# High Load on Startup [Solved]

## donmartio

Ok, I'm stuck,

after loggin in to my account (using kde4.3.1) my system is realy slow for a while. 

htop says there is a Load average about 7-8, but no cpu usage and low cpu usage and realy low memory usage (800MB of 2GB).

The Shutdown behavior is the same (needs up to 2 minutes for KDE to shutdown).

I suspect wait io for causing the load but i don't know where the reason.

vmstat during eclipse startup:

```

 4  0      0 282736  47564 838008    0    0  1352     0 2428 1478 79  6  2 13

 2  0      0 268272  47580 844584    0    0  3290     0 2578 1862 60  8  4 29

 2  0      0 236092  47964 854696    0    0  5138   130 2495 1633 65  9  1 26

 1  1      0 124204  47996 884444    0    0 14872     0 2764 1281 74 10  1 14

 2  1      0 102900  48168 890948    0    0  3280   392 2548 2012 67  8 12 13

 1  1      0  75352  48168 894816    0    0  1916     0 2544 1903 71  8 13  8

 2  0      0  67516  48172 899376    0    0  2300     0 2471 1865 62  9 13 16

 0  2      0  51592  48320 902276    0    0  1438   100 2395 1868 75  7  4 15

 4  1      0  54508  44400 891076    0    0  2658     0 3157 1857 67 10  7 17

 1  2      0  53468  44624 886448    0    0   752   104 2750 1300 74  7  8 11

 3  2      0  53524  44664 884300    0    0   790     0 2336 1369 59  7  0 34

 5  2      0  55324  44724 879040    0    0  1424     0 2337 1570 56  8  3 34

 1  2      0  53044  44924 875956    0    0  1154   550 2451 1464 59  7  6 28

 5  1      0  53096  44960 874216    0    0   804     0 2465 1489 58  7 13 21

 2  2      0  56596  45104 876220    0    0  1036    96 2391 1537 58  8 14 20

 1  2      0  53044  45128 877504    0    0   652   302 2528 2240 60  6  6 28

 1  2      0  53664  45176 875152    0    0   742     0 2577 1339 53  7 11 29

 1  1      0  54748  45360 862012    0    0   364   108 2620 2071 75  7  3 14

 2  1      0  53988  45484 862500    0    0   332     0 2379 2114 51  8 23 18

 1  2      0  52664  45540 863484    0    0   482     0 2223 1410 45  7 29 19

 
```

load is something about 3.5-4.

May someone can give me a hint where to look or what to check to get rid of this.

```
~ # 

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82Q963/Q965 PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)

00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)

00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev f2)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300/X1550 Series]

01:00.1 Display controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV516 [Radeon X1300 Pro] (Secondary)

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5754 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

```

```

lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by

radeon                345504  3

drm                   121120  4 radeon

agpgart                26252  1 drm

ipv6                  200820  28

snd_pcm_oss            33024  0

snd_mixer_oss          12276  1 snd_pcm_oss

snd_seq_dummy           2360  0

snd_seq_oss            23456  0

snd_seq_midi_event      5428  1 snd_seq_oss

snd_seq                40368  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event

lp                      8740  0

snd_hda_codec_analog    54548  1

snd_usb_audio          72672  1

ppdev                   6776  0

snd_hda_intel          21576  1

snd_hda_codec          48148  2 snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel

parport_pc             33220  1

snd_usb_lib            13268  1 snd_usb_audio

parport                29548  3 lp,ppdev,parport_pc

snd_rawmidi            16864  1 snd_usb_lib

pcspkr                  2132  0

i2c_i801                7812  0

snd_pcm                57720  4 snd_pcm_oss,snd_usb_audio,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec

joydev                  8448  0

dcdbas                  6580  0

snd_seq_device          5536  4 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_rawmidi

i2c_core               17704  2 drm,i2c_i801

snd_timer              16252  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm

snd_hwdep               6008  1 snd_usb_audio

snd_page_alloc          7260  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm

tg3                    95512  0

libphy                 16308  1 tg3

scsi_wait_scan          1012  0

usbhid                 30112  0

uhci_hcd               18624  0

usb_storage            45536  0

ehci_hcd               29408  0

usbcore               112240  7 snd_usb_audio,snd_usb_lib,usbhid,uhci_hcd,usb_storage,ehci_hcd

```

KDE itself runs smooth. I think i have something wrong in my system so every disk-access is more expensive than it should be.

Greetings

DonMartio

----------

## audiodef

Maybe it's a kernel config issue. Have you tried loading one of Pappy's kernel seeds?

----------

## donmartio

Thanks for the reply. No i never heard of them until now. Google gave me that:

http://62.3.120.141/~pappy/

I'll have a look.

Thank you very much.

----------

## donmartio

Ok i used the Seed for my brand new small kernel. But i can't get it running.

If i try it using initrd (not mentioned in the Howto) the kernel panics with some message.

```
unable to mount root fs on block (0,1)
```

reiserfs and ext3 are both compiled into the kernel.

What does the (0,1) in the message mean. If i'm not mistaken that should be the root Partition which is

(0,2).

Here what i've done to create th initrd:

```
mkinitrd -v --omit-scsi-modules --omit-raid-modules --fstab=/etc/fstab /boot/initramfs-mkinitrd-x86-2.6.30-gentoo-r6 2.6.30-gentoo-r6
```

Here the part from my menu.lst

```

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.30-xconfig-r6 - init-ng - Seed

root (hd0,0)

kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-xconfig-x86-2.6.30-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/ram0 init=/sbin/initng ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda3 udev vga=0x31a video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap

initrd (hd0,0)/initramfs-mkinitrd-x86-2.6.30-gentoo-r6

```

I don't know howto configure grub for mounting without initrd so i tried a little bit on my own with no success.

may someone can give me the next hint in this riddle.

Greetings

DonMartio

----------

## donmartio

Ok i got it started now and it's slightly faster. I had to change my menu.lst:

```

title=Gentoo Linux 2.6.30-xconfig-r6 - init-ng - Seed

root (hd0,0)

kernel (hd0,0)/kernel-xconfig-x86-2.6.30-gentoo-r6 root=/dev/sda3 ramdisk=8192 udev vga=0x31a video=radeonfb:mtrr:3,ywrap

initrd (hd0,0)/initramfs-xconfig-x86-2.6.30-gentoo-r6

```

And in the Kernel-Config i had to change the Default Ram Disk Size corresponding to the grub parameter to 8192 (Device Drivers->Block Devices)

I missed some parport stuff but all in all it's running and it's definitly faster.

----------

## donmartio

Hmmm ok it's faster now but instead of a loadavg of 7-8 on kde startup i now get a load of 4-5.

It's definitly faster (thanks to audiodef and of course pappy_mcfae) but not as fast as i wish.

At home i got an old AMD64 (one of the first) and even with kde4 i got a maximum load of 2 when updatedb is running.

I got a lot of Samba Shares here at work but they are not involved when konsole and friends are started.

oh, and i forgot to mention that i switched my maschine from a pentium4 to a new DualCore (both Dell Toaster) and the startup on the pentium4

was much faster.

The System is compiled for x86 (not 64bit since there where some Problems in the past).

Any further hints?

----------

## smithpeter018

Thanks its giving us better help thanks guys

----------

## donmartio

Accidently i found this file.

/etc/kde/startup/agent-startup.sh

and uncommented the following:

```

if [ -x /usr/bin/urxvtd ]; then

        /usr/bin/urxvtd --opendisplay --fork --quiet

fi

```

This gives a little speedup too on kde start.

----------

