Re: more RAM = more speed?
Hi Patrick, At home, I run a P133 with 48 meg, but most of the time only text, because of my bad monitor and card. At work, I run a P133 with 128 meg SDRAM. _That_ is just perfect, although I still need swap (and 28 meg of swap is not enough.. :-( ). Netscape (4.61 I believe) needs a restart almost every day, or else swap gets full, and the machine starts to freeze. A P133 is fast enough for X with Netscape (and StarOffice, but I only tried it (quite cool)) and al kinds of servers like web, ftp, dns, irc etc, so I guess you should buy the extra memory if you think your computer is worth it (especially the monitor/vcard imho). HTH. Groets, Ookhoi In your case of course, more memory would show *huge* speed increases. It looks like another 32 megs would stop the immediate swapping problem. If you want to run StarOffice, I imagine another 16 to 32 megs above that is required. I don't have star office installed myself, so I can't check for you. :( (one more week... :) I have StarOffice on a very similar machine. This is the report it gives: total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 30264 29616648 24884128 17600 -/+ buffers/cache: 11888 18376 Swap: 128484 5192 123292 I got there by this: 1. boot Linux (was running DOS game, sorry) 2. log into xdm and start StarOffice 3. open a new (empty) text document 4. switch to tty1 and login to run free It looks like StarOffice is quite a memory hog too. It sounds like 64MB is enough to make Netscape happy. Based on the free output above, do you think 96MB would be enough to keep swapping to a minimum with StarOffice thrown in? If you're not sure, I'd be happy to wait a week or so until you have StarOffice installed. If you can afford it, the new mobo+cpu+ram would probably be the right thing to do. Actually, my crazy idea was running my existing CPU in a new board for a while until I want to (and can afford to) upgrade it. But unless the new board has 3 ISA slots, I don't think I want to do that. Adding a net card, sound card and 56K modem to about $280 for the board, CPU and RAM is a bit to much. Thank you, Patrick Olson -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Brian Servis wrote: This is really interesting. I didn't realize the kernel did this. I'll probably try this out this weekend. (I love finding little tweaks like this...) Add a second hard drive on the second ide channel(hdc) It is good to have a swap partition on a different controller channel with each partition having equal priority. The kernel will use the partition which will provide the best performance. +---++ | Nate Duehr - [EMAIL PROTECTED]| Support Amateur Radio Linux! | | Private Pilot, Telephony Engineer | Ham Callsign: N0NTZ | | UNIX Hack, Perl Hack, Tech-Freak | Grid Square: DM79 | | | May the Source be with you. | +---++ | HamRadio and Linux mailing lists available for interested parties: | |http://www.natetech.com/mailman/listinfo| ++
Re: more RAM = more speed?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- On Wed, 25 Aug 1999, Stephen Pitts wrote: On Wed, Aug 25, 1999 at 08:14:06AM -0700, Patrick Olson wrote: 1. hdc has been a CD-ROM since the second I booted the Debian install CD. Will anything bad happen if hdc is suddenly a hard disk and hdd is now the CD-ROM? I haven't actually used the CD-ROM since I finished installing, so the only possible trouble spot might be booting. Booting won't be a problem, since you aren't moving around hard drives. Check /etc/fstab to make sure there is no reference to hdc. Otherwise, you are fine. Check if you have a /dev/cdrom symlink. If so, this will need to be updated. If not, don't worry about it. - -- finger for PGP public key. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBN8R6I77M/9WKZLW5AQFqAgQAhP+Slj8mD1C0pb+tqewN/vUwy2C6Dbr7 /U4Ue/brH+yULBXAahUN95kFj+Myk4x2pYiiLwzSR92B+0G7HBpfc/31XLFh67hq pbCm5T7h5odYiR002XOJ96DEWrLZCiNVXxdR3tkWiNbxUIcjnfhcPlP4+/xQ947w IEjTpknZ848= =sxCq -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On Wed, Aug 25, 1999 at 08:14:06AM -0700, Patrick Olson wrote: Thanks for the other info on RAM, it will be very useful. Add a second hard drive on the second ide channel(hdc) It is good to have a swap partition on a different controller channel with each partition having equal priority. The kernel will use the partition which will provide the best performance. I don't know much when it comes to drives in Debian, so I have a few questions: 1. hdc has been a CD-ROM since the second I booted the Debian install CD. Will anything bad happen if hdc is suddenly a hard disk and hdd is now the CD-ROM? I haven't actually used the CD-ROM since I finished installing, so the only possible trouble spot might be booting. The linux kernel itself won't care. What will care is your /etc/fstab file. You should update this to reflect your cdrom drive in a different place, as well as the new swap partition. This isn't too hard, maybe the file is easy to understand, if not, the fstab(5) manpage isn't too bad.. but some of the options you do have to lookup in the mount(1) (or is it mount(8)?) manpage. 3. Since any drive I add will be old and slow (200MB), is it worth it? Probably. :) -- Seth Arnold | ICQ 3172483 | http://cswww.willamette.edu/~sarnold/ I prosecute unsolicited bulk emails, using the RealTime BlackHole List. You should too. Ask me how, or visit http://maps.vix.com/rbl/
Re: more RAM = more speed?
