FossaPup Running Slow On Netbook

[jm03]

Hi everyone,

I have successfully installed FossaPup on both my Lenovo ThinkPad and my Samsung Netbook.

Though, the Netbook is now running incredibly slow with FossaPup.

I was previously running Puppy Tahr on it, and that definitely ran quicker.

What do you guys think I should do?

Should I go back to Puppy Tahr?

Or is there another version of Puppy Linux that would be more suitable and run well on the Netbook?

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

[bigpup]

I have successfully installed FossaPup

Which version?
Installed exactly how?

Samsung Netbook

Model or specs if you know them?

[bigpup]

This is what most of it is about:
https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/11/04/an- ... perations/

[jm03]

I have successfully installed FossaPup

Which version?
Installed exactly how?

Samsung Netbook

Model or specs if you know them?

Hi bigpup,

Thanks for your reply.

I am running FossaPup 9.5.

The Netbook is a Samsung NC210 with an Intel Atom processor, 2 GB RAM, and I think a 300gb hard drive.

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

[jm03]

This is what most of it is about:
https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/11/04/an- ... perations/

Hi bigpup,

I read that link you provided, but I'm confused as to what point you are making...

Are you saying that the Linux kernel is getting slower with each new release?

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

[dogFellow]

boot pfix=ram then open gparted select the partition then right click and select "check" then do it action it

[jm03]

Hi dogFellow,

I am confused by your instructions.

Where do I put "pfix=ram" ?

Then I open Gparted and right-click on which partition?

What is all this supposed to do?

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

[dogFellow]

sorry i have lost my mind and cant reply to you any more

[foxpup]

How have you installed Puppy on your netbook?
Is it a frugal install?
Do you have a swap?

Does it start up fast enough or is it just running slowly?

Can you startup htop to monitor RAM use?

Can you find the configfile of the bootloader on system?
menu.lst or grub.cfg or ...
Can you find the entry for Fossapup there?
Add a new entry there and add option pfix=nocopy to the kernel line.
In case ram is a problem, it will not copy the entire Fossapup to ram, so more ram is left for work.

Let us know how it goes.

[garnet]

Hi John,

Once you have figured out where your bootloader configuration are, as @foxpup says, try putting "mitigations=off" boot option in your bootloader config file and see if you recover some of the "lost" performance.
If you don't see any difference, then remove it.
If you see some difference, then report back and I will explain what it means ...

[jm03]

How have you installed Puppy on your netbook?
Is it a frugal install?
Do you have a swap?

Does it start up fast enough or is it just running slowly?

Can you startup htop to monitor RAM use?

Can you find the configfile of the bootloader on system?
menu.lst or grub.cfg or ...
Can you find the entry for Fossapup there?
Add a new entry there and add option pfix=nocopy to the kernel line.
In case ram is a problem, it will not copy the entire Fossapup to ram, so more ram is left for work.

Let us know how it goes.

Yes, it is a frugal install, and I have a 2GB swap partition.

I think it starts up okay. Not too slow.

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is with Google Chrome closed.

It's weird, because Google Chrome is closed, but it still shows up in the list of processes.

I have just killed the Google Chrome process using htop.

I will try your pfix=nocopy trick and let you know how that goes.


I am looking to find where the menu.lst file is stored, but I can't seem to find it.

I have a 250mb FAT32 partition at sda1 as my boot partition, because the FossaPup installer kept demanding a fat32 volume to install the bootloader to.

But, I don't see any sda1 on my system...Perhaps I need to manually mount it?

Yes, I just tried it, and I had to manually mount sda1. Now I can see menu.lst.

[jm03]

I tried to do the pfix=nocopy but I put it in the wrong location of the grub.cfg file and my netbook couldn't start up. It totally kernel panicked and froze up.

Upon second inspection, there is already a "pfix=" option included on the kernel line...I can't remember exactly what was written, but it was something like "pfix=fsck", something like that.

Should I remove the existing pfix options and put "pfix=nocopy" ?

[foxpup]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is too much. Is it like that at the start, before you start any program?
You can sort on memory usage in htop (click on the colum title)(cpu usage as well).
What is causing this?

By the way, does sda1 not show as a desktop icon?

[foxpup]

Should I remove the existing pfix options and put "pfix=nocopy" ?

You can use comma:

Code: Select all

pfix=fsck,nocopy

[redquine]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is with Google Chrome closed.

