Fresh Installation Excruciatingly Slow All The Time

It is a long time since I tested anything on a spinning disk.

I have a 750GB Samsung 2.5" spinning disk and I have a a Acer Aspire with a dual-core Celeron N3350 and 4GB RAM.

If I can download, install and update the latest Xfce I am fairly certain your issue is hardware related somehow.

Maybe - the CPU vulnerability mitigations applied is having a huge effect on your system - I don’t know.

Until I have tested the above - I suggest you try to disable the mitigations by applying the following change to the grub default configuration

Using a terminal and a terminal editor e.g. micro, nano or vi - whatever you are familiar with - open the file

micro /etc/default/grub

Then locate the line reading

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet udev.log_priority=3"

And amend it to read

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="mitigations=off quiet udev.log_priority=3"

Save the file and rebuild grub config

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Then reboot the system

reboot

Verify if this has any effect.


From the inxi above I very much looks like you are using BIOS/MBR - I don’t see an EFI partition - is that correct?


I have know installed Xfce rel.21.1.6 minimal on the mentioned system using a spinning disk.

It is noticable slow - as I expected but not unusable - it takes approx. 2-3 minutes to boot to a desktop with wallpaper and shortcuts.

The initial update was 4-5s using the terminal - (sudo pacman -Syu) and installing the linux515 kernel took a 3-4 of minutes including download and rebuilding the initrd.

My test system is more recent EFI based system - the inxi output can be read from

$ inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io
http://ix.io/3DY2

$ inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io
http://ix.io/3DY5

$ systemd-analyze  | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io
http://ix.io/3DY6

$systemd-analyse blame  | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io
http://ix.io/3DY7

My test system

Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire ES1-432 v: V1.08 serial: <filter>
  Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter>
  Mobo: Acer model: Maia_AP v: V1.08 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.08
  date: 10/21/2016
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Celeron N3350 bits: 64 type: MCP arch: Goldmont
  family: 6 model-id: 5C (92) stepping: 9 microcode: 44 cache: L2: 1024 KiB
  bogomips: 4378
  Speed: 796 MHz min/max: 800/2400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 796 2: 2064

Although not as old as yours - Manjaro is still usable - and your system still appears to have a faster CPU with hyperthreading.

Still leaves me to wonder what could cause your experience.


The logfile shows your sata controller renegotiating - for ever - so you are having a hardware problem with the board or the disk.

I suggest you try switching the sata port - preferably to another controller - and to try with another disk.

The interesting part is Intel® H55 Chipset I have an old system based on either the same chipset or very similar.

This system was a pain to get installed with Manjaro - I don’t recall all the details - and can’t check as it has been decommissioned - still standang next to my desk - partly ripped.

I recall the firmware was flaky and EFI dysfunctional - so to get it working I booted in EFI mode and installed in BIOS/MBR mode.

The ISO grub menu was very slow to respond and it required a lot of patience - that I do recall. This was not a fault or flaw with Manjaro. I eventually got it working and it served some time as a build system for Manjaro ISO.

I have an old DELL laptop with 4Gb RAM - no problems

The laptop I have is running Manjaro from an external USB HDD, so it would seem that those two hardware pointers are not the issue.

1 Like

If you want to speed up your Manjaro installation, you should buy a new computer.
:sunglasses:

I do have other three installations that I use constantly. But, since I had a spare machine, I just wanted to make it useful.

Dear @linux-aarhus , I simply cannot thank you enough for all the trouble you’ve gone through, and I need to express my hearty thanks and gratitude!

But, at the risk of appearing, falsely, to defend the hardware, I’m absolutely sure that the other distro I was trying, on the same machine, displays nothing I’m having here!

I could send the content of the journalctl -b on the other distro just for comparison, but only if that is needed (not to clutter the message). But, essentially, both are installed on the same hard-drive, i.e. using the same SATA port and all. Which is why I’m quite amazed and confused this particular installation is behaving like that.

I’ll make the suggested change to GRUB, and post the results.

I can understand why you are puzzled and maybe confused - I am really running out of ideas - and frankly I don’t really beliieve the hardware is failing - it is just difficult to imagine what the cause can be - I think - what I am trying to say is - there must be something which is not configured correct or maybe lack of configuration after the final installation.

Try dumping the commandline when the system is booted to a Manjaro ISO - then carefully apply this to the installed system.

This is done by editing the file /etc/default/grub - same way as above - and at some point you will find the correct combination that works for this particular system

cat /proc/cmdline

Perhaps use the pastebin I describe above - use the URL given - so we can see the commandline that actually works when booted to an ISO

cat /proc/cmdline  | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

You can safely ignore root, miso arguments, locale, timezone - what is interesting for you to test is the last parts of the ISO commandline.

I forgot to mention it, but you can upload the journal easily with:
journalctl -b | curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

Anyway clearly there is a problem with the disk controller that it’s causing the slowness, but I’m afraid I can’t say why. SATA disk controller seems to me like a mature and stable kernel module that nowadays can’t go wrong. The fact that your other Linux systems work flawless seems to indicate that there is no hardware problem.

On the other hand, Googling I have been unable to find a case like yours, so that could mean that there is some hardware problem in your computer: BIOS configuration, faulty SATA cable, … I don’t know, but something that is unique to your computer and it’s only triggered by Manjaro (probably a newer kernel than the other Linux systems you have).

I got out of ideas and knowledge, so I hope that someone can finally be able to help you. Good luck!

1 Like

I tried the GRUB suggestion, and nothing changed.

Only remains the /proc/cmdline when booting from the ISO. I’ll try that later, maybe today, and see what transpires…

Thank you everyone for trying to help :sparkling_heart:

I remember something we used as a joke 20 years ago :slight_smile: - as some said that Linux destroyed their hardware.

Linux is not destroying - it is exposing the flaws

Follows are the outputs of /proc/cmdline, first for the ISO image (the LiveMedia), second for the current Hard Drive installation:

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-x86_64 lang=en_US keytable=us tz=UTC misobasedir=manjaro misolabel=MANJARO_XFCE_2110 quiet systemd.show_status=1 apparmor=1 security=apparmor driver=free nouveau.modeset=1 i915.modeset=1 radeon.modeset=1

BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.13-x86_64 root=UUID=5442ad42-ce85-4c1b-9082-0321a56fc662 rw mitigations=off quiet apparmor=1 security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3

I understand that the LiveMedia cmdline contains things pertinent only to it, and are inapplicable to the hard drive installation.

Anyway, thanks for everything!!!

On another forum, where Manjaro things are discussed, I’ve been instructed to do some more tests, the results of which I’m going to put in here, in the hope they could shed some more light. After all, this forum is the authentic place for discussing what I’m experiencing.

And thanks in advance for your efforts.

top - b -n 3 | grep -A 10 -E “^top”

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

awk ‘$1 ~ /[[:digit:]]/’ /proc/interrupts

           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

sudo iotop -oab -n 5 > iotop.out

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

There has also been talk about an indexer being the culprit. I can’t spot anything of the sort, and I still can’t find one that would be causing this weird behaviour.

Could there be a kernel module that needs some tuning?!