There are several solutions to your problem: 1- Buy a new and better computer(i know that might an expensivesolution) Wish I could :) 2- Add more RAM and change your motherboard. At the same time reduce the size of swap memory(this is to force the applications to use any free physical RAM) Will keep this in mind, thanks. 3- Try changing your window manager, specially if you're using KDE, it tends to eat-up memory(try something simpler and new since new WM have improved memory managment features) How is WindowMaker on eating up memory? I really like it compared to others I've tried. Thanks, Patrick
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On 25-Aug-1999, Patrick Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Based on the free output above, do you think 96MB would be enough to keep swapping to a minimum with StarOffice thrown in? If you're not sure, I'd be happy to wait a week or so until you have StarOffice installed. In my experience 96Mb of RAM (which I used to have) seemed to be just perfect. 64Mb was just that little bit to small. 128Mb is preferable, but only really possible if you are upgrading your machine. Pete.
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On 24-Aug-1999, Patrick Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer type of RAM? You need to consider the fact that the latest SDRAM (132 pin?) now runs at 100Mhz, so if you buy more RAM now it wont be usable in your new system unless you set the Memory speed back to 66Mhz. I guess it depends on how long you are going to wait until upgrading. Pete.
more RAM = more speed?
I have Debian 2.1 running on a P-133 with 32MB of RAM and a 6.4GB Western Digital IDE, but it is awful slow when I have a lot of stuff running, including a few Netscape Communicator web browsers. Specifically, it likes to keep me waiting while it stops and runs the hard disk in the middle of a program, or sometimes when I switch to a virtual console that has been idle for a while. Based on the report below, I think a RAM upgrade might reduce swapping, which should speed things up. $ uptime 8:10am up 11 days, 15:11, 5 users, load average: 1.10, 1.21, 0.83 $ free total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 30964 30408556 14472652 14928 -/+ buffers/cache: 14828 16136 Swap: 128484 32196 96288 On top of this, I plan to install StarOffice and try and run it without exiting any other programs. Could someone take a moment and give me some advice on this issue. I can think of four specific questions: 1. Am I barking up the wrong tree with the idea of a RAM upgrade? 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer type of RAM? 3. If I upgrade nothing but RAM, how much do I need to have enough to cut down on the swapping it does now and keep it to a minimum even after I load StarOffice 5.1? Keep in mind that although my budget is limited, so is my patience with this old hardware. 4. Is there something else I should upgrade? Your response is appreciated. Thank you, Patrick Olson
Re: more RAM = more speed?
