Linux Mint

SSH slow/unresponsive in Mint 8

Bug #515707 reported by wight13 on 2010-02-01

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	Linux Mint	Triaged	Undecided	Husse

Bug Description

I have just recently gotten into NoMachine NX and after installing it on several boxes running Linux Mint 6, 7, and now 8; I have found that on Mint 7 and 8 there is a problem where at random intervals NoMachine becomes unresponsive. I have already replaced all of my Mint 7 installs with Mint 8 due to other issues I was never able to find a resolution to however on the Mint 8 installs I have narrowed the problem down to SSH. On the LAN, using no encryption, NoMachine has no problems, however, I have discovered that even a SSH terminal session becomes unresponsive to text input. It seems if you wait long enough your keystrokes do eventually go through.

I have also found a temporary work around that involves pinging an outside server or even the gateway (router) at .2 - 1 second intervals improves responsiveness. 1 second intervals feels sluggish and any interval greater than 1 second gets fairly inconsistent response times. However, .2 second intervals feels almost as smooth as using it under Mint 6.

Revision history for this message

Husse (husse) wrote on 2010-02-25:

There are several reports of similar behavior in Helena
This one
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=42502
and one that has been filed as a bug, but is a bug in Nautilus and others
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a specific problem for you but it its into a general trend
Might report the nautilus one as a bug in Nautilus

Changed in linuxmint:
status:	New → Triaged

Revision history for this message

wight13 (wight13) wrote on 2010-02-26: Re: [Bug 515707] Re: SSH slow/unresponsive in Mint 8

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Husse,

Thank you for the response. I checked out the link and related links but
I don't think those issues are anything quite like what I'm
experiencing. I have migrated three systems back to Mint 6 and they are
doing fine now with all SSH related connections.

I had other issues with Mint 7 that I reported a while ago but they were
never resolved so I never upgraded to it and saw no real benefit in
doing so. Under Mint 7 I had slowness issues with Opera and NoMachine
NX. I thought perhaps NX wasn't really used that much by many casual
users but Opera, I felt, surely had some other fans like myself so I
wondered how the problem had not been found and reported sooner. The
problem turned out not to have been as obvious as I had originally
thought. Quite a few of my customers are using Bellsouth and therefor I
did not realize right away that the issue only manifested itself when
behind Bellsouth Netopia routers.

Considering this, I can understand how that issue might have slipped
past general testing but I would have thought that SSH would be pretty
widely used compared to Opera and NX and the SSH issue manifests itself
whether you are wired, wireless, on a LAN or WAN.

Mint 8 seems faster or at least more responsive than Mint 6 or 7 and the
drivers for several of my peripherals, particularly the wireless NIC in
my personal notebook and scanner support for one of my clients scanners
that was always a little buggy under Mint 6, just seemed to work better
under Mint 8. I sure would be interested in migrating to it but this SSH
thing is a show stopper.

I'm still fairly new to Linux but I'm trying to migrate clients over to
it and one of the selling points is supposed to be my ability to provide
remote tech support and off site backup. (Which, frankly, I could do
under Windows much more easily but then I've grown tired of supporting
the OS with the worst track record for security and reliability so why
would I? :).

I guess my question is now... How can I stay in the loop so as to know
when they resolve this issue or is there anything I can do (not being a
software engineer or having any money to contribute) to help?

I was somewhat disappointed that the Mint 7 issue I was experiencing
never got resolved (to my knowledge at least). At first, I couldn't
understand why it was that several machines (6 to 8) reproduced the
problem every time on multiple sites but the bug couldn't be validated
when I reported it. It was assumed that I may have mis-configured
something but merely booting from a live CD and running "sudo apt-get
install Opera" could easily reproduce the problem in my environments.
Once I discovered that it wasn't reproducible except when behind a
Netopia router, I realized why and how such a bug could make it into the
final release and why you guys were having a hard time validating it and
assuming I might have mis-configured something. I also gave up.

Husse,

Thank you for the response. I checked out the link and related links but 
I don't think those issues are anything quite like what I'm 
experiencing. I have migrated three systems back to Mint 6 and they are 
doing fine now with all SSH related connections.

