8.10 is dead slow

[Master Chief]

We have a large number of Ubuntu installations, like over 7000 world wide, and Ubuntu 8.10 apparently has some serious performance problems; because our users are complaining, one after the other, about being stuck with dead slow PC's! And this started right after the upgrade from 8.04.1 to 8.10 so what the heck is going on?

I personally used iTunes (VirtualBox latest version/Windows XP) but now I can't even play music properly anymore! I already re-installed VirtualBox and iTunes, but that didn't help.

Can someone please inform me what to do, who to contact for this, before someone here tells me to dump/forget Ubuntu?

Note: It seems to be limited to all amd64 (all Quad Core Intel CPU's) installations only ?!?

[mikewhatever]

There is indeed some evidence that 8.10 is slower then it's predecessors, although my own experience is quite the contrary.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_bench_2008&num=1

What can you do:
1. Test before upgrading a large installation base.
2. Go back to 8.04 or whatever works for you.
3. Provide more info on the problem.
4. Contact the payed support by Canonical.

[Master Chief]

What can you do:
1. Test before upgrading a large installation base.
2. Go back to 8.04 or whatever works for you.
3. Provide more info on the problem.
4. Contact the payed support by Canonical.

1: We did test 8.10, but the 32 bit edition only. Not testing the amd64 edition has never been a problem for us. At least up until now.

2: Going back to 8.04 is not a real solution, and I am sure that there are more people running into this problem, waiting for a real solution because it should work without too much trouble. Also, neither the Ubuntu community nor Canonical is helped by going back to a previous version.

3: What kind of information do you want? I mean there isn't much to tell, other than that everything is really slow.

4: I rather solve my personal installation first, and that should shed some light on what the problem is.

Thanks

[night_fox]

Are you using pulseaudio by any chance? When you play music sometimes does it use an entire cpu?

[mikewhatever]

1: We did test 8.10, but the 32 bit edition only. Not testing the amd64 edition has never been a problem for us. At least up until now.

Is it safe to assume then, that all 32 bit installations are not slow?


2: Going back to 8.04 is not a real solution, and I am sure that there are more people running into this problem, waiting for a real solution because it should work without too much trouble. Also, neither the Ubuntu community nor Canonical is helped by going back to a previous version.

I disagree. Hardy Heron is a solid LST release, there is nothing wrong with using it. I also don't see in what way you help Canonical by using only the latest version as opposed to the previous one.


3: What kind of information do you want? I mean there isn't much to tell, other than that everything is really slow.

Outputs of <ps -aux> command from the slow systems is probably the way to start.


4: I rather solve my personal installation first, and that should shed some light on what the problem is.


Hopefully there is only one problem for all slow machines.

[Master Chief]

Is it safe to assume then, that all 32 bit installations are not slow?

Correct.


I disagree. Hardy Heron is a solid LST release, there is nothing wrong with using it. I also don't see in what way you help Canonical by using only the latest version as opposed to the previous one.

Sure, there is nothing wrong in using it, and so we did without any problems whatsoever. The point is that I want this problem solved, without going back to a previous version.


Outputs of <ps -aux> command from the slow systems is probably the way to start.

I think I found/isolated the problem. It seems that VirtualBox (v2.1.0) which starts at startup (with Windows XP/SP3, fully patched) is eating/max out (aka 100% CPU usage) one core (out of four) and that appears to be the problem (our users are using VirtualBox for a Windows only input device).


Hopefully there is only one problem for all slow machines.

I'm sure there is a simple solution, waiting to solve this mystery because it is Christmas so I really don't want to fix computer problems for work, but whatever.

Thanks for helping me!

[Master Chief]

Are you using pulseaudio by any chance? When you play music sometimes does it use an entire cpu?

I personally am yes, but I am unaware of any problems related to this. Can you please shed some light on the matter?

Thanks!

p.s. Merry Christmas for everyone here!

Correction: I am NOT using pulse audio driver, but the alsa audio driver (which appears to be the problem for my choppy audio)

[Master Chief]

I like to add that we located the problem, which turned out to be unrelated to Ubuntu since our distribution server, used to distribute Ubuntu 8.10 AMD64 to our clients, was having some memory failures (replacing the RAM modules and starting a new round of our Ubuntu distro works like a charm now).

FYI: These Ubuntu clients are used to measure oxygen/pollution levels in all major European cities.

[mikewhatever]

Cool. Glad it worked out.:D