Why would iowait keep pegging the cpu?

Post #272,814 by drewk 11/9/06 10:46:32 PM Reply	Why would iowait keep pegging the cpu? Ever since I installed Ubuntu on this old, low-spec box, booting has taken a long time. Like 8-10 minutes. I haven't cared, because I can hit the button and walk away. Then starting X takes another several minutes (~3-5) before it becomes responsive. And several apps (notably Firefox and Open Office) take several minutes to launch. I've noticed that when X and the few slow apps are launching, the CPU is pinned at 100% in multimon. And it's almost entirely iowait doing it. Now that I've started noticing, that's also what's causing some web pages to load slowly, typically when they've got flash on them. So, why would the cpu show 100% iowait for two minutes or more with no disk activity every time I try to launch a couple apps? And is there something I can change to correct it? === Kip Hawley is still an idiot. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #272,817 by folkert 11/9/06 10:58:42 PM Reply	Have you updated? There were some early bugs in Dapper relating to memory usage problems... which appeared to be IO problems, mainly because it was trying to cache the whole hard drive and then some into memory and was also trying to not swap out to kep it fast... So, the question it, are you running Dapper, Edgy or Fiesty? If Dapper, is it up-to-date? If Edgy... I dunno. If Fiesty... you are on you own. One question, do you have hdparm installed? And Tweaked for the drives? For you info, I am running Dapper on my laptop it is an 800MHz, 512MB RAM, ATA66 Hard Drive @ 5400RPM. -- [link\|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net\|greg], [link\|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry\|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ *i_wethey* Freedom is not FREE. Yeah, but 10s of Trillions of US Dollars? SELECT * FROM scog WHERE ethics > 0; 0 rows returned.
Post #272,828 by drewk 11/9/06 11:56:19 PM Reply	Dapper hdparm is installed, but I don't know hoe to determine the proper settings for the drives. I checked the links Scott posted, and it showed some people are having problems with certain kernel versions. How easy is a kernel upgrade in Ubuntu? === Kip Hawley is still an idiot. === Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link\|http://DocHope.com\|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats]. [link\|http://DocHope.com\|http://DocHope.com]
Post #272,821 by Another Scott 11/9/06 11:03:12 PM Reply	Does this help? Man, that's slow. :-( [link\|http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=180093\|Ubuntu Forums]. It may be a kernel+driver version issue if it's similar to [link\|http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/2005-February/045073.html\|this] Centos thread. HTH a bit. Cheers, Scott.
Post #272,913 by a6l6e6x 11/10/06 10:50:34 PM Reply	Sounds like you have a device driver written by a novice. Someone who does not know interrupts are your friend. Alex When fascism comes to America, it'll be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. -- Sinclair Lewis

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