Chrome causes system crash

JSM · 2021-05-05 15:56

After installing Q4OS 3, when I started the built-in browser, I was asked if I wanted to install Chrome. I did it even though I usually work with Chromium.

Since I only have 1GB of RAM, I always set the settings specifically, I block everything possible, switch off everything that additionally requires RAM, use adblock plus, etc.

After a few days I notice that Chrome triggers a very long access to the hard disk shortly after starting. The access slows down the system extremely, for 1-2 minutes. Chrome also reported that it was waiting for the cache. That was strange because I clear the cache when I close Chrome.

Even after closing Chrome, this hard disk access is happend again. I checked the settings and even cleared the cache manually. No effect on Chrome's behavior.

Yesterday I had two fb tabs open, one youtube with active video and google translate. Suddenly I got a black screen and my notebook rebooted. I tested it twice more and the same thing happened both times.

Then I removed Chrome entirely and installed Chromium. Made the same settings. And the same test with the 4 tabs. Chromium was then extremely slow, but it kept working. With "free" I saw that 500MB was already in my swapfile. Nevertheless there was no system crash. Chromium also does not cause long hard disk access after starting and after closing.

So I suspect Chrome is causing a problem and maybe not using its cache properly. Or then there is a problem with Chrome and Q4OS 3 working together.

aluma · 2021-05-05 19:57

There are other questions here.

Why is a closed source browser needed and what can the Linux community do with it?
Today, in my subjective opinion, there are two browsers in Linux - chromium and firefox.
Chromium will allow you to get access to Google services and one step more resolution in YouTube videos (monopolists! ).
Firefox provides more privacy.

PS. For the ancient computer, I would choose another, lighter Os, in the neighboring branches you can find my posts on this topic.

q4osteam · 2021-05-05 20:32

@JSM
What is your hardware ? Please provide "inxi -F" command output. We are not able to reproduce the issue so far, however we will try to do so and post back.

JSM · 2021-05-05 23:39

@Q4OS TEAM

root@q4os-desktop:~# inxi -F
System:
  Host: q4os-desktop Kernel: 4.19.0-16-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 Console: tty 1
  Distro: Q4OS 3.14.2-n1
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Packard Bell product: DOTS2 v: V1.21
  serial: LUBGN0B0220170D9A31601
  Mobo: Acer model: DOTS2 v: V1.21 serial: N/A BIOS: Acer v: 1.21
  date: 03/17/2010
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 0.8 Wh condition: 19.8/23.8 Wh (83%)
CPU:
  Topology: Single Core model: Intel Atom N450 bits: 64 type: MT
  L2 cache: 512 KiB
  Speed: 1137 MHz min/max: 1000/1666 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1646 2: 1647
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Atom Processor D4xx/D5xx/N4xx/N5xx Integrated Graphics
  driver: i915 v: kernel
  Display: server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: intel
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa tty: 80x25
  Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console for root.
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio
  driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-16-amd64
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR8132 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: 70:5a:b6:d9:28:0c
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: 78:e4:00:24:3e:01
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 156.30 GiB used: 10.51 GiB (6.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HTS545016B9A300 size: 149.05 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB model: UFD 2.0 Silicon-Power8G size: 7.25 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 49.94 GiB used: 10.51 GiB (21.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 30.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 160 Uptime: 4m Memory: 975.1 MiB used: 658.6 MiB (67.5%)
  Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.32
root@q4os-desktop:~#

So far no problem with Chromium. My hardware is not in the best condition, the battery only works for 5-6 minutes. But it would be an extreme coincidence if it had been a brief power failure, because the problem occurred three times in a row, within a period of no more than 10 minutes. So far I have not found any identical information on the Internet. But there is some information that Chrome freezes in some Linux distributions, but without a system crash.

JSM · 2021-05-05 23:55

@aluma ... only :-)

Personally, I have no problem with it if someone likes to use no-open-source either. It's not a crime ;-) But I know that Q4OS TEAM is working on the new version Q4OS 4 and therefore I wanted to draw there attention to it. If there is a general problem with Chrome, then they can at least reconsider the offer to install Chrome :-)

Yes, I'm looking for other small Linux :-). At the moment I have a tiny core on sda1 and it's impressive! It's not a full-fledged distribution and a lot of packages (extensions) are pretty outdated programs, but it runs so fast that I get dizzy :-)

Yesterday I tried to install Void Linux, but I failed because of the WiFi problem. It couldn't be done, not even in 3 hours. Pity :-( Some tips? With GUI? :-)

Now antrix remains for the weekend. I think I will have a tiny core as a fast "Internet system" to surf on fb, as well as a full-fledged distro like Q4OS, Antrix, or Void. And then a third partition to play around with other options.

Where can I find your information? So we can move there and go on talking.

aluma · 2021-05-06 06:16

JSM wrote:

@aluma ... only :-)
Where can I find your information? So we can move there and go on talking.