I had other issues with Mint 7 that I reported a while ago but they were 
never resolved so I never upgraded to it and saw no real benefit in 
doing so. Under Mint 7 I had slowness issues with Opera and NoMachine 
NX. I thought perhaps NX wasn't really used that much by many casual 
users but Opera, I felt, surely had some other fans like myself so I 
wondered how the problem had not been found and reported sooner. The 
problem turned out not to have been as obvious as I had originally 
thought. Quite a few of my customers are using Bellsouth and therefor I 
did not realize right away that the issue only manifested itself when 
behind Bellsouth Netopia routers.

Considering this, I can understand how that issue might have slipped 
past general testing but I would have thought that SSH would be pretty 
widely used compared to Opera and NX and the SSH issue manifests itself 
whether you are wired, wireless, on a LAN or WAN.

Mint 8 seems faster or at least more responsive than Mint 6 or 7 and the 
drivers for several of my peripherals, particularly the wireless NIC in 
my personal notebook and scanner support for one of my clients scanners 
that was always a little buggy under Mint 6, just seemed to work better 
under Mint 8. I sure would be interested in migrating to it but this SSH 
thing is a show stopper.

I'm still fairly new to Linux but I'm trying to migrate clients over to 
it and one of the selling points is supposed to be my ability to provide 
remote tech support and off site backup. (Which, frankly, I could do 
under Windows much more easily but then I've grown tired of supporting 
the OS with the worst track record for security and reliability so why 
would I? :).

I guess my question is now... How can I stay in the loop so as to know 
when they resolve this issue or is there anything I can do (not being a 
software engineer or having any money to contribute) to help?

I was somewhat disappointed that the Mint 7 issue I was experiencing 
never got resolved (to my knowledge at least). At first, I couldn't 
understand why it was that several machines (6 to 8) reproduced the 
problem every time on multiple sites but the bug couldn't be validated 
when I reported it. It was assumed that I may have mis-configured 
something but merely booting from a live CD and running "sudo apt-get 
install Opera" could easily reproduce the problem in my environments. 
Once I discovered that it wasn't reproducible except when behind a 
Netopia router, I realized why and how such a bug could make it into the 
final release and why you guys were having a hard time validating it and 
assuming I might have mis-configured something. I also gave up.

Aside from the one client's buggy scanner on under Mint 6, it was 
working fine. I've been using Linux Mint since Mint 5 beta was released 
and Mint 6 seems to be the best version thus far. It was faster than 
Mint 5 with better hardware support and relatively bug free in my 
experience. Mint 7 showed no real improvements that were obvious to me, 
aside from the better scanner support but, with the bugs, the 
disadvantages outweighed the advantages. Mint 8 looked promising at 
first, being noticeably quicker and being the first version to 
successfully install on my nephew's computer (who has been wanting the 
Compiz Cube since I showed him my Mint 5 Beta) so I adopted it quickly 
and began using it for all new installs and even replacing several of 
the existing Mint 6 installations. Unfortunately, I have had to revert 
myself and some of my clients back to Mint 6 having discovered the SSH 
issues as well as some other minor glitches. Gnome-do and nautilus are 
unstable under Compiz Fusion and one client complained daily that his 
system was slower under Mint 8. (Although in my usage I find it to be 
faster.) I don't know what the problem was but since I rely heavily on 
remote support for this particular site (he was and is a complete 
neophyte when it comes to computers) and since that is not yet feasible 
under Mint 8, I reverted him back to Mint 6 and I haven't heard any 
further complaints.

As a side note... Linux Mint and Ubuntu seem to be kind of heavy on 
resource usage. I'm not too familiar with many full blown distributions. 
I cut my teeth on Puppy Linux which I loved for its speed, simplicity, 
its ability to run well on virtually any hardware platform I moved it to 
as well as its small size and phenomenal driver support that made it 
extremely portable. I knew that running as root was "insecure" but not 
being hampered by running into permissions issues every time I tried to 
do something was was great for getting started with Linux. Besides, even 
my windows systems had never been breached and they run as root so I 
figured it was safe enough for my purposes. I was wrong. After getting 
compromised by trying to run server services for remote access I decided 
I needed to go ahead and figure out permissions and find a distro where 
you weren't running as root. So after much distro testing, (over a year 
in total... no exaggeration) I found Linux Mint and it became my OS of 
choice due to its default set of useful applications, polished look and 
feel and the hardware support was second only to Puppy Linux. Linux Mint 
has Puppy beat on accelerated graphics drivers but Puppy hardly needs 
them for what it does. Puppy just seems to work in a more diverse range 
of systems both new and old but Linux Mint, on a newer system that can 
meet its greater hardware specs outshines Puppy. Besides, I doubt I 
could convert too many people to Puppy Linux from XP unless I really 
expanded Puppy well beyond its default base and since I'm no guru yet, 
Linux Mint is the ticket. But Linux Mint, as I began, being an Ubuntu 
derivative does seem to be heavier than some other distros I tested and 
simply too much OS for some of my clients machines.

