[ubuntu-za] Configuring Ubuntu 11.10

[Peter Nel]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 7:19 AM, Jan Greeff <jan at verslank.net> wrote:
> Peter, after sleeping over it my gut feel is that the problem started when I
> ran the "sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback" command. Is there a
> way to reverse this? Otherwise I may need to just do a new fresh install...
>
>
> Jan

On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 9:39 PM, Jan Greeff <jan at verslank.net> wrote:>
Peter, my 11.10 has started freezing up in a gray screen. It seems to
be> trying to get out of it after a while, then goes back to freeze.
Now I'm> back to my 11.04 on the other drive...>> I ran sudo swapon -s
and received: /dev/sdb5 partition size 1037308 used> 508576 priority
-1. Does that mean anything?>> I also received a warning: Unresponsive
script.>> It may have started after I activated Skype. Could this be
the issue? Never> had a problem with Skype before.>>> Jan>>
>
> On 18/12/2011 20:06, Peter Nel wrote:
>> ...
>>
>> About your performance issue... you mentioned problems with your
>> NVidea graphics drivers earlier - I've seen performance improve
>> several orders of magnitude after fixing the graphics driver.
>> Have you checked availability of-&  tried enabling the restricted driver?
>>
>> Regards

Jan,

I watched this:
[How to change to Gnome Classic Desktop in Ubuntu 11.10]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xDXeOsLQ3k

According to the video, you install "gnome-session-fallback", then
also change the lightdm.conf file to actually choose that as default
desktop for your user.
Did you do that? If so, make sure you didn't make any spelling errors,
perhaps it's trying to load a desktop that doesn't exist?
(re:"Unresponsive script" -- I'm assuming you get this error after
logging in; If not... it's sometimes given by a web browser when
scripts on a particular website is misbehaving, perhaps having gone
into an infinite loop or some such -- nothing you can do about it if
that's the case, the web developer must fix that)

Did you try the default 11.10 Unity interface before trying to put on
classic gnome?
If so, was performance bad in Unity too? Did you have this or any of
the other problems you mention there as well?

I also read this thread earlier to check what else could be causing
slowness on 11.10:
[Ubuntu 11.10 extremely slow]
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1861622

I didn't read the whole thread, but several people refer specifically
to certain NVidea graphics card models (also some ATI models) that
seem to cause a significant performance dip after upgrade to 11.10...

Tip: when troubleshooting problems like this, i.e. performance, or
hardware issues, it's a good idea to know what exact hardware you
have, for instance the exact model number of your graphics card.
Useful both in support forums, and when googling it yourself.
To get hardware info, on a terminal run:
$ lspci
-or-
$ lspci | grep VGA
(NOTE: without the '$';
 FYI: for the 'manual' on any command run
 $ man <command>)

... the second command sends the verbose ouput of 'lspci' ("list PCI
devices") to 'grep' (Gnu Regular Expression Processor) that filters
lines with "VGA" (i.e. graphics) on it.

You can also install an app called "sysinfo" from the software center
to get system & hardware info. There are some other apps too.

Having your exact hardware info makes searching for solutions much
easier & more accurate.

I doubt that skype is causing the problem, but to be sure, you can
kill all traces of the skype application (sometimes you close it but
it still runs in the background).
On a terminal type:
$ killall skype
-or-
$ pkill skype
(sometimes a process just won't die nicely, so you can be more
forceful by adding the -9 parameter, e.g. $ killall -9 <appname>  #
use with care)

You can also see what applications are running using the gnome "System
Monitor" app (under System applications) - it also shows you how much
memory and processor resources each running process/program is using,
which can also help in identifying processes that could be slowing the
system down; it also has a Resources tab that shows graphically the
overall load on CPU, Memory & swap-space, and network.

BTW, that command you asked about "$ swapon -s" -- according to the
'man' page swapon/swapoff enables/disables swapping on given drives.
The -s argument gives a summary of your active swap partictions, in
your case partition /dev/sdb5 (i.e. DEVice: hard(Scsi)-Drive 'B'
partition 5) is an active swap partition, with '1037308' bytes
(approx. 1 Gb) available and with '508576' bytes (approx. 500Mb,
roughly 1/2) used.
What is swap space? Well, in short, it's also known as "virtual
memory" which is space on your hard drive that acts as RAM memory. RAM
is the 'Random Access' "live" Memory where your active running
programs and open files are kept (loaded from slower but larger &
permanent disk). When a program goes idle (but still running), or an
open file isn't touched for a while, and another more active program
or a newer file needs to become active or loaded - the system checks
if you have enough RAM for it; if not, the idle stuff gets "swapped"
out to disk to make live memory available to the new stuff... this way
you can also have more "active" stuff running/loaded than you have
physical RAM available.
If both RAM and swap space gets full, the system can go into a loop of
swapping things in and out of virtual memory to continuously try to
make space, but stuff that recently swapped out gets swapped back in
again almost immediately, and the system spends more time doing this
than doing actual work... this is called "thrashing" which can grind
everything to a halt - it may be why you ran that command... to see if
your swap drive is full... it seems ok, only 1/2 full (optimist :-)

I think that understanding your computer is key to operating it smoothly.

A final bit of advice. You say you have 2 hard drives (/dev/sda &
/dev/sdb) - did you make a clean install of 11.10 on the one? If you
haven't migrated everything over yet, then a re-install might help.
PS. you don't need 2 physical drives, It seems you have multiple
partitions on /dev/sdb (1..5..+?) you can also use one of the other
partitions on the same drive, e.g. /dev/sdb2.. what's on there?
Windows? Yes, get rid of it. LOL

I hope I've helped you become more empowered today :-)

Keep well.

-- 
Péter Nel