.dat persistent savefile running very slow

[Kartex]

So, my computer is currently lacking a hard drive and the only storage device I have is a 32 GB USB stick on which I installed Porteus 4.0 (64 bit edition). Since the USB drive is formatted with fat32 (I cannot format it with a Linux filesystem), I had to create a .dat file to save changes upon reboot. So I created a 4 GB savefile (I actually allocated 16 GB, but for some reason it has a 4 GB limit it cannot go beyond). It works, but the system is extremely slow and with poor performance. For example, I do not need to install Chrome all over again, which is good, but the browser itself is very very slow, with simple pages like google.com taking several minutes to load (and no, it is not a connection speed problem) and constant crashes. How can I fix this problem and make the system run faster? I have already tried booting from RAM (which it claims to cause a `huge increase` in speed) but it does nothing.

[Ed_P]

A couple of things you can do. 1. Format the USB drive as exFAT. FAT32 has a 4 GB file limit, exFAT does not. 2. Change the cheatcode for changes= to changes=EXIT: this makes changes to be saved when you shut down Porteus. If the USB drive is slow shutting down may take a minute but it's better than a sluggish system when it's running. BTW My save.dat file is .5 GB.

[donald]

Some Questions:
Which Desktop do you use (kde,xfce etc)?
and more important, how much physical RAM do you have?
Please post the outcome of

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ free -m

while Chrome is running.

[Kartex]

A couple of things you can do. 1. Format the USB drive as exFAT. FAT32 has a 4 GB file limit, exFAT does not. 2. Change the cheatcode for changes= to changes=EXIT: this makes changes to be saved when you shut down Porteus. If the USB drive is slow shutting down may take a minute but it's better than a sluggish system when it's running. BTW My save.dat file is .5 GB.

1. I have already tried that (using Universal USB Installer) and I get an error message saying I can only format it as fat32. Perhaps I should try a different ISO manager? Which one?
2. I haven't tried that yet. Thanks for the suggestion. Gonna try it now.

Some Questions:
Which Desktop do you use (kde,xfce etc)?
and more important, how much physical RAM do you have?
Please post the outcome of

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ free -m

while Chrome is running.

I use LXDE and my computer has 8 GB of RAM.

As to the outcome, the system is so slow that I don't even think I'll be able to post the feedback through it (right now I'm using running the fresh, non-persistent system), but I'll try. If this helps, right now it says -n is an invalid option:

[Kartex]

Oh, sorry. I just saw you asked for -m instead. Here's the outcome right now:

[Kartex]

Update: Now on the sluggish persistent system, the memory usage in MB is indeed much lower. I finally managed to screenshot and upload it:



How do I make it use more memory to improve performance?

[donald]

8 GB is by far sufficent.

I assume you managed to put the chrome module into the modules folder,no?

Code: Select all

guest@porteus:~$ ls $PORTDIR/modules

will show it.

where did you store the save,dat file?
It should be on the physical drive not somewhere in the live filesystem.

EDIT
Here is an Example of an usb thumbdrive formatted with fat32 and having a save.dat file.

The file is at /mnt/sdb1/porteussave.dat
(you may have sda1 because there is no HDD)

adding the path to the file in /mnt/sdb1/porteus/porteus-v4.0-x86_64.cfg
did not work.

adding the path to the file in /mnt/sdb1/boot/syslinux/porteus.cfg
so it looks like this
APPEND changes=/mnt/sdb1/porteussave.dat
does work.

[Ed_P]

donald, if the save.dat file is on the root of the drive try changing the porteus.cfg file to be just:

Code: Select all

APPEND changes=EXIT:/porteussave.dat

[Kartex]

Ed P's solution is working. With the cheatcode EXIT:porteus/optional/porteussave.dat (I put the savefile on the /optional/ folder), the system is running much faster, even with low memory usage. Thank you!

[Kartex]

Updated: Although I've managed to get a fast-running system, for some reason it is displaying no sound What could have happened?

[Ed_P]

the system is running much faster, even with low memory usage. Thank you!