3

first of all this is my config : - Intel i5-2520M - 8GB of RAM - SEAGATE st1000lm014 - 1TB SSHD - 64MB cache + 8GB flash - Ubuntu 17.10

The problem is that when I get close to the RAM being full computer freezes and in some cases it unfreezes after several minutes or I need to reboot it. I do have 16GB of swap enabled, I've tested swapiness in a range of 10 - 100, together with min_free_kbytes. Without the swap it was the same story. Same thing happened while watching any longer videos in Chrome ( I was not looking at top or monitor at this point, but the system froze and the HDD led is blinking like crazy)

To recreate I use :

stress --cpu 8 --io 8 --vm 8 --vm-bytes 900M --hdd 8 --timeout 100s

But sometimes it's not coming back from the dead.

I think it's connected with the sceond problem that I have which is the system becoming ustable/sluggish at some points, as seen on the screenshot. In this situation I'm syncing Ethereum node, the HDD usage is moderate, same as CPU and RAM, but cpufreq shows that system is overloaded and I can barely move the mouse pointer. When trying to open app drawer it starts lagging even more. enter image description here

The HDD itself seems to be healthy:

enter image description here

Improve this question
3
  • Consider purchasing more RAM. Swap is many orders of magnitude slower than RAM.
    – Aaron Franke
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:21
  • I have the same problem, i have 8 chrome tabs 1 vm 2 phpstorm and boom everything freeze when ram is full, just enables the swap to see if it is going to put non used data into swap or not
    – amir beygi
    Jan 18, 2018 at 16:47
  • I have the very similar problem. When getting to almost full RAM I get a huge HDD load and everything freezes. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it does not. I have tried enabled swap and disabled swap. Makes no difference. Usually the source is either chrome of firefox, as those are the big RAM consumer by me. I can not extend the RAM as I am at the limit of the machine. I think it is some failure with Ubuntu handling this situation. When I get problems I see in iotop some kind of "loop..." which tries to read tremendous amount from my SDD and never stops...
    – Robeen
    Jan 17, 2021 at 15:22

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

As for ethereum: bottleneck is your HDD. If you using Mist or Geth you should have SSD for normal working ethereum node. If you just want desktop Eth wallet then try Parity, it can run on PC with HDD.

Improve this answer
0

The problem is that when I get close to the RAM being full computer freezes and in some cases it unfreezes after several minutes or I need to reboot it. I do have 16GB of swap enabled, I've tested swapiness in a range of 10 - 100, together with min_free_kbytes. Without the swap it was the same story. Same thing happened while watching any longer videos in Chrome ( I was not looking at top or monitor at this point, but the system froze and the HDD led is blinking like crazy)

Swap is about 100,000 times slower than RAM. So if you've run out of RAM, an unresponsive system and the HDD going crazy would be expected behavior. Having 16GB of swap is great and all, but only if the data which is being stored in there doesn't need to be accessed frequently. Otherwise, because of the exponential speed difference between swap and RAM, it's only good for prevent the kernel from throwing an OOME. I think the only fix for this issue would be to buy some more RAM.

Now concerning this 2nd part:

In this situation I'm syncing Ethereum node, the HDD usage is moderate, same as CPU and RAM, but cpufreq shows that system is overloaded and I can barely move the mouse pointer. When trying to open app drawer it starts lagging even more.

That sounds to me like your graphics card is being stressed. Usually when your CPU is pegged, the system is still somewhat responsive. I know from experience, however, that when a program is using graphics card acceleration, (such as rendering a 3D animation) it seems like the system comes to a complete halt.

Also, in this particular scenario, your RAM usage is fine, so I think the only thing that can be blamed is the graphics card. Not to mention, mining cryptocurrency at any reasonable speed requires hardware graphics card acceleration; therefore I can say with a great deal of confidence that in this 2nd scenario, your graphics card is being overloaded.

The fix that comes to mind for this would be to purchase another graphics card, and run your display off this 2nd card so that your primary one can be dedicated solely to mining and not have to drive a display as well. Alternatively, running the system headless and connecting through SSH could work as well as long as you're OK with not having a GUI.

Improve this answer
6
  • it's not mining , I'm just syncing the wallet with Ethereum network, hence only HDD and WIFI is used. The freezes also happen while using Chromium while watching videos - come one I have 8GB of RAM, on my other low-end laptop it works fine with 4GBs ;)
    – halaprix
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:14
  • @paniczklos "The problem is that when I get close to the RAM being full computer freezes" well, you're using what you have so what can I say? I have 16GB in my laptop and 24GB in my desktop....
    – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:18
  • Something similar hapenned to me, it was chromium using most of my cpu. At the end was a site with mining javascript (without cpu limit, bastards!), i installed nocoin extension.
    – bistoco
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:23
  • @androidDev We're not comparing lengths ;] But... on my desktop I have 256GB of RAM and still it can get a hickup with no reason (mostly while using Chrome / on Windows). I never had issues like that on Ubuntu, that's my first system that behaves like that.
    – halaprix
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:36
  • @bistoco Thanks! I've added that just in case ;D
    – halaprix
    Dec 13, 2017 at 21:37

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .