Problems installing Antix 21 on MacBook Air early 2014

[Member madibi]

Dear, my daughter has an (not so much) old MacBook Air early 2014, 4 Gram.
She cannot upgrade its OS because all the MacOS supported by that Mac are too old.
I’m trying to convince her to test Antix, that my wife and me are using on a daily basis.
In order to let her to make some test, I tried to install Antix 21, full, 64 bit, no runit, on an external USB-HD.

The problem, that needs a crystal sphere, is the following:

– the installed system, after update, when I start using Firefox esr on the google home page, freezes. The same phenomenon with Chromium in another page, a bit more “heavy”.
The same problem applies with all the DE and with both the kernels.

Please note that:
– when I tested the live on the Macbook air, all is ok: I can navigate multiple pages, also complicated ones;
– I did a memory test, that lasted about 150′, and no problems were reported.
– I tried to re-intall antix other 2 times, with the very same result.

I dont know where to investigate

Any help will be appreciated, many thanks in advance!
m

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

[Member PPC]

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I don’t have mac hardware to test but, if the external USB hard drive (I assume it’s really an hard drive, not just a regular usb pendrive) is working in one computer, then it seems that there is nothing wrong with it… Can it be some kind of problem with the iMac? Maybe some kind of problem with the USB port that freezes the access to the disk when it’s writing/reading too much information?
I don’t think that installing to an external USB drive is a good way to test antiX – I would just use a live USB pen drive with persistence already setted up…
My external USB hard drive also slowed to a crawl when it was connected to a USB port of one of my old desktops. I had to disconnect every single USB device and then plug it in so it would now slow down… External USB drives (not “pendrives”) do require a lot of power…
If this is only happening in the browsers… I would try to configure firefox/firefox ESR not to use disk cache (you’ll have to dig around the web or the forum for instructions on how to do that)- if the problem is the excess of information being written to disk, this may help…

P.

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

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Does it work ‘ok’ after installation but before an upgrade?

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Member madibi]

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@Anticapitalista: I dont know. I’ll try a 4th install (no prob at all for that) and I’ll let you know.
For sure I didnt upgrade the live (that has a version roughly 3 month old – may be mid dec 21).

@PPC: I very often do install on external old HD to whom I buy a SATA hard cover, so I can recicle it. On “normal” pc I had never probs. In reality tou are right, it’s the 1st time that I make this try on a Mac (this one has an USB 3). I didnt consider the electrical power that is necessary.
I’ll let you know after the 4th install

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

[Member madibi]

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@Anticapitalista
You are right: without “sudo apt update” and “sudo apt upgrade”, there is not the problem of freezing, with both 5.10.57 and 4.9.0-217 kernel

Do you need me to do something, in order to give you a feedback that may be useful for you?

m

[Member madibi]

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OT
something strange happened in this thread:
I received a mail with a kind post from Christophe concerning this thread.
But it doesnt appear, and neither the counter takes account of the mentioned post.

[Moderator christophe]

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OT
something strange happened in this thread:
I received a mail with a kind post from Christophe concerning this thread.
But it doesnt appear, and neither the counter takes account of the mentioned post.

That’s my fault, madibi. I deleted my post after I saw that you had responded back, and my suggestion was then obsolete (in my opinion).
(It was simply seconding PPC’s suggestion to test live-usb — then install to internal hdd if all goes well.)
🙂

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Moderator christophe]

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Also, because of performance issues, you may want to make your external hdd into a “live-usb.” It may make good use of an old hdd that you don’t need for other uses.
https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/turning-your-hdd-to-a-non-removable-live-usb-using-live-usb-maker/

confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019

[Member madibi]

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@Anticapitalista
I did another try: on this MacBook Air, booted with the live, I did “sudo apt update” and “sudo apt upgrade”.
Then I tested it for 30′, mainly with Firefox esr with more charge than yesterday’s tests, opening pages of chess and youtube. No problems at all.
Therefore the mystery deepens 🙂

@Christophe & @PPC
thx for the hint you gave me and related links.

I’m really surprised about your advice, because starting from march 2020 I recovered a couple of external HD with usb covers, and did some tons of trial installs.
One of them now is my drive where it is installed my copy of antix that looks like MacOS using JWM. It is working very good since 3 month and with it attached to my Asus laptop from 2008, I saw some Netflix series.
So I never suspected about throughput problems.
I only had an issue with another specific laptop that (then I discovered) had the usb port dirty, and for that reason it worked randomly when using OS on external HD.

In today’s specific case both the port and the disk are USB3, the unique hw that I didn’t double check was the cable, that I assume works properly, because everything is good on another Mac. This is the reason why I first tested the ram.

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

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