Poor Graphics Performance on Xubuntu and MacBook

thethinker · 09-01-2016, 09:25 AM

Hey all, I'm having some poor graphics performance on a (2 year old) MacBook running Xubuntu 16.04. I'm mostly looking for debug ideas, since I doubt anything specifically I say will make anyone go "That's it!" Anyway, what's happening:

Basically, switching windows takes a long time. If I'm running two instances of Chrome, for example, if I try to switch between them (say, click the other instance at the top of the screen), the entire computer will slow down (mouse freeze-stop, freeze-stop, keyboard 10 s lag, etc) until that windows loads. Then, things work as normal. I get the same behavior when switching workspaces - which is very frustrating when the workspace I'm switching into has little more then a terminal and maybe emacs!

Programs I am commonly running: Chrome, terminal, emacs, evince

Programs I occasionally run: OpenShot, GIMP, Sage (Browser Interface)

For a while I thought it was Chrome + Google Drive doing it (since I often have ~7 tabs and two gmail accounts going on...), but switching to Chromium did not have any effect (trying Firefox now). The only real debug effort I've made is to run top and hit 'm' to sort by memory usage, which just showed Chrome using ~20-40% of memory and CPU during these lags.

Any thoughts on how to proceed?

INB4 "Throw away the Mac!": I would like nothing better, but this is what was given to me. Getting an actual operating system on it was already a concession....

kernel-of-truth · 09-01-2016, 11:31 AM

Check out the article, A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops . It lists desktops by memory usage.

There's also a graph at the end of the article showing memory usage with the desktops side by side in a bar graph.

A bare bones desktop is possible (runs fast, your core apps, you don't notice that it's bare bones).

• twm (lightweight window manager)
• xterm
• Xfc (lightweight file manager)

#
# View Modules that are part of the system config, but not in use.
# Last character in command (below) is a zero.
#

~]$ lsmod | grep -w 0

Next task is to prevent unused modules from loading. Your profile doesn't show distro. For RHEL flavors,

• chkconfig
• /etc/sysconfig/modules
• Working with Kernel Modules

L

thethinker · 09-23-2016, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kernel-of-truth

Check out the article, A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops . It lists desktops by memory usage.

There's also a graph at the end of the article showing memory usage with the desktops side by side in a bar graph.

This is a nice article, but doesn't exactly get the root of my question. I'm using Xubuntu, running XFCE, which is light, but not the lightest (in comparison with Unity or GNOME, for instance, as compared with JWM). This Mac is not legacy hardware or anything - it's just over two years old. I shouldn't need to count bytes on the WM to get even average performance.

Quote:

#
# View Modules that are part of the system config, but not in use.
# Last character in command (below) is a zero.
#

~]$ lsmod | grep -w 0

Next task is to prevent unused modules from loading. Your profile doesn't show distro. For RHEL flavors,

• chkconfig
• /etc/sysconfig/modules
• Working with Kernel Modules

L

I appreciate this info and I'm looking into it - I am certainly loading quite a few modules I am not using. But my impression was that loaded but unused modules aren't that big a drag on system resources. Am I wrong about this? My guess was that I had some specific program causing these graphical lags, not just an overburdened system.

Thanks for the response!

kernel-of-truth · 10-08-2016, 01:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thethinker

This is a nice article, but doesn't exactly get the root of my question. I'm using Xubuntu, running XFCE, which is light

I've found LXDE to be lighter than XFCE.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thethinker

I appreciate this info and I'm looking into it - I am certainly loading quite a few modules I am not using. But my impression was that loaded but unused modules aren't that big a drag on system resources.

Am I wrong about this? My guess was that I had some specific program causing these graphical lags, not just an overburdened system.

You're right. Theoretically, modules with a status of 0:00 are no load on the system.

My ref to /etc/sysconfig/modules (RHEL) was processes coming up at boot, such as sendmail, that you may not be using.

L

ardvark71 · 10-08-2016, 02:06 PM

Hi...

Out of curiosity, what is your Mac's graphics chip? Please open a terminal and post the results of this command...

