Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

bernhard · 2023-09-21 14:27

I fetched the 64bit installation disk for Aquarius Trinity from sourceforge, dd it to an usb stick, booted and installed it on yet another USB stick. Sorrily Q4OS fails to run from that one. The laptop boots very slow (several minutes until the blank blue desktop appears), even booting into maintenance mode is very slow and it is not very usefull, since the network is unconfigured and I had not yet set a root password (which I did in the meantime). I do not remember if I was not patient enough during the first boot and interrupted it or if it ended in frozen black screen, which I forced into reboot. During the second boot the appended error message appeared on the empty blue trinity desktop after a very long time, which complains that DCOPserver was not running. I switched to a console and found a running dcopserver.

Any help is appreciated.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-21 14:54)

Attachments:

DCOP-error.jpg, Size: 187.31 KiB, Downloads: 122

bernhard · 2023-09-21 17:41

In the meantime I succeeded entering maintainence mode and I append the output of journalctl -xb.

Edit: After some googling, I created the readable journal of all 5 attempted boots and extracted the logs of the first and second boot as journal-1st-boot.txt and journal-2nd-boot.txt

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-21 18:39)

Attachments:

journal.txt, Size: 140.54 KiB, Downloads: 248

journal-1st-boot.txt, Size: 145.19 KiB, Downloads: 189

journal-2nd-boot.txt, Size: 211.98 KiB, Downloads: 224

bernhard · 2023-09-22 08:12

as suggested here, I additionally append the output of reportq4 & inxi -Fxxx

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-22 08:13)

Attachments:

inxi-out.txt, Size: 3.67 KiB, Downloads: 244

qreport.tar.gz, Size: 170.74 KiB, Downloads: 180

hchiper · 2023-09-22 09:25

bernhard wrote:

installed it on yet another USB stick. Sorrily Q4OS fails to run from that one.

A topic about this exists on the forum. If you are interested, you can find it with the search tool (I don't remember the link). In short, GRUB is not installed on the target USB, unless no hard drive is found. That was the situation with Q4OS 4 (Gemini). Apparently it is the same with Q4OS 5 (Aquarius).

The laptop boots very slow

Spinning HDD and USB 2 are slow. When I first installed Q4OS on an HDD, it took at least 2-3 minutes to boot. Now I have replaced the HDD with an SSD and the boot takes less than 20 seconds (from power-on to Plasma login screen). I tried also to install on an USB 2 stick and the boot was even slower. I never tried an USB 3 stick because the ports on my laptop are only USB 2.

Edit:
I just see your inxi.txt now. Your USB key is 3.2 Gen1; is it well plugged into an USB 3 slot?

Last edited by hchiper (2023-09-22 09:32)

bernhard · 2023-09-22 09:47

hchiper wrote:

GRUB is not installed on the target USB, unless no hard drive is found. That was the situation with Q4OS 4 (Gemini). Apparently it is the same with Q4OS 5 (Aquarius)
[...]
I just see your inxi.txt now. Your USB key is 3.2 Gen1; is it well plugged into an USB 3 slot?

yes it is plugged into an USB3 slot, and I doubt that neither this is the cause nor that there are Grub problems, since I arrive at the Grub prompt and can select the advanced option menu to boot into maintenance mode in the Aquarius installation Also I still have the previous Q4OS version (Gemini) on similar stick running without problems on this laptop with Grub installed on it. There were some problems initially with Gemini, see my previous post, but I was able to resolve them.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-22 12:21)

Rademes · 2023-09-22 17:47

Why have you decided to install Operating System on USB flash drive? Nowadays SSD disks are cheap and they are 100 times faster than USB flash drives. In your laptop you have HDD disk. I strongly suggest you to change it to SSD disk and install Q4OS on it. Personally I install Crucial MX500 250GB SSD on all my old laptops.

Last edited by Rademes (2023-09-22 17:48)

bernhard · 2023-09-22 18:49

Rademes wrote:

Why have you decided to install Operating System on USB flash drive?
[...]

Q4OS is not my primary OS on this laptop, I am using primarily EndlessOS (a Debian derivate with unmutable root filesystem) and I do not want to reconfigure the ssd for multiboot. As already mentioned in my reply hchiper above, I have Q4OS Gemini running flawlessly from a very similar USB stick, which is the same major debian_version as EndlessOS 5 and I prefer having another Debian with the similar debian_version and standard root filesystem available. EndlessOS will sooner or later also upgrade to bookworm, so I decided to try Q4OS based on bookworm now from yet another usb stick.

