Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 04:07:20

Hey guys!

I just installed Crunchbang a while ago, and I have some questions...

1- I'm running this from a USB because this laptop doesn't have a hard drive. It has 1 GB of RAM and an Intel Atom.
#! is a bit sluggish as you'd expect, but when I ran it as a Live USB (I'm a noob, if this isn't the term... whopsies) it ran smoothly.
What can I do to improve the performance?

2- I don't have much space available (2.41GB used out of 3.55GB), I'd like to remove the programs I won't need.
How can I see the packages I have installed? (And to remove them, is there a way without cranking up the terminal? I'm a noob sad )

Last edited by Rhesus (2014-02-09 04:08:55)

Ozitraveller · 2014-02-09 04:39:49

Could you give us the make and model of your netbook? It's doesn't have a hard disk, it must have a 4gb sd card then?

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 05:10:17

Ozitraveller wrote:

Could you give us the make and model of your netbook? It's doesn't have a hard disk, it must have a 4gb sd card then?

It's a Magalhães lol

There was a hard drive, but it broke and I "rescued" it with Puppy Linux, and now Crunchbang. It does have an SD card port but I'm running the OS off of a USB stick (4GB).

vic · 2014-02-09 08:33:59

Wow, what a funky cool looking piece you got there Rhesus smile If you want to uninstall something without the terminal you should find the Synaptic Package Manager. It is a simple gui program that handles your packages. Think it is placed under System in the menu. Please be aware that when running #! installed from usb it will be a bit sluggish. Have done it myself several times. It is probably possible to fine tune it a bit, but I am not sure of what is the best thing to do.

pvsage · 2014-02-09 08:52:30

`dpkg -l` will list all installed packages, including packages that have be removed but left config files behind.

machinebacon · 2014-02-09 09:49:50

@pony: The Op stated "And to remove them, is there a way without cranking up the terminal?" so dpkg -l is does not fit his needs.

@Rhesus:

Yes, you can start Synaptic package manager from the Openbox menu.

get yourself "orphaner" from the repos, along with "localepurge" and "bleachbit" (latter can be run as normal user and as root - becareful!) Remove stuff like GIMP, if you never edit images on this poor little box :-)

Depends what you want to remove, of course. I suspect you don't need Italian localization if you are Swede, so run localepurge as root and deselect any language you don't need. By the way, bleachbit can do the same too, when run as root (careful).

"sudo orphaner --purge" will quite safely list all packages that are hanging around in the system, unused, orphaned. Do this when you finished cleaning your system from unwanted applications.

Tip of the day: consider replacing some of the gtk apps you seldom use with terminal applications (example: transmission -> ctorrent/ctorrent, filezilla/gftp -> sftp/wput). If space is more important than appearance, replace the faenza-icon-theme with tango-icon-theme (remember to switch in lxappearance). There's a lot that can be done.

Though, I am more concerned about why the system is sluggish.

Last edited by machinebacon (2014-02-09 09:50:56)

snowpine · 2014-02-09 12:21:11

machinebacon wrote:

Though, I am more concerned about why the system is sluggish.

Because it's an Atom.

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 13:47:24

Thanks for the answers so far guys! (it is a weird machine indeed lol )

I had opened Synaptic before, but didn't find the installed packages. I got it now, it's under "Status". This was easier on Puppy Linux lol
I'll also try doing what machinebacon said.

And btw, when I ran this in Live before I installed, it ran smoothly, could it be because it just loaded the essentials? (remember, I'm a noob so... yeah)

Last edited by Rhesus (2014-02-09 13:50:01)

snowpine · 2014-02-09 14:55:34

Rhesus wrote:

And btw, when I ran this in Live before I installed, it ran smoothly, could it be because it just loaded the essentials? (remember, I'm a noob so... yeah)

When you install to a USB thumb drive (instead of a fast internal hard drive or SSD) you are hamstringing your performance.

Running in "live" mode is read-only, so drive speed is less of an issue.

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 15:30:20

snowpine wrote:

When you install to a USB thumb drive (instead of a fast internal hard drive or SSD) you are hamstringing your performance.
Running in "live" mode is read-only, so drive speed is less of an issue.

Oh, ok then. Bummer hmm

pvsage · 2014-02-09 15:42:25

If you didn't already set your thumb drive to noatime,relatime at install time, you can add this to your (EDIT: /etc/fstab) for a marginal improvement in performance. What this does is it keeps the system from writing timestamps every single time a file is touched.

