See this post for a tip in how to boost your Linux performance:

Free Linux Memory by Dropping Caches

So the disk is not full... that's good. You might want to try defragmenting the / volume. Also, check how many inodes and blocks are free (using tune2fs). If the inodes are near full, which might be the case even with 48% disk usage, there will be performance problems. But probably, you need to (a) tune the disk given the link in my previous post, and (b) defragment.

Hi Otheus,

Following is the output of tune2fs.

tune2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem volume name: /boot
Last mounted on: <not available>
Filesystem UUID: adedf01a-11a0-474d-a0fb-b0fb618c5489
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype sparse_super
Default mount options: user_xattr acl
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Inode count: 26104
Block count: 104388
Reserved block count: 5219
Free blocks: 83463tune2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem volume name: /boot
Last mounted on: <not available>
Filesystem UUID: adedf01a-11a0-474d-a0fb-b0fb618c5489
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem revision #: 1 (dynamic)
Filesystem features: has_journal ext_attr resize_inode dir_index filetype sparse_super
Default mount options: user_xattr acl
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
Filesystem OS type: Linux
Inode count: 26104
Block count: 104388
Reserved block count: 5219
Free blocks: 83463
Free inodes: 26065
First block: 1
Block size: 1024
Fragment size: 1024
Reserved GDT blocks: 256
Blocks per group: 8192
Fragments per group: 8192
Inodes per group: 2008
Inode blocks per group: 251
Filesystem created: Tue Sep 23 11:28:12 2008
Last mount time: Mon Nov 10 10:24:18 2008
Last write time: Mon Nov 10 10:58:58 2008
Mount count: 176
Maximum mount count: -1
Last checked: Tue Sep 23 11:28:12 2008
Check interval: 0 (<none>)
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
First inode: 11
Inode size: 128
Journal inode: 8
Default directory hash: tea
Directory Hash Seed: bd7df157-0fae-4d98-aff4-23eaa8dc92aa
Journal backup: inode blocks

Free inodes: 26065
First block: 1
Block size: 1024
Fragment size: 1024
Reserved GDT blocks: 256
Blocks per group: 8192
Fragments per group: 8192
Inodes per group: 2008
Inode blocks per group: 251
Filesystem created: Tue Sep 23 11:28:12 2008
Last mount time: Mon Nov 10 10:24:18 2008
Last write time: Mon Nov 10 10:58:58 2008
Mount count: 176
Maximum mount count: -1
Last checked: Tue Sep 23 11:28:12 2008
Check interval: 0 (<none>)
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
First inode: 11
Inode size: 128
Journal inode: 8
Default directory hash: tea
Directory Hash Seed: bd7df157-0fae-4d98-aff4-23eaa8dc92aa
Journal backup: inode blocks
=========================================================

I tried to execute the following commands to tune the harddrive, but they don't seem to be working on my PC.
Please take a look them and guide me further.



[root]# hdparm -t /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
Timing buffered disk reads: 6 MB in 3.15 seconds = 1.90 MB/sec
[root]# hdparm -T /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads: 2236 MB in 2.00 seconds = 1118.49 MB/sec
------------------------------------------------------------------
[root]# hdparm -c1 /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
setting 32-bit IO_support flag to 1
HDIO_SET_32BIT failed: Invalid argument
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

[root]# hdparm -d1 /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
[root]# hdparm -m 16 /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
setting multcount to 16
HDIO_SET_MULTCOUNT failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
HDIO_GET_MULTCOUNT failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[root]# fsck
fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 is mounted.

WARNING!!! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause
SEVERE filesystem damage.

Do you really want to continue (y/n)? yes


/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00: clean, 345300/19052352 files, 8652505/19046400 blocks
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/dev/sda1 is mounted.

WARNING!!! Running e2fsck on a mounted filesystem may cause
SEVERE filesystem damage.

Do you really want to continue (y/n)? yes

/boot: clean, 39/26104 files, 20925/104388 blocks

/boot is not very interesting. Run it on /dev/hda3
Noo! You have SCSI disks!! As you noted in a previous message, /boot is on /dev/sda, which means SCSI. Go into your SCSI Bios setup (during a reboot) and see if you can determine the bus speed and max data rate for the device. Examples will be: 20, 40, 80, 160, 320 Mbits / s. Also see if you can identify the hard drive. If the SCSI BIOS doesn't help you, you can use dmesg or cat /proc/scsi/scsi

NOOOOO NEVER DO THAT (unless you know what you're really doing). Did you not see the "SEVERE damage" part of the message?

Consider yourself lucky.