cursor sticks/freezes...escape key release.Forum: User Feedback Topic: cursor sticks/freezes...escape key release. started by: marc66thomas Posted by marc66thomas on Feb. 14 2007,18:04
I don't know if this is happening to anyone else. 2 or 3 times a day the cursor will stop reacting moving responding. I have waited a while to see if a process has it tied up... the only thing that I've found to regain control, is to hit the escape key. I can then continue using the app or the OS. I haven't noticed one application that seems to be the culprit as it seem to happen with a number of programs. Opera, Dillo even just the desktop of Fluxbox. Anyone with Ideas? Dell latitude Laptop LM p133 40g ram. using an external ps2 mouse, firmly plugged in. PS it also happened using the laptop touchpad. Posted by lucky13 on Feb. 14 2007,18:49
I believe you meant 40MB RAM. Here are a couple things you can do to monitor what's going on and see if you can detect a pattern. Open your menu to "system" and find top. Alternatively, you can just open a terminal, type top, and then let it run where you can see it while you have applications opened. Watch to see if anything is running up a lot of memory/CPU when you detect a freeze. (You only need to leave the first few processes visible under whatever else you're running.) Second idea, open a terminal and type: ps -A This will give you a list of all processes. If you see something still running that you remember shutting down you can kill that manually (sudo kill -9 [PID number from the list]). One of the things I've noticed about Dillo, since you said you run it, is that its bookmark plug in (dpi/dpi.d iirc) doesn't close along with Dillo. While that's most likely NOT to blame unless you have a ton of bookmarks for Dillo, it does eat up some of your memory and should probably be killed if you see it. You can search just for that with: ps - A | grep dpi I have a hunch this is occurring because you're running big apps like Opera without sufficient RAM to handle them. You didn't say what you're doing or how big your swap partition is, but I figure it would stutter a lot with 133 mhz and 40MB of RAM using Opera or if you're doing anything with multimedia or images since those are usually big files. Posted by marc66thomas on Feb. 14 2007,21:10
Lucky13 Thanks for the directions for searching out my quirk. It rings true that I'm multitasking when the mouse freezes. To clear up the RAM, my mistake 40mb ram and the swap file is about 75MB. Top reports ram 38,764 while running opera used 36,364. and Swap 76,600. I'll keep an eye out for the activity that may push it over. As far a Opera and stuttering. Being that I like Firefox on all my other machines, and the fact that I chose opera over FF is because Opera works well for chat, mail, rss and yes browsing too. I can report that it boots fast and feels nimble as it changes from task to task all in one application. For me that made it a winner. Posted by lucky13 on Feb. 14 2007,22:32
That computer CAN multitask, but it will be a lot easier and smoother if you choose applications with consideration for your memory limitations.
It isn't merely "running over" that's tripping you up. Opera isn't the only process running. You also have X, fluxbox or whatever window manager, init, etc. Running something as large as Opera requires everything to page back and forth between RAM and swap. The more tabs/browser windows you have open and the more processes you're running, the more likely it is that all this paging between RAM and swap is what's causing the stutters with your cursor and locking up. This is especially true if you're hitting pages with graphics, flash or java (if enabled), or other multimedia.
That's one thing on computers with 128MB of RAM (or preferably more), but another with 40MB. In theory, it makes good sense to use something that ties everything into a tighter bundle like that. In practice, though, you'll have a lot better performance with 40MB using smaller apps like Dillo and Sylpheed and nAIM. And the more console apps you run, even under X, the better performance you'll have with 40MB. Remember, too, that 40MB of RAM doesn't equate to 40MB available for all your apps if part of your RAM is set aside for video. I have a hunch you don't have a separate video carsd and thus have 37-38MB available for your use. (I think you can use the DSL Console to see how much RAM you have available.) DSL has console apps for everything you mentioned. nAIM and nIRC come on the DSL CD-ROM. You can also install epic4 from the repository if you want more IRC features. The repo also has elmo, which is a very good little mail agent. You can use netrik or lynx to browse; they can read most sites and you'll be surprised how fast sites load without all the graphics. Snownews is a very nice RSS aggregator found in the repo; set it up with lynx as the browser. You can run all these -- and more -- in the same terminal in X, in their own terminals, or multitasking in the console using screen.dsl (terminal multiplexer that lets you run and switch between multiple console apps) and your system should run a lot better without any stuttering because I don't think they'll cumulatively tie up a third of the RAM Opera alone requires. And even if you need a GUI browser, Dillo plus those console apps will eat up a lot less than Opera alone will.
