Search Results for 'swap'

[Member dugin]

I already have a deprecated Linux OS frugally installed on sda1. I have been booting this OS using its liveCD for about 4 years now. I never got around to booting this OS from usb, but the liveCD boot works acceptably well. When I say I wish to boot antiX from liveDVD, I am maintaining a consistency of method, however ineffcient, between these two OSes. I may switch to usb booting, eventually, but certainly not now. I have work to do. My work involves manipulating files on and between the two logical ext3 data drives. With antiX, I have a problem with gui access to logical drives. Not only does ROX not (conveniently) see a logical drive, it can’t mount a logical drive. That is a big problem. Thunar (MX Linux) recognizes the two hard drives, but identifies them by their UUID, not their logical drive designations. SpaceFM sees the internal logical drives (including the swap partition) by selecting Devices > Show > internal drives, but will not perform a copy & paste operation once logical drive contents are displayed. I know there is an Event Manager operating, and I need logical drives to be recognized at boot, possibly by appending Automount. This is not an ideal approach, but at least I would have quick access to logical drives upon booting. Ideally, the Event Manager should detect internal logical drives (including optical and usb, but excluding swap) at boot, and then cause display of corresponding icon(s) on desktop that can be clicked to mount device, thereby producing an instance of ROX Filer. Of course, to move files with ROX Filer, user needs two instances of ROX for dragging files from source to destination. Therefore, after the initial click on the desktop icon to mount the logical drive, subsequent clicks of the icon should simply produce another instance of ROX, but not toggle-unmount the logical drive. Maybe a double-click would unmount the logical drive. Or devs could create a gui for mounting and unmounting logical drives (hint, hint). Two things are for sure: I am not going to mount and unmount logical drives from CLI, and I am not going move files around using CLI. If I click a download dialog, and I can’t browse to my logical drives (because they’re not properly mounted?), that is a huge problem. Yet, this is the situation I encounter when I use antiX out of the box. I hope and trust this can be overcome easily. As you can see, I have more issues than just booting this OS from frugal install. Another immediate concern is elimination of the password annoyance. In other words, I need to give admin privileges to user, and please understand, I will ignore admonishments about security.
Christophe, I did try the toram option for booting the liveDVD, but without doing a frugal install. I watched the full ISO (1.2 GB) being loaded into RAM, which took two or three minutes. Upon boot, the OS is working fine. Conky is showing my RAM usage as 551 MB/2.55 GB. Are you suggesting that the base ISO be used for booting a frugal install? For that matter, why not use the Core ISO for booting? (That’s a real question, it’s not rhetorical.)

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by dugin.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by dugin.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by dugin.

Although I have been following antiX since 2010 or so, I have never installed it, only run it as liveCD or liveDVD. I wish to make a frugal install of antiX 32-bit. Many of my questons may have a hand-holding quality, but I hope you will indulge me. Do I perform a frugal install from the antiX installer on the Menu tree, or by using F5 options available on the boot screen? I have two spinning hard drives, of which the second hdd is solely ext3 data. The first hard drive has a 30 GB partition sda1 for OS, a 5 GB swap, and the rest is ext3 data. I wish to boot from DVD, to make this installation as simple as possible. The OS partition sda1 has 24 GB available for a frugal install of antiX. I don’t fully understand the ifferent types of frugal installs, but I want to store as much as possible on the sda1 partition, requiring the least amount of attention when shutting down or rebooting. The antiX files and directories are probably not going to keep growing on sda1 because I habitually move operations to the data portion of the drive. If there is an option to write changes to the boot DVD, I may want to explore that approach, but most likely, I will be saving changes to the sda1 partition on the hard drive. If the frugal install is performed following the antiX installer program, I would appreciate a detailed (step-by-step) exposition of the process, and some commentary on what to expect. I expect that GParted editing will not be involved in this installation process. I looked at the antiX package installer, and it seems I will be installing maybe half of those packages available through the package installer. Can you give me idea of the footprint that a frugal install would have on sda1. Also, what is the approximate footprint of a full installation of antiX that includes a good portion of extra packages from the package installer. I have no need for office programs or suites, and I will attempt to remove these in due course.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by dugin.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by dugin.
• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Brian Masinick. Reason: Solved

