On Wed, 2 Dec 2009 10:10:30 -0500, Willie Wong <ww...@math.princeton.edu> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 12:32:20PM +0100, Penguin Lover Jes??s Guerrero > squawked: >> On Wed, 2 Dec 2009 13:22:38 +0200, Dirk Uys <dirkc...@gmail.com> wrote: >> > This has been bothering me for some time now. I have a Dell PC at work, >> > Intel Core2 Duo with 4gb ram etc. Whenever something does a lot of disk >> > access, the PC slows down to a halt? > >> > The application that is mostly involved when I get >> > these long delays is FireFox, VMWare and emerge (emerge --sync). >> >> I know I am hitting at the obvious, but I can't be sure you already >> checked that. >> >> Since the applications you are using can be quite intensive in memory >> usage, did you check whether you are hitting swap or not? > > I realize that Firefox is a memory hog, but how many tabs must be open > for Swap to hit severely on a machine with 4gb ram? :)
A lot. But even though it's possible to hog that system with firefox alone, I wasn't thinking in that extreme case. I was more thinking along the lines of wmware running a huge vm inside of it and I only meant firefox and emerge as little Satan's helpers :D > Question in general: emerge --sync and VMWare I can see, but why does > FireFox require heavy disk access? Well, that's why I ask if he's hitting swap. ANY app will require disk access, even if not directly, if the ram is full. I have no idea if that's the case though, I was just pointing at a possibility :) -- Jesús Guerrero