Code:

lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 12

Regards...

gradinaruvasile · 10-08-2016, 02:44 PM

The Macs have Intel chips. It might have a dedicated card too, but by default you will use the Intel GPU.
What is the output of:

Code:

glxinfo | grep Open

syg00 · 10-08-2016, 06:34 PM

Run latencytop for a while - at least that should give a place to start.

thethinker · 10-09-2016, 08:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardvark71

Hi...

Out of curiosity, what is your Mac's graphics chip? Please open a terminal and post the results of this command...

Code:

lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 12

Regards...

Sure, here's that:

Code:

~$ lspci -nnk | grep VGA -A 12
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [8086:0166] (rev 09)
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller [106b:00fa]
	Kernel driver in use: i915
	Kernel modules: i915
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:1e31] (rev 04)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI Host Controller [8086:7270]
	Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 [8086:1e3a] (rev 04)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller [8086:7270]
	Kernel driver in use: mei_me
	Kernel modules: mei_me
00:1a.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 [8086:1e2d] (rev 04)
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation 7 Series/C210 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller [8086:7270]

thethinker · 10-09-2016, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

The Macs have Intel chips. It might have a dedicated card too, but by default you will use the Intel GPU.
What is the output of:

Code:

glxinfo | grep Open

Here's that:

Code:

$ glxinfo | grep Open
    Vendor: Intel Open Source Technology Center (0x8086)
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Ivybridge Mobile 
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00
OpenGL ES profile extensions:

Not sure what else this tells us except some kind of build-in Intel chip, right?

gradinaruvasile · 10-10-2016, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Not sure what else this tells us except some kind of build-in Intel chip, right?

All Macs have Intel integrated graphics. The command shows that at least hardware rendering seems to be enabled.

Also what HDD does it have (HDD or SSD)? Do you swap out?
When this happens check the 'top' command in a terminal and see it's headers 'KiB Swap:' line. If you have 'used' swap especially if you have a mechanical HDD you might have general responsiveness issues. Do you have slow media attached like usb drives? Do you have anything in dmesg?

Code:

top - 03:29:06 up 4 days, 21:37,  1 user,  load average: 0.08, 0.30, 0.31
Tasks: 284 total,   1 running, 283 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3.0 us,  2.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 94.6 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem : 15409272 total,   434544 free,  6307908 used,  8666820 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 15624996 total, 15495036 free,   129960 used.  8270636 avail Mem

snowday · 10-11-2016, 09:44 AM

Which type of drive do you have? HDD or SSD?

Our help desk gets a lot of complaints about poor performance on Macbooks with the HDD.

thethinker · 10-13-2016, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

Also what HDD does it have (HDD or SSD)? Do you swap out?

It's an HDD, made by Apple, 500 GB, SATA, 5400 rpm...anything else? If you mean "swap out" like disconnect and reconnect something like a USB drive, no, I do not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by gradinaruvasile

When this happens check the 'top' command in a terminal and see it's headers 'KiB Swap:' line. If you have 'used' swap especially if you have a mechanical HDD you might have general responsiveness issues. Do you have slow media attached like usb drives? Do you have anything in dmesg?

Code:

top - 03:29:06 up 4 days, 21:37,  1 user,  load average: 0.08, 0.30, 0.31
Tasks: 284 total,   1 running, 283 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  3.0 us,  2.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 94.6 id,  0.3 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem : 15409272 total,   434544 free,  6307908 used,  8666820 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 15624996 total, 15495036 free,   129960 used.  8270636 avail Mem

When I top, I see that much more of my swap is being used then you - I have around 10-20%, you seem to have closer to 1% or less:

Code:

top - 10:32:06 up 2 days,  1:36,  5 users,  load average: 0.57, 0.51, 0.45
Tasks: 248 total,   1 running, 246 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s):  8.2 us,  1.6 sy,  0.8 ni, 89.2 id,  0.1 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.2 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  3950276 total,   418780 free,  2851880 used,   679616 buff/cache
KiB Swap:  4097020 total,  3492344 free,   604676 used.   602748 avail Mem

Could that be the problem? I've just got too many things running? Right now I have Firefox (with like 10 tabs, to be fair), couple instances of evince (one of which is large), some terminals, emacs, gnuplot...I don't really regard these as "resource intensive", but am I wrong?

