file that describes internet adresses where the package manager can install software. Enabling it makes no difference performance-wise. What you install from there is a different case, of course.

Based on the software you are using I don't see anything special in your CPU & memory usage.

edit: fixed a nasty (although quite amusing) little typo..

[philinux]

If you try Deluge instead of Azureus you'll notice that it's much lighter on resources.

[squee]

Or use Transmission. It really good and very light in comparison to Azureus.

[poiiop]

Thx for all your answers.

I wasn't aware of the free ram cached part - thx mcduck - that explains alot. And yes, it was the 3.part repository I was referring to.

I will skip my JAVA for now ..

[hyper_ch]

if you want a light yet powerful torrent client use rtorrent in conjunction with screen