Slow processing

[linas@linas.org]

It's been rumoured that Jim Woodruff said:
> 
> 
> I just installed gnucash-1.4.3-3 via rpm obtained from
> gnucash.org on my 533Mhz Alpha 21164PC that has 64 MB
> SDRAM and 1 MB SRAM cache. I'm running Red Hat 7.0.
> 
> I successfully imported Quicken 2001 QIF files from my
> wife's windows machine but have run into a major problem.
> Whenever I open, close, change preferences, enter data,
> etc. my checking account register (my checking account
> QIF file was 347 Kb in size) my computer processes and
> perfonms read/writes to my harddrive for 5-7 mins.  Top
> shows approximately 17% cpu and memory usages. This makes
> this program totally unusable.

Are you sure the system isn't swapping like crazy?   Although
memory usage may be 'small' (17%), that's only the 'rss'
(resident set size).  The total size may be well in excess 
of 64MB, but rss is only 17% because netscape, X11, etc. 
insists on hanging onto the other 83%

In 'top', what are the 'SIZE', 'RSS' and 'SHARE' values?

also what's the mem status lines, i.e. the ones that look like
Mem:   95200K av,  90644K used,   4556K free,   9660K shrd,  36116K buff
Swap: 197056K av,   3200K used, 193856K free                 28848K cached
                   ^^^^^
                  this in partoicular ...


--linas