# internet slows down entire system when started [solved]

## MM23

EDIT2: HA HA HA, OH WOW.

EDIT: seems it's being caused by any /etc/init.d/net.* script being started, regardless of modules -- my initial guess was wrong

this is a strange problem, and I'm not sure where to begin.

I had been spending the last two nights working on helping install gentoo on a friend's laptop through ssh -- after the initial hurdles of getting wireless working, configuring the kernel, etc., we had a fully usable system and proceeded to emerge X and gnome-light. for whatever reason, everything is VERY sluggish starting up in X. for example, starting firefox takes over 60 seconds, and starting pidgin takes around 30. starting a simple gnome-terminal takes around 20! this is a very fast system, even if it is a laptop -- a Core 2 Duo E6750. compile times themselves are very fast, and i've checked dmesg and top over and over again and there's no problems with anything using too much cpu time or memory. there have been no compile errors, and booting up only shows a couple of acpi complaints. the system would appear to be in perfect shape -- until you try and start an application within X with this module loaded and active.

the module in question was found by chance -- the iwl4965 driver used for the laptop's intel wireless card. when the module is loaded and net.wlan0 is running, apps take forever to start and the system as a whole just isn't very responsive. when net.wlan0 is stopped and the module is rmmodded, the system is snappy as all hell as it should be.

lsmod reports that it's not too insane size-wise or anything:

```

Module                  Size  Used by

...

iwl4965               176756  0

```

and like I said, top doesn't show any spikes in CPU: load averages are good, memory usage is minimal, and running hdparm -Tt shows no drive slowdowns. I can't figure out for the life of me why having internet would cause physical lag with the kernel schedulers or something. my next plan of action is to try upgrading the kernel or disabling/enabling schedulers... but it's all shooting blindly at this point.

does anyone have any experience with specific network modules + internet causing physical slowdowns? the internet itself runs perfectly fine and fast, there are no lags or disconnects, it utilizes the network fully. this happens regardless of network activity -- one can be idling at 0 kbps and it won't matter, the system will move at a snail's pace until that module is unloaded and the network script is brought down.

if it's needed, emerge --info:

```
Portage 2.1.4.4 (default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 i686)

=================================================================

System uname: 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz

Timestamp of tree: Thu, 14 Aug 2008 01:17:01 +0000

app-shells/bash:     3.2_p33

dev-lang/python:     2.5.2-r6

sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1

sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1-r2

sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.61-r2

sys-devel/automake:  1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1

sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3

sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4

sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.26

virtual/os-headers:  2.6.23-r3

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"

CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

CFLAGS="-march=prescott -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"

CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc"

CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"

CXXFLAGS="-march=prescott -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"

FEATURES="distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"

GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.usu.edu/mirrors/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirrors.easynews.com/linux/gentoo/ http://mirror.fslutd.org/linux/distributions/gentoo/ "

LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"

PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"

PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"

PORTDIR="/usr/portage"

PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"

SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"

USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa ass avi bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip bzip2 cairo cdr cdrw cjk cli cracklib crypt cups dbus dri dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd evo fam ffmpeg firefox flac fortran ftp gd gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gunzip gzip h264 hal httpd iconv imagemagick imagick immqt-bc ipv6 isdnlog javascript jpeg jpg kerberos lame ldap libnotify lua mad matroska midi mikmod modplug mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses newspr nls nptl nptlonly nv nvidia offensive ogg opengl openmp oss pam pcre pdf perl png posix ppds pppd python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime rar readline reflection sdl session smp spell spl sse ssh ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tar tcpd theora tiff truetype unicode usb utils vesa vesafb vorbis wifi win32codecs wireless wlan x11 x11-xorg x264 x86 xcomposite xine xml xorg xpm xulrunner xv xvid zip zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia nv"

Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

```

Last edited by MM23 on Fri Aug 15, 2008 12:45 am; edited 3 times in total

----------

## jcat

Is it sluggish if you just load the module again WITHOUT loading the initial network init script?

```
modprobe iwl4965
```

Cheers,

jcat

----------

## MM23

no, actually, strangely enough the system is fine when the wlan0 init script is down and the module is loaded. but bringing the init script up immediately brings the system back to a crawl.

nice find, by the way

----------

## jcat

What system are you using for WiFi?  Wireless Tools or WPA_supplicant or other?

Can we see your 

```
cat /etc/conf.d/net
```

 and 

```
ifconfig -a
```

 for good measure.

Cheers,

jcat

----------

## MM23

just using wep and dhcp

/etc/conf.d/net

```

ssid_wlan0="myessid"

key_myessid="keyhere enc restricted"

routes_wlan0="default gw 192.168.0.1"

config_wlan0="dhcp"
```

ifconfig -a

```
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback

          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

sit0      Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4

          NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

tunl0     Link encap:IPIP Tunnel  HWaddr

          NOARP  MTU:1480  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:E8:D7:B3:27

          inet addr:192.168.0.6  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

          inet6 addr: fe80::213:e8ff:fed7:b327/64 Scope:Link

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:18855 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:17711 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:8331097 (7.9 Mb)  TX bytes:4635943 (4.4 Mb)

wmaster0  Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-13-E8-D7-B3-27-38-80-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
```

----------

## MM23

sorry to double post, but i think i need to expand on this further... it seems that the slowness is caused whenever the network script is up, regardless of modules loaded or not. guess that was a bit of a jump to conclusions on my half.

it does this hooked up to ethernet, using wireless with ndiswrapper, or using wireless with the in-kernel drivers for the card. this is really bizzarre..  i can't find anyone else with this problem with google searches/forum searches.

----------

## jcat

Are you saying that you get the symptoms when you start either wlan0 or eth0?

Cheers,

jcat

----------

## MM23

I figured it out -- it was due to a misconfigured /etc/hosts file. for whatever reason, gtk apps like to communicate to each other through the LAN, and when internet was started they got confused and ended up taking 30 seconds to finally start.

I fixed this by adding the hostname of the machine to these two lines in /etc/hosts:

# IPv4 and IPv6 localhost aliases

127.0.0.1       localhost hostname

::1             localhost hostname

what a pain, I spent like 4 hours trying worthless crap and it turned out to be something this worthless!? argh!

----------

## jcat

 *MM23 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> what a pain, I spent like 4 hours trying worthless crap and it turned out to be something this worthless!? argh!

 

Well, I don't know about worthless, I think you've just proved to yourself how important that file is!   :Wink: 

Glad it's working.

Cheers,

jcat

----------