I know this question may be expecting a bit much, but why is it that 
other distros like Suse, PCLOS, Mepis, and Vector seem to run more 
comfortably on lesser hardware. I know I cant expect it to be as 
advanced as it is and to be as light as Puppy Linux but some of these 
other distros are using KDE or Gnome and have many of the same Apps and 
therefor I would assume libraries and dependencies but can run much 
better on PIII class systems with as little as 384MB of RAM.

Don't get me wrong... I love Linux Mint and its default set of 
applications, Gnome, Nautilus (with only a few complaints about lack of 
features), and the polished look and feel, and most of all the features 
provided by Compiz-fusion which I find more useful than mere eye candy 
and of course gnome-do, which in and of itself makes Linux Mint more 
usable on some systems that I might otherwise find too slow for Mint. (I 
would much rather launch an app with a couple of key strokes then have 
to wait a few extra seconds than to have to use those seconds or more to 
navigate to it using a mouse.)

So what is it about Ubuntu that makes it heavier? I have tried to learn 
how to optimize Linux for better performance and my efforts have 
produced mixed results. The bottom line is that Linux Mint/Ubuntu seems 
to like more RAM. 512 MB doesn't seem to be enough in general and for my 
usage, which is heavier than most casual users, I think 1 GB isn't 
really enough. I experimented with vm swappiness and cache pressure 
which seemed promising at first but when I tax the system, which I can 
easily do with only 1GB, I think I've discovered why some people advised 
against it. I've looked into other window managers besides Gnome but 
most of them don't seem to save more than 10 or 20 MB of RAM at best. 
Hardly enough to explain why PCLOS or Suse seem so much lighter... (I 
haven't taken the time to compare memory footprints but I doubt if I did 
it would be helpful considering my current level of knowledge.)

I'm doing all I can to learn... I refuse to accept that the best 
solution is to buy a better machine or throw RAM at the problem. And 
like I said I've already done extensive distro hopping to find the OS I 
love so well as to make it my own choice. I just need to figure out how 
I can make it work better on some lesser systems so I can make it the OS 
of choice for a larger number of my clients. I have a number of clients 
I could potentially convert who have aging XP machines that, after 
several years of usage, have bogged down to the point that I might could 
convince them to make the switch. Linux Mint is polished enough to make 
it an impressive OS newer machines but unfortunately on an XP class 
machine with 512 MB of RAM, it can't outperform a pristine install of XP.

Anyway... I apologize for rambling on. I know you must have plenty to do 
and don't have time to read a book from every user but I imparted all of 
this information in the hopes that you might get an idea of my 
background and interest in Linux Mint. I don't want to distro hop to 
find a more suitable distro for this class of machines I want to try to 
make Linux Mint more suitable for this class of machines.

I'm just a technical consultant who has gotten tired of supporting 
Microsoft since the MSDOS era and have realized that the best way I can 
contribute to the Linux movement/community is by retraining to learn to 
support Linux systems. More widespread adoption of Linux will not occur 
if there is a lack of support personnel. I have spent a great deal of 
time pursuing this goal and am comfortable enough with my level of 
knowledge that I have gained the confidence to promote Linux to my 
clients both home and business. But it is still a hard sell in many 
cases especially in the business environment. There are just too many 
businesses that are dependent on MS based apps and they are unwilling 
and sometimes unable to make a switch. I would be doing them a 
disservice to try to switch them.

But the home user market could be an easier market to cultivate if I 
could use the current state of affairs to persuade them to try something 
different.

