Linux OS and Hardware Driver Issues

Hello, and welcome once again to “Backyard Blog”. This trip we will be discovering two known hardware/Linux issues; what the fixes are; and what process can be taken to avoid future issues.

Research showed a couple of interesting sites. Storagecraft. Recovery Zone proved to be of interest. The author discusses several issues, however, the one I found to be of particular interest was the System Hanging. He says that like any other OS, Linux is prone to hanging mostly during startup. He uses the example of test driving a CD where the Administrator can monitor the blinking light and noise emitting from the device to determine if the system is running slow or hanging. Now not to be contrary, but I have experienced the DVD device running for all it was worth, and not doing anything.

He then states to fix this issue, start by pressing CTRL+ALT+DEL, which takes you to a virtual machine where one can properly shut down and reboot the machine. For our purposes, running straight from the hard drive, the Log Off /Lock Out screens come up, and the option to reboot is presented. The author also presents a very good point; the amount of RAM, and hardware compatibility can present issues, and should definitely be taken into consideration. So basically the answer is to reboot or upgrade the troubled hardware that is the real problem.

The second problem: sluggish performance, the author noticed that even the lightweight LXLE ran faster on the same hardware that Windows 8 struggled with. He tried running multiple apps, browser windows, and even a virtual machine to compare the performance and detect any possible issues which may occur. On a healthy system, performance problems are almost always the result of troublesome processes. These problems can arise if the system is being over tasked.

The solution is to analyze and address troubled processes using the “Top” command in the terminal. This command analyzes all running processes and determines if the performance issues are related to CPU overload, lack of memory, or high disk I/O, and responds accordingly. We used this command in our assignment recently to discover the running processes on Ubuntu.

Now for the fun part. I Googled “How to prevent Linux startup hang ups”, and found a site for Debian Bug reports #754218 boot hangs forever on LSB job “raise network interfaces”. I read through some of the messages, they start with the boot start up hangs and takes forever, the response was to try: (I took this from the page)

Can you please try the following:

systemctl enable debug-shell.service

This allows you to switch to tty9 very early during boot and inspect the

system.

A systemctl list-jobs and ps aux output might be helpful in this case.

Booting with systemd.log_level=debug and the journalctl -alb output would be great as well.

Could you also please tar up /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/network/*, /etc/dhcp*, /etc/rc?.d/ and /etc/init.d.

This might give us further clues.

Long story short - the tips that the developers gave the user were to get for dependencies as we discussed in class, and there was a bug of sorts in the firewall which was hang the startup process. Once the user stopped the firewall, the problem disappeared. This conversation went on for a long time, each time the developers found some type of solution. Now I’m not totally versed in Linux, however, I was able to pick up on some of the tips. It mostly looked like the user was trying to work against the system instead of with it. I was however, able to come up with a fantastic new saying (probably have heard it many times) “Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth?” Anyway, I am going to venture a guess that if one doesn’t know exactly what one is doing, one should not mess without asking someone who is in the know.

Now let’s go and research sluggish performance. WOW! Here’s a big surprise. I seem to recall doing a blog on the slowness of “Old Smokey” and in it was mentioned that Windows has “junk” files and apps that startup initially, and then run taking time from the CPU and slowing down the computers performance. Well guess what! Linux has the same thing with the exception that a user can actually go in there and change this!!! Now as mentioned before, if you don’t know what you are doing - - don’t do it.

However, the askubuntu.com site has gone through some examples and explicitly explained the commands telling how to change the boot loader menu timeout, get rid of kinit if you don’t use hibernate and sleep functions, install BUM (Boot Up Manager) which will remove the unnecessary TTY’s, clean up apt cache, and many more. I also heard you say – “What is TTY?” (I said it too). According to askubuntu.com:

The name of TTY actually comes from the old days of computers: then computers even had teletypewriters as terminal, so you could see the output of programs printed (tty = TeleTYpe/TeleTYpewrite).

TTY usually refers for "physical" terminals, like more attached terminals (even like a teletypewriter) to a single computer, or in our days: more separated text consoles, you can switch between them Ctrl+Alt+F1-F7 (or more, if you have configured more).

In case of Ubuntu, tty7 is usually used by Xorg, do provide your graphical environment (to be more exact, it provides a "windowing system" only, and things like the gnome - as a desktop environment solution - runs "top of it"). (Almost made me sorry I asked) but I do sort of remember this from before.

SO, in conclusion, I’m finding Linux to be fun to work with, having some SNAFUs. Not as many as with Windows. I’m leaning to the side of other people should give Linux a try. They may find it enjoyable too. So for now, so long, it’s been good to chat at you. Have a nice day, and “Happy Researching”

My Resources:

"Troubleshooting Linux: Problems That Drive You Mad and Solutions to Save the Day! - Storagecraft." Storagecraft. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2016. <http://www.storagecraft.com/blog/troubleshooting-linux-problems-that-drive-you-mad-and-solutions-to-save-the-day/>.

"Debian Bug Report Logs - #754218 Boot Hangs Forever on LSB Job "raise Network Interfaces"" #754218. Web. 11 Apr. 2016. <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=754218>.