Is it still a winner if it's what's causing your laptop to freeze up? That would be my criteria, not how nice or fancy it is, but how well it runs on your hardware with everything else. Apparently something's not right... Posted by marc66thomas on Feb. 15 2007,21:41
Lucky13 I appreciate your attention to this subject. I am a fan of Dillo with some reservations (bookmarks are tough for me to figure out. using Dillos system and preferences are a bit slim.) Sylpheed was the deal killer. Although it is small and nimble, as you said. It didn't handle HTML mail or attachments well. After spending an hour on how to send myself a file; (a zipped HTML file of my bookmarks) I decided to punt on Slypheed. Opera was my known quanity choice, the add on of the chat was 270k more. I'll stick with Opera untill I start having other additional issues. (hitting the escape key not being a fatal flaw. Again thank you for the suggestions. I may look for an alternate mail app. that can handle incomming HTML mail and better recognize attachments of any sort. Posted by lucky13 on Feb. 16 2007,15:59
What issue did you have with Dillo's bookmarks? I think the preferences in Dillo are pretty straightforward, too. What problem did you have with that? As far as Sylpheed goes, it handles HTML mail and other attachments just fine. Most "HTML mail" comes with the main text body and an HTML attachment. This is how Sylpheed and other (mostly console) MUAs treat HTML; I have KMail set up on this computer to look at text and treat HTML and images as attachments because that's the most secure way to handle them (especially from spam/unknown sources). I only open such attachments from sources I can identify -- never by default (I've fixed that default error in Opera, Thunderbird, Seamonkey on my other computers and all are now configured to show only text until I'm sure I want to open attachments). I realize other MUAs give preference to HTML over text and display everything unless told otherwise. I think that's a very bad default and an unsafe practice to be in because of the number of threats related to HTML and images. Yes, you can get malware from text-based e-mail; the threat from HTML-mail, though, increases exponentially because of the number of exploits that take advantage of HTML parsers as soon as mail is open. It can be something relatively minor, such as reporting your e-mail address as valid to the sender (which only means you could receive more spam as a result). It could be something a lot more serious even with Linux. It's just bad practice to open an HTML attachment BY DEFAULT like that. You can configure Sylpheed to open the HTML attachment in Dillo or any other browser just as you can configure other applications to handle any other attachment. Once you have it configured (and applied) as you want, all you do is open it to look at the attachments and middle click (or right and left click if using laptop touchpad) on the HTML attachment or whatever attachment you have and it opens in Dillo or another handler app you've set up. You can use any browser for the HTML, xzgv for image attachments, xmms for audio/video attachments, etc. Sylpheed works VERY well like that, whether you use the applications that come with DSL or add others through the repository or apt-get. It only takes a few minutes to configure and you can change it on the fly if you find other applications to handle your attachments. I wouldn't let that be a "deal breaker," especially given the amount of memory your computer has in relation to the applications you want to run, but it is your computer and you're free to hit the escape key as often as you have to. Hopefully that's the most of your worries with how you choose to view your e-mail. Just remember the escape key doesn't stop snooping, virii, or other unsolicited actions occurring from promiscuously viewing HMTL code in e-mails by default. < See this page >, < this one >, < this one > (more Windows oriented, but the principles are the same), or do your own search for HTML e-mail and security. Posted by lucky13 on Feb. 16 2007,18:22
One more thing. < The Sylpheed manual > is available online and contains directions to handle MIME types with helper applications. You can also look < [here > for more information.I don't know how many programs you've installed from the repository or apt-get and you'd want to set up to handle attachments, but here are the basic handler applications you should associate with various types per the programs that come with DSL: image/*; xzgv %s application/pdf; xpdf %s text/html; dillo %s audio/*; xmms %s video/mpeg; xmms %s Etc. The pattern is very simple and you can set all that up in Sylpheed's configuration menu or in the sylpheedrc file manually. If you choose to open files with console apps, remember to set up an aterm in the handler command (e.g., if you want to open HTML in lynx instead of dillo you would use aterm -T lynx -e lynx %s). |