Last edited by pvsage (2014-02-09 17:48:55)

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 16:15:28

pvsage wrote:

If you didn't already set your thumb drive to noatime,relatime at install time, you can add this to your /etc/inittab for a marginal improvement in performance. What this does is it keeps the system from writing timestamps every single time a file is touched.

I don't know how to do that tongue
What would I change in the file?

Joe90 · 2014-02-09 16:30:23

You should be able to do it in /etc/fstab too

1. Open terminal
2. Type "sudo nano /etc/fstab" (without quotes) and press Enter

make this (or what yours looks like)

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=a724392c-eee7-4244-aae9-1a3cde06d05f /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

look like this

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=a724392c-eee7-4244-aae9-1a3cde06d05f /               ext4    sync,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1

You might just want to try adding sync and noatime one at a time to see if you get any change.

You could also try this (to increase writeback time)

1. Open terminal
2. Type: "echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs" (without quotes) and press Enter

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 17:19:19

Joe90 wrote:

You could also try this (to increase writeback time)
1. Open terminal
2. Type: "echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs" (without quotes) and press Enter

Sync and noatime don't do much, and echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs doesn't work (permission denied), I may have to run the terminal as root but I don't know how either xD

Btw, thanks again everyone. Nice and patient community lol

damo · 2014-02-09 17:29:26

Rhesus wrote:

.... and echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs doesn't work (permission denied), I may have to run the terminal as root but I don't know how either xD

Editing a file which you don't have root permission for is easy. Either start your text editor as root...

gksudo geany
<enter password when asked>

...then edit by adding

and Save as /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
Or open a terminal and do

sudo echo 1500 > /proc/sys/vm/dirty_writeback_centisecs
<enter password when asked>

Last edited by damo (2014-02-09 17:31:59)

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 17:48:21

Thanks damo, did that. Didn't notice much improvement hmm

damo · 2014-02-09 17:52:01

Did you restart?

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 17:58:57

damo wrote:

Did you restart?

...

No... Gonna restart now and post the results xD

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Edit:

Wow, it was much worse. I changed stuff back to the way they were (fstab and dirty_writeback_centisecs).

Last edited by Rhesus (2014-02-09 18:31:11)

Rhesus · 2014-02-09 22:41:43

What if I installed #! on a micro SD card, would it run faster? (Than this USB 2.0)

And could it be possible for #! to read only (like in "live mode"), and only write on demand or after an install/shutting down?

wow

very questions

such noob

many gratefullness

wow

Sorry guys ops

Ozitraveller · 2014-02-10 05:39:09

This might be useful to you.

http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/sd … lash-drive

This is from the above link.

Some of the higher class (i.e. expensive) SD cards are pretty fast. My Class 4 cards are about the same speed as my USB 2.0 sticks; I've seen cards as high as Class 10. I don't have USB 3.0 (yet, 'tis coming soon) to compare to but, considering USB 3.0 can be as much as ten times faster than USB 2.0, whs is probably correct about USB flash drives being faster on USB 3.0 than cards (he's usually correct anyway).
Usually, one uses cards in cameras, vid cams, phones, tablets, etc. that keep the device semi-permanently installed within the device whereas USB flash drives will stick out of the device and is intended to be used temporarily. A card, even when inside its little storage case, takes up less room than a USB stick but that also makes it easier to loose the thing. Every computer has USB ports but not every computer has a built in card reader. Portable card readers are available but are just somethiong else to lug around and keep track of.
Both cards and sticks have their advantages and disadvantages, depending on their usage. I have four Class 4 8GB SD cards I use in my two cameras (two are spares). I also have a Class 4 32 GB card I regret buying since it's safer to have several smaller cards instead of one to minimize data loss should one fail. I keep it in my purse, along with the two spare 8 GB cards I have for my cameras, to use as a back up drive for photos when on the road (all my portable computers have had built in card readers). I also have a lower class (not sure what class it is since it uses a proprietary classification) 1 GBSD card I use on my e-book reader). For just about everything else, USB sticks are more convenient and easier to keep track of.

http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?t=1201213

Last edited by Ozitraveller (2014-02-10 05:42:13)

Rhesus · 2014-02-10 10:49:56

^ Got it, thanks Ozitraveller!

iann · 2014-02-10 12:13:00

Flash drives and cards have pretty bad write performance. Read performance can be good, especially with the new USB 3.0 (which you probably don't have), and seek times are essentially zero, so anything you can do to reduce writing to the drive will help. Try not to swap, put things like /tmp into a tmpfs, etc. With only 1GB of RAM, you probably can't do a lot, but try the various compressed memory utilities, reduce swappiness, etc.