It's weird, because Google Chrome is closed, but it still shows up in the list of processes.

That suggests that Chrome is (a) in Startup and (b) running processes in the background, even when it's closed.

Open Rox-filer (you should have a folder or house icon somewhere, or find it in the menu under Filesystem).
Click Startup and see if Chrome's in there. If so, move it to the "disabled" folder.

Next, launch Chrome and go to Settings > Advanced.
Scroll down to System and switch off "Continue running background apps when Iron is closed".

[thinkpadfreak]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is with Google Chrome closed.

It may matter where the cache directory is located and whether the cache size is limited or not.

The attached image shows the command line option of Chrome. You will get the information if you type "chrome://version" in the bar where the url is usually typed in.

--disk-cache-dir=/tmp means that the cache directory is /tmp, and with this setting, the cache is written in RAM not in the real disk (hard drive). This speeds up the browser.

--disk-cache-size=10485760 and --media-cache-size=10485760 means that the cache sizes are limited to 10485760 byte (approximately 10MB) respectively.
Without these settings, Chrome would eat up RAM.

I start Chrome with the following command:

Code: Select all

google-chrome-stable --disk-cache-dir=/tmp --disk-cache-size=10485760 --media-cache-size=10485760

I am running Chrome as spot by way of "Login and Security Manager." I installed Chrome from the official deb package. The software environment may be different from yours.

[bigpup]

This is what most of it is about:
https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/11/04/an- ... perations/

Hi bigpup,

I read that link you provided, but I'm confused as to what point you are making...

Are you saying that the Linux kernel is getting slower with each new release?

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

Yes.
Some slowness is caused by how the kernel is having to run stuff for security reasons.
But it should not be showing up as too slow.
My frugal install of Fossapup64 9.5, booted to a desktop, and no programs running.
Is showing used RAM as around 300MB.
So it seems you have Chrome doing something using up your RAM.

[jm03]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is too much. Is it like that at the start, before you start any program?
You can sort on memory usage in htop (click on the colum title)(cpu usage as well).
What is causing this?

By the way, does sda1 not show as a desktop icon?

I have started htop and sorted by memory usage.

No, it is not like that from the start...

From the start htop shows me that the system is using 576Mb of 1.93GZ of RAM.

Yes, sda1 is now showing as a desktop icon (it wasn't doing so on my previous bootup).

[jm03]

Should I remove the existing pfix options and put "pfix=nocopy" ?

You can use comma:

Code: Select all

pfix=fsck,nocopy

Thanks, I will try this.

[jm03]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is with Google Chrome closed.

It's weird, because Google Chrome is closed, but it still shows up in the list of processes.

That suggests that Chrome is (a) in Startup and (b) running processes in the background, even when it's closed.

Open Rox-filer (you should have a folder or house icon somewhere, or find it in the menu under Filesystem).
Click Startup and see if Chrome's in there. If so, move it to the "disabled" folder.

Next, launch Chrome and go to Settings > Advanced.
Scroll down to System and switch off "Continue running background apps when Iron is closed".

I have checked the Startup folder on my Netbook, and Chrome is not in there.

I have launched Chrome and gone to Advanced Settings and switched off "Continue running background apps when Google Chrome is closed."

[dogFellow]

have u done what i told u yet you appalling specimen of a human being ?

[jm03]

I have started up htop and it tells me that 1.73GB of 1.93GB RAM is used.

That is with Google Chrome closed.

It may matter where the cache directory is located and whether the cache size is limited or not.

The attached image shows the command line option of Chrome. You will get the information if you type "chrome://version" in the bar where the url is usually typed in.

--disk-cache-dir=/tmp means that the cache directory is /tmp, and with this setting, the cache is written in RAM not in the real disk (hard drive). This speeds up the browser.

--disk-cache-size=10485760 and --media-cache-size=10485760 means that the cache sizes are limited to 10485760 byte (approximately 10MB) respectively.
Without these settings, Chrome would eat up RAM.

I start Chrome with the following command:

Code: Select all

google-chrome-stable --disk-cache-dir=/tmp --disk-cache-size=10485760 --media-cache-size=10485760

I am running Chrome as spot by way of "Login and Security Manager." I installed Chrome from the official deb package. The software environment may be different from yours.

I have started my Google Chrome with the command you included above, and now 878Mb is being used of 1.93Gb of RAM, which is substantially better than before.

