10.4 minimums

[J]

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 15:53, Ronald B Cadby <RCadby at roncadby.org> wrote:
> "Notably, the /var partition contains a lot of state information
> specific to Ubuntu in addition to its regular contents, like logfiles."
>
> Is that only manageable at install time?

Right, but as I said, if you only have a / (root) partition and a swap
partition, there is no adjusting to do, beyond deleting stuff
elsewhere, And be that as it may, the stuff in /var does nothing to
make your computer run faster... as they say, it holds state files,
caches, spools, logs and stuff like that.  And yes, I supposed if you
run out of space on a /var partition or your hard disk itself, you'll
definitely see a performance and stability problem...

BUT, if you don't know whether or not you have a separate /var
partition, you probably don't.  The default partitioning scheme for
Ubuntu (for a while now) is a / partition and a swap partition.  To
double check this, you can run the 'mount' command and see what's
mounted...

if you see an entry in the output that says /var, then you have a var
partition, otherwise, /var is part of the / partition, thus, if you
fill up your root FS, things won't be able to write to /var and thus,
hilarity ensues.

>> As for swap space, are you using swap?  If you look at the output of
>> the command 'free' ..........
>
>              total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
> Mem:        895484     834964      60520          0      26364     220748
> -/+ buffers/cache:     587852     307632
> Swap:      2620408       4268    2616140

Roughly 2GB swap space there... you're only using about 4 MB, and
that's probably about right for a system that just started or hasn't
been running long (or isn't loaded).

> Looks good at this point....need to check it when I'm 'loaded' with my
> usual operating programs. I mostly do a lot of PHP program editing using
> BlueFish and always have FF open with its FireFTP and FireBug open, as
> well, along with Thunderbird, Terminal, PuTTY, Gedit, and NoteTab Pro in
> Wine and other 'stuff' like image editing, OpenOffice spreadsheet data
> manipulation, file downloads, video viewing..........:) Any wonder I
> have crashes?

That's a lot of stuff to be running with only 800MB of RAM...  Firefox
alone, especially with a few plugins, can easily start chewing up 200
- 400 MB after it's run for a while...

For example:

bladernr  2113 16.2 22.0 2074352 863256 ?      Sl   Jul01 304:22
/usr/lib/firefox-3.6.3/firefox-bin

my single firefox instance is currently using up more RAM than your
system has in total... it's been running for about 24 hours straight
now and has about 15 open tabs, using some Java, and it's also
probably got some memory still used up with old Flash data from
watching some videos...

OpenOffice can also use up a good bit of RAM, as can Thunderbird.
Putty and Gedit, AFAIK are fairly lightweight, no idea on NoteTab, but
wine is also a huge resource consumer, anything that handles image
editing (it as to keep the program and the full decompressed image in
memory as well as use more memory when it's doing things edity like
scaling, masking, coloring, filtering, etc...)

Seriously, if you're running all that stuff concurrently, you need to
invest in a bigger machine.  heh...  but I know what you mean, I often
have many many things open.  Right now, I have XChat, Firefox, 8
xterms, a couple self organizing tools, calculator, Evolution, gtodo,
gimp, transmission, and totem...

> Most disturbing, though, are the boot and mouse failures when there's
> nothing loaded, yet.

You still haven't actually said WHAT you're seeing, beyond vague
references to "others have seen" something... What specific mouse
failures?  What specific boot failures?

Those, though possibly two completely separate issues...

>>  If you're actually using
>> Swap, you've either got some serious computing going on, like
>> rendering large images or video, or you're running more stuff than you
>> have RAM for..........
>
> No doubt.
>
>>
>> ....... If you DO use swap, ........
>
> Does the 'free' output above indicate that I am?

Not yet, theres a little used, but that could be just normal
overhead...  when you start seeing more than 10 - 15% swap used,
you're using it... which in your case, the Used column for Swap should
show 200MB or more in use... (and that's really conservative, in
reality more than maybe 20MB could be considered really in use... it
just depends).

>> Also, if you're using swap space consistently, then you probably DO
>> have a performance issue.
>
> It will be interesting to do the 'free'  command while I'm all 'loaded' up.

Yeah, I'd be interested in that too, just for kicks :-)

>> .........I'm more inclined to fix
>> the hardware deficiency first.........
>
> That's my guess, too.
>
>>
>> What kind of system are you running on, anyway?  .........
>
> My main workhorse, because of the convenience of mobility is my Dell
> laptop, a Vostro 1000, w/AMD64 (I avoid the 64 bit operation as seems to
> be mostly recommended) , with single boot to 10.4.

With only 1GB of ram, you probably don't need a 64bit OS.  I have 4
with the possibility of 8GB if I ever buy the big DIMMs, so I am
running the 64bit... but my AthlonXP and netbook both run 32bit just
fine...

> Specs:
> 1.9 GHz Athlon 64 bit X2 AMD processor, a 15.4 inch Widescreen WXGA
> (1280x800), 874.5MB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, and a 120GB hard drive .

I'm not intimately familiar with the Vostros, but I am pretty sure you
have 1GB of ram and roughly 128 or so shared for Video... if at all
possible, if you're running that much stuff, you need a bigger system,
and if you can't do that, you need to max the ram in that machine...

As for stability issues, as I said, what SPECIFICALLY are you seeing
WRT boot and mouse issues?

If you're running that much stuff and your mouse issue is that the
screen/UI just completely freezes, it's a good bet that it's because
you're just running way too much stuff for the resources you have.  As
far as booting, as I said, that's a different issue alltogether, and
probably needs it's own thread.

Cheers
Jeff