Computer memory issue ...

[dbee]

I seem to be running out of memory. The issue has gotten alot worse since i installed a microsd card...

this is my top. kswapd can use up to 50% of CPU at any given time, yet KiB Swap is zero ....

top - 07:48:08 up 13 min,  1 user,  load average: 4.76, 2.59, 1.60
Tasks: 192 total,   2 running, 153 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 31.8 us,  9.9 sy,  0.5 ni, 51.9 id,  5.5 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.5 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  1944604 total,    63796 free,  1552500 used,   328308 buff/cache
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.    41836 avail Mem 

  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
   41 root      20   0       0      0      0 R  12.9  0.0   0:25.37 kswapd0
  174 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   3.2  0.0   0:08.17 mmcqd/0
 1130 dara      20   0 1016904 130296  11296 D   3.2  6.7   1:50.83 chrome
 3692 dara      20   0   44076   3528   2936 R   3.2  0.2   0:00.06 top
 1580 dara      20   0  545492  31332   5872 S   1.6  1.6   0:12.22 chrome
    1 root      20   0  225416   3604   1128 S   0.0  0.2   0:02.71 systemd
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
    4 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:+
    5 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.0  0.0   0:00.19 kworker/u8+
    6 root       0 -20       0      0      0 I   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 mm_percpu_+
    7 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.14 ksoftirqd/0
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.0  0.0   0:00.82 rcu_sched
    9 root      20   0       0      0      0 I   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rcu_bh
   10 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0
   11 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0
   12 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuhp/0
   13 root      20   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuhp/1
   14 root      rt   0       0      0      0 S   0.0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/1

and my /proc/meminfo

dara@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:~/Desktop$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        1944604 kB
MemFree:          153752 kB
MemAvailable:     677792 kB
Buffers:           40200 kB
Cached:           709140 kB
SwapCached:            0 kB
Active:          1179528 kB
Inactive:         432212 kB
Active(anon):     864828 kB
Inactive(anon):   113492 kB
Active(file):     314700 kB
Inactive(file):   318720 kB
Unevictable:          48 kB
Mlocked:              48 kB
SwapTotal:             0 kB
SwapFree:              0 kB
Dirty:               216 kB
Writeback:             0 kB
AnonPages:        862480 kB
Mapped:           270828 kB
Shmem:            115920 kB
Slab:             102772 kB
SReclaimable:      43524 kB
SUnreclaim:        59248 kB
KernelStack:        7472 kB
PageTables:        35944 kB
NFS_Unstable:          0 kB
Bounce:                0 kB
WritebackTmp:          0 kB
CommitLimit:      972300 kB
Committed_AS:    4757160 kB
VmallocTotal:   34359738367 kB
VmallocUsed:           0 kB
VmallocChunk:          0 kB
HardwareCorrupted:     0 kB
AnonHugePages:         0 kB
ShmemHugePages:        0 kB
ShmemPmdMapped:        0 kB
CmaTotal:              0 kB
CmaFree:               0 kB
HugePages_Total:       0
HugePages_Free:        0
HugePages_Rsvd:        0
HugePages_Surp:        0
Hugepagesize:       2048 kB
DirectMap4k:      202816 kB
DirectMap2M:     1798144 kB

I don't sem to be able to get much out of dmesg

Also, how do i unmount a microsd card? I can access it no problem so presumably it's mounted. Yet when i do

dara@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:~/Desktop$ sudo blkid
/dev/mmcblk0p1: UUID="42EC-0B92" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="56c62bfb-2ace-40f5-842b-56d170dc18b1"
/dev/mmcblk0p2: UUID="76e2b547-702d-4386-a868-9fedbc97bb53" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="51735fd3-6d98-4c40-8b16-28fdcb4a318e"
/dev/mmcblk1: LABEL="microsd" UUID="0e36cfc3-c8fe-4c2a-b85b-4267fb9b8f7f" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/mmcblk0: PTUUID="52c3523d-707f-4f3d-9321-0d620c9526c4" PTTYPE="gpt"

dara@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:~/Desktop$ umount /dev/mmcblk1
umount: /dev/mmcblk1: not mounted.

microsd is named but doesn't seem to be mounted for some reason ...

dara@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:~/Desktop$ df
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev              949848        0    949848   0% /dev
tmpfs             194464     1408    193056   1% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2  29407228 26584044   1306336  96% /
tmpfs             972300   104688    867612  11% /dev/shm
tmpfs               5120        4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             972300        0    972300   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1    523248     8596    514652   2% /boot/efi
tmpfs             194460       24    194436   1% /run/user/1000

Like i said, the problem seems to be exacerbated when i installed the microsd card. Also, when i open multiple tabs in chrome. Does each tab run as it's own process or something ?