PS: Q4OS Gemini needs about 40 seconds to boot into the Trinity desktop fro. the usb-stick

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-22 19:08)

q4osteam · 2023-09-22 19:34

@bernhard
The TDE dcop error generally shows up on systems with an extremely slow boot process due to some internal timeouts. We would guess that the USB flash drive is not using the full speed of the USB3 protocol due to an outdated driver. You can try to install Debian Bookworm on this USB stick and compare it with Q4OS Aquarius to see if the problem comes from Q4OS or Debian base.

bernhard · 2023-09-22 21:19

q4osteam wrote:

We would guess that the USB flash drive is not using the full speed of the USB3 protocol due to an outdated driver.

sounds reasonable. BTW, the installation was awfully slow (around six hours), which could also be due to the same problem.

q4osteam wrote:

You can try to install Debian Bookworm on this USB stick and compare it with Q4OS Aquarius to see if the problem comes from Q4OS or Debian base.

I'll try that, but I will need some time for that.

bernhard · 2023-09-23 16:50

OK, I installed Debian 12.1.0 with Mate desktop on the very same usb-stick and it is running with the same miserable performance as Q4OS Aquarius. But I also realized that this stick is not really the same as the one Q4OS Gemini is running nicely from. According to the inxi -Fxxx output Aquarius and Debian Bookworm are running unacceptable slowly from this one:

ID-2: /dev/sdb type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: SanDisk 3.2 Gen1 size: 116.57 GiB type: N/A
serial: A20031DA09081095 rev: DL17 scheme: GPT

whereas Q4OS Gemini is running flawlessly on this one:

ID-4: /dev/sde type: USB vendor: SanDisk model: Ultra Fit size: 114.56 GiB type: N/A
serial: 4C530001150713105515 rev: 1.00 scheme: GPT

So it might be caused by one of the following possibilities:

Bad driver as suggested by q4osteam
Bad stick.

The second is not very reasonable, it is a brand new stick. To be safe, I checked it now with f3probe and it does not find any problems. Gnome disk benchmarks under EndlessOS 5.2 and f3probe output are attached.

So the problem should be reported upstream, but I am not sure where in the Debian bug tracking I should post it, and what I need for that or how I could debug and/or how to gather the relevant information.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-23 16:53)

Attachments:

f3probe.txt, Size: 773 B, Downloads: 221

Benchmark-Sandisk-usb-stick.png, Size: 121.29 KiB, Downloads: 131

Rademes · 2023-09-23 18:39

I have been using a lot of flash drives. All of them have the same problem - very slow write speed, and I mean crazy very slow! For example let`s take your flash drive. It has Average Read speed - 270 MB/s, but Average Write speed only 13,6 MB/s. As you can see, the write speed is 19 times slower than read speed!
And that is not because of outdated driver or bad USB stick. USB stick is OK, there are another reasons:
1. USB Flash Drive actual read/write speeds are bottlenecked a lot by the controller and actual Flash memory (which need to serve/accept the data being transferred.)
2. The speed also depends on the size of the files (a lot of small files will be way slower than one big files of their combined size) since the controller needs to do a lot of stuff for each file it is writing, and each file also needs to start on a new block).
3. The write speed is further limited (even from the write speed this flash drive is supposed to have) by the OS and the Copying application you use (a tool like robocopy can be faster than Windows File Explorer copy).
4. Cheap USB Flash drives use cheap and slow Flash memory and controller. Even if the controller is powerful enough to transfer data from Flash memory to PC, when it comes to writing data into Flash memory, it just "choking on the abundance of information".
https://superuser.com/questions/1785762 … humb-drive

Because of that, I strongly do not recommend to use USB Flash drives for OS installation! They can be used as Live USB system drives, but as regular OS installation drives - NO! NO! NO!
If you need a portable Linux OS on external drive, I suggest you to buy external SSD, like this one:
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/dp/B0937GXJ6 … uage=de_DE
It is far more faster and more reliable than Flash drives. I have similar SSD, and it works very well.

Last edited by Rademes (2023-09-23 18:42)

bernhard · 2023-09-24 10:38

@Rademes

I think I explained already that the Q4OS installation on the USB stick is not my primary operating system on this laptop (but it is on other systems, and the other systems Q4OS is installed on the internal SSD). So please refrain from insisting on trying to convince me that the installation on an USB stick is a bad idea. I know that there are better devices for regular OS installation.

