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I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 with Xfce on an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz and 4Gb RAM, which I've had for a while and which isn't keeping up with the increasing demands of software updates to Firefox and Xfce etc.

If I leave the computer unused (but on) for any length of time (typically overnight but often shorter) the GUI becomes unresponsive for a couple of minutes but then comes back to life.

I really only use these apps: Firefox, Handbrake, backuppc, terminal.

Since it also covers various other non-GUI functions like backuppc, iptables, bind, dhcp, there may be a lot of unnecessary server-side stuff going on.

This is my freemem output:

adam@gondor:~$ free -m
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           3883         683         909         144        2290        2771
Swap:          4024         186        3837
adam@gondor:~$

Can I diagnose and fix this without adding more hardware, and apart from not using Firefox anymore?

Adam
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  • There no Ubuntu version 16. Which Ubuntu version do you really have? 16.04 or 16.10? They are significantly different. – L. D. James Jun 18 '18 at 01:10
  • It's Ubuntu 16.04 – Adam Jun 18 '18 at 21:53
  • So it is becoming unresponsive if you leave it alone for a while ? Your first step could be to make sure your HDD is not spinning down . – Robert Riedl Jun 28 '18 at 06:38
  • That's right - normally it's fine but overnight something seems to nacker it. The disk drive setting in my Disks utility is set to OFF. It seems that functionality might not work for the brand of hard drive - Western Digital to be specific and mine is a Hitachi, although I turned it ON and watched the syslog, which showed udisksd doing its stuff without errors or warnings. I have left Stand-by=OFF, but set APM to perform better 255 (disabled). 1 is spin down permitted. It was just OFF – Adam Jun 28 '18 at 19:01
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    Maybe try using iotop to see what thread is using disk I/O? I frequently need to ionice things like tracker-store, and iotop lets you do this interactively. – Nathaniel M. Beaver Jun 29 '18 at 21:08
  • OK I see stuff running like backuppc but this is a dual core CPU - how come the other core isn't free to run firefox? – Adam Jun 30 '18 at 11:49
  • I'm not sure what you mean by GUI "unresponsive". Does that mean the mouse pointer won't move or applications won't refresh? Leave the terminal running top overnight. When you come back in the morning is it still updating every few seconds? Press the Q key to exit top. Can you immediately type some terminal command such as ll or does it pause for a couple of minutes? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jun 30 '18 at 17:16
  • GUI "unresponsiveness" == the mouse moves, but the effect of the clicks is massively delayed. The command line is not so badly affected - I can run top and quit out of it, although it is slightly slowed down. That's probably got access to the other CPU core right, but the GUI thread/s ... glacial – Adam Jul 01 '18 at 11:42
  • have you checked the cpu governor ? Maybe its in powersafe mode or something ? – Robert Riedl Jul 02 '18 at 17:37

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