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Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by zero (Post 1040471)

I tried putting the N900 in the fridge

:eek: WTF? You want to destroy Li-Po battery, fry Your N900 cause humidity concentration on inside parts, or whatever? Never ever do such a things. You may be lucky 1, 2, or 999 times, and another one will damage Your device irreversibly.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by Estel (Post 1041370)

Not that I recommend this because there is no reason for it but most modern fridges are usually dry, more dry than the outside air. It's when you take it out to a much hotter humid climate that you must avoid condensation buildup (one way is to stick it in a bowl of rice). Also putting a Li-Ion battery in the fridge actually increases lifespan. Still agree with you though, there really is no reason to stick it in the fridge.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Hi zero,

I agree with you, the way to go is a dedicated SD partition.

Everything is so much faster and more stable.

All the rebooting problems seem to happen to people with their image on the MyDocs partition.

I would like to have some people try out my new "swap scripts" to see if this helps with images on the MyDocs partition.

Before running big I/O heavy processes in a MyDocs image (like installing or updating Debian apps), please do the following from a Maemo terminal:

Code:

sudo nr_requests_setup

sudo swapoffon

Please report your findings!

Quote:

Originally Posted by zero (Post 1040318)

Hello,

If you remember, I had a very bad rebooting problem with ED before a few months ago where it became unusable. I had some time recently to try out ED again with the latest 9.56 scripts. I used a fresh image v3e and there were no changes to my N900 since the previous time. Unfortunately, when installing new applications through Synaptic, my device rebooted after about 10 minutes and destroyed the ED image.

After that I played around with other areas of my N900 and here is what I have achieved. I have now been running ED with a heavy disk and cpu load for a few hours and there has been no problem. I made the following changes to my N900:

- power kernel 46
- swap on eMMC increased to 1.75G (not sure if this does anything)
- chroot is on /dev/mmcblk1p3, dedicated ext2 partition. I would have used ext4 but the maemo kernel version does not allow mounting of ext4 without a journal. I'm sure having a journal would be fine, as SD cards are very cheap now anyway
- modified the qchroot script to stop mounting /home/user inside the chroot, as this interferes with maemo settings. I can still mount MyDocs. Not sure why you would mount the Maemo /home/user inside the chroot anyway... and is this what is causing the gconf errors?

I am not going to unzip any ED image on the N900 any more, as my PC is so much faster. However, by having the entire chroot filesystem on its own microSD partition, this makes the transferring and backing up much faster. It used to take me 1 hour to transfer the 2GB image, like mscion. I now use dd if=/dev/sdc3 of=/..../debian.backup bs=262144, this takes 4 minutes to backup 2G.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

I've done some benchmarking with OpenOffice Calc, before and after moving to a dedicated SDcard partition:

Starting Easy Debian, Opening OO Calc, opening a file (my time sheet for work), doing a bit of scrolling to test responsiveness, closing OO and shutting down ED:
- from image file: 3:05min
- from partition: 2:15min

Starting Open Office from within Maemo, opening a file (my time sheet for work), doing a bit of scrolling to test responsiveness, closing OO:
- from image file: 2:15min
- from partition: 1:25min

Stock CPU speed, freshly booted each time. Swappolube is on, KP47, CSSU installed, using AndrewX192's updated image.

So, a very decent improvement. Maybe the second round (from partition) went a bit smoother because I had had a practice round, but it can't explain everything.

Are these times more or less what you would expect, or could I get some more improvement out of it?

(I also tried it with MS Excel 2007 on my laptop with Core2@2.00GHz, it took 40 seconds. It has a pretty slow hard drive, but still, in that respect, 1:25 is not bad at all :)

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Which class and manufacturer is Your SD card? I wonder if You can get better results using dedicated partition on eMMC and (important) swap only on microSD.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by maartenmk (Post 1043827)

I've done some benchmarking with OpenOffice Calc, before and after moving to a dedicated SDcard partition:

Starting Open Office from within Maemo, opening a file (my time sheet for work), doing a bit of scrolling to test responsiveness, closing OO:
- from image file: 2:15min
- from partition: 1:25min

Hi maartenmk. I find that the timings are sensitive to what order you do things.
Lets assume you let the N900 start up.
Now open OO from Maemo. It took me 1 minute and 35 just to start OO.