I think that the huge performance difference between Q4OS Gemini and Q4OS Aquarius when installed on an USB stick needs an explanation.

q4osteam · 2023-09-24 10:47

bernhard wrote:

I think that the huge performance difference between Q4OS Gemini and Q4OS Aquarius when installed on an USB stick needs an explanation.

The possible, and likely explanation is different USB device used for Gemini and Aquarius. If you would want to make sure about the real culprit, we would need to install both OSs on the same USB stick exactly the same way and provide debug info for comparison.

Another possible explanation, as said above, is different driver and kernel.

Anyway, both Gemini and Aquarius have similar hardware requirements and should perform roughly the same way.

bernhard · 2023-09-24 12:35

q4osteam wrote:

we would need to install both OSs on the same USB stick exactly the same way and provide debug info for comparison.

I'll try my best; could you please give me some guidelines how to provide debug info for comparison (e.g. pointer to the right chapter of Self service Linux). My first step will be cloning the old Gemini stick to the new stick and try to boot it.

q4osteam wrote:

Anyway, both Gemini and Aquarius have similar hardware requirements and should perform roughly the same way.

good to know, I had already feared that Aquarius is more demanding

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-24 18:14)

Rademes · 2023-09-24 17:49

@bernhard
I do know, that Q4OS installation is not your primary OS on your laptop, and you have EndlessOS installed on your internal SSD.
I do not want you to install Q4OS on your internal SSD.
I am trying to convince you to install Q4OS on External USB SSD Disk instead of cheap and slow USB Flash drive.
External USB SSD Disk can be used just like USB Flash drive. Yes, it is bigger sized, but it is also much faster and much more reliable.
That is the fastest and easiest way to solve your problem and have second OS available.

And big Thank You for this: http://linuxclass.heinz.cmu.edu/doc/Ope … -Linux.pdf

Last edited by Rademes (2023-09-24 20:55)

bernhard · 2023-09-25 09:38

Rademes wrote:

@bernhard
Yes, it is bigger sized,

hmm, yes about 100 times larger (length & width is approx. 6 times larger and the height is about 3 times the size), see appended photo.

Rademes wrote:

@bernhard
And big Thank You for this: http://linuxclass.heinz.cmu.edu/doc/Ope … -Linux.pdf

you are welcome. Although now some years old, I like the book for tracking down problems.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-25 10:42)

Attachments:

SSD-Stick.jpeg, Size: 96.32 KiB, Downloads: 122

bernhard · 2023-09-25 10:38

q4osteam wrote:

we would need to install both OSs on the same USB stick exactly the same way and provide debug info for comparison.

done. The first, surprising result is: Gemini cloned from the old (fast) to the new (slow) stick shows similar bad performance as Aquarius. I append the output of

journalctl -b

for both boots as Gemini-Journal-good.txt and Gemini-Journal-slow.txt as well as the relevant pieces of the output of

diff -w --suppress-common-lines <(cut -c 17- Gemini-Journal-slow.txt) <(cut -c 17- Gemini-Journal-good.txt)

which gives the line numbers of the differences, which I think are relevant (but I am not sure if I did not overlook and delete some relevant messages).

I contacted Sandisk/WD support, but that sounds not very promising.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-25 10:39)

Attachments:

Gemini-Journal-relevant-diffs.txt, Size: 3.47 KiB, Downloads: 241

Gemini-Journal-good.txt, Size: 163.34 KiB, Downloads: 193

Gemini-Journal-slow.txt, Size: 206.06 KiB, Downloads: 203

q4osteam · 2023-09-26 12:26

We have probably found a clue in the Gemini-Journal-slow.txt log, see

kernel: GPT:Primary header thinks Alt. header is not at the end of the disk.
kernel: GPT:240254975 != 244457471
kernel: GPT:Alternate GPT header not at the end of the disk.
kernel: GPT:240254975 != 244457471
kernel: GPT: Use GNU Parted to correct GPT errors.