As for "anything in dmesg", nothing that I recognize but I probably wouldn't recognize it anyway. There is a bunch of cfg80211 junk which I think is just our crappy wireless. There is this strange section:

Code:

[131863.549137] Hardware name: Apple Inc. MacBookPro9,2/Mac-6F01561E16C75D06, BIOS MBP91.88Z.00D3.B0C.1509111653 09/11/2015
[131863.549140]  0000000000000286 00000000ee0bdf69 ffff880168303dc8 ffffffff813f1b73
[131863.549143]  0000000000000000 ffffffffc03e4bd0 ffff880168303e00 ffffffff810811c2
[131863.549146]  ffff88003555c000 ffff880157d5f3c0 000000000000009e ffff8801688f3100
[131863.549150] Call Trace:
[131863.549159]  [<ffffffff813f1b73>] dump_stack+0x63/0x90
[131863.549165]  [<ffffffff810811c2>] warn_slowpath_common+0x82/0xc0
[131863.549169]  [<ffffffff8108130a>] warn_slowpath_null+0x1a/0x20
[131863.549188]  [<ffffffffc03c1b96>] cfg80211_roamed+0x86/0xa0 [cfg80211]
[131863.549244]  [<ffffffffc07e7955>] wl_notify_roaming_status+0xc5/0x140 [wl]
[131863.549290]  [<ffffffffc07e6fb0>] wl_event_handler+0x60/0x1d0 [wl]
[131863.549335]  [<ffffffffc07e6f50>] ? wl_notify_scan_status+0x320/0x320 [wl]
[131863.549338]  [<ffffffff810a08d8>] kthread+0xd8/0xf0
[131863.549342]  [<ffffffff810a0800>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x1e0/0x1e0
[131863.549346]  [<ffffffff81830a8f>] ret_from_fork+0x3f/0x70
[131863.549349]  [<ffffffff810a0800>] ? kthread_create_on_node+0x1e0/0x1e0
[131863.549352] ---[ end trace 015473c2de213997 ]---

thethinker · 10-13-2016, 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snowpine

Which type of drive do you have? HDD or SSD?

Our help desk gets a lot of complaints about poor performance on Macbooks with the HDD.

This is interesting - would this depend on the OS, since I'm running Xubuntu? What kinds of things do you guys often suggest to help?

snowday · 10-13-2016, 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by thethinker

This is interesting - would this depend on the OS, since I'm running Xubuntu? What kinds of things do you guys often suggest to help?

We recommend that users upgrade to a SSD (solid state drive) as opposed to a 5400rpm HDD. A faster drive will make your computer more responsive for any tasks involving drive access (including swap).

I think that you would also benefit from more RAM.

gradinaruvasile · 10-13-2016, 12:49 PM

Quote:

It's an HDD, made by Apple, 500 GB, SATA, 5400 rpm...anything else? If you mean "swap out" like disconnect and reconnect something like a USB drive, no, I do not.

I meant that the system exhausts the RAM memory and to keep running, writes down the less used memory parts into the swap partition. The problem is that sometimes the written down memory sometimes is actually needed and it has to be retrieved from the swap partition. Of course if memory is tight something else will be put there. And so on. Keep in mind that all this is extraneous housekeeping, you will stll have the normal i/o operation needs above this.
And since writing/reading is very slow on mechanical HDDs compared to RAM operations, the system slows down, becomes temporarily unresponsive until stuff gets straightened. Sometimes this will slow down the system to a crawl and unless you stop the most memory intensive programs it will choke the system (from human point of view, the computer can keep grinding the hdd for hours if you let it and dont get white hairs). SSDs being much faster both on single and multi threaded i/o operations will provide a much smoother experience because it can a magnitude better handle parallel writes/reads.

4 GB RAM as you have nowadays is not that good (i recently upgraded from 8 to 16 GB mainly because of Chrome's memory usage patterns). Actually lighter desktop environments will not save that much RAM as you might think.
Chromium based browsers are memory suckers because of their every-tab-a-process architecture (just open a "top" and order by process name to see your herd of Chrome processes - i tried to count them and usually had 5 GB or so). They recover memory better though compared to Firefox that uses less memory but if you open and close javascript-laden pages in it they usually still take up memory that just grows.
Truth is programs (mainly browsers) written nowadays expect lots of RAM.
So, if this is actualy your issue you would need at least 8 GB RAM and a ssd.