Most recent Manjaro installed and it is SOOOO SLOOOOWWWW after installation

HosAdeeb · 11-06-2021, 08:24 PM

Hi there,
I've tried posting my problem on Manjaro's forum, with no solution found. So, I thought maybe someone here might help.

The Live DVD behaves quite nicely as far as performance is concerned on my oldish machine (Intel i5, 4 GB of RAM). After the installation, though, the system is excruciatingly slow!!!

The same machine has another Linux distro installed, on another partition on the same hard drive, and its performance displays no such sluggishness. (http://ix.io/3EfD)

I have no idea why that is happening, and how the situation can be remedied.

Thanks a million times for your help and guidance.

Hosam Adeeb Nashed

wpeckham · 11-06-2021, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HosAdeeb

Hi there,
I've tried posting my problem on Manjaro's forum, with no solution found. So, I thought maybe someone here might help.

The Live DVD behaves quite nicely as far as performance is concerned on my oldish machine (Intel i5, 4 GB of RAM). After the installation, though, the system is excruciatingly slow!!!

The same machine has another Linux distro installed, on another partition on the same hard drive, and its performance displays no such sluggishness. (http://ix.io/3EfD)

I have no idea why that is happening, and how the situation can be remedied.

Thanks a million times for your help and guidance.

Hosam Adeeb Nashed

I am running the latest Manjaro on a Pinebook Pro, AARCH64 with cpufetch ourput

Code:

CPU 1:
      ############     ##########   ####  ######  ########      Microarchitecture: Cortex-A53
   ###############     #########    #######################     Max Frequency:     1.416 GHz
  ####        ####     ####         #####   #######   #####     Cores:             4 cores
 ####         ####     ####         ####     #####     ####     Features:          NEON,SHA1,SHA2,AES,CRC32
 ####         ####     ####         ####     ####      ####   CPU 2:
  ####       #####     ####         ####     ####      ####     Microarchitecture: Cortex-A72
   ###############     ####         ####     ####      ####     Max Frequency:     1.800 GHz
    ########  ####     ####         ####     ####      ####     Cores:             2 cores
                                                                Features:          NEON,SHA1,SHA2,AES,CRC32
                                                              Peak Performance:    37.06 GFLOP/s

Your basic machine performance should not run it slower than mine does!
I am running KDE with PLASMA.

What desktop are you running, and have you looked for WM/DM errors or messages in the logs?
(Or any warnings for ANYTHING, for that matter!)

HosAdeeb · 11-07-2021, 02:53 AM

I had picked the XFCE version. And no, I can't find any error but the incessant hard drive LED blinking all the time (as evidenced by the journalctl -b output, in the ix.io link above).

I'll post here what I had encountered, and posted on the Manjaro forum:

Quote:

I decided to do a fresh install, after removing all extra PCI cards, and also decided to try only two, instead of three, distributions. And here’s what happened:
After installing the other distro, as I prefer Manjaro’s own GRUB screen, I ventured to install Manjaro.
Same extra slow pace after installation, but not in LiveMedia mode. Strangely enough, the installer decided to register the /home partition, in /etc/fstab as both that AND the swap area!!! Of course, I couldn’t leave this situation going on, and I duly used swapon to activate the rightful swap partition. Nevertheless, no positive impact on performance…
I needed to install the mc package right away, but pamac decided not to install it alone, rather to do all upgrades in one go… Well, that resulted in more than 6 hours of the hard drive churning away.
And since I used pamac on the CLI, I was able to see that a couple of upgrades, especially the one for the linux-firmware, was upgraded more than 7 times in a row!!!
Well, I decided that enough was enough, and forcibly did ^C, and then issued a reboot command, which took about two whole hours to take effect…
On reboot, I wanted to make sure the other distro is still alive, and I was shocked to see the login screen taking a few minutes just to show up!!! But, on rebooting again, it functioned just business as usual.
On trying to boot Manjaro, it complained that it cannot find the kernel… That made my day! So, I decided I just might do a third installation, but without a format. It didn’t take as long, but on rebooting, I realised that, this time over, the installer omitted any mention of a swap partition altogether!!! Hence, I had to put an extra line in /etc/fstab.
On rebooting, an error appeared stating a time-out for the swap partition. Still, after logging in, I used swapon again, and htop could testify it’s there.
Everything is still SLOW!!! I opted for not doing any more upgrades until I see an improvement in performance…
Another very serious problem: There’s no way of telling what is going on that would destroy the system when I ask it politely to shut down, only to end up with an error on booting!!! I consult htop and the task manager, but still, I can’t see why the system would later fall apart when it shuts down properly…

