Good evening, everybody.
I just updated “from the inside” to ubuntu 22.04. It took a loooong time, but finally everything works.
It’s true though I noticed that after the update/upgrade everything works slower than before, with ubuntu 18.04.
What stats could I present in order to sustain my statement with facts/credible data? And how exactly could I get them? ( I really don’t know how to extract that kind of info from ubuntu). But the truth is that even connecting thorugh ssh takes longer than usual, and the page charges a lot slower.
It is not a “serious” problem, but I think it is worth mentioning.
On the other side, the laptop I use has this CPU:
“model name : Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 925 @ 2.30GHz
cpu MHz : 2294.332”
And it’s running with 2GB ram + 2 GB swap.
ANy insight on this topic will be most appreciated.
Thanks all in advance.
Did you happen to look at the what is in the system monitoring?
https://your-domain-here.tld/admin/munin/processes-day.html
clicking the various categories on the left side?
Might see something if you go weekly or monthly and compare with the date of the upgrade.
I guess the real question is – what do you plan on doing if you can prove its slower?
Are you really running MiaB on a laptop?
I personally think that a Celeron with 2GB of RAM is very insufficient. Does it even have an SSD or is the hard drive a 5400RPM mechanical? You may gain performance by switching to an SSD.
Hello.
Thanks for answering.
I am thinking of switching to a ssd hard drive. The only improvement I can afford at the moment (unfortunately).
I paid a look at the munin charts, but, honestly I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
An yes, at this moment, I am running Miab on a laptop - the only possibility I can afford - and given that it’s for “personal” use, for the moment just me and my son we’re using it, I suppose it’s enough (the moment it totally brakes for whatever reason, I will contemplate switching to a different solution).
But, by all means, thank you very much for the interest taken in this topic and for the advice. I will try to follow it, as soon as possible.
Much obliged, @stylnchris.
2GB shouldn’t be the issue. I’m running MiaB on a 2 core / 2GB VPS and it is running just fine. But the old Celeron platform most likely is. The CPU itself has only one core with a passmark score of 477. Also the platform is very old, and was at the bottom end of the spectrum, even when it was new. This means generally very low I/O speeds and low memory bandwidth. So I’m not sure if it is worth buying an SSD for this machine. Especially since every used PC or laptop you can buy nowdays will be faster than your current laptop, and even the cheapest offers of refurbished PCs usually come with an SSD and at least 4GB of RAM.
I’m not sure where @danp lives but if it’s in the US, SSDs are only $29 bucks for a SanDisk 240G.
A pny 240G disk is $20
I think personally he would see a heck of a lot of performance switching to an SSD. Yes I do agree the CPU is weak.
Replacing a whole computer would be more for sure but again if you buy a refurbished model it might not be terrible.
$169 for an i5,256SSD and 16G RAM
Yeah SSDs are cheap and maybe it’s worth a shot. However, in this case, I would still try to monitor the system, especially the CPU load, before I would buy an SSD. Because if e.g. the CPU is constantly running at full load, which could mean that the HDD isn’t the bottleneck, @danp wouldn’t be able to use the potential of the SDD. And that’s what I suspect could be the case here…
Good afternoon.
Gentelmen, thank you very much for your interest. I understand what you told me about the CPU capacities - will pay a close look at its performances. And I will givi it a try with a ssd (I already have one waiting… 
). But for the moment my machine works almost perfect (if it weren’t for the topic mentioned…). And I will learn some more about the munin tool which is quite interesting…
My guess it’s more related with the oldeness of the platform altogether rather than just CPU bottleneck - but untill it drops totally dead I’ll keep on using it (for the time being).
As soon as I get some real data, I will come back with details.
Thanks a lot for your interest and interesting advice.
I expect Disk I/O as the first bottleneck, then once he installs the SSD, then CPU.
We shall see perhaps danp will keep us up-to-date.
Hello.
As promised, a bit of an update.
Untill now, I managed to chande the hd to a ssd disk.
But, the problems showed up immediately: the ubuntu installer (22.04) just wouldn’t start. On top of it, the os installed on the ssd was an ubuntu 18.04 (server), but had no internet connection (didn’t recognize the RJ45 cable connected to the laptop). WHy? I don’t know. FOr the moment went back to the hdd, everything working fine.
Nevertheless, as much as I could observe, the CPU is working really hard (haha), almost at a 95% capacity (which I guess isn’t good at all). I’ll keep on investigating and trying with the change (maybe the usb I used wasn’t good - I don’t know for sure). I promise to keep you up to date as soon as I get something credible and better.
Thanks again for your interest.
A few questions Dan. Assume you’re hosting this in your house right? How did you get around residential IPs being in spamhaus? Are you only emailing directly on the box and never sending externally?
Your in the US?
Hello.
Yes, it’s installed at home.
I’m in Europe. THe only error I have is due to my ISP - that just won’t create a reverse DNS… but apart of it, everything works fine (I can send and receive mail without any problem).
As I said, I’ll keep on testing things, and keep you up to date.
Except to email providers who won’t accept emails sent from IP’s without a proper rDNS.
Good evening.
True about that - also true that untill now (fingers crossed), didn’t encounter one of those providers.
Joke apart, I remember and keep in mind that the best solution is to have my box installed on a vps. (@alento I remember it was one of your recommendations!). But, still, for the moment, cannot afford one (I’m still studying the case to find a proper one for me).
Just a bit changing the subject - in my v60 instance I don’t find more skins thant the “original” - did I do something wrong when upgraded? Must I do something more to have more skins installed (or can I install more skins? How?).
Black Friday is coming up very soon. It might be worth a look at Low End Talk or Low End Spirit over the Thanksgiving (in the US) weekend. You can quite possibly score something for $15-20 a year. A word of warning though - most of the providers there are quite good, but there is always a chance of hitting upon a quite bad one. The community will let you know who to avoid, so spend some time researching before you pull the trigger.
I can also see a performance hit since upgrading. I don’t really notice this during using it, but I can see some step changes in Munin graphs. There’s more processes running, more disk latency, more io throughput on disks, more memory usage, and larger NTP offsets.
Disk latency does seem to be the biggest step change on my system, so I’d agree with the discussions above that replacing a spinning disk with an SSD would probably help.
It would be interesting to see Munin graphs for other people’s systems to compare
Has the ram requirement gone up? Before it was happy using 265/512mb of ram at idle, now it’s using nearly the full GB for the VM on 22.04?