Ram upgrade issue

[jbcooper]

Hello, I read this thread with great interest because I have just upgraded the RAM on a 64 bit machine with Lubuntu 20.04 already installed from 2 to 8 GB. The only apparent effect is that when I reboot, the wireless internet is very unstable and keeps dropping out, at least according to the web-browsers I use, they keep saying connection lost. The only way to cure it is to reboot again. So every time I want to use the computer, I have to boot it twice, which is a bit frustrating! Any clues very much appreciated. I didn't change anything else, as far as I remember except installing conky :-0

Apart from that the system is better i.e. doesn't crash when the RAM fills up, well, with 8 Gb it never does fill up now, in my hands. It's just the double-booting problem that I want to solve.

[QIII]

Moved to its own thread from here.

Hello!


Please do not hijack the threads of other users with an issue of your own. Please allow all users, including yourself, to get one-on-one support for their individual requests. While issues may often seem to be the same, similar symptoms may arise from entirely different causes. Confounding a thread that way causes confusion for the OP, those who attempt to help, and you.

[CelticWarrior]

The wifi issue is unrelated to any memory upgrade or dual-booting.

[Autodave]

Try removing the battery and leaving it out for 10 minutes while ALL other cables are disconnected. Reinstall and see if that helps.

[jbcooper]

Thank you. I will try that and see how it behaves over a couple of days. That is extremely helpful. Re: hijacking other people's threads, I was trying to give the impression that I had already looked for a solution before asking a question, which I admit I did not do as thoroughly as I could have done, so that was bad of me on two counts. However it was an unexpected consequence of doing a memory upgrade to 20.04, post-install, which might not be irrelevant to others trying the same thing in the hope of getting a more reliable OS.

[CelticWarrior]

Not a consequence, unexpected or otherwise. That it happened after or that you start noticing after doesn't imply correlation. That said, you may inadvertently touched or partially disconnected one of the antennas while you were adding the new RAM or somehow disturbed something. If not applicable then absolutely NOT related. Even if the new RAM is defective the symptoms would be not that.

You say Lubuntu and 2GB RAM so probably (very) old hardware? Failures happen and it doesn't take much.

Recently there was a kernel update that has/has some issues. It happening due to this update (to 5.8 series) is far more plausible. Or everything can be just a coincidence.

Better see actual data: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=370108
Please post results from the script so we can take a look at it.

[grahammechanical]

Are you connected to the Internet Service Provider by a telephone landline? I have experienced instances where the web browser says the connection was lost. I look at the indicators on the router and the router has dropped the connection to the ISP and is re-initializing the connection. This takes a certain time. Rebooting the OS as you do will allow the router sufficient time to re-establish the connection. I just wait until the router has finished and then re-open the web browser.

In my case I am experiencing interference on the telephone line. It causes the download speed to drop significantly and if the interference is very bad the router drops the connection to the ISP.

Regards

[jbcooper]

Hello, thank you. It is just a home phone line, allegedly fibre broadband. I have always had the occasional dropping out that you mentioned. This is a bit more regular though i.e. it happens within seconds of opening a webpage after booting and the wifi still seems to be connected. The web browser just says the page has crashed rather than there being no connection. Anyway it was almost certainly my incompetence in fitting the RAM, earthing my fingers, etc. I'll check it again tonite as I have removed the battery and held the power switch down to blank-out any residual charge, etc. Dare I hijack my own thread with another query? I was interested in the other thread about the default swap space being zero and was thinking that maybe that's why it used to crash when the RAM filled up. With 8Gb I guess it'll be OK set to zero. Anyhow, that's just an academic point now as I need to find out if the chips are not fried first ;-0

[Yellow Pasque]

I would run memtest to verify new and old RAM is good. What kind of system/motherboard are we dealing with here? Was 20.04 upgraded from an older version or fresh installed? 20.04 should have created a swapfile by default, unless Lubuntu does not that. The /etc/fstab entry would be:

/swapfile                                 none            swap    sw              0       0

Even if the new RAM is defective the symptoms would be not that.

It's unlikely, but we don't know for sure. PCI-e addressing/configuration can be affected by changes in RAM.

[jbcooper]

Hello, many thanks all. It is an Asus X453M from about 2015 which I did not start using until about 4 months ago - its basically a new machine! Lubuntu 20.04 was a fresh install over Windows 8. The wifi seemed fine today but here is the output from the wifi test:

https://pastebin.com/RnNwpvBk

A few other commands show there is no swap space. I must have made a big bloomer when I did the installation which would explain why it kept hanging with only 2Gb RAM, duh.

cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
UUID=b4e30e5d-1eea-4abc-bf75-095bfe91d10d / ext4 defaults 0 1

cat /proc/swaps
Filename Type Size Used Priority

free -h
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 7.7Gi 6.9Gi 176Mi 219Mi 646Mi 362Mi
Swap: 0B 0B 0B

The web suggests about 8Gb swap space for 8Gb RAM so I just followed this excellent article and set the swapfile to 8Gb without any apparent issues!

The output from Memtester looks ok, I think:

sudo memtester 7G 1memtester version 4.3.0 (64-bit)
Copyright (C) 2001-2012 Charles Cazabon.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2 (only).


pagesize is 4096
pagesizemask is 0xfffffffffffff000
want 7168MB (7516192768 bytes)
got 7168MB (7516192768 bytes), trying mlock ...locked.
Loop 1/1:
Stuck Address : ok
Random Value : ok
Compare XOR : ok
Compare SUB : ok
Compare MUL : ok
Compare DIV : ok
Compare OR : ok
Compare AND : ok
Sequential Increment: ok
Solid Bits : ok
Block Sequential : ok
Checkerboard : ok
Bit Spread : ok
Bit Flip : ok
Walking Ones : ok
Walking Zeroes : ok
8-bit Writes : ok
16-bit Writes : ok
Done.

Actually, the thread I originally posted in had other relevant information from guiverc which confirms Yellow Pasques comment that Lubuntu 20.04 might not create swap space by default any more: "However PLEASE NOTE: You currently may not have any swap allocated/utilized (which can slow performance significantly if your machine has limited RAM). It's not default on a Lubuntu 20.04 LTS install." Hence the crashing, I suspect.

Still got a bit of a crashy browser issue now, but never mind. I have tried clearing the cache and will see.