[ubuntu-studio-users] 19.04 install on system that didn't like 18.04 succeeds, with one issue

[Mike Squires]

I after running 16.04 for some time I tried to upgrade to 18.04. The 
install did not fail, but the resulting system was excruciatingly slow - 
minutes for changes in a window.  Running it without the extensions did 
not help.  I wondered if this was due to the Spectre fixes, since the 
CPUs are a bit complex.

19.04 install went well but extracting my home directory, a 421 gb file, 
was taking many hours.  "iostat" indicated 2mb/sec rate. I tried booting 
16.04 and running from the install disk; this completed in two hours.

Only other problem has been a slowdown in a VirtualBox Windows 7 x64 
image.  I traced part of the problem to the HP 8710 driver which behaved 
normally under 16.04 (with an obsolete version of VirtualBox, v5) but 
was not happy with VirtualBox 6.06 which is current.

Only other problem was "unixbench"; the version from "Software" ran 
properly under 16.04 but the version currently available, which appears 
to be the same, crashed with an "illegal instruction" error.  
Downloading the source and compiling it created a version that ran 
correctly.  Text and HTML output is attached.

Hardware is a Supermicro X7DAE dual Xeon 5300 quad core motherboard 
(have 2 5472 CPUs on order) using a 3ware 9750 SATA/RAID controller.  
Video is an ATI/AMD 5000 series PCI-E card; sound is via an M-Audio card 
which is correctly controlled by "envy64control".

I am now set up for a quick swap of boot devices (RAID 1 off the 3ware 
card) so will be happy to test versions as they come out.

In case anyone is curious - I ran a Tandy 16B at work, and another at 
home starting in 1986, using Radio Shack XENIX/68, a UNIX v7 port by 
Microsoft for the Apple Lisa licensed to Tandy. Thanks to the backup 
tools and cross-system portability of the UNIX variants my home file 
system has never been lost through disk failures and contains files with 
creation dates back in the 1980's.  I ran SCO variants for a while, and 
in 1990 started using 386BSD and FreeBSD which I still use on my 
back-end servers.

-- 
Michael L. Squires, Ph.D., M.P.A.
546 North Park Ridge Road
Bloomington, IN 47408
Home phone: 812-333-6564
Cell phone: 812-369-5232
www.siralan.org or www.smithgreensound.com
UN*X at home since 1985

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Benchmark Run: Sat Jun 08 2019 16:11:59 - 16:41:05
8 CPUs in system; running 8 parallel copies of tests

Dhrystone 2 using register variables|148032085.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Double-Precision Whetstone|21060.5 MWIPS (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Execl Throughput|9926.5 lps (29.4 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks|336765.6 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks|93730.1 KBps (30.1 s, 2 samples)
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks|919861.8 KBps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Pipe Throughput |3545751.3 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Pipe-based Context Switching|714367.9 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)
Process Creation|16045.2 lps (30.0 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)|18525.3 lpm (60.1 s, 2 samples)
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)|2603.4 lpm (60.2 s, 2 samples)
System Call Overhead|2260818.2 lps (10.0 s, 7 samples)

System Benchmarks Index Values|BASELINE|RESULT|INDEX
Dhrystone 2 using register variables|116700.0|148032085.9|12684.8
Double-Precision Whetstone|55.0|21060.5|3829.2
Execl Throughput |43.0|9926.5|2308.5
File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks|3960.0|336765.6|850.4
File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks|1655.0|93730.1|566.3
File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks|5800.0|919861.8|1586.0
Pipe Throughput|12440.0|3545751.3|2850.3
Pipe-based Context Switching|4000.0|714367.9|1785.9
Process Creation|126.0|16045.2|1273.4
Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)|42.4|18525.3|4369.2
Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)|6.0|2603.4|4339.0
System Call Overhead|15000.0|2260818.2|1507.2
   ========
System Benchmarks Index Score 2238.9

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