[Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-04 13:34:23

Hello All,

I have a Dell laptop, model Vostro 1540. I have installed Arch and Openbox in it. It works perfectly except at the time of update. It becomes a very painful experience whenever there are updates for any bigger packages like the kernel, Libreoffice-Fresh etc. It runs hours to download those packages. On average I get 50-60 K/Sec speed. I believe I am not getting the right mirrorlist. In my other newer laptops I get 7-8 M/Sec. In those newer laptops, I use rate-mirrors to create the mirrorlist. But in this Dell laptop whenever I run rate-mirrors arch I get 0 mirror.

# STARTED AT: 2022-09-04 18:47:51.294731824 +05:30
# ARGS: rate-mirrors arch
# FETCHED MIRRORS: 1011
# MIRRORS LEFT AFTER FILTERING: 458
# JUMP #1
# EXPLORING US
# VISITED US
#     + NEIGHBOR UK (by HubsFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR ID (by HubsFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR DE (by HubsFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR CA (by DistanceFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR FR (by DistanceFirst)
#     + NEIGHBOR NL (by DistanceFirst)
# BLANK ITERATION
# COUNTRY JUMPING YIELDED TOO FEW MIRRORS (0), ADDING OTHERS TO UNLABELED
# 

# TESTING UNLABELED MIRRORS
# 

# NO RESULTS TO RE-TEST
# ==== RESULTS (top re-tested) ====
# FINISHED AT: 2022-09-04 18:48:23.371681540 +05:30

I am using reflector. But with that I hardly ever get 100K/Sec. I am from India. Here is Dell Vostro 1540 info.

System:
  Host: Arch Kernel: 5.19.6-arch1-1 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Openbox
    v: 3.6.1 Distro: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Portable System: Dell product: Vostro 1540 v: A01
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0NHCFP v: A01 serial: <superuser required> BIOS: Dell
    v: A01 date: 08/22/2011
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 18.0 Wh (100.0%) condition: 18.0/48.8 Wh (36.8%)
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5 M 480 bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache:
    L2: 512 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 1330 min/max: 1197/2661 cores: 1: 1197 2: 1729 3: 1197
    4: 1197
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: CNFB112I024010029790 Integrated Webcam type: USB
    driver: uvcvideo
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.4 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.3 driver: X:
    loaded: intel unloaded: modesetting,vesa gpu: i915
    resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics (ILK) v: 2.1 Mesa 22.1.7
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 5 Series/3400 Series High Definition Audio
    driver: snd_hda_intel
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.19.6-arch1-1 running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 16.1 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter
    driver: bcma-pci-bridge
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    driver: r8169
  IF: enp19s0 state: down mac: 24:b6:fd:15:c3:9c
  IF-ID-1: wlp18s0b1 state: up mac: e4:d5:3d:f3:e7:83
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Broadcom Corp Dell Wireless 1701 Bluetooth type: USB
    driver: btusb
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: down bt-service: not found
    rfk-block: hardware: no software: no address: see --recommends
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 344.68 GiB used: 11.8 GiB (3.4%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: MK2565GSX size: 232.89 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Toshiba model: MK1237GSX size: 111.79 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 31.61 GiB used: 8.14 GiB (25.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda7
  ID-2: /home size: 60.26 GiB used: 3.66 GiB (6.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sdb2
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.12 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    dev: /dev/sda8
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 0.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 4759
Info:
  Processes: 191 Uptime: 2h 27m Memory: 7.57 GiB used: 1.88 GiB (24.9%)
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.20

Please help.
Thanks.

Last edited by ChalaoAdda (2022-09-08 04:33:33)

Trilby · 2022-09-04 13:47:21

Just copy the mirror list (or the first few mirrors in it) from the "good" laptops to the Dell Vostro. If updates are still slow, then you can rule out the mirrorlist as a relevant factor and focus on the Vostro networking issues - on the other hand, if the copied mirror list works well, then we can focus on troubleshooting the mirror list generation on the Vostro.

