The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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hooah: Feb 6, 2006; WTF?

I'm running Fedora 33 on an old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (i5-4200U with 4 GB of RAM). If I have only Discord open and then try to open and use IntelliJ, the latter will usually crash. How can I figure out why that's happening? I hope it's not running out of RAM or something. Even though 4 GB isn't a huge amount, I could run several programs at once under Windows on this machine.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:25

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# ? May 30, 2024 02:54

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

hooah posted:

I'm running Fedora 33 on an old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (i5-4200U with 4 GB of RAM). If I have only Discord open and then try to open and use IntelliJ, the latter will usually crash. How can I figure out why that's happening? I hope it's not running out of RAM or something. Even though 4 GB isn't a huge amount, I could run several programs at once under Windows on this machine.

you're probably out of memory. Give yourself more swap.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:26

hooah: Feb 6, 2006; WTF?

Methanar posted:

you're probably out of memory. Give yourself more swap.

I'm relatively new to this level of Linux management. Do I want to increase the size of the existing swap strategy, or add an additional one?

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:30

Methanar: Sep 26, 2013; by the sex ghost

hooah posted:

I'm relatively new to this level of Linux management. Do I want to increase the size of the existing swap strategy, or add an additional one?

I'm pretty sure you can increase the existing one without issue.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:32

rufius: Feb 27, 2011; Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

hooah posted:

I'm running Fedora 33 on an old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (i5-4200U with 4 GB of RAM). If I have only Discord open and then try to open and use IntelliJ, the latter will usually crash. How can I figure out why that's happening? I hope it's not running out of RAM or something. Even though 4 GB isn't a huge amount, I could run several programs at once under Windows on this machine.

Given that IntelliJ is a Java program, it�s possible the heap size is large enough to be causing memory pressure and it�s getting OOMKilled.

Other ideas - client vs server JVM running.

Also, the comments about Swap could help.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:39

hooah: Feb 6, 2006; WTF?

I created this zram-configurator.conf file by following the example, and things are crashing ... less. But still crashing. Also, the system itself feels slower now. I guess more paging is happening?

code:

[zram0]
host-memory-limit = 9048
zram-fraction = 0.50
max-zram-size = 4096

I actually rebooted instead of

pre:

systemctl restart swap-create@zram0.service

and things seem much better.

hooah fucked around with this message at 22:00 on Mar 9, 2021

# ? Mar 9, 2021 21:51

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

The "everything is a file" idea of UNIX was good up to a point, up until people started putting character or block devices in files on filesystems which uses devices block devices - which is what happens on every Unix-like but FreeBSD which removed block devices for this very reason. That way you get three or four layers of caching where one unified memory subsystem could do it all.

This is why file-backed swap is a bad idea, because even if you ignore the terrible nightmare that is writing crashdumps to a filesystem if that filesystem is what's causing the crash, translating the kernel operations from device operations to filesystem operations and back to device operations is incredibly inefficient.

Same applies to iSCSI extends, hypervisor guests, and basically anything that isn't an actual file being written to a filesystem.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Mar 9, 2021

# ? Mar 9, 2021 22:57

Kamrat: Nov 27, 2012; Thanks for playing Alone in the dark 2.

Now please fuck off

hooah posted:

I'm running Fedora 33 on an old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro (i5-4200U with 4 GB of RAM). If I have only Discord open and then try to open and use IntelliJ, the latter will usually crash. How can I figure out why that's happening? I hope it's not running out of RAM or something. Even though 4 GB isn't a huge amount, I could run several programs at once under Windows on this machine.

Used to have a similar problem actually, Discord crashed after a while because it was leaking memory, I don't know if Discord still has that issue on Linux.

Kamrat fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Mar 9, 2021

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:09

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

It's fine to assume Discord is more leaky than a sieve that's been stomped on, it's written in Electron and is basically just an entire program written in a scripting language that isn't type-safe and wasn't ever meant to be used for what it's being used for.

In case anyone wasn't around then or has forgotten, JavaScript got its name because it co-existed with Java, and was meant to serve as the literal glue between java applets, NPAPI plugins and the static html that basically entire web was built with back then.

Considering we've basically all concluded that Java was one of the worse ideas to come out of Sun, it really boggles my mind that JavaScript has not just managed to stick around but get wider adoption to the point that just the code for handling it takes up almost as many lines of code as fully-functional OS kernel does.

BlankSystemDaemon fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 9, 2021

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:15

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

hooah posted:

I created this zram-configurator.conf file by following the example, and things are crashing ... less. But still crashing. Also, the system itself feels slower now. I guess more paging is happening?
code:
[zram0]
host-memory-limit = 9048
zram-fraction = 0.50
max-zram-size = 4096
I actually rebooted instead of
pre:
systemctl restart swap-create@zram0.service
and things seem much better.

