disk swapping

folgui · Post by **folgui** » Thu Apr 03, 2003 4:21 pm

Hi!

First, sorry if my english isn't good enough, i'm from Spain

My problem is that when i'm getting new headers, i can't do anything else with the system....desktop, windows, loading progs, all is very very slow and desesperatelly

While getting headers and open a folder (with newsgroups) to view contents it seems program has crashed but finally, after 5-10-30 minutes it responds and can see the contents of folder. Same for deleting headers. Sometimes to delete 1-2 headers y takes a lots of minutes before responding.

All these problems are only while getting new headers. Also when i click to get new headers for a folder with a several newsgroups, it can be instantly or perhaps it takes a lot of time before responding.

I use WinXP Pro with the latest version of newspro (3.62). Have PIV 1.4Mhz with 256 MB of RAM.

NewsPro Database is on a 80GB Harddrive at 7200rpm. It uses about 30% of processor and 160 MB of ram.

I have 6-8 newservers, and newsgroups are organized by folders, each folder has like 5-8 newsgroups itself.

I recently fixed fld.dat to 200MB and del.dat to 100MB but the same problem goes on.

One solution is reset database, but i don't want to reset database each week / 2 weeks.

I think purge deleted headers will help but not sure. Seems that when getting new header acceses to disk are at 99-100% and don't let me do nothing until it finishes.

Anybody can help me? Tell me some options or parameters/steps that can cause this or follow to get happier

Great program. The Best newsreader.

Thanks in advance

Regards, folgui.

alex · Post by **alex** » Thu Apr 03, 2003 5:39 pm

You have 256MB of memory, if you see 200+100=300MB+ database files - it is more memory than you have. When you download headers it requires access to all the database, since it cannot be contained in memory - disk swapping starts. If you add 256MB more memory (512MB total) there will be no problem to handle the database size.

It doesn't matter what memory SDRAM or RDRAM, in the sense 512MB SDRAM will perform better than 256MB RDRAM.

Alternatively you can also reduce retention (properties->newsgroups, retention or last headers) so the database will have less headers. Invoke get new headers and after the number of headers has dropped - invoke file menu->optimize database accesses, the database will shrink then (no need in reset database).