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

I’m using a “rock solid” laptop today; this is one of the ones that I ALWAYS use with antiX, and it’s perfectly suited to this system:

inxi -Fxz
System:    Kernel: 4.9.0-294-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Desktop: IceWM 2.9.6 
           Distro: antiX-19.5_x64-full Wobblies 24 January 2022 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 3249CTO v: ThinkPad X201 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: LENOVO model: 3249CTO serial: <filter> BIOS: LENOVO v: 6QET66WW (1.36 ) date: 05/31/2011 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 79.4 Wh (100.0%) condition: 79.4/84.2 Wh (94.2%) volts: 12.1 min: 10.8 model: Panasonic 42T4696 
           status: Full 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i7 M 620 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Nehalem rev: 5 cache: L2: 4 MiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 21279 
           Speed: 1466 MHz min/max: 1199/2667 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1333 2: 1466 3: 1599 4: 1199 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Lenovo driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           Device-2: Lenovo Integrated Webcam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-1.6:6 
           Display: server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: loaded: intel resolution: 1280x800~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ironlake Mobile v: 2.1 Mesa 18.3.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio vendor: Lenovo driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus-ID: 00:1b.0 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.9.0-294-antix.1-amd64-smp running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network vendor: Lenovo driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: 1820 bus-ID: 00:19.0 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: 1880 bus-ID: 02:00.0 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 119.24 GiB used: 6.07 GiB (5.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: THNS128GG4BAAA-NonFDE size: 119.24 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 110.96 GiB used: 6.07 GiB (5.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 6 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 50.0 C mobo: 0.0 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 1959 
Info:      Processes: 176 Uptime: 32m Memory: 7.6 GiB used: 1.32 GiB (17.4%) Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 
           Packages: 1633 Shell: Bash v: 5.0.3 inxi: 3.3.06 

--
Brian Masinick

In the “[antiX] Package Installer” clonezilla is listed under “Utility”[footnote 1].

I am curious if anyone knows how to “launch” clonezilla from within antiX. My understanding was that clonezilla could only be used as a live CD/USD/other-storage-media. But since it is available as a package, under “Popular Applications” no less, I assume that this is not the case. I may very well be wrong, in which case I ask that someone more knowledgeable corrects me and teaches me what the use is for a clonezilla package.

If it is required to “launch” clonezilla as its own operating system, I will use this opportunity to ask the kind citizens of this forum: how can I add a GRUB menu option to the antiX GRUB menu in order to launch a clonezilla partition? I tried following these instructions by creating /etc/default/grub.d/40_custom[footnote 2] but the menu item never appeared (yes, I ran sudo update-grub before rebooting). I believe/hope that GRUB is standardized across most Linux distributions, but I may be wrong because I do not know about operating systems/booting internals so I’m unsure what part of the system is responsible for starting GRUB.

I am well aware that this would all be much easier if I had a CD or USB drive to install Clonezilla on. I unfortunately do not. I have a single USB drive with 32GB, so if anyone wishes they could suggest a way to boot a Clonezilla partition on that drive. I do not want to use the entire drive because I have an antiX live install on it, and I would like to keep the security of having a bootable USB drive that I know works.

About my system

I prefer to share as little information as possible about my hardware, for privacy. However I realize that this can make troubleshooting unreasonably difficult (if not impossible) for those who try to help me. Please request more information if you feel it would help you help me.

I installed antiX in multiple partitions using the custom template option (my apologies for the vague language; I do not remember the Live USB install menu terms exactly and would like to avoid rebooting into it right now to save time). See the inxi output of my partitions immediately below. The quick info is that I have an unencrypted GPT filesystem created for a UEFI motherboard.

The “System”, “Partition”, “Swap”, and “Info” headers of my running inxi -zv7:

System:
  Kernel: 5.10.57-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc 
  v: 10.2.1 Desktop: IceWM 2.9.6 wm: Blackbox vt: 7 dm: N/A 
  Distro: antiX-21_x64-full Grup Yorum 31 October 2021 
  base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 62.44 GiB used: 5.02 GiB (8.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3 
  label: rootantiX21 uuid: <uuid-redacted> 
  ID-2: /boot size: 487.2 MiB used: 104 MiB (21.3%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/sda2 label: boot uuid: <uuid-redacted> 
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 252 MiB used: 274 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat 
  dev: /dev/sda1 label: EFI System uuid: <uuid-redacted> 
  ID-4: /home size: 124.93 GiB used: 3.77 GiB (3.0%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/sda4 label: homeantiX 
  uuid: <uuid-redacted> 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 32 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) 
  priority: -2 dev: /dev/sda5 label: swapantiX 
  uuid: <uuid-redacted> 
Info:
  Processes: 210 Uptime: 1d 3h 28m wakeups: 2 Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 
  runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 alt: 10 Packages: 
  apt: 1659 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.4 running-in: roxterm inxi: 3.3.06 

