Home » Trisquel » Issues
Submitted by lembas on Sun, 10/25/2015 - 17:59

Intel wifi causes slowdown

Project:Trisquel
Version:7.0
Component:Kernel/drivers
Category:bug report
Priority:normal
Assigned:Unassigned
Status:active
Description

Apparently having an intel wifi card in the machine gives a constant output in VT1 complaining lack of free firmware. This slows the system down. I've seen more threads about such issue but couldn't find them now.

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/iwl3945-desaster-using-trisquel-70-i686iso-bug-report

MeNoMore:
Mon, 10/26/2015 - 10:55

type sudo lspci -nn in a terminal and paste your "network controller"?

lembas:
Thu, 10/29/2015 - 06:47

@MeNoMore I don't have this problem so I can't help.

Apparently another side effect is having your disk filled with logs.

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/root-partition-filled-after-upgrade-6-7

MeNoMore:
Thu, 10/29/2015 - 08:08

(https://trisquel.info/en/forum/iwl3945-desaster-using-trisquel-70-i686iso-bug-report) explains an already fixed bug. Did this user install it as the other user?
I hate to say it, but I can only help "depending" on the research effort this user is willing to show.
Did this user check if his/her Partition logs are filling up? Can this user explain more in detail what makes his system slow? Maybe this user can show the log generated during (slow) times? Does it show any excessive CPU usage? Did the user also try rebooting with "sync && reboot -f"?

Until then, I can only grasp at straws and tell him what I think might be wrong. Haha.
I have no such problem with my Trisquel, either.

lembas:
Sun, 12/20/2015 - 22:06

I wrote to a kernel dev about this asking whether the kernel is to blame and he said he took a quick glance at it but found no such mechanism and suggested that perhaps wpa_supplicant might be the cause.

Anyway this is probably something that only happens in free distros, so upstream might not be willing to fix it. Also, I have no statistics but I believe the intel wifi might be quite common so many people might get the idea that Trisquel is a very slow distro, probably that all free distros are. I wonder if e.g. the Parabola people know about this. Goddamn blobs!

EDIT: Here's a guy who claims he fixed this by updating his kernel, so who knows. https://trisquel.info/en/forum/partition-filled-log-files-thanks-intel-wifi-card#comment-85339

MeNoMore:
Sat, 01/16/2016 - 11:34

Must remember that newbies do not know why the distro is so slow, nor know how to fix it.

I do not know, I never had this issue with my Trisquel/gnuLinux. I am just trying to figure out what is wrong and how I can help?
Maybe bring in an automated log rotate where it rotates every day or week or so on.

I have no clue lol. I can only guess at the problem. (: