Re: Sporadic UI halts on Meerkat Netbook - how to debug
Hi Milan, On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:25, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: > There's nothing specially related to GUIs in this problem, I think > that's a bug in the kernel. everything is connected, reliability in the UI *depends* on conditional reliability in the core/kernel > So I'm not "deferring the problem to another > list", I'm just saying that there's no hope the desktop team will fix > it [...] i agree totally with you, the desktop team can't fix this alone, this is bigger than only desktop team or only kernel hackers.. > and the only option is to discuss this with kernel developers. Have > a look at the bug report I linked to, and you'll see that's the only > guarantee to avoid talking with nobody listening... > true. it's difficult to get this one across to anybody, because nobody really feels responsible. If UI response gets improved on a UI level, I/O stutters will most likely still occur, if I/O misbehaviour is fixed, UI response might still have its problems and issues.. To reserve a legit amount of "power" for what i would call UI Reliability is a joint venture for all of the desktop and its core, i don't think anybody can go this one alone, we'd just end up in the same vicious circle of performance issues again next cycle.. safe -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Sporadic UI halts on Meerkat Netbook - how to debug
Le mardi 05 octobre 2010 à 10:51 +0200, frederik.nn...@gmail.com a écrit : > AIUI todays default user interface to the linux kernel is a GUI, the > DE in our case here. > If the DE itself can not rely on a minimum of CPU and memory resources > to be reserved for it, how can we assume that it will ever be reliable > itself? > > It is easy to defer this problem to another list, but it is equally > clear that this problem extends over all areas related to UI, DE or > the underlying architectures.. There's nothing specially related to GUIs in this problem, I think that's a bug in the kernel. So I'm not "deferring the problem to another list", I'm just saying that there's no hope the desktop team will fix it, and the only option is to discuss this with kernel developers. Have a look at the bug report I linked to, and you'll see that's the only guarantee to avoid talking with nobody listening... Cheers -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Sporadic UI halts on Meerkat Netbook - how to debug
Hello Milan, On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 21:34, Milan Bouchet-Valat wrote: > If you're ready > to answer a long series of technical questions, then you can send a mail > to the kernel development list (lkml.org). > that's perhaps one way to go about it.. Another one would be to make a suggestion. >From the knowledge of this problem's existence alone we can already deduct that the linux kernel does not reserve resources for the graphical user interface, and if it does, then the reliability of this feature is our problem. AIUI todays default user interface to the linux kernel is a GUI, the DE in our case here. If the DE itself can not rely on a minimum of CPU and memory resources to be reserved for it, how can we assume that it will ever be reliable itself? It is easy to defer this problem to another list, but it is equally clear that this problem extends over all areas related to UI, DE or the underlying architectures.. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: Sporadic UI halts on Meerkat Netbook - how to debug
Le lundi 04 octobre 2010 à 21:42 +0300, Mikko Ohtamaa a écrit : > Hi, > > > > I am trying Maverick Meerkat Netbook remix on Asus 1005HA Eee Pc. I > like it. Finally the Linux desktop is going to right direction. > > > However, I am having some "slowdown" issues. Once in a while (...or > many times during an hour) everything besides the mouse cursor in the > user interface halts. The text cursor stops blinking (no matter what > application). I suspect this might have something to do with disk IO > as the netbook has very slow disk and I have encrypted home folder. > Each halts last 5-10 seconds and since they happen often they hit hard > the overall user experience. Basic tasks like editing the text on the > computer become pain. These are the typical symptoms of an I/O bug nobody has been able to identify and which has generated many comments. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/131094 but don't expect to find help there, as we don't even know whether there are several bugs mixed or a single root cause... :-( > I have some background tasks running (Skype, Quassel), but it should > be nothing killing the performance. Windows XP can handle things just > fine. The only thing that is likely to create a high I/O load regularly is swapping. I'd suggest you avoid running too many programs at the same time. You can use the command 'free -m' to see how many free RAM you have. > Now, my question is, how to debug these "halt" or "stop" issues. I > suspect if I could get history graph of CPU and IO per application > level it would help greatly. Also, the problem might be in kernel > services (disk io, OpenGL, sound?) . If your problem is actually the swapping + I/O bug issue, I don't think you can do much to help, except if you have enough skills to convince kernel developers that they can do something about it. If you're ready to answer a long series of technical questions, then you can send a mail to the kernel development list (lkml.org). But before that, it would be useful to check that system logs don't show something interesting each time you suffer from the bug (use System->Administration->Log viewer and have a look at these files). Also running the command 'top' and checking what applications are using RAM may simply reveal that one of them is leaking memory (type '<<' to sort processes by order of physical RAM usage). Regards -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