Hi JSM.

Links to other distributions are discouraged and I have already received a comment on this.
A colleague CyclePiet drew my attention to this assembly, I tried it, the last two posts in this thread https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3523
Tried a separate browser with Q4os, the result is https://www.q4os.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=3547 /

Regards.

JSM · 2021-05-08 23:44

@Q4OS TEAM

So far no major problems with Chromium. But I have the impression that the browser is slowing down, especially with fb, when adblock plus has a lot of work to do. Could it be that adblock plus is building a list of ads in the background, which it then loads into the RAM? I haven't found this on the internet.

I have tested antix for the last two days. There is a browser called "Brave". It comes with its own adblocker. It runs faster and uses less ram than chrome or chromium. And it's also based on Chrome. You have the same extensions available.

Midas · 2021-05-09 14:16

@JSM: IMHO, Brave has gone shady lately, try Vivaldi instead -- it's made by former Opera people and has similar features...

q4osteam · 2021-05-09 14:58

@JSM
Thanks for the information. We didn't notice any significant Chrome crashes or flaws throughout the testing so far. We will continue to keep Chrome watching, you are welcome to post any additional info here.

We recommend to start at https://distrowatch.com/ to search for information about Linux distributions. Pointing, or linking, to another distributions in this forum is welcome, if it contributes to solving Q4OS issues.

JSM · 2021-05-11 00:10

@ Q4OS TEAM

In my test with antiX, I saw that the addblocker has a significant influence. There are also browsers that manage the memory much better than others. Opera is one of them! Really impressive. In the antiX forum I made a post today and just copy the text here. Opera is really the alternative, or Vivaldi (Opera like). I never had a system crash, with none of the browsers tested. Seems like it's just Chrome causing it.

Copy post from antiX:

Hi

Because I know that surfing with little RAM is a problem, I would like to tell you about my new experience with Opera:

I have 1GB of RAM and was looking for the right browser. Firefox wasn’t that bad, but from 2 fb tabs, a google translate and another page it reaches the limit where the swapfile starts to work. I see this well on the “Conky”, a wonderful tool ? With Chromium and Chrome, it is a little worse than with firefox. Brave was about the same as firefox, but the built-in addblocker didn’t convince me at all!

Just out of curiosity and more of a coincidence, I tested Opera and there was a big surprise! Opera runs significantly faster than the up-to-date browsers mentioned above. Opera also has an addblocker built in and it works fine. In addition, Opera has many setting options that I have not found in the other browsers. Obviously Opera manages the memory better than the others! I observe that my RAM usage is never higher than 700MB (out of a total of 927MB available). If I am already close to 700MB and open another tab, the load even sinks and then slowly increases again to around 700MB, but never goes above it. I conclude from this that Opera has a limit on RAM usage and then uses the browser cache. Because the swapfile is NOT beeing activated, should mean it doesn’t swap! Sentational, really ?

I had also tested Falkon on my old notebook, also with 1GB Ram. It also ran better than Chromium and Firefox. The version that I installed under Lubuntu still had a static browser cache (not a dynamic one), which has the advantage that it can be increased manually. The maximum was 2GB.

q4osteam · 2021-05-11 08:00

You can easily install Opera on Q4OS, a dedicated "esh" installer is available here:
https://github.com/q4os-installers/oper … ag/v2.2-a1
or:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/q4os/f … ntal_apps/

aluma · 2021-05-11 20:23

First, let's define what we want.

If privacy, then closed source browsers are excluded.
(During the development of exсel, according to one of the developers, they collected information from users about the frequency of clicks on menu items, users and had no idea, which Google collects today ...)

If the maximum comfort from the resolution of YouTube videos, then chromium, its codec is faster.

If you squeeze the maximum out of the old computer, that is, there is another OS, I already talked about this.

Besides, there are ancient text browsers in the repositories (lynx, elinks, etc).
No Java scripts, ads, for text and images, but this is for especially advanced

And the last thing.
Adblock (I am using
uBlock Origin) is not the only option. There is a firewall...

PS.
About memory.
In addition to the memory occupied by applications, there are also caches of other programs. And the Linux memory manager tries to keep their size so as not to get into a swap.

Last edited by aluma (2021-05-11 20:48)

Q4OS Forum

#1 2021-05-05 15:56

Chrome causes system crash

#2 2021-05-05 19:57

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#3 2021-05-05 20:32

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#4 2021-05-05 23:39

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#5 2021-05-05 23:55

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#6 2021-05-06 06:16

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#7 2021-05-08 23:44

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#8 2021-05-09 14:16

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#9 2021-05-09 14:58

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#10 2021-05-11 00:10

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#11 2021-05-11 08:00

Re: Chrome causes system crash

#12 2021-05-11 20:23

Re: Chrome causes system crash

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