Isn't this the opposite of what you should be doing?

Zram is a ram-based swap device instead of a traditional disk-based based swap device, if your concern is going out of memory or memory pressure, the solution is not "throw more poo poo into memory".

I think fedora 33 defaults to using zram now (which is probably why you increased it) because it's expected your on a device with copious amounts of RAM in which case it's a performance boost. I think during install there is a way to use a traditional swap disk but I don't remember and it's probably not obvious.

I would create a traditional swap disk (at least 8GB)-> activate it -> deactivate zram > delete the zram, then see how the performance is.

The java OOM thing would be a next step but unless your project is huge I wouldn't expect that to be the problem.

Teams is definitely another culprit, it's absolute dog poo poo on all platforms.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:30

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Zram is good to use anyway since it's basically compressed stuff you're calling up all the time from your storage. If this person is using this app pretty frequently then the files the app needs to run are going to end up in the zram pool anyway and just speed up his startup times. It's just a general nice thing to have.

I'd personally leave zram in place and increase your swap size.

Nitrousoxide fucked around with this message at 23:44 on Mar 9, 2021

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:38

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

@BSD

You or anyone else have a good primer on modern beat practices for setting up jails-per-service? I plan on going through the handbook but it's simultaneously sparse and dense; trying to set up a Mumble server and a couple other similar services on a VPS.

I've started by using ezjail but it's not obvious to me how the networking works without just giving it it's own network device? Also is it not recommended to use binary packages in jails? Every guide I ever see going over jails builds stuff from ports, but the defaults for the services I care about seem fine and I don't have to figure out how to use poudriere in concert with jails to keep everything updated...

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:44

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

Nitrousoxide posted:

Zram is good to use anyway since it's basically compressed stuff you're calling up all the time from your storage. If this person is using this app pretty frequently then the files the app needs to run are going to end up in the zram pool anyway and just speed up his startup times. It's just a general nice thing to have.

I'd personally leave zram in place and increase your swap size.

Unless I misunderstood zram, it's entirely in memory and thus actively hindering his limited memory situation as described...?

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:46

spiritual bypass: Feb 19, 2008; Grimey Drawer

xtal posted:

Is there a Linux app that works as well as Preview.app for inserting text and drawing signatures into PDFs?

Last time I needed to do this xournal was the only option and it worked fine

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:53

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Mr. Crow posted:

Unless I misunderstood zram, it's entirely in memory and thus actively hindering his limited memory situation as described...?

Zram compresses the data going into it, meaning that he can fit significantly more stuff into memory than he would otherwise be able to with his limited RAM. The zram pool is going to consist pretty much of just the stuff that his OS is using constantly (and thus would need to be in RAM anyway, or would call up frequently.) It's possible that without zram enabled his overall RAM available to this app might decrease when stuff the OS needs being kept in RAM are no longer compressed and take up more space.

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:54

xtal: Jan 9, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

rt4 posted:

Last time I needed to do this xournal was the only option and it worked fine

Thanks, that did work fine!

# ? Mar 9, 2021 23:55

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Zram (and zswap) are as close as you'll get in the real world to "downloading more ram"

# ? Mar 10, 2021 00:02

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

Nitrousoxide posted:

Zram (and zswap) are as close as you'll get in the real world to "downloading more ram"

Ok I was getting very confused and mentioning zswap here reminded me, there's actually three things we (I) are talking about : zram, zswap and what F33 does, zram swap.

This is a good article going over it https://linuxreviews.org/Zram

I remember being very confused reading the F33 patch notes as I'd never heard of any of these.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 00:57

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

Mr. Crow posted:

Ok I was getting very confused and mentioning zswap here reminded me, there's actually three things we (I) are talking about : zram, zswap and what F33 does, zram swap.

This is a good article going over it https://linuxreviews.org/Zram

I remember being very confused reading the F33 patch notes as I'd never heard of any of these.

Yep, Fedora should work especially well on low ram machines (at least on bare metal) since it's got a really good zram implementation (in this case zram swap).

I probably wasn't being very clear in my initial post so that was my bad.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 01:10

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

It's a little strange seeing people talk about zram on Linux.
With FreeBSD, zfs, and inline compression, ARC is kept compressed in memory, so depending on your resident set, you can end up with something like this example from the RPI that does syslog collection of my entire collection of computers onto a pair of mirrored ZFS disks:

pre:

681M Compressed, 6889M Uncompressed, 10.12:1 Ratio

Yes, that does in theory mean my RPI3+ has almost 7GB memory, instead of the 1GB that it claims. :allears:

Mr. Crow posted:

@BSD

You or anyone else have a good primer on modern beat practices for setting up jails-per-service? I plan on going through the handbook but it's simultaneously sparse and dense; trying to set up a Mumble server and a couple other similar services on a VPS.