Footnotes

1: (I call it such to distinguish it from the Synaptic Package Manager) launched from Control Centre -> Software -> Package Installer
2: I found the path to this grub directory from the “Boot Parameters” antiX wiki page

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by ronqual. Reason: Attempt to replace superscript HTML tags with smaller font size
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by ronqual. Reason: Give up on pretty footnotes :(
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by ronqual. Reason: Remove code (backtick) and tags from inline text I wish to monospace

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[Member puter]

Thanks Christophe. The steps you have taken are the same as what I tried except I hadn’t created a swap partition.
I had allocated 2GB RAM which I thought should be enough for a fresh install with KDE.

I tried again, this time with 3GB RAM and 2GB swap partition but I still get the same result.

Checked output of ‘top’ and the SDDM process is listed.

I also tried installing :

xfce4, stops booting at a blank screen with a flashing cursor.
lxde, stops booting at a blank screen with a flashing cursor.

I have a few different distro virtualboxes with the DEs that are provided, no problems there. I created an antix21-base virtualbox, it boots to GUI without issues.

Any suggested trouble shooting steps would be appreciated.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by puter.

[Moderator christophe]

OK. 🙂

So, I installed it into a virtualbox VM. I have to say that it did work perfectly.
This is what I did:

1. Used the antiX-21 core x64 ISO. I booted up into a fresh virtualbox VM, 11 GB vdi for hard disk. I logged in as root. First thing I did was to run:
apt update followed by apt full-upgrade

2. I partitioned the virtual hdd — 10 GB ext & 1 GB swap. (Maybe there’s an easier way to do it, but (for some reason) the console font was HUGE.I couldn’t see the screen well – it was cut off on both sides. Maybe just my old computer. Anyway, I couldn’t figure out what to do, except to reach way back in my memory how to run ‘fdisk /dev/sda’. After it was partitioned & written to disk, I ran ‘mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1’, to format it. Again, let me just say, that maybe there’s an easier way. But it did the job.)

3. Then I ran the cli-installer. That went easily, as expected. (At the point in the installation where it asks, I took care to adjust the console font to terminusbold at 8×14, and that fixed it to a viewable size.)

4. Once the installer completed, I rebooted. After login, I ran:
sudo apt install --install-recommends kde-standard virtualbox-guest-dkms virtualbox-guest-x11 virtualbox-guest-utils

5. Once that concluded, I ran
sudo reboot

6. When the VM came back up, it went straight to the SDDM login screen. (Ta-Daaa!) I was able to log in.

So that’s the reason I tried to give as much detail as possible. Because it was basically the same as the video.

EDIT: If you think the problem stems from partitioning/formatting the virtual hdd prior to installing, I’ve figured out the easier (“intended”) way to do it. 🙂

If you have questions, please ask.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by christophe. Reason: minor clarification
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by christophe.

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confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member silverrahul]

ModdIt wrote:

“You can also make a USB Live stick start without setting up persistence, as long as
you have sufficient RAM and swap memory available”

How do i do that? Does the live usb stick start WITH persistence by default or without persistence by default? I had downloaded the antix 21 live usb iso from the antix website and flashed it into my pendrive .

Do, i just boot using the same pen drive if i want to start live usb without persistence ?

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by silverrahul.

[Member ModdIt]

Hi silverrahul.
after making so many changes, major desktops pull in many depends
the sanest way to get back to a normal antiX installation is to reinstall from your
personal backup or ISO image.

When you want to try out anything which makes major changes to your system may I
recommend to use a live USB stick. It makes reverting really easy. Just rewrite
from your personal backup or a sha256 checked download.

You can also make a USB Live stick start without setting up persistence, as long as
you have sufficient RAM and swap memory available, fully update, make changes,
experiments and at any time reboot without doing a live remaster. Next start you
have your personal environment back to the way you booted it.

While using a non persistent stick you can at any time remaster keeping your changes
and user environment. In contrast to using persistence to save changes the remaster
will boot and shutdown faster. Save data to live usb storage or another stick.

