Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[dahiyasumit]

Facts: -
- Lucid Puppy 5.2
- Dell Inspiron 1525
- 3Gb RAM
- 250 Gb Hard Disk
- Boot from CD
- Session file (lupusave.2fs) loads from SDHC card formatted as FAT.
- Video describing the problem: - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k52BVa9yzT8
- Puppy Linux ROCKS!

I have observed that, lately, ROX filer on my puppy linux falls little slow while opening (see video above). However, once the filer window opens, there is no lag navigating through the directories. It wasn't always like that.

I thought SDHC card might be slowing things down and moved the session file (lupusave.2fs) to a USB flash drive(formatted as FAT). Rebooted and loaded session file from this flash drive but ROX's behavior did not change.

I am not sure how I managed to run into this issue. Any ideas on what might be going on?

(Please let me know if I have missed out a necessary detail in this message.)

Thanks.

{Search Keywords: rox filer slow, hard disks mount slowly}

[Fossil]

dahiyasumit
Welcome. I see you have a 250 Gb hard drive. Do you have a lot of videos or images stored either within the lupusave.2fs, or on accessing the hard drive?
If Rox has show 'thumbnails' enabled, it will generate an image of each image, this will slow it down.
Right click a desktop icon: Rox, Options, uncheck 'Show Image Thumbnails'. See if that makes any difference.

[dahiyasumit]

Thanks for the reply, Fossil.

My 250Gb hard drive has 85% free space and has very few images but no videos. The session file (lupusave.2fs) is also 62% free with neither images nor videos on it. Also, 'thumbnails' are disabled under Rox options.

I want to stress on the fact that lupusave.2fs loads from my SDHC card; not the 250Gb hard disk.

Keep the ideas coming .... thanks!

[Dougal]

Have you tried looking at the logs (/tmp/xerrs.log and the rox log in rightClick->Window->Show Log), to see if there are some kind of errors to explain rox's slowness? Have you got a lot of files in your home directory that it might be slow in recognizing (it checks their magic bit to find out the type if there's no recognizable file extension)?

[Karl Godt]

[dahiyasumit]

I think I have isolated the problem area and can replicate(and also resolve) the issue at will.

It may sound strange, but if I disable my wireless internet (using the hardware WiFi switch on my laptop OR using the "network" icon in system tray) then Rox filer works just fine - it is MUCH faster than when connected. Also, as soon as I turn my wireless internet back on, Rox becomes slow again. This behavior can be replicated as many times as I wish - across several hours, thus eliminating the possibility of a "fluke".

This might indicate an issue with WiFi card in the laptop. But when I take this laptop to my work place and connect to the work-internet then Rox shows no slowness. It is only at home that I experience this behavior.

I am unable to establish the correlation between Rox and the wireless internet.

[bigpup]

Do you have any kind of file sharing turned on?

[dahiyasumit]

@bigpup
File sharing, not that I know of. How can I check?

Thanks!

[dahiyasumit]

@Dougal
I looked at the log file but did not find anything suspicious. Also, my home directory has 12 visible items and 65 hidden items. Does this qualify as "too many"?

Like I mentioned before, there is no slowness whatsoever when connected to WiFi network at my office. Not sure what is Rox trying to do over internet when I launch it.

Thanks.

[Dougal]

[dahiyasumit]

@Dougal
I'll test this out over the weekend and post the results back. My non-puppy life is going to consume most of tomorrow

Thanks

[technosaurus]

I discovered a little talked about issue while compiling several library updates. If you have updated underlying libraries, this may apply. (specifically relating to the app you are trying to open ... nothing to do with rox or wireless, if it is the actual video buffer time disregard and debug WiFi)

When a program is compiled it will directly link to all libraries specified in the command whether they are direct dependencies or not. This causes the program to expect a certain symbol to be at a certain location, and as long as you never upgrade libraries, you will benefit by ~.001 second increase in start speed at the cost of some file size from having a larger symbol table. The problem arises when one of those indirect libraries is up/downgraded. At best this causes a significant increase in start time while trying to locate these symbols. At worst, the symbol is no longer present or renamed and all apps linked this way would need to be recompiled. Usually this is from autotools being "crap" or the libraries unnecessarily being specified in the pkgconfig (.pc) file.

If done properly, only the direct dependencies that actually depend on that symbol would need to be recompiled. for example:
BAD
gcc ... -o gapp -lgtk-x11-2.0 -lgtk-x11-2.0 -lpangox-1.0 -lglib-2.0 ... -lX11 -lXdmcp -lXau
GOOD
gcc ... -o gapp -lgtk-x11-2.0
BETTER
gcc ... -Wl,--as-needed -o gapp -lgtk-x11-2.0

the dynamic linker will automatically find the symbols in dependencies fairly quickly at load time... and won't break.

the as needed will also do some of this for you, and possibly reduce some dependencies in the mean time. to see the difference you can use "objdump -x binary" and look for NEEDED

To make a long story short, be cautious about "upgrading" if you don't really need to... we need something better than autotools and waf.[url][/url]

[MrToad]

I have had this ROX slowdown problem - or a similar one - many times with different Puppies, and tried all sorts of things to fix it. In the end it came down to something rather simple.

I don't know if this will solve dahiyasumit's problem but it's worth a try as it will take only a moment to check out: open the two files /etc/hostname and /etc/hosts in a text editor and see if the computer's name is the same in both files. If not, make it so.

Background: whenever I changed the default name of "puppypc" on any of my Puppy computers in order to use it with other Puppies on my LAN (cabled and wireless), a ROX slowdown occurred. This happened with every Puppy I used on my LAN. (lots of 3 and 4 series, including the latest Fluppy - version 13). The setting-up dialogue that gives you the opportunity to change the machine's identification seems to only change it in /etc/hostname and not /etc/hosts as well - in /etc/hosts the offending line stayed as "127.0.0.1 localhost puppypc" in all the Puppies I have played with.

This "clash" results in some odd behaviour (I am just a user so don't ask me why!) such as: some programs, eg browsers, start up very slowly, ROX opens very slowly on clicking the "home" icon but then works normally, and so on. Weirdly, dragging the /root folder to somewhere on the desktop to give a second shortcut to it, makes a clickable icon that opens /root in ROX quickly compared to the one that was already there and "slowed down" - I have no idea why. The difference between them vanishes once I have the /etc/hostname and etc/hosts files agreeing with each other.

Hope this is of some help.

MrToad

[Dougal]

That's very interesting, Toady.

I just run grep over the rox sources and found this:

[Bruce B]

Lupu 5.20

I can't duplicate this presently or any any past versions.

My standard way of installing Puppy is:

Mid level machine, (low level by some people's standards)
ext3 host partition
ext3 puppysave file

AND frequent full filesystem checks on both devices

My experience and PLEASE correct my nomenclature here.

USB type 1 is painfully slow
USB type 2 is pleasantly fast

?? Could USB type or filesystem errors be the problem here ??

~