Testing Ram - Gimp - Puppy slowing down at 3gb- 10% usage (solved)

[peppyy]

I have been doing some graphics work with the Gimp. Multiple layers, not really high resolution. I am finding that after about 1/2 an hour to an hour that puppy becomes very sluggish. Usually just before the 3gb mark according to conky. If I open a browser on another desktop, it slows to a crawl.

I have never seen my 32gb of ram approach anything over 4gb usage.
Is there a tool I can use to test the ram? I remember something called memtester I used to use a long time ago.

I am guessing that it would be best to test this without the os running? Since I am specifically Non OEM, custom build I don't have the tools that would usually be on a separate Utilities partition.
Any suggestions?

[rockedge]

@peppyy Which kernel are you using? Is a swap file / partition enabled and active?

The machine shouldn't be showing this behavior until around 28+ Gb of RAM if it can actually access the full 32 G of RAM.

What does the pup-sys-info report? or in a terminal:

Code: Select all

free -h

[Phoenix]

The program you remember is called memtest x86. It runs before any operating system is loaded. As well, it could be that you CPU could be struggling. You should be checking via htop to verify that there isn't something else besides memory at hand.

[bigpup]

memtest 86
viewtopic.php?t=159

[peppyy]

@rockedge free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 31Gi 588Mi 28Gi 490Mi 2.0Gi 29Gi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B
It is funny once you write something and post it, you remember resources you had forgotten. I booted to UBCD4 and ran a test live. Everything came back with no errors on 2 passes. (it was running all the fans on high for an hour).
Running stock kernel
Kernel Release: 5.4.53
Build Date: Sun Jul 26 12:11:02 BST 2020
Build GCC: 9.3.0
OS Support: GNU/Linux
Architecture: x86_64
SMP Enabled: Yes
Kernel Command Line:
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz pmedia=atahd pdrv=fossa pfix=fsck,fsckp,trim TZ=EST5EDT,M3.2.0,M11.1.0

[peppyy]

@Phoenix I will remember to open htop next time it starts lagging. It appears that it currently agrees with conky desktop.

[Feek]

(it was running all the fans on high for an hour).

What about CPU usage?

I had a problem with the rising of the CPU usage in Fossapup64 even if no app was running.
Turning off the compositor (Picom) helped me.

[peppyy]

@Feek It was only when running Memtest86+ live that the fan's were running full. You do have a point though. I find when using video apps like Openshot that ffmpeg only uses one core and speeds up the processor fan. The memory tester I used said it found all 6 cores however it was only using one.

[peppyy]

(Solved) I went into The Gimp - edit - Preferences, and under System Resources, set undo, tile cache and new image higher and it is working very well.

[mikewalsh]

The program you remember is called memtest x86. It runs before any operating system is loaded. As well, it could be that you CPU could be struggling. You should be checking via htop to verify that there isn't something else besides memory at hand.

I doubt the system is struggling. Not with a 6-core FX-6300 and 32 GB RAM.

Of course, even now very few apps are actually written to make use of multiple core threads, even when such are available. If the GIMP is only using one thread/core, then what peppyy is doing, viz: layers, could perhaps be over loading that single core, despite that there are several others available.

It's something of a minefield.

@peppyy :-

Just out of curiosity, what version of GIMP are you running here.....2.8, or 2.10? (Or are you being REALLY brave, and trying out the 3.0 'dev' build?)

Mike.

[peppyy]

@mikewalsh I am running 2.10. I notice that in preferences it offers (with a warning), Hardware acceleration using OpenCL however it looks like something I don't want to play with See http://gegl.opencl.org/.

I have tried a couple newer appimages however I am rather set in my tools arrangement and layout. When things are in different menus or areas I take a long time to adapt.

opencl.jpg (33.76 KiB) Viewed 662 times

Edited to add screenshot