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-04 14:16:06

I have already tried that. I copied the mirrorlist from my newer laptop to Dell one. But speed became poorer than the list generated by reflector.

Thanks.

Trilby · 2022-09-04 15:09:13

So then the mirrorlist itself is irrelevant. There's something wrong with the networking on the Vostro.

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-04 15:32:24

So how do I find out what's wrong with networking? I use the same wifi as my other laptops.
Also why rate-mirrors always returns zero mirror? Sometimes, if I use --entry-country=IN, I might get one mirror. I tried with other combination of parameters. What am I missing here?

Thanks.

Trilby · 2022-09-04 16:24:29

I had never heard of rate-mirrors before your post - so I can't help you with the specifics of that tool. But if there are networking issues it's not surprising that tools to rate mirrors will fail.

As to what's wrong with your networking, I haven't the foggiest idea as all the information you've provided so far has been focused on mirror ranking tools. That was my point to refocus the diagnostics on (what is most likely) the actual problem.

What is this laptops networking hardware? What network management tools do you use? Can you ping and / or curl from the mirror urls? If so, does curl download from the mirror urls at a reasonable rate or is that also slow?

Sending a journal for the current boot (when problems have been observed) to a file sharing site and posting the link here may help us gather information.

Last edited by Trilby (2022-09-04 17:54:40)

ewaller · 2022-09-04 16:34:25

What is the output of iw dev wlan0 link (Assuming your network interface is called wlan0; modify the command if the name of your network interface is different)
Also, what is the output of sind /etc/systemd ?

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-05 07:17:03

Trilby wrote:

I had never heard of rate-mirrors before your post

Rate Mirrors

Trilby wrote:

What is this laptops networking hardware?

Here is lspci output. lspci

Trilby wrote:

What network management tools do you use?

Network Manager.

NetworkManager.service - Network Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2022-09-05 16:15:34 IST; 3h 46min left
       Docs: man:NetworkManager(8)
   Main PID: 340 (NetworkManager)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 9274)
     Memory: 20.7M
        CPU: 2.194s
     CGroup: /system.slice/NetworkManager.service
             └─340 /usr/bin/NetworkManager --no-daemon

Sep 05 16:15:41 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374741.9119] device (wlp18s0b1): state change: ip-config -> ip-check (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Sep 05 16:15:41 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374741.9342] device (wlp18s0b1): state change: ip-check -> secondaries (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Sep 05 16:15:41 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374741.9346] device (wlp18s0b1): state change: secondaries -> activated (reason 'none', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
Sep 05 16:15:41 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374741.9352] manager: NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_SITE
Sep 05 16:15:41 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374741.9364] device (wlp18s0b1): Activation: successful, device activated.
Sep 05 16:15:42 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374742.0625] dhcp6 (wlp18s0b1): activation: beginning transaction (timeout in 45 seconds)
Sep 05 16:15:42 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374742.1481] dhcp6 (wlp18s0b1): state changed new lease
Sep 05 16:15:42 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374742.5208] manager: NetworkManager state is now CONNECTED_GLOBAL
Sep 05 16:15:42 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374742.6565] manager: startup complete
Sep 05 16:16:19 Arch NetworkManager[340]: <info>  [1662374779.1746] agent-manager: agent[dc75ae71b5d9bc53,:1.20/org.freedesktop.nm-applet/1000]: agent registered

Trilby wrote:

Can you ping and / or curl from the mirror urls? If so, does curl download from the mirror urls at a reasonable rate or is that also slow?

Yes, I can ping or curl mirror url. Download speed of curl from the mirror url is a bit faster.

Trilby wrote:

Sending a journal for the current boot (when problems have been observed) to a file sharing site and posting the link here may help us gather information.

journalctl

Thanks.