*- On 24 Aug, Patrick Olson wrote about more RAM = more speed? I have Debian 2.1 running on a P-133 with 32MB of RAM and a 6.4GB Western Digital IDE, but it is awful slow when I have a lot of stuff running, including a few Netscape Communicator web browsers. Specifically, it likes to keep me waiting while it stops and runs the hard disk in the middle of a program, or sometimes when I switch to a virtual console that has been idle for a while. [snip] 1. Am I barking up the wrong tree with the idea of a RAM upgrade? No. Dollar for dollar a memory upgrade will gives a better performance boost in this situation. 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer type of RAM? Upgrading to a new processor, new motherboard and new memory type with more memory than you have now will still cost more than a simple memory upgrade for you current setup. And you will not get a significant performance boost unless you are doing extensive number crunching 3. If I upgrade nothing but RAM, how much do I need to have enough to cut down on the swapping it does now and keep it to a minimum even after I load StarOffice 5.1? Keep in mind that although my budget is limited, so is my patience with this old hardware. This is difficult to say. Netscape tends to take and not give back memory, I often exit and restart it just to release memory. I would suggest at least 96M or more. StarOffice is reported to be a massive memory hog(I personally don't use it). 4. Is there something else I should upgrade? Add a second hard drive on the second ide channel(hdc) It is good to have a swap partition on a different controller channel with each partition having equal priority. The kernel will use the partition which will provide the best performance. HTH, -- Brian - Mechanical Engineering [EMAIL PROTECTED] Purdue University http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis -
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On Tue, Aug 24, 1999 at 09:21:48PM -0700, Patrick Olson wrote: I have Debian 2.1 running on a P-133 with 32MB of RAM and a 6.4GB Western Digital IDE, but it is awful slow when I have a lot of stuff running, including a few Netscape Communicator web browsers. Specifically, it Heh, netscape is a bit of a memory hog. After running it for a few days, I have seen it eating more than 60megs -- even with only one window open. I understand that calls to free the memory don't always make the OS actually reclaim it -- which makes sense, in some senses, but .. I don't want to restart netscape every few days just to reclaim memory.. In your case of course, more memory would show *huge* speed increases. It looks like another 32 megs would stop the immediate swapping problem. If you want to run StarOffice, I imagine another 16 to 32 megs above that is required. I don't have star office installed myself, so I can't check for you. :( (one more week... :) But, when a new motherboard and new celeron and 128 megs of sdram run $90 + $80 + $110 = $280 .. whereas another 64 megs of simms can cost $100.. the celeron chip/mobo is 400/133 (roughly 3*) faster -- the harddrive controllers might be able to do the nice dma hard drive access routines, and the whole thing can (probably) overclock to between 450 and 600 MHz.. it is a tough call. I think perhaps the new mobo+cpu+memory might be in order --0 unless you need to replace other components as well, that won't fit on the new system (eg, if you have isa soundcard, modem, network card, and scsi card -- they probably wont fit on a new motherboard..) If you can afford it, the new mobo+cpu+ram would probably be the right thing to do. likes to keep me waiting while it stops and runs the hard disk in the middle of a program, or sometimes when I switch to a virtual console that has been idle for a while. Based on the report below, I think a RAM upgrade might reduce swapping, which should speed things up. $ uptime 8:10am up 11 days, 15:11, 5 users, load average: 1.10, 1.21, 0.83 $ free total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 30964 30408556 14472652 14928 -/+ buffers/cache: 14828 16136 Swap: 128484 32196 96288 On top of this, I plan to install StarOffice and try and run it without exiting any other programs. Could someone take a moment and give me some advice on this issue. I can think of four specific questions: 1. Am I barking up the wrong tree with the idea of a RAM upgrade? 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer type of RAM? 3. If I upgrade nothing but RAM, how much do I need to have enough to cut down on the swapping it does now and keep it to a minimum even after I load StarOffice 5.1? Keep in mind that although my budget is limited, so is my patience with this old hardware. 4. Is there something else I should upgrade? Your response is appreciated. Thank you, Patrick Olson -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null -- Seth Arnold | ICQ 3172483 | http://cswww.willamette.edu/~sarnold/ I prosecute unsolicited bulk emails, using the RealTime BlackHole List. You should too. Ask me how, or visit http://maps.vix.com/rbl/
Re: more RAM = more speed?
- I have Debian 2.1 running on a P-133 with 32MB of RAM and a 6.4GB Western - Digital IDE, but it is awful slow when I have a lot of stuff running, - including a few Netscape Communicator web browsers. Specifically, it - likes to keep me waiting while it stops and runs the hard disk in the - middle of a program, or sometimes when I switch to a virtual console that - has been idle for a while. - total used free sharedbuffers cached - Swap: 128484 32196 96288 ^ This says you should have _at least_ 32 mb more. As long as you are going to play with staroffice, buy even more, you should have 96 or 128 megs then - 1. Am I barking up the wrong tree with the idea of a RAM upgrade? - 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? - Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer - type of RAM? not needed. - 4. Is there something else I should upgrade? you can upgrade anything, disk, CPU, mainboard i'd prefer upgrading this way: 1. memory 2. CPU 3. adding another HDD for much user filesystems - swap, tmp, var preferrably on another controller. The new drive can be just around 1.6GB, the speed is important imo -- Matus fantomas Uhlar, sysadmin at Telenor Internet Kosice, Slovakia BIC coord for *.sk; admin of netlab.irc.sk; co-admin of irc.felk.cvut.cz WinError #9: Out of error messages.