Please do use the fantastic tools antiX provides, they are very useful, efficient
and well thought out.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

I was *thinking* about this the other day, but I’m not sure that I expressed it, though I have probably mentioned it several times over the years, almost certainly in one of our earlier forums:

Back in the early 2000s, there was a time when many distributions were created that could run live from CD. KNOPPIX was probably one of the early ones, possibly the first. MEPIS, Morphix, Kanotix, Feather Linux, Tiny Linux, and PCLinuxOS were some of the others.

MEPIS eventually became MX Linux as the work “changed hands”, PCLinuxOS grew into predominantly a desktop oriented distribution, and KNOPPIX grew a lot too, though most of these can still initially “boot” from a removable device.

Anyway, back then I’d look around for small CD distributions that could run ENTIRELY from RAM; antiX and MEPIS could both do this in the early days.

It’s ironic that I don’t run from USB that gets “loaded 100% into RAM” very often; that is probably because MOST of my installed disk systems, though contained on fixed physical media, also run completely from RAM once initially loaded.
This is even more true of my hardware that contains solid state drive technology; it is fast to begin with, and when it can also load most, if not all, of it’s contents directly into memory and KEEP it there, rarely moving it or “swapping out”, this explains why it makes less difference where my initial boot media comes from.

I’ll have to take some time and get some rough “seat of the pants” feeling of subjective performance using various USB and SSD models, including our much valued “Frugal” modes, and see what the best traits are for each use case.

Overall, using antiX, what has always struck me favorably, in addition to the lean, efficient resource management are the great number of choices – boot and run from external media, save the most commonly used settings and features in Frugal mode, create and install software, then snapshot your own custom software solution, install to disk, etc.

I probably use the snapshot method as often as anything, then install my snapshots on multiple systems that I use; I definitely love the many choices we have – and each of us can pick and choose the method or methods we prefer.

--
Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

Greetings Damon! I am a long time antiX user and I also happen to have a Dell Inspiron 5558 laptop, which I am using right now.

Here’s a report on it:

inxi -Fxz
System:    Kernel: 5.11.0-21.2-liquorix-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 Desktop: IceWM 2.9.6 
           Distro: antiX-21-runit_x64-base Grup Yorum 30 October 2021 base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5558 v: 01 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Dell model: 086DKN v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: A04 date: 08/06/2015 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 30.1 Wh (100.0%) condition: 30.1/41.4 Wh (72.6%) volts: 16.5 min: 14.8 
           model: Samsung SDI DELL 07G07587587 status: Full 
CPU:       Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i7-5500U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Broadwell rev: 4 cache: L2: 4 MiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 19155 
           Speed: 2878 MHz min/max: 500/2401 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2878 2: 2400 3: 2462 4: 2944 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 5500 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           Device-2: NVIDIA GK208BM [GeForce 920M] vendor: Dell driver: N/A bus-ID: 08:00.0 
           Device-3: Suyin Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 2-5:3 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 5500 (BDW GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Broadwell-U Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:03.0 
           Device-2: Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0 
           Device-3: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 08:00.1 
           Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.11.0-21.2-liquorix-amd64 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Wireless 3160 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel port: f040 bus-ID: 06:00.0 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Realtek RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet vendor: Dell driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 
           bus-ID: 07:00.0 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth: Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 bus-ID: 2-6:4 
           Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: warning rfk-block: hardware: no software: yes 
           address: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 447.13 GiB used: 18.82 GiB (4.2%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Kingston model: SA400S37480G size: 447.13 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 78.19 GiB used: 18.82 GiB (24.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6 
           ID-2: /boot/efi size: 98.4 MiB used: 1.7 MiB (1.7%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 
Swap:      ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/sda2 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 55.0 C mobo: 25.0 C sodimm: SODIMM C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 2200 
Info:      Processes: 175 Uptime: 2m Memory: 7.69 GiB used: 1.24 GiB (16.1%) Init: runit runlevel: 2 Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 
           Packages: 1301 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.4 inxi: 3.3.06 

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Brian Masinick.