Rhesus · 2014-02-10 19:17:53

iann wrote:

Try not to swap, put things like /tmp into a tmpfs, etc. (...) try the various compressed memory utilities, reduce swappiness, etc.

I don't know how to do that, I even looked at a guide but it's just too much for an inexperienced user like me...

I tried changing the file "swappiness", from 60 to 0, but when I try saving it (even after opening the file as root) it gives an error message:

Error saving file. 

Error writing to file: Invalid argument

The file on disk may now be truncated!

And the guide I took a peak at was this one: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic. … 18#p121718
I'm running Waldorf but some stuff are applicable right?

I think this will be the last thing I'll ask for help regarding optimizing #!
If this doesn't work I think there's nothing else to.

Can you guys help me with these issues (and following a guide )?

CBizgreat! · 2014-02-11 11:48:16

bizzy kicks in ... how about eliminating unwanted startup daemons ... using things like bum and rcconf or a more appropriate way of googling up on getting rid of em. smile

Wouldn't expect it to be a massive difference but every lil bit helps eh. Think you've gotten some dang good suggestions all da way round in this thread OP and agree w much of what others have said too. Though what you're asking is kinda a specialty order kinda thing. Not something many ( definitely not meself) are off da top proficient in.

Minimizing disk i/o for certain seems a good thing imo regards getting the most out of a persistent flash drive install as a buncha people have noted/encouraged. Off loading whatcha can to RAM or tmpfs-etc. Occurs that there could be a lot to it too. ie: what file format you went w. fat32-etc ? Non-nix native formats are often enough known to have file permission probs w gnu/nix. Things like that could poss be addressed in fstab with uid,gid, umask or dmask perhaps ?

Off top would say relatime or noatime seems a dang good suggestion for folks to make and might look at non journaling like ext2 on a usb. Just really do think what you're asking about is a specialty kinda deal and you'd be better off spending some quality time googling on the topic for yaself. Even though again imo many folks here have given some kickbutt gnu/nix suggestions, pointing in good direction or off on right foot.

Vll! smile

DAMMIT anal afterthought babble
Also thought of depending upon what file format you go with, likely can't be a bad idea to occasionally chkdsk or fsck, dosfsck etc da sucker, flash drives filesystems appreciate a bit of luv too folks. Don't expect thumb drives filesystems to stay pristine w/o a lil bit of help now and then.

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2014-02-11 12:20:51)

Rhesus · 2014-02-12 20:59:01

Thanks for your suggestions so far, but I can't do anything. I've now noticed that some changes I did before weren't even implemented.

There's always this error message (the one I posted previously) and I can't edit anything, and this is after I open stuff as "root".
Oh man this is so frustrating, but I'm insisting because #! isn't running that good, but not bad either. I think it just needs a little push.

CrunchBang Linux

SEARCH

#1 2014-02-09 04:07:20

Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#2 2014-02-09 04:39:49

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#3 2014-02-09 05:10:17

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#4 2014-02-09 08:33:59

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#5 2014-02-09 08:52:30

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#6 2014-02-09 09:49:50

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#7 2014-02-09 12:21:11

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#8 2014-02-09 13:47:24

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#9 2014-02-09 14:55:34

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#10 2014-02-09 15:30:20

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#11 2014-02-09 15:42:25

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#12 2014-02-09 16:15:28

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#13 2014-02-09 16:30:23

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#14 2014-02-09 17:19:19

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#15 2014-02-09 17:29:26

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#16 2014-02-09 17:48:21

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#17 2014-02-09 17:52:01

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#18 2014-02-09 17:58:57

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#19 2014-02-09 22:41:43

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#20 2014-02-10 05:39:09

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#21 2014-02-10 10:49:56

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#22 2014-02-10 12:13:00

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#23 2014-02-10 19:17:53

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#24 2014-02-11 11:48:16

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

#25 2014-02-12 20:59:01

Re: Improving #!'s performance and... Hey, what are my packages?

Board footer