Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 13:41:53
From: Bret Busby <bret@busby.net>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Problem with system update or something
Resent-Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2012 05:44:11 +0000 (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org
On Sat, 3 Nov 2012, Bret Busby wrote:
Hello.
I am running (or, now, kind of running) Debian 6.0.x AMD64 version.
I have done a system update in the last day or so, and, possibly because of
that, the system has become mostly unusable.
Upon shutting down konqueror, all of the saved bookmarks were deleted.
With rebooting, rebooting has been consuming about 200MB of disk space on
each reboot, leaving me now with somewhere around 2-6MB of free disk space
(it changes on each reboot), and, for some strange reason, trying to run a
web browser (not saving anything to disk, just trying to run a web browser)
writes stuff to the disk, or, otherwise uses up free disk space, so that it
runs out of free disk space and crashes the system.
Now, with an AMD64 system, with 8GB of RAM, and tens of GB of disk capacity
(in the home partition), all that it is usable for, is running alpine.
What is happening, that Debian, after the update, is wrecking the system?
It is as if Debian 6 has assumed the nature of the "experimental" version
of Debian - tending to break the system.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................
It has occurred to me, that this ivolves multiple problems or symptoms.
1. The operating system and/or the web browsers ignore the swap partition,
and simply progressivley consume the RAM, until none is left free to be used,
causing system crashes. No known reason is shown for this, and checks have
been done, and all of the settings appear to be correct for causing swapping
to occur; it simply does not occur, and the system progresively runs out of
memory, until it crashes.
2. The web browsers (konqueror and opera) progressively consume available
free disk space in the home partition, until that runs out, regardless of
whether I am saving any files. The malware javascript is enabled in opera,
because I need it for an online application, and it is disabled in konqueror
and the other web browsers that I have used (but, that I have not used for
some months now, such as iceape and iceweasel and epihphany, due to the
overall system instability).
3. When I used the kill button "Click on the application window to cause the
application to quit", after rebooting, if that is done to opera and/or
konqueror, hundreds of megabytes of disk space in the home directory, are
freed.
4. When I last used that to kill opera, on reloading opera, it did not eith
restart as the crashed session, or, offer an option to do that (software
appears to be erratic in this and other things).
5. When I closed down konqueror, with an orderly closure, it deleted all of
my bookmarks within it.
6. After having killed opera as described in 3 above, about 200MB of disk
space in the /home partition, was freed, that showed as being free after
rebooting the system.
7. However, after rebooting after 6 above, opera was behaving as if it was
running in about 640kB of RAM - it was unresponsive, so, the system was
rebooted, and the 200MB of free space in the home partrition, was consumed by
the reboot.
8. I do not know how to cause space consumed by downloaded files, in a system
update, to be automatically freed, by purging either the files downloaded in
the system update, and or any files or other disk space consumed by the
update process, or, the predecessors of the files downloaded in the sytem
update. I assume (but am not sure) that they occupy space within the
Downloads directory within the home partition.
9. Thus, the system (Debian 6.0.x AMD64 version) appears to have degenerated
to the status of the Debian version that is named "Sid", or, experimental -
said to be unreliable, erratic, unstable, and, likely harmful.
9. This AMD64 system with 8GB of RAM and tens of GB in the home partition, is
now giving me about the same performance as my XT clone (it has an NEC V22
processor) running DOS (I think it was last DR-DOS 5 or 6, but I am not
sure)used to give; all that I can now run on this system, is alpine, and the
download speed is about the same, even though, before this trouble, I could
get download speeds of about 1MB per second, on this system .I would probably
be using my XT clone, but it is kind of buried under other junk, and, the HDD
(10MB with a stepper motor) ended up needing to be kickstarted every time
that the system was booted.
--
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............
"So once you do know what the question actually is,
you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
A Trilogy In Four Parts",
written by Douglas Adams,
published by Pan Books, 1992
....................................................