So all was basically hunky-dory on this old ASUS laptop (apart from the login
issue; I have to go to a virtual console, login there, and run startx).

Looking at the rat's nest of cables in the "office", I powered everything
down... the router, the interface to AT&T fiber, the MIDI devices, the
laptop....

After the cleanup (much nicer), I powered up and logged in. Then came a couple
of weird issues, and I am not sure why.

1. YouTube took forever to open a video, and would not play. I reinstalled,
renamed the Chromium and Firefox configuration directories, and eventually
got them to play. But no sound from YouTube (which would play audio out the
laptop speakers. MPD played fine (through the Behringer USB audio box).
Using yt-dlp to download a video from YouTube worked fine, fast as ever.

On the Lenovo laptop, no problem. Still at a loss, nothing I've tried
works. I disabled all Chrome extensions (Dark Reader and Vimium), nada.

2. I wanted to rearrange my music directory and copy it to a USB drive.
At about 28Gb, it should have taken around 5 minutes to copy.
Instead, it took hours. Not sure if it's a VM issue. Today I copied
the music to my Android phone, and it took around 5 minutes.

At times during the copy from the cheapo SSD to the USB, the system
would undergo long pauses.

The output of "sysctl -a | grep dirty":

vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10
vm.dirty_bytes = 0
vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000 (5 minutes)
vm.dirty_ratio = 20
vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200 (!!)

The setting maintain on the Lenovo.

Sigh.

--
Wear me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong
as death, passion cruel as the grave; it blazes up like blazing fire, fiercer
than any flame. [Song of Solomon 8:6 (NEB)]

On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 09:07:58 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us>
wrote in <vdm4ve$3nuv0$3@dont-email.me>:

> So all was basically hunky-dory on this old ASUS laptop (apart from the
> login issue; I have to go to a virtual console, login there, and run
> startx).
>
> Looking at the rat's nest of cables in the "office", I powered
> everything down... the router, the interface to AT&T fiber, the MIDI
> devices, the laptop....
>
> After the cleanup (much nicer), I powered up and logged in. Then came a
> couple of weird issues, and I am not sure why.
>
> 1. YouTube took forever to open a video, and would not play. I
> reinstalled,
> renamed the Chromium and Firefox configuration directories, and
> eventually got them to play. But no sound from YouTube (which would
> play audio out the laptop speakers. MPD played fine (through the
> Behringer USB audio box). Using yt-dlp to download a video from
> YouTube worked fine, fast as ever.
>
> On the Lenovo laptop, no problem. Still at a loss, nothing I've tried
> works. I disabled all Chrome extensions (Dark Reader and Vimium),
> nada.
>
> 2. I wanted to rearrange my music directory and copy it to a USB drive.
> At about 28Gb, it should have taken around 5 minutes to copy.
> Instead, it took hours. Not sure if it's a VM issue. Today I copied
> the music to my Android phone, and it took around 5 minutes.
>
> At times during the copy from the cheapo SSD to the USB, the system
> would undergo long pauses.
>
> The output of "sysctl -a | grep dirty":
>
> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10
> vm.dirty_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000 (5 minutes)
> vm.dirty_ratio = 20 vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
> vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200 (!!)
>
> The setting maintain on the Lenovo.
>
> Sigh.

Does dmesg -T show anything while trying to play back video? I've
had a machine throw PCiE retries before, causing unusual behavior
with various peripherals. Does it have a discrete GPU? Maybe it
bumped loose.

Also, run free(1) and make sure you didn't lose memory. Perhaps you
bumped the laptop and had memory unseat.

Certainly sounds like hardware.

--
-v System76 Thelio Mega v1.1 x86_64 NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti
OS: Linux 6.11.0 Release: Mint 21.3 Mem: 258G
"Clairvoyants meeting cancelled due to unforseen events."

