🚀 go-pugleaf

s9511307@yallara.cs.rmit.EDU.AU (Ozgur Aksu ) writes:

>	Firstly the question...
>While I'm compiling a program I run the command "uptime" which gives
>me values like
>	(Ozgur: ~)uptime
>	 12:29am  up  1:02,  3 users,  load average: 2.09, 0.52, 0.17
>	(Ozgur: ~)
>Well, when the load average is about 3.0 the system becomes pretty slow...
>The mouse waits for a while before moving, keyboard entries take time to
>process, etc. (Basically, it slows down to a point where I am ready to go
>for a coffee)
[...]
>I have..
>	486-DX50
>	1.2G Hd	- 484 Mb Linux - 16 Mb Swap - 700 Mb Dos/Windows
>	8 Mb RAM
>	16 Mb Swap Space
>	1 Mb WD90C33 VL-Bus Card
>(I don't know what other information to give!!!)

I assume you're running X?  If so, it's probably due to excessive swapping
to disk.  X chews up a fair amount of RAM (and some X programs even more),
as does gcc when it gets going.  On my old 386 with 8Meg, I saw similar
effects.  Basically what's happening is that the compile process is
squeezing the memory of other processes out to disk, so that whenever you
try to do something else, that memory has to be swapped back in, which takes
a non-trivial amount of time - hence the slow response time.

>If this is a problem or if there is any way I can improve this, I would 
>really appreciate some help...

The cheapest/easiest thing to do is to try to cut down the amount of memory
being used for other processes, so programs you want to use won't be swapped
out so aggressively.  You can get stats on how much memory you have free and
how much is swapped out using the "free" command.  Stats for individual
processes can be obtained using the "ps" command ("ps -aux" is probably a
good start) - look for the processes which are consuming the largest portion
of your memory and see if you can do without them.

For a more effective solution to your problem, you can't go past more RAM.
With more RAM, more (or larger) programs can fit in memory simultaneously,
and fewer will need to swap to disk, drastically reducing the response time
problem.  You just have to decide whether it's worth the price - I'd suggest
talking to other people who have had the same problem and upgraded their
RAM, and find out what their experiences were.

				Warwick

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warwick Harvey                                    email: warwick@cs.mu.OZ.AU
Department of Computer Science                        phone: +61-3-9287-9171
University of Melbourne                                 fax: +61-3-9348-1184
Parkville, Victoria, AUSTRALIA 3052     web: http://www.cs.mu.OZ.AU/~warwick