How long can you run Mint before "Slow Down"

[Garvan]

I have two console programs that require a long time to complete. One max'es out both CPU's and takes between 24 and 36 hours to complete running. Right from the beginning the system is unresponsive, but that is expected. But It should start working again when the program finishes, shouldn't it? When it finishes the system is so slow it is very difficult to shut down the computer. It might take five or ten minutes of trying to shut down programs and get the menu to respond.

A second program uses only one CPU so the system remains responsive at the start. But the program takes longer to complete, more than two days, and by the end the system is unresponsive again. Not as bad as the the first example, but bad.

I am running a 32-bit OS with 2 GB of memory.

Can others run programs continuously for long periods of time?

Garvan

[Garvan]

What exactly are the programs?

http://www.genetics.ucla.edu/software/admixture/ & http://code.google.com/p/treemix/ respectively.

Garvan

[Flemur]

A couple of things that may help...

Try running the pgms with lower priority, i.e.

Code: Select all

$ nice pgm_name

or w/renice after it starts.

After they're done, flush memory:

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# This needs to be run as REAL root: "sudo -l"  or "sudo -s"
#!/bin/sh
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

Other ideas: check the memory and swap file size/useage, and "swappiness".