Qubes Os 4.0 - problem with performance

[Cranix]

Hello,
I have PC with 8GB RAM, hdd and AMD FX X-6. Qubes Os 3.2 was working
fine. Unfortunately Qubes Os 4.0 is very slow. Booting up takes ~15min,
then spawning VM takes about 5 minutes or more. What is worse appvms
itselfs are slow. I mean they need significant amount of time to respond
to my actions. They are so slow that this system is practicly unusable.

Text mode stuff and web browser are rather torelabre in terms of
performance. Kicad is usuable, especially loading it's libraries takes
ages.

i have laptop with 8GB ram and SSD and both Qubes 3.2 and 4.0 works
fine.

I have no idea how i can fix this problem. I can run benchmarks and/or
paste logs, just please tell me what will be helpfull to troubleshoot
this problem. Should i update my hardware? A have asked a few people on
IRC but we did not managed to find source of this problem.

I'm trying to analyse diferences between Qubes Os 3.2 and 4.0.
Are new features in CPU used in Qubes 4.0 that are not used in Qubes
3.2? Something related to storage?

[awokd]

Cranix wrote on 4/5/19 3:18 PM:

> Hello,
> I have PC with 8GB RAM, hdd and AMD FX X-6. Qubes Os 3.2 was working
> fine. Unfortunately Qubes Os 4.0 is very slow. Booting up takes ~15min,
> then spawning VM takes about 5 minutes or more. What is worse appvms
> itselfs are slow. I mean they need significant amount of time to respond
> to my actions. They are so slow that this system is practicly unusable.
>
> Text mode stuff and web browser are rather torelabre in terms of
> performance. Kicad is usuable, especially loading it's libraries takes
> ages.
>
> i have laptop with 8GB ram and SSD and both Qubes 3.2 and 4.0 works
> fine.
>
> I have no idea how i can fix this problem. I can run benchmarks and/or
> paste logs, just please tell me what will be helpfull to troubleshoot
> this problem. Should i update my hardware? A have asked a few people on
> IRC but we did not managed to find source of this problem.

Check the following for warnings:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/xen/console/hypervisor.log
journalctl -b

> I'm trying to analyse diferences between Qubes Os 3.2 and 4.0.
> Are new features in CPU used in Qubes 4.0 that are not used in Qubes
> 3.2? Something related to storage?

Yes, see
https://www.qubes-os.org/faq/#can-i-install-qubes-4x-on-a-system-without-vt-x-or-vt-d.

[unman]

I see Qubes 4 running fine on x230 with HDD and 8GB RAM.
Boot up time of 15 mins? There's something seriously wrong. VM starting
5 mins? SERIOUSLY wrong.
Certainly check those logs.
Try systemd-analyze blame to see if there are any services need
attention, and systemd-analyze plot for a graphical view.

[Chris Laprise]

This sounds like dom0 root filling up with logs:

https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/4927


--

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https://twitter.com/ttaskett
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[unman]

Perhaps but OP didnt say that his system worked and slowed down - just
that Qubes 4.0 is very slow.

[Cranix]

By mistake i sent direct answer, not mail to list sorry for that.

I have checked logs and found
dom0 kernel: sp5100_tco: I/O address 0x0cd6 already in use
TBD: tbd_open_ex could not open file /var/lib/xenstored/tbd no such file
or directory
xen free = too small for satisy assignments! assigned_but_unused

both duckduckgo and google did not gave me answer what is going on.
systemd-analyze bleme shown me that AppVM needs 1 to 3 minutes to start,
rest of services was rather quick.

After installation performance of system was torelable, maybe not super
fast but it was usable. Right now i had to increase qrexec-timeout to 5
minutes to be able to launch AppVM.

I had also noticed warning in logs that it's running out of storate
about 80% full.

So this is rather software related issue, not a hardware one?

[Jon deps]

for me, the culprit was the "speedstep" in the bios/uefi, if you have
that try it with and without, and maybe turn up your cpu fan speeds if
you have that option

[Cranix]

When my machine boots i see

sp5100_tco: I/O address 0x0cd6 already in use

Can it be related to my performance problem?

[awokd]

Cranix wrote on 4/10/19 6:02 PM:

> When my machine boots i see
> sp5100_tco: I/O address 0x0cd6 already in use
> Can it be related to my performance problem?

No, that's a pretty common message. The

TBD: tbd_open_ex could not open file /var/lib/xenstored/tbd no such file
or directory
xen free = too small for satisy assignments! assigned_but_unused

lines are unusual, as is receiving 80% in use messages on a fresh
install. Did you allocate the full drive to Qubes when you installed?
Might need to reinstall if not.

[Cranix]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 10:00:47PM +0000, john s. wrote:
> sorry, after I posted I read your full post , you have an AMD system
>
> so maybe you don't have "intel speedstep" , as it's apparently just intel
>
> on AMD it's called "cool n quiet" if you have that try turning it off
>
>
> problem is it will make your cpu run hotter, hence monitoring cpu
> temp and /or increasing fan speed to compensate
>
> g'luck

I will look for that option. How this feature can hurt performance?
I do not see how this can cause problems...
Especially that qubes os 3.2 was working fine.

[Cranix]

Ad swap: on my laptop i did not created any swap to limit amount of
writes on SSD. On desktop i have created resonable swap, so this is
rather not realted to this problem.