hello list,

[warning: this post is a fairly long newbie-ish linux problem and subsequent 
call for help - those with low tolerances for such things, please skip!]

i've been trying to learn how to compile a kernel properly, and after about 15 
botched kernels i finally got a working 2.4.21 running on my debian sid box, 
configured properly with my athlon xp 2100 cpu, ethernet, sound, nvidia 
drivers, usb mouse and audio support, and so on. everything looks dandy when 
i boot up, except for a couple of error messages about 'cannot locate module 
char-major 10', 'cannot initialize agpgart module', and some nls modules 
which can't be located -- none of which particular bothers me. all my modules 
show up fine after checking with 'lsmod' and my various system components all 
seem to be working fine.

that said, i seem to be experiencing inexplicable system slowdowns using kde 
3.1 where the cpu usage spikes to around 80% or so, the mouse becomes 
unresponsive, and any audio playing (xmms usually) starts to stutter. i've 
tried isolating the problem to a particular program - i noticed xmms seemed 
to be occupying several processes all around 5%, so i killed it, then X 
started doing the same. then today the same thing happened with just mozilla 
open. i was previously running the default debian install kernel 
2.4.18-bf.2.4 with no problems. 

which leads me to believe that somehow i configured something wrong in the 
kernel, though i've googled for info on just about every kernel option and 
think i have everything ok. could any of you linux gurus offer any 
explanation of why/how a new kernel could be responsible for these weird 
system problems? or would it be more likely some kde bug? i regularly (once 
every few days) run apt-get update & dist-upgrade.. is that more likely the 
bug?

sorry for the long post, and i appreciate any help anyone can offer,

best,
nick


_______________________________________________
TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota
http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org
https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list