Fine tune system

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I recently installed a Linux (openSUSE 11.3 64-bit) on my VAIO machine, and I compared the two system internet

capabilities.

I sadly realized, that a file to download (download.gna.org/etoile/EtoileDevImage06102009.zip) on Linux took me 3

days and I didn’t even finished it yet. (85~90% downloaded, and would take one, or half more day. Turns out to be

corrupted, when I finished with Windows.)
But under Windows (7) it takes aprox. half an hour, (with no restart with 60 second time-out) which leads me to the

conclusion, that the laptop manufacturers (like Sony) can fine adjust the preinstalled systems, like I can’t anything, so

it works more than perfectly.

This is the command that I run on both system (For Windows, I used cygwin)


$ wget -T 60 -c -t 0 http://download.gna.org/etoile/EtoileDevImage06102009.zip

time-out, continues any unfinished download fragments, and tries it to download it infinite times.

So now I’m writing both here, and at Club VAIO forums for seek help, on fine adjust my Linux, so it works like

almost as good, as my Windows.
I use NetworkManager (which I prefer for Gnome but any alternative suggestions are welcomed). I also have OpenGL issues.

Namely I cannot use KDE with OpenGL (which should be faster) because OpenGL would crash after a while, if I run other OpenGL

applications (yet).

I’ve got a VAIO E-series notebook,
Atheros AR9285 WiFi (This is used mainly),
Marvel Yukon 88E8059 (Not yet used),
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator HD,
Realtek/Intel High Definition Audio,
ALPS Pointing-device for VAIO (Extra-sensitive Dim TouchPad).

I’m using both KDE and GNOME. (Depending on my mood.) But I have extra problem for each of them.
KDE cannot control brightness through the Fn+F5 and Fn+F6 buttons,
and Gnome cannot control volume at all. (Some mainly Gnome features don’t even have any sound.)

I installed choosing KDE as main environment.

What else you need to know, in order to help me?

2

This reads to me that you have a problem with ipv6. I always disable this on install (if installing from a DVD).

Try this boot code in grub splash menu:

ipv6.disable=1

… also download with a download accelerator. I use a download accelerator NOT because it speeds up the download, but because it performs excellent checksums and will ensure a higher probability of a good download. I like ‘prozgui’ which comes with openSUSE on the OSS directory.

A prozgui review: ProzGUI 2.0.2 linux review and download

But you should be able to install it with root permissions in a terminal with:

zypper in prozgui

… try that install AFTER booting with the “ipv6.disable=1” boot code I mentioned.

3

On 2010-08-16 18:52, jadaml wrote:
>
> I recently installed a Linux (openSUSE 11.3 64-bit) on my VAIO machine,
> and I compared the two system internet capabilities.
>
> I sadly realized, that a file to download
> (download.gna.org/etoile/EtoileDevImage06102009.zip) on Linux took me 3 days
> and I didn’t even finished it yet. (85~90% downloaded, and would
> take one, or half more day. Turns out to be corrupted, when I finished with Windows.)
> But under Windows (7) it takes aprox. half an hour, (with no restart
> with 60 second time-out) which leads me to the

Ok, so you have a network problem.

I would suggest you post again with a subject line about download speed problems, in this or another
appropriate forum.

What kind of internet connection you have? How is it setup? Etc.

Is it wireless? Perhaps the wireless driver doesn’t handle your machine well.

output of “ifconfig”?

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” GM (Elessar))

4

I think the original problem lies with download.gna.org being a slow site. Wget of other files haven’t been a problem.

You’ve set Wget to retry the download after timeout forever, instead of letting it timeout. You should be able to resume downloads using the Wget “-c”.

Why that download times out I don’t know you could check ifconfig to make sure it the connection is correct.
Sometimes its just an issue of the route taken to the source, ie, not always the fastest, most direct or same route to a source.

5

oldcpu:
I will try disabling ipv6 then. About the downloader, as I remember I tried that but that falled back just like wget. Also till today anything is suffering download anything, like wget did.

Carlos E. R.:
No, this is not a network problem, it is much more a driver problem, and I recently found out that. (I thought Sony made some fine tunes, but after I installed Win7Pro, it turned out, that there were nothing more done.) My internet configuration is not really matters here, since under Windows 7 handles the network great, which means that the speed problem is not related to my internet configuration. Otherwise I’m not sure, but I think it is either cable modem or might be DSL, and yes, I use WiFi, to connect to a router that has the modem attached directly to it.

Output of ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 54:42:49:0D:02:27  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:18 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:1439 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1439 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:324400 (316.7 Kb)  TX bytes:324400 (316.7 Kb)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 78:DD:08:D0:F3:88  
          inet addr:193.224.13.42  Bcast:193.224.13.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::7add:8ff:fed0:f388/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:817876 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:519934 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1169993903 (1115.7 Mb)  TX bytes:52251140 (49.8 Mb)

tararpharazon:
Yes, I could have done that, but I usually do something else, and I would not notice if it has timed out, so instead let it time out after a certain amount of times, and notice it after a few hours, that is not downloading anymore, I instead asked wget, to always try again.

Now I try out this ipv6 thing immediately, and write back the results.

6

At first it is only seems slightly faster, but I cannot quite determine if it is. So I try out the same command, if it is better now or not.