Now if I exit out and start OO from Maemo again it takes about 45-50 seconds.

Anyways, could you reverse the order of your tests for when you start from Maemo. No need to open spread sheet. Just see how long it takes to get to the stage you can type.

EDIT: Correction. If you use close debian after exiting OO it adds about (15 to 25) seconds to restart OO from Maemo. Also, all my restults are from using easy debian in MyDocs.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

I think that in order to speed test the various chroots,
1) the device must be freshly booted each time (Maartenmk reports he did so);
2) you should get the first 3 timings, since in my experience the first OOO boot is really slow, the second is much quicker, the third gets stable.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by debernardis (Post 1045568)

I completely agree with your suggestion. That was basically what I was doing. All the information is useful in characterizing performance. So it would be good if maartennm could try starting up OO three times for at least some of the cases. In particular, it would be very interesting if, when starting within Maemo and from partition, there is a significant improvement from the 1:25min reported on the second try. You could also try comparing results after using close debian and not using close debian.

In maartenmk's test he is also utilizing Swappolube, KP47, CSSU, and AndrewX192's updated image so I am very interested in his restults because I do not currently use any of them. It is good to isolate what is having an effect, if any, on performace. For example, how do restults change if Swappolube is on or off. When I tried that in the past I did not see much improvement. But I will try again and consider checking other options utilized if the performance is improved. Also does it depend on combinations of options. For example, do you need to use Swappolube and CSSU together to see an improvement. I can't really say because I do not know how they work.

Finally, it might be good if there were "standard" files for testing purposes. For example a word document, spread sheet and ppt so that the tests are more relavent for comparison. Do such files exist?

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

@Estel
It's a class 2 8GB card that came with an Xperia X10. I am not quite ready to start repartitioning the eMMC, and I'm also hesitant to put swap on microSD, but I do have a class 4 4GB card, maybe I'll try using that.

@mscion and debernardis:
I repeated the exact same test for starting from a partition from within Maemo, and then a few more times without rebooting. I did not use Close Debian.
1st: 1:20min (loading OO took 35secs)
2nd: 1:05min (loading OO took 15secs)
3rd: 1:10min
4th: 1:05min
Then I did the same once more (without rebooting), O/Ced too 1150MHz, this took 55 sec.

mscion, for the original test I did record the time it took to start OO. With the image file on MyDocs, from within Maemo, it was 55secs.

But after a few days of use I must say that the responsiveness improvement is just as nice as, or even nicer than the loading time improvement. ED is now really usable, the lag is pretty much gone.
So using a dedicated partition is highly recommended.

Re: Easy Debian Fremantle Beta Testing

Quote:

Originally Posted by maartenmk (Post 1046004)

Just be sure to do benchmarks first. Some class 2 cards (SanDisk, particullary) are faster, than other class 4, 6, or even 10 (patriot, which suxx big time btw). Card "class" isn't standarized, so manufcturers tends to do wishful thinking there.

As for reformatting eMMC, i strongly recommend You using last solution from wiki page - using Aptosid (or whatever debian liveCD/DVD You want) and backupmenu mass storage mode, repartitioning is easy as a piece of cake. Really. Personally, I used this method - mixed with "changing eMMC filesystem" article - to reformat my /home and ED dedicated partition to ext4, which improves performance and reliability even more (beore that, i used ED on dedicated partition, but as ext3)

Also, keep in mind, that moving swap to MicroSD partition improve performance dramatically, even using class 2 - that's due to lesser I/O conflicts, when both swap and Your application want to access eMMC.