On 2024-10-03 9:07 a.m., Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
> So all was basically hunky-dory on this old ASUS laptop (apart from the login
> issue; I have to go to a virtual console, login there, and run startx).
>
> Looking at the rat's nest of cables in the "office", I powered everything
> down... the router, the interface to AT&T fiber, the MIDI devices, the
> laptop....
>
> After the cleanup (much nicer), I powered up and logged in. Then came a couple
> of weird issues, and I am not sure why.
>
> 1. YouTube took forever to open a video, and would not play. I reinstalled,
> renamed the Chromium and Firefox configuration directories, and eventually
> got them to play. But no sound from YouTube (which would play audio out the
> laptop speakers. MPD played fine (through the Behringer USB audio box).
> Using yt-dlp to download a video from YouTube worked fine, fast as ever.
>
> On the Lenovo laptop, no problem. Still at a loss, nothing I've tried
> works. I disabled all Chrome extensions (Dark Reader and Vimium), nada.
>
> 2. I wanted to rearrange my music directory and copy it to a USB drive.
> At about 28Gb, it should have taken around 5 minutes to copy.
> Instead, it took hours. Not sure if it's a VM issue. Today I copied
> the music to my Android phone, and it took around 5 minutes.
>
> At times during the copy from the cheapo SSD to the USB, the system
> would undergo long pauses.
>
> The output of "sysctl -a | grep dirty":
>
> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0
> vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10
> vm.dirty_bytes = 0
> vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000 (5 minutes)
> vm.dirty_ratio = 20
> vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
> vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200 (!!)
>
> The setting maintain on the Lenovo.
>
> Sigh.

Linux works perfectly! The problem is between the keyboard and the
screen! Blah, blah, blah, blah GNU! *pant* *pant* *pant* freedom!

--
CrudeSausage
Catholic, paleoconservative, Christ is king

vallor wrote this post and blinked twice:

> On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 09:07:58 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us>
> wrote in <vdm4ve$3nuv0$3@dont-email.me>:
>
>> So all was basically hunky-dory on this old ASUS laptop (apart from the
>> login issue; I have to go to a virtual console, login there, and run
>> startx).
>>
>> Looking at the rat's nest of cables in the "office", I powered
>> everything down... the router, the interface to AT&T fiber, the MIDI
>> devices, the laptop....
>>
>> After the cleanup (much nicer), I powered up and logged in. Then came a
>> couple of weird issues, and I am not sure why.
>>
>> 1. YouTube took forever to open a video, and would not play. I
>> reinstalled,
>> renamed the Chromium and Firefox configuration directories, and
>> eventually got them to play. But no sound from YouTube (which would
>> play audio out the laptop speakers. MPD played fine (through the
>> Behringer USB audio box). Using yt-dlp to download a video from
>> YouTube worked fine, fast as ever.
>>
>> On the Lenovo laptop, no problem. Still at a loss, nothing I've tried
>> works. I disabled all Chrome extensions (Dark Reader and Vimium),
>> nada.
>>
>> 2. I wanted to rearrange my music directory and copy it to a USB drive.
>> At about 28Gb, it should have taken around 5 minutes to copy.
>> Instead, it took hours. Not sure if it's a VM issue. Today I copied
>> the music to my Android phone, and it took around 5 minutes.
>>
>> At times during the copy from the cheapo SSD to the USB, the system
>> would undergo long pauses.
>>
>> The output of "sysctl -a | grep dirty":
>>
>> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10
>> vm.dirty_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000 (5 minutes)
>> vm.dirty_ratio = 20 vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
>> vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200 (!!)
>>
>> The setting maintain on the Lenovo.
>>
>> Sigh.
>
> Does dmesg -T show anything while trying to play back video? I've
> had a machine throw PCiE retries before, causing unusual behavior
> with various peripherals. Does it have a discrete GPU? Maybe it
> bumped loose.

Doesn't show anything that could be related.

> Also, run free(1) and make sure you didn't lose memory. Perhaps you
> bumped the laptop and had memory unseat.

Nah, I moved the rolling desk with the laptop on it, but no bumps.

> Certainly sounds like hardware.

There's some hanky-panky going on.