Re: more RAM = more speed?
Hi Patrick, Well two things might be causing your computer to run slow: 1- Applications like netscape and Staroffice need at least 64MB of RAM to minimize swap use and to speed up processing 2- Your processor is slow, and it is pentium I. Pentuim II has special ways of increasing its throughput (through ram and cache). So when you're doing multiprocessing (virtual terminals)it speeds up things. P2 also has an improved microprogram design(which might speed up the graphic side of applications) There are several solutions to your problem: 1- Buy a new and better computer(i know that might an expensivesolution) 2- Add more RAM and change your motherboard. At the same time reduce the size of swap memory(this is to force the applications to use any free physical RAM) 3- Try changing your window manager, specially if you're using KDE, it tends to eat-up memory(try something simpler and new since new WM have improved memory managment features) From: Patrick Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: debuser debian-user@lists.debian.org Subject: more RAM = more speed? Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 21:21:48 -0700 (PDT) I have Debian 2.1 running on a P-133 with 32MB of RAM and a 6.4GB Western Digital IDE, but it is awful slow when I have a lot of stuff running, including a few Netscape Communicator web browsers. Specifically, it likes to keep me waiting while it stops and runs the hard disk in the middle of a program, or sometimes when I switch to a virtual console that has been idle for a while. Based on the report below, I think a RAM upgrade might reduce swapping, which should speed things up. $ uptime 8:10am up 11 days, 15:11, 5 users, load average: 1.10, 1.21, 0.83 $ free total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 30964 30408556 14472652 14928 -/+ buffers/cache: 14828 16136 Swap: 128484 32196 96288 On top of this, I plan to install StarOffice and try and run it without exiting any other programs. Could someone take a moment and give me some advice on this issue. I can think of four specific questions: 1. Am I barking up the wrong tree with the idea of a RAM upgrade? 2. Is it a bad idea to buy RAM for a P-133 since it only takes 72-pin? Instead, should I upgrade to a motherboard that can handle a newer type of RAM? 3. If I upgrade nothing but RAM, how much do I need to have enough to cut down on the swapping it does now and keep it to a minimum even after I load StarOffice 5.1? Keep in mind that although my budget is limited, so is my patience with this old hardware. 4. Is there something else I should upgrade? Your response is appreciated. Thank you, Patrick Olson -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null __ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
Re: more RAM = more speed?
Thanks for the other info on RAM, it will be very useful. Add a second hard drive on the second ide channel(hdc) It is good to have a swap partition on a different controller channel with each partition having equal priority. The kernel will use the partition which will provide the best performance. I don't know much when it comes to drives in Debian, so I have a few questions: 1. hdc has been a CD-ROM since the second I booted the Debian install CD. Will anything bad happen if hdc is suddenly a hard disk and hdd is now the CD-ROM? I haven't actually used the CD-ROM since I finished installing, so the only possible trouble spot might be booting. 2. Is there a a how-to or some doc's for this? I made a swap partition with cfdisk in the beginning and let the (excellent) install program figure out the rest. Thus, I never learned much about swap. 3. Since any drive I add will be old and slow (200MB), is it worth it? That is interesting that when both are given equal priority, the kernel figures out which one is best. I didn't know about that feature. Thank you, Patrick Olson
Re: more RAM = more speed?
