From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 16:15:05 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 16:15:05 -0500 Received: from packet.digeo.com ([12.110.80.53]:7659 "EHLO packet.digeo.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sat, 22 Mar 2003 16:15:04 -0500 Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 13:25:51 -0800 From: Andrew Morton To: Maciej Soltysiak Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: 2.5.65 interactivity Message-Id: <20030322132551.75ff8ab8.akpm@digeo.com> In-Reply-To: References: X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.8.9 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i586-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Mar 2003 21:25:51.0996 (UTC) FILETIME=[9D6393C0:01C2F0B9] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Maciej Soltysiak wrote: > > Hello, > > I am experiencing dramatic interactivity degradation when > apt-get upgrade is setting up the packages under X, with X running with > nice 0 (it previously had -10) > > x-terminal-emualtor windows stop getting refreshed, xmms stops playing, > and after a few seconds everything stops responding and gets going after > another few seconds. > First thing we need to work out is whether it is a CPU scheduler thing or if it is a VM/MM/block/fs latency problem. - How much memory do you have? - Are your disks runnning in DMA mode? (run hdparm /dev/hda) - Send `vmstat 1' traces from when the problem is happening. - If you nice up the X server, does that help? - Try setting /proc/sys/vm/swappiness to zero - Try decreasing /proc/sys/vm/dirty_ratio to 15