[TriLUG] Debian 10 (Buster) on Brand-New OptiPlex 3070 Installer is Glacial

[Brian via TriLUG]

On 8/23/19 9:03 PM, David Both via TriLUG wrote:
 > Seems like a pretty low end box for "some VirtualBox VMs." That i3-9100
 > CPU is 4 cores with no hyperthreading and a max of only 16GB of RAM.

It beats a single-threaded 10-year-old machine.  And in reality, it's 
only running one VM which serves as our build environment for production 
releases.  Not a heavy-use situation.  We're only changing it at all 
because the original hardware has become unreliable.

 > The cuplrit is more likely to be the network

It's definitely not the network (but for the record, it's a Realtek 
88something gigabit chipset).  This problem is consistent from the 
moment the installation image boots, long before any network activity is 
involved.

On 8/24/19 8:58 AM, Alan Porter via TriLUG wrote:
> 
>>  From the grub prompt, if I choose the graphical installation option, it's minutes before the GUI appears.
> 
> This one line makes me suspect the USB stick.  Is it plugged into the same USB hub as some other USB 1.0 decide that has downgraded the whole bus to slower keyboard/mouse-like speeds?  That can make the USB storage access very slow.

Though this is the most likely culprit so far, I still doubt that it's 
the issue.

It took over 30 minutes (I am not at all kidding) for parted to get from 
"scanning disks" to a usable interface.  That has nothing to do with 
networking and probably isn't due to slow USB either (by that time, the 
executable should be fully in RAM).  It took another several minutes to 
get from partitioning to the next interactive screen of the installer.

On 8/23/19 10:19 PM, Wes Garrison via TriLUG wrote:
 > Finally, it could be some sort of power supply issue or thermal
 > throttling.  Check the PSU and CPU fans and heat sinks.  Make sure 
the fans
 > spin freely when you spin them with a pen, and make sure the CPU heat 
sink
 > is properly seated and making good contact with the CPU.

I would really hope that Dell wouldn't ship systems with problems like 
these.  If it's still glacial when it gets to running the installed OS, 
I'll look for thermal problems.

Anyway..

When I left the machine yesterday evening, it was grinding its way 
toward prompting me to select packages for installation.  On Monday, 
assuming it's still waiting for me, I'll finish out the installation, 
however long it takes, and see how the installed OS performs.

Thanks for the input so far!
-Brian