Thanks for the reply. In your case of course, more memory would show *huge* speed increases. It looks like another 32 megs would stop the immediate swapping problem. If you want to run StarOffice, I imagine another 16 to 32 megs above that is required. I don't have star office installed myself, so I can't check for you. :( (one more week... :) I have StarOffice on a very similar machine. This is the report it gives: total used free sharedbuffers cached Mem: 30264 29616648 24884128 17600 -/+ buffers/cache: 11888 18376 Swap: 128484 5192 123292 I got there by this: 1. boot Linux (was running DOS game, sorry) 2. log into xdm and start StarOffice 3. open a new (empty) text document 4. switch to tty1 and login to run free It looks like StarOffice is quite a memory hog too. It sounds like 64MB is enough to make Netscape happy. Based on the free output above, do you think 96MB would be enough to keep swapping to a minimum with StarOffice thrown in? If you're not sure, I'd be happy to wait a week or so until you have StarOffice installed. If you can afford it, the new mobo+cpu+ram would probably be the right thing to do. Actually, my crazy idea was running my existing CPU in a new board for a while until I want to (and can afford to) upgrade it. But unless the new board has 3 ISA slots, I don't think I want to do that. Adding a net card, sound card and 56K modem to about $280 for the board, CPU and RAM is a bit to much. Thank you, Patrick Olson
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On Tue, 24 Aug 1999, Seth R Arnold wrote: Heh, netscape is a bit of a memory hog. After running it for a few days, I have seen it eating more than 60megs -- even with only one window open. I understand that calls to free the memory don't always make the OS actually reclaim it -- which makes sense, in some senses, but .. I don't want to restart netscape every few days just to reclaim memory.. It's not that Netscape's free calls con't reclaim the memory, it's more that Netscape makes more malloc() calls than free() calls. It allocates the memory and doesn't give it back. Memory that is freed will be reused by the application that originally allocated it. Memory that is never freed, though, can't be reused - by anybody - until the application exits.
Re: more RAM = more speed?
Sorry, forgot to put debian in the adress-field. It's getting late here in denmark... Vitux Error is human; complete disaster takes a computer -Oprindelig meddelelse- Fra: Wichmann, Viggo Sendt:25. august 1999 20:11 Til: 'Patrick Olson' Emne: Re: more RAM = more speed? Hi Patrick I sincerely doubt if you will have any kind of trouble putting in another drive. I've done it recently without any squeaks. I'd say it might be worth getting a (small?) new(-ish), (but most important) fast drive, and maybe just use part of it for swap, and use the rest for something else like /tmp or whatever. Being a relative newbie, I'm not sure how to actually do it, but some wiz guys can probably enlighten you (and me!) on how to split your filesystem on several disks... hth Vitux Error is human; complete disaster takes a computer -Oprindelig meddelelse- Fra: Patrick Olson [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sendt:25. august 1999 17:14 Til: Brian Servis Cc: recipient list not shown Emne: Re: more RAM = more speed? Thanks for the other info on RAM, it will be very useful. Add a second hard drive on the second ide channel(hdc) It is good to have a swap partition on a different controller channel with each partition having equal priority. The kernel will use the partition which will provide the best performance. I don't know much when it comes to drives in Debian, so I have a few questions: 1. hdc has been a CD-ROM since the second I booted the Debian install CD. Will anything bad happen if hdc is suddenly a hard disk and hdd is now the CD-ROM? I haven't actually used the CD-ROM since I finished installing, so the only possible trouble spot might be booting. 2. Is there a a how-to or some doc's for this? I made a swap partition with cfdisk in the beginning and let the (excellent) install program figure out the rest. Thus, I never learned much about swap. 3. Since any drive I add will be old and slow (200MB), is it worth it? That is interesting that when both are given equal priority, the kernel figures out which one is best. I didn't know about that feature. Thank you, Patrick Olson -- Unsubscribe? mail -s unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] /dev/null
Re: more RAM = more speed?
On Wed, Aug 25, 1999 at 08:14:06AM -0700, Patrick Olson wrote: 1. hdc has been a CD-ROM since the second I booted the Debian install CD. Will anything bad happen if hdc is suddenly a hard disk and hdd is now the CD-ROM? I haven't actually used the CD-ROM since I finished installing, so the only possible trouble spot might be booting. Booting won't be a problem, since you aren't moving around hard drives. Check /etc/fstab to make sure there is no reference to hdc. Otherwise, you are fine. 2. Is there a a how-to or some doc's for this? I made a swap partition with cfdisk in the beginning and let the (excellent) install program figure out the rest. Thus, I never learned much about swap. The 'mkswap' program makes a swap partition. Make a partition (/dev/hdc1) and run 'mkswap /dev/hdc1'. Use -c to check for bad sectors. Use 'swapon /dev/hdc1' to enable the swap partition. Add a line to /etc/fstab similar to your existing swap line to automatically enable this swap partition on boot. 'swapoff /dev/hdc1' will turn off your swap partition. 3. Since any drive I add will be old and slow (200MB), is it worth it? Try it out and see. I'd say yes, because one of the drives wouldn't be going back and forth, moving the head all around. If it doesn't make any difference, you can use it to back up data or something. -- Stephen Pitts [EMAIL PROTECTED] webmaster - http://www.mschess.org