--
Brian Masinick

Hello,
Youtube crashes my system from time to time. Both from Firefox and SMtube.
Any ideas or solutions?

inxi -F
System:
  Host: antix1 Kernel: 4.9.0-294-antix.1-486-smp i686 bits: 32 
  Desktop: IceWM 2.9.5 Distro: antiX-21_386-full Grup Yorum 31 October 2021 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P5GC-MX v: Rev x.xx 
  serial: <superuser required> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 0205 
  date: 07/20/2007 
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium Dual E2160 bits: 64 type: MCP cache: 
  L2: 1024 KiB 
  Speed: 1200 MHz min/max: 1200/1800 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1200 2: 1200 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: intel 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa resolution: 1280x1024~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel 945G x86/MMX/SSE2 v: 1.4 Mesa 20.3.5 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio 
  driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k4.9.0-294-antix.1-486-smp running: yes 
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm Atheros Attansic L2 Fast Ethernet driver: atl2 
  IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:1b:fc:85:bf:5e 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 149.05 GiB used: 6.42 GiB (4.3%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST3160215AS size: 149.05 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 20.02 GiB used: 6.42 GiB (32.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda4 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.95 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) 
  dev: /dev/sda3 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 22.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 1973 case-1: 2721 
Info:
  Processes: 156 Uptime: 54m Memory: 1.96 GiB used: 736.5 MiB (36.7%) 
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.06

If you ever have been in doubt what goes on with your freshly ext4-formated harddrive (of a size of some TB), showing constantly disk activity by blinking its LED, your antiX writing to and reading from the drive for hours and hours again: This behaviour is normal. It will stop eventually after the culprit, a hidden helper tool of ext4 has completed its work.

You also could file the question differently:
What the heck is ext4lazyinit and why should I know it? What should I know about it?

Firstly you won’t guess there is running this process, since it is not shown in htop or system information. So you won’t have a clue whats going on, in some hardware setups powering up your CPU to 100% for hours. You even could think of a virus…
Well, actually you need to start iotop instead, to see its activity.

Secondly: What is this ext4lazyinit thing good for?
Obviously it is a design decision of the mkfs.ext4 creators. The ext4 file system expects to overwrite all nodes on a freshly formated drive by zeros. This zeroing is performed in order to make sure there are no outdated inodes or zombie records left on the drive, which won’t do any harm in normal operation, but cause a restore of a damaged filesystem to fail later on occassionaly. In the old days, when drive capacities were small (and physical measure them were big), this task was performed during formating completely. But on the large drives of our days it would take some additional 10-20 minutes, depending on the size of your drive. So they decided to let this task wait until first mount of the file system instead, this way speeding up the formatting process itself. Once the file system is mounted first time, this task will be performed in background, using around 10% of the drive transfer capacity for this only, allowing you to use your drive and system already, while the zeroing goes on.

What can be done about it? Simple answer: Nothing. You’ll just have to wait until ext4lazyinit has finished its task. Then the activity stops and the system load goes back to normal. You can use your system and your drive already normally. OK, for the cracks among us there is a way to force ext2fs to perform this zeroing task during formatting already when using a command line switch, but this is not the case when using the antiX installer or gparted for creation of file systems. These will use the defaults of ext2fs, so you will experience this disk activity on first mount, and in case you u(n)mount the drive before finnishing the task even on next mounts still.

So when experiencing strange disk activity on a freshly installed antiX system (which by default formats the drive), you should check whether this ext4lazyinit tool is the culprit, before thinking of journaling, timestamping, swapping, drive failure, or whatever else well known reasons.

Btw, this happens also on smaller sized drives, but it will finish much faster on them, so you probably won’t notice is activity on those smaller drives at all.

Additional hint:
Unfortunately on a 32bit single core system this ext4lazyinit process works poor, powering up your CPU usage to 100% for the time it is running, which can take some hours as said before. No good idea on a notebook, it might run out of battery power, or even overheat, since these devices (different to big desktop PCs) are often not designed to run for hours on 100% load.

More details and deeper research source links:
Lemma about ext4-filesystem on Thomas Krenn wiki

Windows is like a submarine. Open a window and serious problems will start.

[Member blur13]

haha great write-up PPC! Quite the coincidence that today I decided to purge my old spare VAIO laptop from 2014 of antiX 19 and install the latest and greatest antiX 21. Totally agree with you about the partition viewer, what a mess. I gave up and installed “on the whole drive”. Amazingly, a swap partition was created matching the system RAM. Next task, copy some dot files from another laptop using a USB drive. Format using the antiX tool. Copy. Insert. Nothing. Format using ext4. Copy. Insert. Files. That are completely empty. Zero bytes. Try copy from new antiX 21 and using the “eject” button. That worked. I dont know, but I always found USB support a bit flakey. But I’m probably doing something wrong. And files copied from USB are always “executable”, ie 755, when originally 644. I obviously have some reading up to do.