I can download a video and it plays fine in VLC (but not in mplayer or
smplayer). (I'm watching a podcast with Larry Fast that I downloaded right
now).

Had a weird issue where booting wouldn't work; powering off and restarting
was fine then.

I just rebuilt a small project using g++ (and meson). No problem.
Then I rebuilt it with clang, and got an ERROR: Compiler clang cannot
compile programs.

Reinstalled clang, and then the build worked.

I'm wondering if my $28 512Gb SSD is a piece of crap.

--
You're being followed. Cut out the hanky-panky for a few days.

On 2024-10-03 12:53 p.m., Chris Ahlstrom wrote:
> vallor wrote this post and blinked twice:
>
>> On Thu, 3 Oct 2024 09:07:58 -0400, Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us>
>> wrote in <vdm4ve$3nuv0$3@dont-email.me>:
>>
>>> So all was basically hunky-dory on this old ASUS laptop (apart from the
>>> login issue; I have to go to a virtual console, login there, and run
>>> startx).
>>>
>>> Looking at the rat's nest of cables in the "office", I powered
>>> everything down... the router, the interface to AT&T fiber, the MIDI
>>> devices, the laptop....
>>>
>>> After the cleanup (much nicer), I powered up and logged in. Then came a
>>> couple of weird issues, and I am not sure why.
>>>
>>> 1. YouTube took forever to open a video, and would not play. I
>>> reinstalled,
>>> renamed the Chromium and Firefox configuration directories, and
>>> eventually got them to play. But no sound from YouTube (which would
>>> play audio out the laptop speakers. MPD played fine (through the
>>> Behringer USB audio box). Using yt-dlp to download a video from
>>> YouTube worked fine, fast as ever.
>>>
>>> On the Lenovo laptop, no problem. Still at a loss, nothing I've tried
>>> works. I disabled all Chrome extensions (Dark Reader and Vimium),
>>> nada.
>>>
>>> 2. I wanted to rearrange my music directory and copy it to a USB drive.
>>> At about 28Gb, it should have taken around 5 minutes to copy.
>>> Instead, it took hours. Not sure if it's a VM issue. Today I copied
>>> the music to my Android phone, and it took around 5 minutes.
>>>
>>> At times during the copy from the cheapo SSD to the USB, the system
>>> would undergo long pauses.
>>>
>>> The output of "sysctl -a | grep dirty":
>>>
>>> vm.dirty_background_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_background_ratio = 10
>>> vm.dirty_bytes = 0 vm.dirty_expire_centisecs = 3000 (5 minutes)
>>> vm.dirty_ratio = 20 vm.dirty_writeback_centisecs = 500
>>> vm.dirtytime_expire_seconds = 43200 (!!)
>>>
>>> The setting maintain on the Lenovo.
>>>
>>> Sigh.
>>
>> Does dmesg -T show anything while trying to play back video? I've
>> had a machine throw PCiE retries before, causing unusual behavior
>> with various peripherals. Does it have a discrete GPU? Maybe it
>> bumped loose.
>
> Doesn't show anything that could be related.
>
>> Also, run free(1) and make sure you didn't lose memory. Perhaps you
>> bumped the laptop and had memory unseat.
>
> Nah, I moved the rolling desk with the laptop on it, but no bumps.
>
>> Certainly sounds like hardware.
>
> There's some hanky-panky going on.
>
> I can download a video and it plays fine in VLC (but not in mplayer or
> smplayer). (I'm watching a podcast with Larry Fast that I downloaded right
> now).
>
> Had a weird issue where booting wouldn't work; powering off and restarting
> was fine then.
>
> I just rebuilt a small project using g++ (and meson). No problem.
> Then I rebuilt it with clang, and got an ERROR: Compiler clang cannot
> compile programs.
>
> Reinstalled clang, and then the build worked.
>
> I'm wondering if my $28 512Gb SSD is a piece of crap.

No, only the person who purchased it is.

--
CrudeSausage
Catholic, paleoconservative, Christ is king