[wildmanne39]

Thread moved to General Help for a more appropriate fit.

[dbee]

I was getting a boot error with my system so i must have uncommented /mnt/microsd in /etc/fstab

#UUID=0e36cfc3-c8fe-4c2a-b85b-4267fb9b8f7f /mnt/microsd/	  ext4	  discard,noatime,errors=remount-ro	  0	  1

How come i'm able to access my microsd card without mounting it specifically in /etc/fstab/ ? Is it because i named the volume ?

[dbee]

I ran a few

du -h | sort -hr | more

and cleaned out some of the larger directories on my harddrive. Now i'm at 90% capacity.

computer doesn't seem to freeze when i keep chrome at 1 tab ...

when i don't, i get this from dmesg

   29.277137] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br-5e87b27037b9: link is not ready
[   29.643540] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br-6b997a73235d: link is not ready
[   29.952461] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): br-b3a964a0eb0e: link is not ready
[  645.722980] perf: interrupt took too long (2504 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 79750
[  784.530207] perf: interrupt took too long (3134 > 3130), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 63750
[ 1291.406858] perf: interrupt took too long (3942 > 3917), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 50500
[ 1919.866646] perf: interrupt took too long (4935 > 4927), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 40500
[ 2390.342387] perf: interrupt took too long (6171 > 6168), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 32250

[TheFu]

I don't see any swap enabled. fix that. The swapon -s command will check it. So will the free -hm command.

A system with only 2GB of RAM needs some swap. If you use a modern browser, make it 4.1G swap size.

You can google how-to add swap. It could be just that old swap was disabled by you somehow. It would be very odd if o swap was setup during install.

[ActionParsnip]

Could upgrade the ram (if possible). It's pretty cheap and will really help the system

[CelticWarrior]

Could upgrade the ram (if possible).

No. not possible in a HP Stream 11. That's pretty much the definition of "disposable laptop". I should know, I have one.

[TheFu]

No. not possible in a HP Stream 11. That's pretty much the definition of "disposable laptop". I should know, I have one.

I had a chromebook running xUbuntu like that - 2G of RAM soldered onto the motherboard. It was crashing due to low RAM. Changing the swap file to be 4.1G provided feedback so I could close programs before no ram was left and the system crashed. I had to learn to recognize when low RAM was happening. It came with a 16G SSD, so making the swap huge wasn't an option. I also enabled swap to be compressed. I think zswap is the default now, but it would be worth checking that as well.

[dbee]

So basically I seem to have unmounted the swap file in my system when i was editing the /etc/fstab file.

To fix it I added this to /etc/fstab ...

/swapfile        none            swap    sw              0       0

Then i remade swap, turned swapon and mounted it

root@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:/etc# sudo mkswap /swapfile
mkswap: /swapfile: warning: wiping old swap signature.

Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 1.3 GiB (1425670144 bytes)
no label, UUID=23390c3c-eec5-428b-abd7-83e447016d52

root@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:/etc# sudo swapon /swapfile

root@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:/etc# mount -a

root@dara-HP-Stream-Laptop-11-y0XX:/etc# free -h

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:           1.9G        1.1G         95M        160M        680M        465M
Swap:          1.3G          0B        1.3G

Seems to have been an easy fix all things considered

[dbee]

I don't see any swap enabled. fix that. The swapon -s command will check it. So will the free -hm command.

A system with only 2GB of RAM needs some swap. If you use a modern browser, make it 4.1G swap size.

You can google how-to add swap. It could be just that old swap was disabled by you somehow. It would be very odd if o swap was setup during install.

I'll see how 1.3 GB does with regards to the swap partition. I barely have any hd left, so 4 GB would be a stretch.

Need to get a new travel laptop. Pronto.

Why have laptop prices gone way up btw? Is there a mem or cpu shortage?