Errors above are not present in Gemini-Journal-good.txt log . So the problem seems to be on the USB stick itself, not in an OS installed.

bernhard · 2023-09-26 12:58

q4osteam wrote:

We have probably found a clue in the Gemini-Journal-slow.txt log,
[...]

yes, I saw these errors also. Since the Sandisk support asked me to reformat the stick in Windows, I did that and re-cloned the fast stick to the slow stick. The two sticks differ by 2GB (the new, slow one is 2GB larger), which explains the GPT error (being not at the end, which is the wrong alternate position). So I corrected this error in my second attempt by fdisk'ing it before booting into it. I also took care to do exactly the same things when booting. I.e. I waited until TDE desktop was fully present on both boots, switched then with Crl-Alt-F1 to the first console, logged in, and did a journalctl -b > file.txt. Both files are included and a short summary text about the timings (startup finished in is the time noted by with this text as label by systemd-journal).

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-27 14:21)

Attachments:

Gemini-slow.txt, Size: 171.75 KiB, Downloads: 203

Gemini-fast.txt, Size: 163.3 KiB, Downloads: 187

Timing.txt, Size: 314 B, Downloads: 216

bernhard · 2023-09-27 11:44

I received from Sandisk/Western Digital a RMA number and they will replace the stick since they also think that a newer version of the product should perform better and not 10 times worse than the older. Although I fear that the replacement won't be better, I think it is worth a try ...
please be patient, I'll give an update, when the replacement arrived and is in use ...

Last edited by bernhard (2023-09-27 14:15)

Rademes · 2023-09-28 12:55

bernhard wrote:

hmm, yes about 100 times larger (length & width is approx. 6 times larger and the height is about 3 times the size), see appended photo.

The SSD Disk I have suggested is not much bigger, than regular USB Flash drives, but it is much, much faster.

bernhard · 2023-11-13 16:09

OK, my exchanged stick arrived and -- not really surprisingly -- its performance is as bad as the original. I did some further benchmarks and to my surprise, the performance measured with gnome-disk-utility 41.0 (UDisks 2.9.2) is very much dependent on the size of the transferred blocks, increasing the so called "sample size" from 10MB to 500MB results in an average read/write rate of 330/71MB/s (compared to 262.5/9.7MB/s for 10MB sample size). I don't know how, but I think it should be possible to tweak ext4 settings to read in/write out large buffers, but I guess also that I must also switch journalling off (which increases the danger of data loss, I know) or move the journal to the internal hard disk. Sorrily I do neither know how to tweak exxt4 file system parameters nor how to move the journal to another device, but I think I could find that out ...

I include screenshots of the benchmarks with gnome-disk-utility.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-11-15 13:07)

Attachments:

Sandisk-32Gen1_new_500M-Benchmark.png, Size: 120.93 KiB, Downloads: 114

Sandisk-32Gen1_new-10M-Benchmark.png, Size: 141.33 KiB, Downloads: 115

Sandisk-32Gen1-new-20M-Benchmark.png, Size: 133.53 KiB, Downloads: 116

bernhard · 2023-11-15 13:08

I tried the stick with journalling switched off for both, the / and the /home partition, but I could not feel any difference in performance.

Last edited by bernhard (2023-11-23 19:21)

bernhard · 2023-11-23 22:30

In the meantime, after lots of Google searches and interesting reading, I am convinced that the problems are due to misaligned partitioning and/or bad alignment of blocks on the device and read/write requests. I still do not have a final solution, but I'll try on.

Inspired by http://linux-howto-guide.blogspot.com/2 … speed.html I did
hdparm -t /dev/sdb
and I get read rates of more than 300 MB/sec, and with
dd count=100 bs=1M if=/dev/urandom of=test
I get write rates of more than 120 MB/sec if the file test does not exist. If dd is overwriting the file test, the write rates drop drastically to 12 - 36 MB/sec.

Q4OS Forum

#1 2023-09-21 14:27

Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#2 2023-09-21 17:41

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#3 2023-09-22 08:12

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#4 2023-09-22 09:25

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#5 2023-09-22 09:47

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#6 2023-09-22 17:47

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#7 2023-09-22 18:49

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#8 2023-09-22 19:34

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#9 2023-09-22 21:19

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#10 2023-09-23 16:50

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#11 2023-09-23 18:39

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#12 2023-09-24 10:38

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#13 2023-09-24 10:47

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#14 2023-09-24 12:35

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#15 2023-09-24 17:49

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#16 2023-09-25 09:38

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#17 2023-09-25 10:38

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#18 2023-09-26 12:26

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#19 2023-09-26 12:58

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#20 2023-09-27 11:44

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#21 2023-09-28 12:55

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#22 2023-11-13 16:09

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#23 2023-11-15 13:08

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

#24 2023-11-23 22:30

Re: Failed installation of Aquarius Trinity, slow boot, barely usable

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