wpeckham · 11-07-2021, 08:55 AM

All is now clear, you have seriously mucked up your install.
I would do this:
Back up what you need and clean up the partition, then do a clean install of the version you need.
Do a complete update before you make changes, use the command line

Code:

sudo pacman -Suuyy

Then modify from there.
Use and then use pacman for installing pieces instead of pamac, and that ONLY after the full update is complete and uninterrupted. (And pamac is at the latest supported version.)
Once it is fully updated and the new pieces loaded you can use pamac going forward if you like.

Both behavior of the tools and the performance of the packages will be better defined if there is a complete and consistent (uninterrupted) update after a clean install.

HosAdeeb · 11-07-2021, 05:24 PM

I do confess that the last installation but one went busted!! But not the one after that, which I've described.

I mean, I did a completely last, fresh, clean installation, and the outputs of both inxi and journalctl are taken from it.

Any update I would be doing would take no less than three or more whole days to complete, judging by the current slow performance. But I'm willing to do just that if it would make things better.

syg00 · 11-08-2021, 12:35 AM

Sounds like a broken driver - or interrupt handler. Try these for us. Wait for the first command to finish - 30 seconds or so.

Code:

top - b -n 3 | grep -A 10 -E "^top"
awk '$1 ~ /[[:digit:]]/' /proc/interrupts

HosAdeeb · 11-08-2021, 01:36 AM

I did the upgrade, and oddly enough it took only a few hours to finish. Still, the performance is the same. I'll do what syg00 instructed me to try.

I wasn't able to send the current output of 'journalctl -b', but the last one, on the pastebin (http://ix.io/3EfD), still holds. I mean, the same incessant access to the hard drive.

HosAdeeb · 11-08-2021, 05:29 AM

The output of {awk '$1 ~ /[[:digit:]]/' /proc/interrupts}

Code:

           CPU0       CPU1       CPU2       CPU3       
  0:         38          0          0          0   IO-APIC   2-edge      timer
  1:          0        536          0          0   IO-APIC   1-edge      i8042
  8:          0          0          0          1   IO-APIC   8-edge      rtc0
  9:          0          4          0          0   IO-APIC   9-fasteoi   acpi
 12:       2404          0          0          0   IO-APIC  12-edge      i8042
 16:          0          0          0          0   IO-APIC  16-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb3
 18:          0          0          0          0   IO-APIC  18-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb1, uhci_hcd:usb5, uhci_hcd:usb8, i801_smbus
 19:          0          0      34169          0   IO-APIC  19-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb7, ata_piix, ata_piix
 21:          0          0          0          0   IO-APIC  21-fasteoi   uhci_hcd:usb4
 23:          0          0          0      80253   IO-APIC  23-fasteoi   ehci_hcd:usb2, uhci_hcd:usb6
 24:          0          0          9          0   PCI-MSI 360448-edge      mei_me
 25:          0          0          0          0   PCI-MSI 1048576-edge      enp2s0
 26:          0          0          0       1879   PCI-MSI 32768-edge      i915
 27:        403          0          0          0   PCI-MSI 442368-edge      snd_hda_intel:card0