Since my old 32bits HP laptop that had antiX 21 on it is currently down, I decided, this weekend to try antiX 64bits, for the very first time on real hardware and I installed it on my old (and very underpowered netbook). I’ll relate my experience here, like if it was the first time I tried to install antiX:

*Creating the live boot media – I downloaded the Linux version I wanted (antiX 21 64bits full) and tried to use the live USB creator – it refused constantly (I unmounted the thumb-drive, I rebooted, etc…) to let me create a live device with persistence (on antiX 19.X, 64 bits)- I gave up and then created the live USB in a couple of minutes… Weird…

*Booting the live media – as always, this worked like a charm. I noticed this: on the GRUB boot menu we can select twice the language we want to use- on the Select Kernel menu and on the Select Boot options – now, selecting the language on the first menu also applies to the second menu- Nice! – but has a tiny bug – the – Fx options are displayed in English on the second menu, and only updated to pt when I select the language again

*Live media performance – for those that never tested antiX in live USB (at least usb 2.0) mode – trust me- you will be fooled into thinking you are running a system already installed on your hard drive – everything just works smoothly and fast (it even seems a tiny bit faster than running the installed version on my hard drive- because my drive is so crappy)

*Installing – hum… A couple of problems here – everything would be fine and dandy if I select the option to install to the entire hard-drive (and delete all other partitions/ Operating systems- but I wanted to keep my backup system- Windows 7, with Word – just in case- I haven’t needed it in the last couple of years, but you never know…)
So I choose the (default) option to keep the existing partitions – and boy – this does look scary – for a user that does not know a lot about partitions (and most of us do not)- it’s like looking at a complex excel spreadsheet displaying lots of detailed information about a subject I know nothing about- what the hell! I just want to install an OS, not apply to an advanced informatics degree!… So I studied every option – and discovered that my old Linux partition, conveniently called by the guy that installed it (antiX-19) is where I should place my system – hum… I heard that Linux does not have a c: drive, all my stuff is kept in my home – so let me select to use that partition as my “home”… and I have one partition called Swap – let me mark to use that as Swap too – Damn- an error complaining that the partition should be at least XXgb? But that partition is 45gb! So I found out, the hard way that the partition where you install antiX can’t be formatted as “Home”, it has to be “root”- weird- why didn’t the installer just warn me that I need to create a “root” partition!!!
-the rest of the install process is a breeze – even in this crappy netbook it’s not just simple, it’s fast – I reached 95% in about 5 minutes or so… and got an error: it could not install something called Grub! It says I can take care of that from live media. I waited for 5 minutes more but nothing – no HD activity – the installer is working, I can click the buttons, move back, etc… But it’s just open, doing nothing- what am I supposed to do? I rebooted… as expected, I got an error saying no grub is found and nothing more- so I boot from the live USB- there should be an easy to see way to recover that Grub thing, right? Nope. So I ran the installer again, exact same settings, same same computer- 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, 99%… I began to chew my nails… 100% Success!! What the hell, I did nothing different an now it works?

*Booting my new installed Operating System
-Damn- this thing may look like the poor, long forgotten twin brother of Windows 98, but is as fast as the wind!
-On the Control Center thingie is something that says “Update” – let me try – we should always keep our system up to date, right? I’ll bet it will take ages and some 50% of my hard drive… What? The update is almost 300mb but it will just take a couple mb of disk space? What sorcery is this? After some minutes of staring to some strange text running past by me on a black screen I see the best sight I ever got in my computer life – a simple window telling me that my Update was finished- no multiple reboots needed, nothing – everything is just ready to be used- has Windows been bs me all my life with that overcomplicated update process?
-Is there a way to make this thing look a bit more like… hummm… it was made in the XXI century? I read about something called Ft10-transformation on the forum – let me check that out- hum… It’s not in the “App store”… Oh! It’s in this complicated other app store, called Synaptic – it took me some 10 minutes to figure out how to install something – it has so many options! Ok. I installed it- everything just looks the same – do I have to run something? I use that app finder thingie and see I have a quazzilion of stuff saying FT10 – let me try this that says “enable FT10″… Ok, one config window, another one… I bet this will take hours… What? More sorcery? This now looks even better than Windows 10? Who is the guy that created this? I want to tell Microsoft to hire him and bring Windows back from the dark side… hum… dark ages!