With the poor state of the economy some people are reluctant to
      purchase new systems but current IT costs of maintaining their old
      systems may make a new purchase seem more reasonable. Windows 7
      promises to be more stable and secure than XP and easier on system
      resources then Vista without the software and hardware
      compatibility issues that plagued it. (I don't know how true these
      claims will prove to be but people tend to believe the marketing
      hype.) I have clients with perfectly good hardware, what I refer
      to as XP class machines, (that is machines that may be up to ten
      years old that have between 256 MB to 512 MB RAM) that either due
      to MS update bloat or malware are running slow enough that they
      are weighing their options... either spend money on a new system
      or once again (odds are they've had to spend a few hundred dollars
      on maintenance over the years) or put more money into their old
      machine to revive it. If I can show them a new, polished OS like
      Linux Mint, which I can realistic load and configure in less time
      (and therefor for less cost) than than reinstalling their XP,
      drivers and software, I think I can close the deal... but it will
      have to run well on that machine or no deal. These converted home
      users may well be the catalyst needed to help promote the adoption
      of Linux into the businesses. After all, I witnessed firsthand how
      new employees coming into businesses with their training on MS
      Word influenced businesses adoption of that over WordPerfect.

With the prevalence of malware on the Windows platform, many users
      are tired of spending more and more money on anti-malware
      subscriptions and then having to spend money again when it fails
      them. Fortunately for Linux MS continues to fail to secure its
      platform from these threats leaving the task of securing their
      products and fixing the problems when security measures inevitably
      fail to third parties. I recently read an article regarding
      extortion-ware, mal-ware that encrypts users data files and
      extorts money from them for the decryption keys. A recent white
      paper explored this relatively new cyber crime. While early
      attempts were clumsy enough as to be ineffective and the
      perpetrators were caught, the researchers determined that if done
      well, it promises to be feasible, effective and lucrative enough
      that it threatens to become the cyber crime of the future. I
      remember thinking before reading the entire article that the
      fraudulent anti-malware application scams was a form of
      extortion-ware thats been around for at least 5 years but this
      promises to be more lucrative and easier to implement without as
      much risk of getting caught. After all, for those who knew better
      than to purchase the fraudulent anti-malware product they usually
      had to pay a tech even more than the amount being sought after by
      the extortionist to remove the infection. But with this scheme, if
      done properly, and the researchers determined and devised several
      scenarios in which the only option would be to pay the
      extortionists. This is expected to be big.

Many users resist adoption of a new and unfamiliar OS and set of
      applications. Windows Vista, while liked by some users, the
      release has largely been a failure. MS claims to have remedied
      many of the issues that plagued Vista with Windows 7 and has
      already invested a lot more into its promotion of Vista than it
      ever did in Vista. With the aging XP class machines, plagued with
      bloat and security issues, many of the people who resisted
      upgrading until now and saw no real need as XP really did what
      they needed (in spite of its propensity to get infected with a
      fair amount of regularity) are now contemplating making a change.
      But there is still a propensity in many users to resist change.
      Linux Mint and Open Office are both more familiar to what an XP
      user has grown accustomed than Windows 7 and the latest MS Office
      with its ribbon interface. Leveraging this makes Linux more
      attractive as an option than it was in the past. Add to that the
      cost savings over a new computer and the cost of MS Office and
      Linux has a better potential to grow its user base than ever before.

I'm probably rambling on again... Its gotten to be 5am my time and I'm 
losing steam. I tend to do this, ramble on until I lose concentration. 
So I apologize again, but its good that I wear down by the time the sun 
wants to come up or else I may not stop at all. :)

I've spent a fair amount of time perusing the help forums so your name 
is somewhat familiar. I assume you are associated or affiliated with 
Linux Mint somewhat closely at least. I hope this rambling email was not 
too much of a bother since its relevance to you regarding your 
involvement with Linux Mint may be minor but perhaps you could help me 
to find out how I can contribute in some way to the project besides 
promoting its usage here locally and rambling on to people like yourself.

Linux Mint, for me was what turned me into a bona fide user and promoter 
of Linux. Until I discovered it I couldn't make the change completely or 
endorse it. I would like to do all I can (having neither money to donate 
or the skills at coding or debugging some of the issues I have found) 
but I feel I could still contribute more in some capacity. Can you help 
me find out how I can speak with regarding this?

Brent

PS.

Husse wrote:
> There are several reports of similar behavior in Helena
> This one
> http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=42502
> and one that has been filed as a bug, but is a bug in Nautilus and others
> I'm not sure if this is a bug or a specific problem for you but it its into a general trend
> Might report the nautilus one as a bug in Nautilus
>
> ** Changed in: linuxmint
>        Status: New => Triaged
>
>

Husse (husse) on 2010-02-28

Changed in linuxmint:
assignee:	nobody → Husse (husse)

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