Huge performance drops

[jury]

My 6 years notebook with Mint 18.2 started to experience quite drops in performance. I decided to go for some lightweight distribution and found out Sparky Linux.
I've installed it about 2 months ago and it seemd quite satisfying for most of its live, but lately I started experiencing even worse performance drops regulary. Its so slow that its inpossible to use it during those performance drops, which last for 10 or even more minutes. This morning it took like 20 minutes after which I had enough of it so rebooted the machine.
"top" command (which takes about 1 minute to start at the times of those performance drops :/ ) doesn't show any cpu hungry processes.
Now, how to identify what is going on?

[bin]

Hi
First of all open a terminal and run

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inxi -F. Copy the output and click the # symbol above the reply box. Paste the output between the 2 sets of brackets.
However, if this has happened with 2 different distros after a period of time then it begs the question - are you using an SSD.
If so then in a terminal run

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sudo fstrim -v / followed by

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sudo fstrim -v /home if you have /home on its own partition.
How much free space do you have on the disk?

[jury]

No SSD.
Free space on the disk is a little over 300 GiB

And the output from inxi -F:

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System:
  Host: notebook1 Kernel: 4.19.0-8-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64
  Desktop: Xfce 4.12.4 Distro: SparkyLinux 5.11 (Nibiru)
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Inspiron 3521 v: A12
  serial: <root required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0N1XH2 v: A00 serial: <root required>
  UEFI [Legacy]: Dell v: A12 date: 10/25/2013
CPU:
  Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-3217U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
  L2 cache: 3072 KiB
  Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/1800 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1107 2: 1096
  3: 1024 4: 1112
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: AMD Thames [Radeon HD 7500M/7600M Series] driver: radeon
  v: kernel
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: ati,modesetting,radeon
  unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ivybridge Mobile v: 4.2 Mesa 18.3.6
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio
  driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-8-amd64
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet
  driver: r8169
  IF: eth0 state: down mac: ec:f4:bb:89:6c:53
  Device-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter
  driver: bcma-pci-bridge
  IF-ID-1: wlan0 state: up mac: d0:df:9a:b8:7f:a8
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 117.73 GiB (25.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST500LT012-1DG142 size: 465.76 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 19.37 GiB used: 5.48 GiB (28.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-2: /home size: 437.95 GiB used: 112.25 GiB (25.6%) fs: ext4
  dev: /dev/sda2
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: radeon temp: 40 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2600
Info:
  Processes: 227 Uptime: 15h 28m Memory: 7.68 GiB used: 4.15 GiB (54.0%)
  Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32


However, if this has happened with 2 different distros after a period of time then it begs the question - are you using an SSD.

Sorry, I haven't been precise. On Mint 18.2 it was just little performance drops compared to what is happening now. The overall system feeling was slower, but thats it. And on Sparky I started having complete stoppage of the system for like 10 or more minutes, when you can not do almost anything.

[paxmark1]

1.  I have been having a similar problem in sid and my several year oid Sparky testing with hdd and sid is on a SDHC  on an ancient atom acer aspire one,  32 bit of course.   inxi posted here a few times.    Problem seems   mostly around browsers.  tied up and locked tight.  ssh in and no high cpu processes noted via htop

2.  I would strongly recommend first to "man fstrim"    Anyone who suggests options that work as root on your disk , well I would first check on things.  Especially someone with just 3 posts. 

I would recommend the -n function added on   That is the dry run.     "fstrim -vn /"        --verbose     --dry-run    The actions suggested are fairly safe in this hobbyists opinion. 

For 30 years of working with the mentally challenged, I still remain a fan of active treatment.    Every Moment is a Teachable Moment.

bin   I did also try it on my Debian stable machine which is extremely important to me.  I would not have done those actions if I did not trust you after a little research.  As always, I remain a fan of using inxi.    bin   - please stay around and keep posting.

32 hours work in 54 hours and a wedding 200 km away to take aging parents to.  I will follow this thread closely.  jury, thank you for posting this. 

[bin]

No SSD.
Free space on the disk is a little over 300 GiB

Sorry, I haven't been precise. On Mint 18.2 it was just little performance drops compared to what is happening now. The overall system feeling was slower, but thats it. And on Sparky I started having complete stoppage of the system for like 10 or more minutes, when you can not do almost anything.

OK - thanks for the hardware info. Inspirons are normally pretty good with linux, I've used a number over the years with a few  problems mostly ATI Graphics chip and Broadcom wifi related..

I have to assume that you have eliminated the obvious in that this is not just being caused by browser misbehaviour.

If the machine locks up/drags to a halt then it has to be for a reason. I notice in your inxi that your memory usage is high-ish. Obviously I have no idea what was running at the time. It would be interesting to get a baseline after power down, wait 5 minutes then power up, wait 5 minutes then run inxi -t . Then if you can get to a point where the machine is bogged down run it again.

If it isn't obviously CPU hogging then it's elsewhere.

The other thing I would be looking at is checking your drive using SMART. Install gsmartcontrol and run it. You'll get a heap of diagnostic data, the most obvious stuff being bad sectors, disk life, uptime and so on.

Other thoughts
I don't know if you are on a mixed network and are trying to authenticate to Windows machines.

Is there a wireless printer that is dropping off and trying to re-connect? Possibly a Bluetooth connection?

Are you using a wireless/bluetooth mouse/keyboard?

Is Firewall running? - I do find that things seem a bit slower when it is, but not massively. If you are not behind a hardware FW then be wary of experimenting with it off.

I  see you're running b43 - the bane of my life with linux on laptops!

I have found that disabling ip6 and setting manual ip in wifi can help eliminate network manager just dropping - which it frequently does. If practical connect to your router via network cable and disable wifi as a possible cause.

Sorry but there's no magic bullet with this kind of issue, these are just a few ideas that might get you to a cause if not a solution.

[jury]

Problem seems   mostly around browsers.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it would be this.

Other thoughts
I don't know if you are on a mixed network and are trying to authenticate to Windows machines.

No Windows! ;)

Is there a wireless printer that is dropping off and trying to re-connect? Possibly a Bluetooth connection?

Are you using a wireless/bluetooth mouse/keyboard?

Is Firewall running? - I do find that things seem a bit slower when it is, but not massively. If you are not behind a hardware FW then be wary of experimenting with it off.

No wireless printer and no wireless/bluetooth mouse/keyboard.
As for Firewall, it was off when this huge slowdown happend.

OK, guys, thanks for all your suggestions (if you have any more do not hesitate to share them ;) )
I will of course read all on that and do what I can do as I need to find out what causing this behaviour. Hopefully it happens quite rarely and since that last time few days ago, this machine works flawlessly.

[jury]

Over 2 weeks passed and I had not even one performance drop, so I guess the problem solved.
What I have done, was after posting this thread I have realised that after installing Sparky I have not done one important thing for web browsers. I did not install any suspender. So I have installed Tab Suspender and all seems well (fingers crossed)