Interface lag in Ubuntu 9.10

[Avi Greenbury]

Huw <huw at synapticsilence.net> wrote:
> Hi Avi, thanks for your reply.  I should point out that I'm not a
> very technical user; I use Ubuntu (or Linux in general) simply
> because I prefer it to Windows...which I only keep around for
> gaming. :)

It's been pointed out to me in the past that my posts have a habit of
starting out non-technical-user friendly and descend into acronym hell.
If it's any consolation, I'm not overly technical either, I'm just
rather good at remembering acronyms.

> After my system POSTs, the message "GRUB is loading" or words to that
> effect appears, which I barely saw with previous versions of Ubuntu,
> but now appears for a good few seconds before the menu appears.
> After making my selection in the menu it takes another second before
> disappearing and handing over to Ubuntu.  It's not *that* annoying
> but it adds to startup time and I'd like to fix it if possible.

I've no idea what to do to troubleshoot this, with it likely involving
grub2 and ext4, neither of which I've been anywhere near. Perhaps it's
deserving of a new thread when you've sorted the currently more
pressing problem?

> 
> > Which graphics card have you got, and which driver are you using? Do
> > you have compiz enabled, or any other GUI fanciness?
> 
> I use an nVidia Geforce 7600GT with whatever was the latest nVidia
> driver suggested by the hardware device manager but I'm 95% certain
> the interface lag was occurring before installing the driver.  No
> Compiz or anything like that.  I don't use those anyway.

Does the restricted drivers manager offer any other versions of the
driver? 
Also, search the ubuntu bug tracker[0] for your chipset and/or driver
version.

> 
> > Are X or GDM writing anything interesting to their logs?
> 
> Don't know, I'll have to take a look tonight but I'm not sure I'd be
> able to discern what is interesting anyway. ;)

Each use characters at the beginning of the line:
(EE)	Error
(WW)	Warning
(II)	Information

There are others, denoting why it's done something (default vs.
configured behaviour for example), and they're all detailed at the top
of the files.

From what I remember, you want
/var/log/gdm/:0.log	for gdm
/var/log/xorg.0.log	for X11
If you paste these somewhere like pastebin in full, or c+p the
pertinent lines here if there aren't many[1], we can have a look.

> Sorry if my email looks terrible; I'm using a not very great webmail
> interface while I'm at work.

Looks fine here, but that might be down to me using a great mail
client...

[0] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bugs
[1] I always prefer error lines to be posted in emails rather than
linked to elsewhere, since it keeps the information inside the list
archives. Opinions vary.

--
Avi Greenbury
http://aviswebsite.co.uk ;)
http://aviswebsite.co.uk/asking-questions