What do you mean that you are running Chrome as "spot" by way of "Login and Security Manager"?

Could you please elaborate on this point, explaining what exactly you did?

Also, is it necessary to run as "spot"? Can't I just run it as root?

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia

[jm03]

have u done what i told u yet you appalling specimen of a human being ?

No, I haven't, because your instructions were not very clear, so I could not follow them.

If you would be willing to elaborate, I'd be willing to give it a go...

[jm03]

How have you installed Puppy on your netbook?
Is it a frugal install?
Do you have a swap?

Does it start up fast enough or is it just running slowly?

Can you startup htop to monitor RAM use?

Can you find the configfile of the bootloader on system?
menu.lst or grub.cfg or ...
Can you find the entry for Fossapup there?
Add a new entry there and add option pfix=nocopy to the kernel line.
In case ram is a problem, it will not copy the entire Fossapup to ram, so more ram is left for work.

Let us know how it goes.

Hi foxpup,

I have added pfix=nocopy to the kernel line, and now upon bootup the system is only using 177Mb out of 1.93Gb of RAM.

Wow!!

I don't know if this will transfer to better performance yet, but I will test out the system performance and let you know how it goes.

Kind Regards,

John

[foxpup]

I have added pfix=nocopy to the kernel line, and now upon bootup the system is only using 177Mb out of 1.93Gb of RAM.

Wow!!

I don't know if this will transfer to better performance yet, but I will test out the system performance and let you know how it goes.

It is a trade off.
Ideally Puppy is small enough to load into RAM completely on boot and run fast on the fast RAM.
But if RAM is small as well it better runs like a full install (nocopy) and only grabs from HD what is needed at the moment.
Of course, this means it is slower. But if the CPU and HD (SSD?) is fast enough you do not notice it much.
And often, being so small, Puppy is one of the very few distros that run in such machines anyway.

By the way, replacing a HD with a SSD is now the cheapest and best upgrade you can do for an old machine.
Adding RAM is another good one.

For Chrome:

Also, is it necessary to run as "spot"? Can't I just run it as root?

Yes and yes.
I don't use Chrome and others can instruct you better.
But I think you can run Chrome as spot or as root with --no-sandbox option.
If you got/installed Chrome from a Puppy source, then this should have been taken care of already.

[thinkpadfreak]

What do you mean that you are running Chrome as "spot" by way of "Login and Security Manager"?

Could you please elaborate on this point, explaining what exactly you did?

Also, is it necessary to run as "spot"? Can't I just run it as root?

Menu -> System -> Login and Security Manager

If you open "Login and Security Manager," I hope you will have some idea of user "spot."
Running Internet applications as spot is believed to be more secure, because spot is a kind of non-administrator.
Run as root, Chrome is working without sandbox.

If you have /root/.config/google-chrome, you are running Chrome as root.
If you have /root/spot/.config/google-chrome, you are running Chrome as spot.
(To see hidden directories/files, you need to press the "eyeball" icon.)

To enable user "spot," there are two ways. One is to use "Login and Security Manager," and the other is to use run-as-spot command.
In the window of "Login and Security Manager," google-chrome-stable is checked from the beginning. But this is misleading, because user "spot" is enabled when the status is changed from off to on.

So, using run-as-spot command will be more handy. For example,
# run-as-spot google-chrome-stable --disk-cache-dir=/tmp --disk-cache-size=10485760 --media-cache-size=10485760

If you are running Chrome as root, you don't have to bother to switch to user "spot." Starting it as spot creates a new profile.

[Wiz57]

have u done what i told u yet you appalling specimen of a human being ?

Having read your not so clear instructions, I think you are the appalling specimen of a human being!
Hey, get a grip...this topic forum is "Beginners Help"...if you can't be a tad more helpful and a LOT
less condescending, just STFU! You have proven the old adage true..."it's better to be silent and be
thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt".
To any and all others with this mentality...YOU, yes, YOU, are the primary reason desktop Linux usage
remains an abysmal 1 to 2 percent of the total desktop PC market. Someone decides they are a bit
tired of Microsoft, Apple, Google...whomever...then read something on a tech site mentioning
Linux, they dig a bit and find something that looks possibly interesting. Then the first time they
ask any question, they are slammed right in the face with the RTFM type macho man bullshit (pardon
my language).
Apologies to the rest of you folks, it's early AM here, and I need another cup of coffee.
Wiz

[garnet]

Hi foxpup,

I have added pfix=nocopy to the kernel line, and now upon bootup the system is only using 177Mb out of 1.93Gb of RAM.

