Recently when I am trying to make a fresh install on my Raspberry Pi 4 4GB it runs really slow. I had it running quick before. I can tell that my SyncThing even installs slower now. The manual update at the beginning takes what seems like 24 hours and the FreedomBox gives me a 500 error after it finishes. Only now am I able to get into it when I skipped the update, but it is still slow.
Another thing I noticed, now that I am running SyncThing is that is download and upload rates are slow, sometimes go to 0 and refresh less often on the GUI. This maybe an issue with my Raspberry Pi, but it also might not be and I am wondering if anyone has or had the same problem and if they know a solution. I had an install running last week, but the partition got corrupted and I had to reinstall, and am using a different USB flash drive. It was way faster before and I can’t get it that fast again.
You mentioned you reinstalled recently; what image are you using? My understanding is for Raspberry Pi you should be running straight Debian on the box, and install FreedomBox separately on top of it as an apt package (as opposed to using one of the prebuilt FBX images).
I am using that stable image on this page.
Gotcha. Is the box connected with an ethernet cable, or is it connected over wifi?
Is there an SD card in the box? What is on the SD card?
Ethernet cable. There is a SD card with this on it.
The USB Flash has the Stable image on it.
The cable is the same that you were using before (when it was faster)? It would be good to inspect the cable for damage because sometimes if one or a couple pins are damaged the cable will still work, but at a dramatically reduced speed.
Is the box connected to a soho router that serves internet to other devices? Do other devices have normal internet speeds?
If you are using a different flash drive than before, one possible way it could be running more slowly is if your last one was running on USB 3.0 and your new one is running on a 2.0 bus (3.0 is about ten times faster than 2.0). The blue ports on your Pi are 3.0, but if you plug a 2.0 device into it then that is the speed you will get.
If your box is headless you can check if the device is 3.0 or 2.0 from the command line. Here is a helpful link: How do I tell if a USB thumb drive is USB 3.0? - Ask Ubuntu
I want to try a shutdown and different ethernet cable, but there is an update to version 21.16 since yesterday.
I checked other devices connected to the router and the do have normal internet speed.
I want to ssh into the box so I can check the usb, but it is not letting me. I am getting:
kex_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host
and sometimes
Connection closed by 192.168.0.10 port 22
The diagnositc results for both Port ssh () available for internal networks and Port ssh () available for external networks has failed. I did check the model number of the USB and it is 3.0, and I do know that I have it plugged in the 3.0 of the Raspberry Pi, but I will try to confirm.
Other than that, the log has a bunch of these repeating. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is what is causing all of my problems.
Jan 05 14:26:33 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[140541]: Running regular setup.
Jan 05 14:26:33 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[140541]: # packages is-package-manager-busy
Jan 05 14:26:33 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[140541]: Unable to complete setup: Package manager is busy.
Jan 05 14:26:33 freedombox /usr/bin/plinth[140541]: Will try again in 10 seconds
Today I have been getting updates starting randomly. When the last one finished, I decided to do a restart. Now I am getting a 503 Service Unavailable when trying to access FreedomBox. I think something is running in the background most of the time that makes it run slow. I am thinking about reimaging FreedomBox one more time and disabling all automatic updates and only running them manually every once in a while.
If you do end up reflashing the image, you might have better luck installing the most recent Debian and then installing Freedombox through apt. The image just looks way more recent. In fact, the Debian 11 for Raspberry 4 looks like it was just updated today (the prebuilt image you grabbed says 8/27).
https://raspi.debian.net/daily-images/
This page describes how to get Freedombox installed once Debian is set up.
https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/Debian
I hope it works out, circle back and mention how it goes!
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That worked. Thanks for your help. I highly recommend anyone installing on Raspberry Pi to go this route. The only downside was I needed to plug a keybroad into the Pi and do a few things and then again to install Matrix Synapse because it did not want to install through the GUI.
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