I've started by using ezjail but it's not obvious to me how the networking works without just giving it it's own network device? Also is it not recommended to use binary packages in jails? Every guide I ever see going over jails builds stuff from ports, but the defaults for the services I care about seem fine and I don't have to figure out how to use poudriere in concert with jails to keep everything updated...

I run jails with jail.conf, with as many common variables defined with something like host.hosthame = "$name.domain.tld.";, as well as vnet and IPv6-autoconfiguration (I'd use DHCP if I didn't have an IPv6-only LAN with IPFW doing NAT64) so I don't really know anything about ezjail/iocage.
As for settings singular daemons up in jails, I tend to treat them as completely independent "embedded" systems where I build the userland for it (preferably statically, if the port supports it) using poudriere and just put the binary into the jail by itself.
It's basically an extension of service jails, which are the idea you're referring to - whereby exec.start is set to the path of the daemon instead of "/bin/sh /etc/rc" which is the default.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 01:12

Nitrousoxide: May 30, 2011; do not buy a oneplus phone

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

It's a little strange seeing people talk about zram on Linux.
With FreeBSD, zfs, and inline compression, ARC is kept compressed in memory, so depending on your resident set, you can end up with something like this example from the RPI that does syslog collection of my entire collection of computers onto a pair of mirrored ZFS disks:
pre:
681M Compressed, 6889M Uncompressed, 10.12:1 Ratio
Yes, that does in theory mean my RPI3+ has almost 7GB memory, instead of the 1GB that it claims.

I run jails with jail.conf, with as many common variables defined with something like host.hosthame = "$name.domain.tld.";, as well as vnet and IPv6-autoconfiguration (I'd use DHCP if I didn't have an IPv6-only LAN with IPFW doing NAT64) so I don't really know anything about ezjail/iocage.
As for settings singular daemons up in jails, I tend to treat them as completely independent "embedded" systems where I build the userland for it (preferably statically, if the port supports it) using poudriere and just put the binary into the jail by itself.
It's basically an extension of service jails, which are the idea you're referring to - whereby exec.start is set to the path of the daemon instead of "/bin/sh /etc/rc" which is the default.

I hope they are porting this over to TrueNAS scale as well. It'd be a shame for this to stay behind on TrueNAS core.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 01:14

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

Nitrousoxide posted:

I hope they are porting this over to TrueNAS scale as well. It'd be a shame for this to stay behind on TrueNAS core.

I don't see how they can.
It's fundementally a change to the VM subsystem (even if it was only a couple handfuls of lines in FreeBSD, if memory serves), and Linus and his lieutenants have made their opinions on any ZFS chance quite clear, so unless they're willing to maintain an out-of-tree patch against every single internal KBI change in the Linux kernel (which changes constantly, because Linux is only ABI-stable towards userland), I can't see how it can happen.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 01:29

DerekSmartymans: Feb 14, 2005; The
Copacetic
Ascetic

tjones posted:

Anyone with a habit of poking things or touching the settings for no reason will break any OS, IMO.

That is how I learned DOS, Win 3.1, and q-basic back in the 90�s. It�s also the same way I learned to familiarize myself with Ubuntu 12. If you don�t �need� to learn under a time limit or in a certain methodology for school, it�s the best way I�ve ever found to learn any computer tool (not CompSci, any real science from gross anatomy to geology is best learned in person with a small group advised by at least a TA). But basic stuff like algebra or literature can be learned without loss of quality on your own because even YouTube walk-through and Google can help. Assume, fail, look up solutions, choose path, try again. Usually by the time you fix it you�ve learned how and why it broke in the first place!

# ? Mar 10, 2021 04:53

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

DerekSmartymans posted:

That is how I learned DOS, Win 3.1, and q-basic back in the 90�s. It�s also the same way I learned to familiarize myself with Ubuntu 12. If you don�t �need� to learn under a time limit or in a certain methodology for school, it�s the best way I�ve ever found to learn any computer tool (not CompSci, any real science from gross anatomy to geology is best learned in person with a small group advised by at least a TA). But basic stuff like algebra or literature can be learned without loss of quality on your own because even YouTube walk-through and Google can help. Assume, fail, look up solutions, choose path, try again. Usually by the time you fix it you�ve learned how and why it broke in the first place!

this is how I ended up getting paid as a computer toucher, so be careful

# ? Mar 10, 2021 05:45

Antigravitas: Dec 8, 2019; Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:

RFC2324 posted:

this is how I ended up getting paid as a computer toucher, so be careful

Extremely hazardous path; don't recommend it to people.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 08:31

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

I mostly learned computers because of videogames, starting with TRS-80s in my elementary school, then the Commodore 64 at home, but really kicking off when I decided I needed to upgrade my RAM and GPU in the first computer I bought for myself as an adult, a Pentium II HP Pavilion. Once I cracked open that case I was lost.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 09:03

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

RFC2324 posted:

this is how I ended up getting paid as a computer toucher, so be careful

Heck, same.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 12:28

rufius: Feb 27, 2011; Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

Mr. Crow posted:

@BSD

You or anyone else have a good primer on modern beat practices for setting up jails-per-service? I plan on going through the handbook but it's simultaneously sparse and dense; trying to set up a Mumble server and a couple other similar services on a VPS.

