Wes, It's important to figure out why your system is slowing to a crawl first.
1. is it a resource limit? Is your CPU running flat-out? Or are you out of memory? Are you running so many processes that you are constantly swapping? 2. Is it a hardware problem? Are you getting sense errors for your disk? Memory errors? It may be something you can alter by setting a configuration variable (usually sysctl, but there are some things you can set in fstab and elsewhere that will drastically improve system performance in _some_ cases). Building a new Kernel won't hose your system if you follow the published instructions for installing it as a package, in that you should be able to revert to the current kernel if the new one won't boot or is otherwise dysfunctional. But you will need to back up your system before you start doing radical surgery on it. HTH, Larry On Jan 21, 2011, at 12:53 PM, Joseph Weston Morgan wrote: > > > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: slow system > Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2011 18:03:09 -0800 > From: Joseph Weston Morgan <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > > My system is slowing to a crawl. I have gone through the forums and have > found that updating the kernel can solve the problem. If I don't do this > right, could it screw up my entire system? I am running Ubuntu 10.10. I > have 30 GB unused disk space and 500MB of ram. > > Wes Morgan > > > > > Is your Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick slow and sluggish? Make it run better. > By Vik ⋅ October 27, 2010 ⋅ Post a comment > Filed Under 10.10, amd64, kernel, lag, linux, maverick, meerkat, power, > slow, sluggish, ubuntu, wget, x86 > > > I recently installed the latest (10.10) version of Ubuntu. My oh my. Its > really unpolished under the hood to say the least. Loved the new font, love > the background. But, as soon as I started using it on full power (Firefox > with 30+ tabs, Compiz), it just borked. I experienced 15 second lags and it > was a wholly unhappy experience. Searching through the forums proved that I > wasn’t the only one who was suffering. Aware of the fact that a re-install of > 10.04 would cost me hours, I was sure there was a solution out there. Thats > when I stumbled across this post in Ubuntu Forums. > > EDIT:Skip to updated instructions at the bottom. > Upgrade your kernel to 2.6.36-rc7 kernel, and you’re going to see a > considerable improvement. Instructions as follows: > > 1 > 2 > 3 > <del datetime="2010-10-26T18:54:00+00:00">sudo su - > cd / > wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-rc7- > maverick/linux-headers-2.6.36-020636rc7_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_all.deb</del> > For x64 > > 1 > 2 > <del datetime="2010-10-26T18:54:00+00:00">wget > http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel- > ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-rc7-maverick/linux-headers-2.6.36-020636rc7-generic_ > 2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_amd64.deb > wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-rc7-maverick/linux- > image-2.6.36-020636rc7-generic_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_amd64.deb</del> > For x86 > > 1 > 2 > 3 > <del datetime="2010-10-26T18:54:00+00:00">wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~ > kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-rc7-maverick/linux-headers-2.6.36-020636rc7- > generic_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_i386.deb > wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.36-rc7- > maverick/linux-image-2.6.36-020636rc7-generic_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_i386.deb > dpkg -i > linux-headers-2.6.36-020636rc7_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_all.deb</del> > And, to end, depending on which version you’ve downloaded, change the > following code to suit your needs: > > 1 > 2 > <del datetime="2010-10-26T18:54:00+00:00">dpkg -i > linux-headers-2.6.36-020636rc7 > -generic_2.6.36-020636rc7.201010070908_amd64.deb > dpkg -i linux-image-2.6.36-020636rc7-generic_2.6.36-020636rc7. > 201010070908_i386.deb</del> > > > > _______________________________________________ > EUGLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
_______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