-Some stuff like the browser, the office suite and some menu entries are not in my language!!! Help!!! Wait… when I searched for “language” on this new handy menu I got a hit- hooo! I just selected to “localize” my system and now, after some more black window thingies, everything now speaks my language- just half a dozen menu entries are still in English, and that file finder thingie (searchmonkey- are they kinding me? Why does this Linux thing have such weird names for apps? Couldn’t it be just “search” or “file search”?)… Now,, why does not this Language thingie part of the install process? that would be sweet!

*Installing applications- I need to install some apps – a faster browser, a more up to date Office suit, Java… let me use that handy little “app store” – I selected some 20 apps and clicked install – ok- I get that black window thingie again- boy Linux has some kind of kink with black windows? – and it says it’s done. No, I don’t want to install anything else…
What? Why did only a couple of my apps get installed???
Let me try installing one by one – man… This sucks… Let me select again, and install, one at a time (is this the dark ages?): palemoon browser (I’ve hear it light, it should run on my crappy netbook), ungoogled chromium browser (this should be nice- I don’t want google snooping all around, I just want to use the free stuff they allow me to use, he he he!!!), pulseaudio (I think Linux has some sound problems without it, sometimes)… and I need Java for work… some nice casual games, like Patience, for my free time and… SuperTuxKart? I heard it’s like that SuperMarioKart I never played when I was a kid because I was too broke to have a gaming console…
I do love e-books, so Calibre should be handy… and non-free codecs should be handy… CUPS and HP stuff for my printer at work… Ok, I think I’m good.

*Testing the system after I set it up with everything I want:
–Network – I set up my Wi-Fi without any problems, I can even access my shared folders!
–Browsing and internet related stuff– Browsing is ok – some sites take ages to load – YouTube only loads fast and with an ok video quality in Chromium, but for everything else I think firefox-esr (most compatibility), seamonkey and palemoon will do just fine. Smtube, already provided out of the box, allows me to stream YouTube videos perfectly, even in higher quality and in full screen, without ads, even on this crummy old computer? Linux, I love you! and an appimage called electronplayer allows me watch streaming services perfectly, like Netflix? and seamonkey e-mail can even be configured to access my Gmail? and this ft10-cloud thingies lets me get cloud drives, like my google drive on my File Manager? Sweet
–Office – the latest office suite, perfectly localized, and running at an acceptable speed on this old machine- great! And I can even open docx documents, without Ms Office? This has to be a scam, right? Nothing can be that good and be for free…
–File compatibility– Audio – my old audio files play great, Pictures, pdfs, everything look ok. Video- very old video files play fine. That HD video I took of my baby girl dancing? It’s… Slow, same as in Windows – let me see if there’s a way around that (hum a guy said to install Xine media player with sudo apt install xine-ui…) What this old beast plays HD video files perfectly with Xine? I could not do that with Windows 7… Again- are this Linux guys into Black magic or what?
–Gaming – I have some light games, like solitaire, chess and soduku, they run great- they are free, without ads and help pass the time, sometimes… Even that supertuxkart is playable in antiX 21, just barely – because it’s kinda of slow – on this video card that shares 8mb of my precious 1 gb of RAM! Even so, I can play an up to date 3d game on this old Windows 7 era netbook that was crappy even when it came out? Sweet!
–Sound – this netbook sound has always been crappy, even in Windows… Let me pull the volume to the max, to amplification to the max, on this pauv thingie I found out on the menu… Oh… My… Godddd…! I can hear everything perfectly – pulseaudio never worked on this computer when I was using antiX 19… This is not sorcery, it’s a miracle!!!
–Video – now… I’ve been trying to keep this light, from a newbie’s point of view, but there is something really wrong with video support – with antiX 21 and my intel video drivers- I can play video files just fine, but a couple of times now, for unknown reasons, when I try to open a video file the video player crashes- if I use the terminal I can see errors with the video driver – both mpv and xine complain about it- if I restart the session, everything just works…

Overall impression:
antix 21, 64bits, particularly with ft10-transformation, pulseaudio, xine media player and up to date applications makes even the cheapest and crappiest 64bits netbook look and feel like a middle range modern netbook running Windows or MacOS – if you have a device with less than 10 years or so- it will literally make your computer fly for most common tasks…
I have only to report, after about half day some random problem that seems to affect the part of the video driver that enables the system to play video files- restarting the session solves that instantly.
After so many problems with pulseaudio it’s a relief seeing, or rather, earing it work perfectly – I can say I never, ever heard such clear sound coming out of those tiny speakers, I though they just could not perform that good!
I give it a 98% rating on this old netbook (100% as soon as I can solve that video problem)- the problem with installing many apps with Package Installer is just a small nuisance !!!

