Ubuntu 13.10 client slows/dims on W7 host

[kmarsh8]

I've had this same problem on 3 different systems over the past year. While I love the integration with Ubuntu, it's just not working well for me.

What happens is I use the Ubuntu client for a short period of time, then it starts to dim and gets very slow. The only apps I use are Terminal and Firefox. I don't have a lot of tabs open.

Current Host system is an i6 with 16GB. Windows 7 is fully patched and updated. Nothing else running except Outlook most of the time. I open Task Manager and nothing is going on. At all. The CPU is not busy. Yet the client O/S is running like molasses.

Client has 1GB of memory and pretty much defaults. I have rebooted host, reinstalled Client Tools and toggled Accelerate 3D graphics, no change.

Any ideas?

[kmarsh8]

Hmmm... that's what I thought.

[gszoniec]

Check my suggestions I wrote there Laggy (bad performing) Linux-VMs

[kmarsh8]

Thanks for the reply.

Narrowing it down a bit, it's not VMNAT.exe running away. I've left Task Manager and TOP running during the freezes and both  the CPU and the virtual CPU are quite idle.

I've since switched from Unity to XCFE, reduced swappiness to 10, and doubled the virtual RAM from 1GB to 2GB. This eliminates most of the pauses and I have an occasional freeze during busy times (opening and closing javascript-heavy pages), but now the system sorts itself out and becomes usable after several seconds of being frozen. Previously I had to wait 10 minutes or more, or just give up and force a reboot.

I suspect the real problem is Firefox's size. With only 4-5 tabs open it runs at least 1.5GB and I only had 1GB virtual RAM and 1GB swap. I've removed add-ons or run in Safe Mode and there's no difference at all, same pauses and freezes. Sometimes it affects just FF and sometimes the whole client (every window and keyboard response). Sometimes I can switch to a virtual console and other times it just ignores the keyboard while its doing its thing.

Thanks for that page, I've bookemarked it and I'll go through it step by step. If the system is hung up in swapping, defrags on host and client filesystems may help, but I doubt will be a cure. I have a Core i7, 16GB RAM so h/w upgrades are not on the table.

Thanks again. If I fix it I'll post what I find.