Re: [tlug] Slooooooow down: logs, smartctl, DNS?

[Dave M G <dave@example.com>]

Stephen, Mario,

Thank you for responding.

Mario De Tore wrote:

> If you have the time and spare cable(s) it might be worth swapping out
> a segment at a time.

Hmmm... you think it could be a bad wire? I'm willing to try that. There
are only two relevant ethernet cables. One from the Mythbuntu (server)
machine to the router, and the other from my usual workstation (client)
to the router. I'll give it a go and report back.

> If you are feeling really plucky you could also
> ratchet down your MTU to try and improve throughput, but I advise
> against that unless you are really comfortable playing around in that
> area

Since I have no idea what an MTU is, I'm going to assume I should heed
your warning and not touch it.


> I gave up on the NFS traffic for now.

I have a note below about NFS.

> All I could figure out is that
> you have a very eclectic collection of music.

: )

> None of this explains the large amount of TCP connections you reported
> earlier though.  Was this capture from that same box?

The capture was from the Mythbuntu (server) box. At the time I was
running Amarok via SSH as described previously. I only have two boxes
relevant to this. The Mythbuntu box I'm connecting to, and my usual
computer that I connect from (and that I'm writing this email from, and
do pretty much everything else with).

A couple of other notes about current status:

I thought Deja Dup might be the problem, simply by reviewing what I've
changed recently since this problem started. Deja Dup was having
crashing problems so I reinstalled it and changed some configurations
roughly around when this problem started. I removed it, and that seems
to have helped, but not solved, the delay. I think it might have been a
secondary problem on top of the main problem described in this thread.

At the top of this thread, I reported wait times of about 15 seconds. I
have to admit that now that I'm watching the situation closely, it isn't
usually quite that bad, though it has been that bad roughly three times
within the last three days.

Usually, like right now as I write this, it's just slow enough to be
totally frustrating. I click on a menu or interface, and it doesn't
respond. I become unsure if it registered the click. So I click again.
And then it seems to suddenly register both clicks, opening and closing
whatever dialogue I hope for so fast that I can't access it. In other
words, most of the time there's some kind of delay or irregular
communication which is just off enough to drive me completely nuts.

The problem is much worse with anything requiring a GUI. Amarok
particularly, but also Firefox, Transmission, and Synaptic. The problem
is much less noticeable if I'm just working in a terminal doing command
line things. I can tell there's a little delay between keystroke and
response, but it's fast enough to at least be operational.

Also, the NFS connection, which I use to navigate directories with
Nautilus, seems to be fine now (possibly as a result of removing Deja
Dup, which does a lot of file crawling). So this may be limited to just SSH.

I hope some of this information can lead to a solution.

Thanks for any help or suggestions.

-- 
Dave M G