HosAdeeb · 11-08-2021, 05:31 AM

The output of {top - b -n 3 | grep -A 10 -E "^top"}

Code:

top - 12:52:29 up 27 min,  1 user,  load average: 3.66, 4.08, 3.83
Tasks: 169 total,   1 running, 168 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  1.5 us,  1.5 sy,  0.0 ni, 24.2 id, 72.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   3666.7 total,   2754.8 free,    424.7 used,    487.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   5721.0 total,   5721.0 free,      0.0 used.   2973.8 avail Mem 

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
      1 root      20   0  165972  11196   8376 S   0.0   0.3   0:00.82 systemd
      2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0   0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
      3 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.0   0.0   0:00.00 rcu_gp
      4 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.0   0.0   0:00.00 rcu_par+
--
top - 12:52:32 up 27 min,  1 user,  load average: 3.66, 4.08, 3.83
Tasks: 169 total,   1 running, 168 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.1 us,  0.2 sy,  0.0 ni, 28.3 id, 71.5 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   3666.7 total,   2754.6 free,    424.9 used,    487.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   5721.0 total,   5721.0 free,      0.0 used.   2973.5 avail Mem 

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
    168 root      20   0       0      0      0 D   0.3   0.0   0:00.08 jbd2/sd+
   1324 hosadeeb  20   0   10952   3812   3344 R   0.3   0.1   0:00.02 top
      1 root      20   0  165972  11196   8376 S   0.0   0.3   0:00.82 systemd
      2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0   0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
--
top - 12:52:35 up 27 min,  1 user,  load average: 3.69, 4.07, 3.83
Tasks: 169 total,   1 running, 168 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.1 us,  0.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 47.8 id, 51.8 wa,  0.1 hi,  0.1 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :   3666.7 total,   2754.6 free,    424.9 used,    487.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   5721.0 total,   5721.0 free,      0.0 used.   2973.6 avail Mem 

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
     31 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.3   0.0   0:00.14 ksoftir+
     93 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.3   0.0   0:00.92 kworker+
    155 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.3   0.0   0:00.99 kworker+
   1324 hosadeeb  20   0   10952   3812   3344 R   0.3   0.1   0:00.03 top

syg00 · 11-08-2021, 07:11 PM

Oops - my bad; didn't realise you had posted both commands.
You're right, something's hitting the disk hard. Install iotop in need, then post the iotop.out this generates.

Code:

sudo iotop -oab -n 5 > iotop.out

HosAdeeb · 11-09-2021, 05:58 PM

Code:

Total DISK READ :       0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE :       0.00 B/s
Actual DISK READ:       0.00 B/s | Actual DISK WRITE:       0.00 B/s
    TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN      IO    COMMAND
Total DISK READ :       7.88 K/s | Total DISK WRITE :      11.82 K/s
Actual DISK READ:      11.82 K/s | Actual DISK WRITE:      15.76 K/s
    TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN      IO    COMMAND
   7230 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:1+flush-8:0]
      7 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:0+flush-8:0]
   2446 be/4 hosadeeb      8.00 K      0.00 B  0.00 % 56.69 % Thunar --daemon
    170 be/3 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 55.91 % [jbd2/sda2-8]
     18 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 55.38 % [kworker/0:1+events]
   9564 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 28.44 % udisksd
    631 idle root          0.00 B      8.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % mandb --quiet
   9698 be/4 root          0.00 B      4.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % python /usr/bin/iotop -oab -n 5
Total DISK READ :      15.58 K/s | Total DISK WRITE :       0.00 B/s
Actual DISK READ:      15.58 K/s | Actual DISK WRITE:       7.79 K/s
    TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN      IO    COMMAND
   7230 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:1+flush-8:0]
   2446 be/4 hosadeeb     24.00 K      0.00 B  0.00 % 98.73 % Thunar --daemon
     94 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 86.25 % [kworker/u16:5+flush-8:0]
     18 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 85.91 % [kworker/0:1+events]
      7 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 73.91 % [kworker/u16:0+flush-8:0]
     93 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 54.11 % [kworker/u16:4-phy0]
    170 be/3 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 28.35 % [jbd2/sda2-8]
   9564 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 14.36 % udisksd
    631 idle root          0.00 B      8.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % mandb --quiet
   9698 be/4 root          0.00 B      4.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % python /usr/bin/iotop -oab -n 5
Total DISK READ :     117.56 K/s | Total DISK WRITE :      15.67 K/s
Actual DISK READ:     180.25 K/s | Actual DISK WRITE:      50.94 K/s
    TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN      IO    COMMAND
   7230 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:1+flush-8:0]
      7 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:0+flush-8:0]
     94 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 92.43 % [kworker/u16:5+flush-8:0]
   2446 be/4 hosadeeb    144.00 K      0.00 B  0.00 % 92.49 % Thunar --daemon
     18 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 91.81 % [kworker/0:1+events]
    170 be/3 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 54.43 % [jbd2/sda2-8]
     93 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 36.23 % [kworker/u16:4-phy0]
    631 idle root          0.00 B     24.00 K  0.00 % 33.16 % mandb --quiet
   7715 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 17.35 % [kworker/u16:2-phy0]
   9564 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 %  9.60 % udisksd
   9698 be/4 root          0.00 B      4.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % python /usr/bin/iotop -oab -n 5
Total DISK READ :       0.00 B/s | Total DISK WRITE :       0.00 B/s
Actual DISK READ:       0.00 B/s | Actual DISK WRITE:       0.00 B/s
    TID  PRIO  USER     DISK READ  DISK WRITE  SWAPIN      IO    COMMAND
   7230 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 99.99 % [kworker/u16:1+flush-8:0]
      7 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 98.39 % [kworker/u16:0+flush-8:0]
     94 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 69.49 % [kworker/u16:5+flush-8:0]
   2446 be/4 hosadeeb    144.00 K      0.00 B  0.00 % 69.51 % Thunar --daemon
     18 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 69.05 % [kworker/0:1+events]
    170 be/3 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 60.32 % [jbd2/sda2-8]
     93 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 27.24 % [kworker/u16:4-phy0]
    631 idle root          0.00 B     24.00 K  0.00 % 24.92 % mandb --quiet
   7715 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 % 13.03 % [kworker/u16:2-phy0]
   9564 be/4 root          0.00 B      0.00 B  0.00 %  7.21 % udisksd
   9698 be/4 root          0.00 B      4.00 K  0.00 %  0.00 % python /usr/bin/iotop -oab -n 5

syg00 · 11-09-2021, 06:38 PM

First guess would be some kind of indexer software - no idea what XFCE and/or Thunar uses or how to turn it off. That's a slow HDD you have, and the indexers are such a pain I disable them everywhere. Can't offer any other suggestions.

HosAdeeb · 11-09-2021, 11:15 PM

HosAdeeb · 11-09-2021, 11:15 PM

Well, the thing is: on the same HDD I had installed another Linux distro, and it functions just fine, with none of the behaviour I'm describing. Which is driving me nuts!!! I have no idea where else I should look.

And it's not just the same HDD, it's also the same kernel that functioned just fine when run from the Live DVD!!!

Couldn't there be some fine-tuning of the kernel module(s)?! I've been offered a suggestion of adding "mitigations=off" to the GRUB defaults, to no avail...

Oh, and I hadn't got the luxury of installing any indexer, or activating one, since the initial installation, save "iotop" last night, so much the system is excruciatingly slow, rendering it quite unusable. And I don't think an indexer is installed by default. I've always used XFCE with other distros, and I've never found one installed from the very start. Besides, wouldn't such an indexer, if present, be flagged in any of the outputs I sent?! I'm certain I didn't spot one in "htop" display.

I don't what else to do... :-(

HosAdeeb · 11-09-2021, 11:26 PM

I'm so sorry, a glitch just happened... And there's no option to delete the extra reply...