7

To test your download speed, you can check this site: Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

8

At further examination, it seems much better, acceptable, but I would still would like to fine adjust it. – it seems to me, that it still performs better on Windows.

These replies were made the very next day? I’m ashamed I didn’t bothered to take a look. :frowning:

9

I don’t understand the ifconfig you posted today. You have an address for the Wan0 but not address for eth0?

Anyway it sounds fixed if you’re happy with the connection speed now. It was the extra IpV6 that was interfering with your speed.

10

I don’t quite think it was fixed. (Although I believe there is not much to fix.) I forgot, that I replaced my router with a better one. But yes we can consider it fixed, because there are not as much timeouts, but I wish to achieve same connection speed in both system.
(The slow reaction for now is because I’m getting ready for my final tests at the university, and the forums are not the first pages that I visit, and I found the SUSE forums particularly slow once before.)

Yes, I did not configured my Ethernet, since I connect with WiFi at home too. Now that you mention that, it might help, if I would connect through Ethernet cable.

11

Finals come first good luck.

When you’ve finished finals and have time, run some wireless download tests from both operating systems and post the output.

You can test d/l speeds at :
Speakeasy - Speed Test
CNET Bandwidth Meter: Online Speed Test - CNET Reviews

That should highlight major difference in speeds. After you connected to eth0 you can rerun the speed tests on the ethernet.

12

Thanks! I try it asap. By the way, is it possible, that SUSE Firewall on 64-bit system can cause slowdowns on the network? Whenever I switch to a terminal or what it is called (ctrl+alt+f1) then messages will appear probably on network activity, like SWF2-INext-DROP-DEFLT and SWF2-OUT-ERROR.

First on Linux:
CNET: 321 kbps
Speakeasy: 0.76Mbps download; 0.72Mbps upload

(Does the second run counts? Because it gave me a different result:
CNET: 1927kbps
Speakeasy: 0.23Mbps download; 0.29 upload
Quite inconsistent…)

I will post Windows results later.

13

First run on Windows:
CNET: 3488 kbps
Speakeasy: 6.8 Mbps Download; 1 MBps Upload

Second run on Windows:
CNET: 7956 kbps
Speakeasy: 6.72 Mbps Download; 1.1 Mbps Upload

It seems to me, that CNET’s speed tests is not reliable.

14

There is a hungarian section of the forum… It seems that language is a barrier in getting things solved.
Magyar
Also, you can have the forum mail you if a response is made to a topic.
thirdly, why not use xterm or konsole to acces the terminal / console / command prompt or whatever you would like to call it.

lastly, the CNET speedtest seems okay to me even seeing the differences in results you provide… It is not miles appart!

15

Speed depends on a lot of things. Current network use, the route to the server and many other factors. Because of this you will never get the maximum rated speed. And also the speed will vary from test to test. The best way is to run several tests and then average.

16

On 2011-02-19 17:36, jadaml wrote:
>
> Thanks! I try it asap. By the way, is it possible, that SUSE Firewall on
> 64-bit system can cause slowdowns on the network? Whenever I switch to a
> terminal or what it is called (ctrl+alt+f1) then messages will appear
> probably on network activity, like SWF2-INext-DROP-DEFLT and
> SWF2-OUT-ERROR.

That’s a bug, or a misconfiguration.

> First on Linux:
> CNET: 321 kbps
> Speakeasy: 0.76Mbps download; 0.72Mbps upload

You do have network problem >:-)

(if your wifi card is not handled correctly in linux, I consider that as
well a network problem)

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

17

On 2011-02-19 22:06, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Speed depends on a lot of things. Current network use, the route to the
> server and many other factors. Because of this you will never get the
> maximum rated speed. And also the speed will vary from test to test. The
> best way is to run several tests and then average.

A difference of ten times is very much significative.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

18

I don’t have problems with English. Or is it that bad?—I also recommended that section to my fried, who does not speeks English well.

I receantly don’t read my e-mails.

The message automatically written there no matter what I do. In a terminal emulator, I can only bring that message up with dmesg, but I found out about that later.

No offense, but I didn’t expect it other way.

Yes, after I told here, that it is ok, I realised that I replaced my rooter, and forgot to check it in Windows as well. How can I solve that?

Does running several tests and then make an average makes my WiFi faster? :wink:

Should I then run 10-10 test on each system, and send it here? Does it help, if I also run 10-10 test on my university network?

Ok, then what should I do? What can I do with my network card?

19

Almost forgot: The other day my fried made an internet call on my laptop, and the connection was junk. I’ve connected an Ethernet cable, set up the network, and we heard each other much clearly, in fact, the connection was really great. Did not tested the download speed though.

Thanks for helping me with my problem, despite my slow response „rate”. :wink:

20

On 2011-02-22 20:36, jadaml wrote:
>
> Almost forgot: The other day my fried made an internet call on my
> laptop, and the connection was junk. I’ve connected an Ethernet cable,
> set up the network, and we heard each other much clearly, in fact, the
> connection was really great. Did not tested the download speed though.
>
> Thanks for helping me with my problem, despite my slow response
> „rate”. :wink:

Well, this reinforces the feeling I have that you have a network problem,
lying with your wi-fi. My feeling is that your wifi hardware is not well
supported in linux, maybe it needs a proprietary driver.

Ask in the wireless subforum, describe your hardware, mention the different
speeds you get in linux, in windows, both wifi and eth cable.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)