Plinth interface is insanely slow

Support
1

FreedomBox Info

  • FreedomBox version: FreedomBox version 20.19
  • Hardware: Pioneer Freedombox
  • How did you install FreedomBox?: Downloaded stable version iso file and DD’d it to my SD card.

Problem Description
The load times on the plinth web interface is painfully slow. It takes about 3 minutes for the page to stop loading after clicking the “submit” button when altering any settings for any app or any system settings.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Login to FreedomBox
  2. Go to any of the settings pages under the “System tab”
  3. Configure any settings
  4. Click the “submit” button
  5. Page takes about 3 minutes to submit the new settings for any section or any app.

Expected Results
I expect to have the page settings to change right away after submitting new settings, instead of it taking 3 minutes of load time to confirm the settings in the browser.

Actual results
The setting DO eventually confirm the changes, but it is painfully slow. 3-4 minutes of page loading on average for each time I hit the submit button.

QUESTION: Could this be a result of defective hardware? Results are the same with many different SD cards.

Thanks for helping!

Check me out

2

Is it always that slow?

  • Only when submitting changes or also when navigating?
  • Only when accessing by domain name or also when accessing directly from https://freedombox.local or with the ip?
3

Its always that slow in all of the listed circumstances.

4

If you have SSH access, can you run htop and see the CPU and memory usage when performing the actions that take 3 minutes?

If everything looks normal but the device is still unusually slow, maybe you can contact Olimex and see if they’d provide a replacement.

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5

If your system is running from sdcard, maybe you can try another one first (before contacting the board vendor).

The first and foremost, known and sure to break point of failure is the sdcard.

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6

Really freedombox should show a big warning as long as it is running directly from sdcard and not “(toram) live with persistence” (as it is called in the Antix and MX boot menu).

7

Switching out SD cards (using a total of 5 different class 10 sdcards) was the first step I took in debuggin this, so I am sure its not the issue. I am about to check htop via @njoseph 's suggestion. I will get back to you guys on this. Sorry for the late reply. I just took my coffee off of the coffee coaster, woops, I mean, Freedombox, for a first time in a while.

8

How would one go about running freedombox live with persistence if I wanted to do so (which I do)? What is antix and mx boot?

Dan

9

That was an idea from Root filesystem completely in RAM (only data mounts)

10

Several users reported that the new Pioneer FreedomBox image we built recently for Debian 11 Bullseye has much better performance. Would you be interested in trying it out?

https://ftp.freedombox.org/pub/freedombox/pioneer/weekly/

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11

I’ve experienced the same problem when I setup my Pioneer FreedomBox — page refreshing could take anything between 1 or more minutes (or fail altogether). After searching this forum I noticed that some people in the past reported slow navigation due to Ethernet speed types (Giga- vs Mega-bit connections) and I realized that the cause might be that I was connecting to network via a powerline adaptor (ethernet via electric line).

I purchased a Lan switchbox and a long cable so I could replace the powerline adaptor via a direct ethernet cable connection to my router and everything worked fine, since then Plinth pages load times are reasonable (like an Apache server running on localhost).

I’m not sure why the powerline adapter was rendering Plinth so slow — in terms of Internet connectivity, all other devices using it where running very fast, only FreedomBox was suffering slow connection — so maybe some of the tech guys might look into it.

Specifically, my powerline adapter was a NetGear PL1000v2 (Powerline 1000):

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