SOLVED -- Programs opening at a snail's pace - a sluggish snail

[Maurice]

Over the past two weeks my system has become very sluggish in the opening of programs. Bootup hasn't changed much but takes 90 secs.

Firefox and Thunderbird - 20 secs each
Synaptic - 35 secs
Open Office - 70 secs
The Gimp - 4 minutes
These are the worst - other programs open OK.

Once the programs are open they act fast enough.

I have emptied all the caches, deleted as much stuff as I thought might cause the slowdown and emptied out /tmp as suggested by Texstar in a recent thread (but keeping the files he recommended). Even used Sweeper and gconfcleaner a  few times. But with no result.

I have two other Minime versions on other partitions but the same programs on those open within seconds.

I've searched the forums and Google but most of the suggestions there are for Windows, even though I specify '+Linux'.

Considering my 'Configure your Computer' won't open (mentioned in a nearby thread) I wonder if I should do a fresh install, thus hopefully solving both problems?

Any ideas please?

[wyohman]

As root:

# hdparm -t /dev/sda
Assuming that's the name of your hard drive

I would also recommend Gsmartcontrol

Cheers.

[Maurice]

As root:

# hdparm -t /dev/sda
Assuming that's the name of your hard drive

I would also recommend Gsmartcontrol

Cheers.

Thanks for a fast reply wyohman. It returned ...

[root@localhost maurice]# hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  250 MB in  3.03 seconds =  82.64 MB/sec
[root@localhost maurice]#


Is that telling me something?

Gsmartcontrol returned Command not found

[wyohman]

Thanks for a fast reply wyohman. It returned ...

[root@localhost maurice]# hdparm -t /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  250 MB in  3.03 seconds =  82.64 MB/sec
[root@localhost maurice]#


Is that telling me something?

Yes. It looks like your hard drive speed is good.

Gsmartcontrol returned Command not found

You'll to install it with Synaptic. Then it will be in the System -> Monitoring menu.

This is the interface to the SMART diags built into the drive. Start with the short test.

Cheers.

[Maurice]

You'll to install it with Synaptic. Then it will be in the System -> Monitoring menu.

This is the interface to the SMART diags built into the drive. Start with the short test.

Cheers.

When I installed with Synaptic I got  -
Warning: syslog is needed in smartd... for all runlevels.

Gsmart gave - Overall health self-assessment test - Passed

Running it in console I got

[root@localhost maurice]# gsmartcontrol
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib:  extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on display ":0.0".
<error> [gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
<error> [gtk] Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",

which is the same reply I got when trying to get into 'Configure your Computer' in my other thread.

[dj_bridges]

maurice - you aren't alone with this problem. Everything on my system was running fine, but now things take an age to open. Not sure if I have exactly the same problem as you, but get similar results to you from wyohman suggestions.

Hoping that the new PCLOS release will sort it out.

[Texstar]

delete .config .cache .local log out and back in again and see if that helps or not.

[Maurice]

Wow. It's solved - and how

I just read a very recent thread Firefox & Thunderbird slow to load by Riki.
www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,68197.0.html
There are a few suggestions there but I used the one from daveleh ...

Quote from: Riki on February 07, 2010, 08:41:28 PM
I am on KDE4.3.4 and both FF and TB take between 50 seconds and 1 minute to load. Is this sort of average loading time? I find it far too long.

"I was getting similar with FFox and OOo and I found this suggested in another thread (cant find it at the mo, but noted the instructions down)

Open synaptic package manager and search for package gtk-qt-engine, kde4-style-qtcurve, qtcurve-gtk2.
Mark them for installation (oxygen-molecule will be removed with it)
Reboot
Open KMenu > System > Configuration > Configure Your Desktop
Find and Click Look and Feel > Appearance > Gtk Themes and Fonts
in GTK Styles choose Use another style and pick QtCurve
in GTK Fonts choose Use KDE fonts in my GTK applications
Click Install scrollbar fix below
Click apply
Reboot or restart X server.

This worked for me - all apps open fast as expected"


daveleh

And it worked for me too.

Initial start 5-6 secs. Subsequent starts 1-2 secs . Synaptic too is similar. The Gimp is still slow but acceptable.

Thanks wyohman and texstar - didn't realise there was a hidden cache and log so I'll delete those too.

Hope this helps you as well dj_bridges.

This post deserves a few colours but they're not working.

Once again I hit the jackpot with the forums.

[dj_bridges]

Wow - just removing the oxygen-molecule package returned the system to its usual snappy self!

Phew - had just downloaded Kubuntu to try as it was driving me nuts!!! Will consider myself reprimanded for even thinking such a thing.......

Thanks for all the help everyone