I've started by using ezjail but it's not obvious to me how the networking works without just giving it it's own network device? Also is it not recommended to use binary packages in jails? Every guide I ever see going over jails builds stuff from ports, but the defaults for the services I care about seem fine and I don't have to figure out how to use poudriere in concert with jails to keep everything updated...

This book has been really helpful https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmjail

I got interested in Jails originally because I saw BastilleBSD. Then I wanted to understand how they�re administered and managed more granularly.

That book is probably the best complete treatment of the topic I�ve found. In fact he notes that part of why he was asked to write the book was due to 20 years of Myths and Legends spread across the internet about what Jails are or aren�t.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 15:15

BlankSystemDaemon: Mar 13, 2009

rufius posted:

This book has been really helpful https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmjail

I got interested in Jails originally because I saw BastilleBSD. Then I wanted to understand how they�re administered and managed more granularly.

That book is probably the best complete treatment of the topic I�ve found. In fact he notes that part of why he was asked to write the book was due to 20 years of Myths and Legends spread across the internet about what Jails are or aren�t.

There's more than a handful of books that preceed it and effectively form a prequel series.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 16:09

rufius: Feb 27, 2011; Clear alcohols are for rich women on diets.

BlankSystemDaemon posted:

There's more than a handful of books that preceed it and effectively form a prequel series.

That�s a good point.

Also those. I originally found MWL because I wanted to read up on ZFS. Then I sorta ended up with a lot of other of his books.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 16:12

Mr. Crow: May 22, 2008; Snap City mayor for life

rufius posted:

This book has been really helpful https://mwl.io/nonfiction/os#fmjail

I got interested in Jails originally because I saw BastilleBSD. Then I wanted to understand how they’re administered and managed more granularly.

That book is probably the best complete treatment of the topic I’ve found. In fact he notes that part of why he was asked to write the book was due to 20 years of Myths and Legends spread across the internet about what Jails are or aren’t.

Cool gonna pick that up and his PAM book since it's largely arcane to me.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 19:53

Bourricot: Aug 7, 2016

xtal posted:

Is there a Linux app that works as well as Preview.app for inserting text and drawing signatures into PDFs?

Okular might be worth a try.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 21:37

Antigravitas: Dec 8, 2019; Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:

Okular has fairly rudimentary annotation features.

It does have the best options though.

Making DRM limitations opt-in has to be the most Linux thing.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 21:46

NihilCredo: Jun 6, 2011; iram omni possibili modo preme:
plus una illa te diffamabit, quam multæ virtutes commendabunt

Antigravitas posted:

It does have the best options though.

Making DRM limitations opt-in has to be the most Linux thing.

This just gave me a freedom boner.

# ? Mar 10, 2021 21:48

JLaw: Feb 10, 2008; - harmless -

xtal posted:

Is there a Linux app that works as well as Preview.app for inserting text and drawing signatures into PDFs?

FWIW I ended up paying for Master PDF Editor (it has a demo that watermarks stuff). Seems kind of overkill since I still don't know what most of the buttons do, but it edits everything like a champ.

# ? Mar 12, 2021 07:03

CaptainSarcastic: Jul 6, 2013

In a pinch I've used Libre Office Draw to edit PDFs, but it's not the most elegant tool for it.

# ? Mar 12, 2021 07:14

Chilled Milk: Jun 22, 2003; No one here is alone,
satellites in every home

rt4 posted:

Last time I needed to do this xournal was the only option and it worked fine

That�s what I�ve used and that�s how I felt about it

# ? Mar 12, 2021 07:15

hooah: Feb 6, 2006; WTF?

Suddenly my track pad on Fedora isn't working. It's still listed in xinput and I can enable or disable it in the system settings, but nothing seems to bring it back. How can I fix this?

# ? Mar 12, 2021 14:35

standard.deviant: May 17, 2012; Globally Indigent

I am installing Debian (ok, Parrot) on an old (2018) MSI laptop. Things work mostly ok, except the HDMI and Mini DisplayPort connections don�t detect monitors.

What do?

# ? Mar 13, 2021 03:16

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# ? May 30, 2024 02:54

Antigravitas: Dec 8, 2019; Die Rettung fuer die Landwirte:

Let me guess, Nvidia and Intel graphics?

# ? Mar 13, 2021 11:54

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Linux Questions Thread: a bunch of pitfalls, but technically it's possible

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