P.

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by PPC.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by PPC.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by PPC.

[Forum Admin rokytnji]

$ smem
  PID User     Command                         Swap      USS      PSS      RSS 
 2915 harry    dbus-launch --autolaunch eb        0      336      424     2388 
 2916 harry    /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --sysl        0      320      446     2644 
 2923 harry    /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --conf        0      332      483     3016 
 2176 harry    /usr/bin/icewm-session             0      352      511     3280 
 3049 harry    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/g        0      756     1014     5596 
 2272 harry    /bin/bash /usr/bin/devmon -        0      744     1149     3704 
 2108 harry    /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/de        0      788     1222     3756 
 2918 harry    /usr/libexec/at-spi-bus-lau        0      808     1369     6856 
 2930 harry    /usr/libexec/at-spi2-regist        0      896     1414     7260 
 6879 harry    /bin/bash                          0     1516     1977     4724 
 2273 harry    conky                              0     3748     4603    10320 
 2181 harry    /usr/bin/icewm --notify            0     5740     7465    18648 
 2239 harry    volumeicon                         0     6716    10086    23528 
 3786 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0     8172    12427    34560 
 6875 harry    roxterm                            0     6824    12534    30396 
 6967 harry    /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/s        0    14344    14516    17220 
 6713 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    13984    24055    71452 
 3685 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    16116    30470    88496 
 3633 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    55832    72397   136000 
 3563 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    83856   106957   179104 
 3477 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0   332992   363399   456944 

Just showing how I check memory usage. If wondering how smem works.

man smem

Should cover it.

$ smem
  PID User     Command                         Swap      USS      PSS      RSS 
 7584 harry    cat                                0       84      141     1716 
 7585 harry    cat                                0       88      147     1756 
 2915 harry    dbus-launch --autolaunch eb        0      336      397     2388 
 2916 harry    /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --sysl        0      340      454     2664 
 2176 harry    /usr/bin/icewm-session             0      352      462     3280 
 2923 harry    /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --conf        0      332      466     3016 
 7591 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome_c        0      312      759     3040 
 7589 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome_c        0      428      870     3280 
 3049 harry    /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/g        0      756      940     5596 
 2272 harry    /bin/bash /usr/bin/devmon -        0      744     1128     3704 
 2108 harry    /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/de        0      788     1197     3756 
 2918 harry    /usr/libexec/at-spi-bus-lau        0      808     1264     6856 
 2930 harry    /usr/libexec/at-spi2-regist        0      904     1311     7268 
 7599 harry    /opt/google/chrome/nacl_hel        0     1492     1553     3988 
 7602 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0      240     1831    16292 
12704 harry    /bin/bash                          0     1508     1956     4860 
 2273 harry    conky                              0     3724     4389    10320 
 7629 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0     1172     5143    44524 
 2181 harry    /usr/bin/icewm --notify            0     5816     7134    18776 
 7598 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0      148     7391    56976 
 2239 harry    volumeicon                         0     6020     8945    23528 
 7639 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0     1340     9175    25596 
 7597 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0      644     9971    56652 
12660 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0     4940    10481    62156 
12702 harry    roxterm                            0     6880    11786    29748 
10802 harry    /usr/bin/pulseaudio --start        0     9440    11827    24672 
 3786 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0     8152    11928    34636 
12730 harry    /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/s        0    16824    16922    19796 
12508 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0     8824    16998    80660 
10543 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0     8348    18069    88424 
 8123 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0    11612    19876    75536 
 6713 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    13984    23749    71452 
 3685 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    16088    30151    88540 
 8714 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0    21696    36763   119084 
 8645 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0    25860    39900   119624 
 7620 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0    32264    48100   108372 
 7622 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0    52196    63128   130280 
 3633 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0    62544    81647   152124 
 3563 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0   114272   138130   214008 
 7579 harry    /usr/bin/google-chrome-stab        0   132816   154481   249256 
12552 harry    /opt/google/chrome/chrome -        0   190352   208461   294596 
 3477 harry    /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefo        0   275556   307947   406036 

Sometimes I drive a crooked road to get my mind straight.
Not all who Wander are Lost.
I'm not outa place. I'm from outer space.

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How to Search for AntiX solutions to your problems