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-05 07:59:05

ewaller wrote:

What is the output of iw dev wlan0 link (Assuming your network interface is called wlan0; modify the command if the name of your network interface is different)
Also, what is the output of sind /etc/systemd ?

I use iwconfig.

wlp18s0b1  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"JOYDEEP_NETWORK_EXT"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.417 GHz  Access Point: 78:98:E8:4F:22:D8   
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=19 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=64/70  Signal level=-46 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:92  Invalid misc:26949   Missed beacon:0

I don't know sind.

Thanks.

ewaller · 2022-09-05 14:30:09

Sorry, that should have been 'find' not 'sind'

Your link looks solid.
As to the find command, it looks like Trilby and I are fishing for the same thing. I suspect you may have multiple things trying to control your wireless network.

Edit: Your network speed is not great, but it is not awful. The SSID looks like you have a network extender. If so, any way to connect to the wireless router itself?

Last edited by ewaller (2022-09-05 14:36:40)

westandskif · 2022-09-05 16:21:29

ChalaoAdda wrote:

Also why rate-mirrors always returns zero mirror? Sometimes, if I use --entry-country=IN, I might get one mirror. I tried with other combination of parameters. What am I missing here?

Hello! You can run "rate-mirrors --help" and "rate-mirrors arch --help" to see base and arch-specific options.

I believe it just takes too much time to fetch 70KB for 1500 milliseconds. You can soften the defaults:

rate-mirrors --min-bytes-per-mirror=70000 --per-mirror-timeout=1500 arch

e.g. try to set minimum bytes to 20000 and increase per-mirror-timeout, setting it to 5000 (5s or even more).

Of course this won't fix your networking issues, but at least this should help you obtain a mirrorlist.

Last edited by westandskif (2022-09-05 16:23:59)

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-06 12:20:53

ewaller wrote:

any way to connect to the wireless router itself?

I got a network cable and I connected one end to the router and the other end to my old laptop. Then I ran rate-mirrors arch. And I got almost 10 M/Sec.

So how do I make my wifi connection better now? Or, is that for another thread? Thank you very much.

Thanks.

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-06 12:29:26

westandskif wrote:

Hello! You can run "rate-mirrors --help" and "rate-mirrors arch --help" to see base and arch-specific options.
I believe it just takes too much time to fetch 70KB for 1500 milliseconds. You can soften the defaults:
rate-mirrors --min-bytes-per-mirror=70000 --per-mirror-timeout=1500 arch
e.g. try to set minimum bytes to 20000 and increase per-mirror-timeout, setting it to 5000 (5s or even more).
Of course this won't fix your networking issues, but at least this should help you obtain a mirrorlist.

Yes. I included those 2 options and I got the bestest mirrorlist! Thank you very much.

Thanks.

cfr · 2022-09-06 17:43:43

Do you get better wifi if you boot the live Arch ISO? Have you seen https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Broadcom_wireless. The talk page has a list of problem-solving tips. Many of them are quite old, so don't ignore the dates.

ChalaoAdda · 2022-09-07 05:35:42

cfr wrote:

Do you get better wifi if you boot the live Arch ISO? Have you seen https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Broadcom_wireless. The talk page has a list of problem-solving tips. Many of them are quite old, so don't ignore the dates.

I installed broadcom-wl and the speed increased significantly.

Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-09-04 13:34:23

[Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#2 2022-09-04 13:47:21

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#3 2022-09-04 14:16:06

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#4 2022-09-04 15:09:13

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#5 2022-09-04 15:32:24

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#6 2022-09-04 16:24:29

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#7 2022-09-04 16:34:25

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#8 2022-09-05 07:17:03

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#9 2022-09-05 07:59:05

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#10 2022-09-05 14:30:09

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#11 2022-09-05 16:21:29

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#12 2022-09-06 12:20:53

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#13 2022-09-06 12:29:26

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#14 2022-09-06 17:43:43

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

#15 2022-09-07 05:35:42

Re: [Solved]Rate Mirrors on Dell Vostro

Board footer