fresh installation extremely slow

[lala]

i have been using ubuntu 12.10 for some time. After a certain update my machine got extremely slow. Boot time increased to almost 5 minutes, application startup time increased to 1-2 mins from seconds. During such delays the HDD seemed to be busy. To avoid any more pain, I switched to Linux mint nadia. Unfortunately i see the exact same issue with this as well.

My machine specs:
P4, Hyper Threading, 3GHz
1.5GB RAM
512MB fairly good VGA

I have used this same machine with both Ubuntu, fedora with no issues in the past.
I think this could be due to a HW issue because the issue is present in both ubuntu and Linux mint, or it could be an issue in a libraby from dabian. In any case I need help to diagnose this further, SO EXPECTING YOUR KIND SUPPORT.

Thank you

[gibbs1984]

I'd agree that it's possibly a hardware issue.

When the computer boots up and it takes 5 minutes which screen does it stay the longest on?

I had a stick of RAM go and that increased my bootup time quite a bit (not 5 minutes though) and it would get stuck on the POST screen.

[lala]

it stays longest with blank screen after bios stuff before giving the login screen.
i will do a memory check. any way to get an idea by looking at logs?

[catweazel]

it stays longest with blank screen after bios stuff before giving the login screen.
i will do a memory check. any way to get an idea by looking at logs?

I wouldn't be suspecting memory just yet. It sounds to me like your HDD is going south. You might see if you can enable SMART and install smartmontools.

Another thing you can do is run this in a terminal and leave it open while you try to use your machine normally. It will help in identifying errors encountered by the kernel:

Code: Select all

tail -f /var/log/syslog

[lala]

i ran smarttools and it report tests as passed. Any more suggesstions?

Thank you

[DrHu]

You could try and optimize your system first, see if that is helping..
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/114

http://www.zdnet.com/ubuntu-linux-12-10 ... 000005948/
Anything the system waits on for service (resources not ready) will delay a startup (boot)

• hard drives
• Networks
  --dns, dhcp, avahi status
• Printers, attached..
• CD/DVD drives
  --you can prevent these devices from being detected by the BIOS (in the BIOS settings) and being read by the OS on boot, but would still activate, when you insert media
• USB devices, attached

There are also some utilities that can help you chart; see where the boot delays are taking place..
http://www.linux-magazine.com/Issues/2009/104/Bootchart
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/bootchart.html

[lala]

Thank you.
I installed bootchart and did a profiling.
I am not expert in analyzing the output, but it looks like IO is the culprit. Could you please have a look and confirm?

boot profile