Wow!!

I don't know if this will transfer to better performance yet, but I will test out the system performance and let you know how it goes.

Kind Regards,

John

Hi John,

Now you know how to do that, you may want to try adding "mitigations=off" there too (the same place where you put pfix=nocopy), as I suggsted earlier, and and see if you've got a better performance (you can test with and without this parameter).

I promised to explain what it is for, so here it is.

There performance of computers has gone down in the last few years (not only Linuxes, but all computers), generally because of the "fixes" required to workaround "vulnerabilities" found in the CPU (this is what the bigpup link talks about). All major OS vendors do this, and Linux is not an exception. Unfortunately what the "fixes" do, is basically to undo the last two decade of performance-enhancement technologies. The cost of these "fixes" can be between 5% to 25% of performance, depending on how old your CPU is. Disabling this "fixes" will basically return the performance from older days.

The parameter I gave you disables this "fixes" and let your CPU runs at full speed, at the risk of being exposed to this "vulnerabilities". But consider this. The "vulnerabilities" they keep talking is about how a program can steal the password so that a program can run as "root". But with Puppy, all programs _already_ run as root! So if you are concerned about "programs being able to run as root", well then, we might as well forget about using Puppies!

Give it try it, so you know what you are missing. If you feel that the difference is not that much, then perhaps it is wiser to keep the fixes. If the difference is perceptible, then, it is up to you to decide whether the added "risk" is worth the added "performance".

^_^

[jm03]

have u done what i told u yet you appalling specimen of a human being ?

Having read your not so clear instructions, I think you are the appalling specimen of a human being!
Hey, get a grip...this topic forum is "Beginners Help"...if you can't be a tad more helpful and a LOT
less condescending, just STFU! You have proven the old adage true..."it's better to be silent and be
thought a fool, then to open your mouth and remove all doubt".
To any and all others with this mentality...YOU, yes, YOU, are the primary reason desktop Linux usage
remains an abysmal 1 to 2 percent of the total desktop PC market. Someone decides they are a bit
tired of Microsoft, Apple, Google...whomever...then read something on a tech site mentioning
Linux, they dig a bit and find something that looks possibly interesting. Then the first time they
ask any question, they are slammed right in the face with the RTFM type macho man bullshit (pardon
my language).
Apologies to the rest of you folks, it's early AM here, and I need another cup of coffee.
Wiz

Thanks Wiz57.

I totally agree with you.

- John

[jm03]

Hi foxpup,

I have added pfix=nocopy to the kernel line, and now upon bootup the system is only using 177Mb out of 1.93Gb of RAM.

Wow!!

I don't know if this will transfer to better performance yet, but I will test out the system performance and let you know how it goes.

Kind Regards,

John

Hi John,

Now you know how to do that, you may want to try adding "mitigations=off" there too (the same place where you put pfix=nocopy), as I suggsted earlier, and and see if you've got a better performance (you can test with and without this parameter).

I promised to explain what it is for, so here it is.

There performance of computers has gone down in the last few years (not only Linuxes, but all computers), generally because of the "fixes" required to workaround "vulnerabilities" found in the CPU (this is what the bigpup link talks about). All major OS vendors do this, and Linux is not an exception. Unfortunately what the "fixes" do, is basically to undo the last two decade of performance-enhancement technologies. The cost of these "fixes" can be between 5% to 25% of performance, depending on how old your CPU is. Disabling this "fixes" will basically return the performance from older days.

The parameter I gave you disables this "fixes" and let your CPU runs at full speed, at the risk of being exposed to this "vulnerabilities". But consider this. The "vulnerabilities" they keep talking is about how a program can steal the password so that a program can run as "root". But with Puppy, all programs _already_ run as root! So if you are concerned about "programs being able to run as root", well then, we might as well forget about using Puppies!

Give it try it, so you know what you are missing. If you feel that the difference is not that much, then perhaps it is wiser to keep the fixes. If the difference is perceptible, then, it is up to you to decide whether the added "risk" is worth the added "performance".

^_^

Thanks garnet.

I think that my Netbook is running okay now, with the pfix=nocopy set.

If I continue to have problems I will try your "mitigations=off" technique.

Thanks again.

Kind Regards,

John
Melbourne, Australia