Browser slowness [SOLVED with a workaround]

[NathanZachary]

Hello all,

I am really frustrated because I've been working on this issue for days and can't seem to get it resolved. On this particular machine, I dual-boot with Windows. In Windows, using Firefox and Opera, my browsing is quite quick. There is very little latency from the time I type in an address and hit enter until the page is displayed (using various websites as tests). In Gentoo, using Firefox and Konqueror, the browsing is very slow. When I open Firefox and type in one of the same addresses that I used as a test in Windows, it takes at least 5-7 seconds to get past the "looking for..." and "connecting to..." in the status bar. However, if I then go to another site, and come back (without closing Firefox), it performs normally. OR, if I then click a link on an internal link on the site, it is fast. If I close Firefox, wait for a second, reopen it, and try again, the sluggishness returns.

From the terminal, my ping shows nothing suspicious:

[Hypnos]

Brainstorming, sounds like your web browsers have a DNS resolution problem.

Do any other tools on your Gentoo install take a long time to resolve hosts? Obviously 'ping' works, though how long does it take to resolve before sending the first packet?
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[NathanZachary]

Ping resolves the host almost immediately and then starts to send the first packet. Thunderbird seems to take a little bit to resolve as well when sending or receiving mail. Are there any other tools that I should try? Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything else that needs to resolve. Although, when dhcp starts up at boot time, it takes 5-6 seconds to get an IP and check it against the network. Thanks for your help thus far!
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[Hypnos]

You can try nslookup and dig (in the package bind-tools) to manually resolve some hosts on the commandline and see performance. With these tools you can specify a nameserver other than the default one provided by DHCP (stored in /etc/resolve.conf), and see if that helps.

You should also make sure that /etc/nsswitch.conf reads

[NathanZachary]

Well, /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/host.conf both have those respective lines (along with the other expected lines). My /etc/hosts has the following:

[Hypnos]

8 milliseconds is pretty good for a DNS resolution.

nslookup behaves similarly?

Also, have you tried both with sites that you have not visited since the problem started?

If all the command line tools behave as expected, but your GUI applications don't, then there's probably a bug with some support library -- that would be annoying to diagnose.
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[think4urs11]

[NathanZachary]

@Hypnos,

Here's the output from dig on a site I've never visited:

[think4urs11]

hmm either you can find the DNS servers on the papers you got from your ISP, somewhere on their website or you use the OpenDNS ones (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220)

btw: i see some 50-60ms for dns resolution for unknown-to-my-router names and i don't have issues from that
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[NathanZachary]

Interestingly, when using dig @208.67.222.222, I get a higher query time by almost 15 ms. So, I don't think that is the problem. However, when I put in the AT&T DNS server, the lookup times are MUCH higher:

[postrelenok]

Run your own name server, just install bind and add /etc/init.d/named to default runlevel. It will reduce DNS resolution latency because name server is on your machine. The problem could be not with DNS resolution at all. GUI applications are much slower on linux than on w$$, it's obvious for those people who used not latest high performance hardware - it happens probably because GUI code is not part of the kernel and using GUI applications involves transferring data from user space to kernel space and vise versa.

[notHerbert]

...or just remove the search line in /etc/resolv.conf

[NathanZachary]

@notHerbert,

When I remove that line, it comes back.

@postrelenok,

I don't know how it could be a problem with Linux entirely, since my other machines and my Arch/PCLOS installations on this machine don't exhibit the problem.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[notHerbert]

That must be because you are running your network with dhcp?

[NathanZachary]

It is. Even though I have DSL, I've found that if I simply assign my router to an address like 192.168.n.x (where n is greater than 1), I can use DHCP instead of PPPoE.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[NathanZachary]

I believe I have solved the problem, but not in a completely satisfactory manner. I went to the Firefox config (about:config), and disabled the ipv6 support by setting network.dns.disableIPv6 to true. There is still a little bit of a delay, but I believe it is normal since it is comparable to my other distros. Are there any serious problems that will occur because of this change? I was thinking about getting rid of ipv6 support entirely for the time being. Any suggestions or information either way?

Thanks to everyone for the help thus far.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[notHerbert]

Well, if you give your box a static address, then your resolv.conf will not be changed.
As an example of a static address - my /etc/conf.d/net

[notHerbert]

I don't use IPv6. I think that at this time it is not necessary unless you know that you need it.

Here are a few more firefox about:config tweaks

[NathanZachary]

Thanks for the additional advice. I am thinking about just changing my USE flags to disable ipv6, and then recompiling. However, I would imagine that would require an emerge -avuDN system && emerge -avuDN world to fully get rid of ipv6.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[notHerbert]

I have -ipv6 in make.conf. Just as a test I changed it to ipv6, and ran emerge -uDNav @system @world. It reports 50 packages to rebuild, mostly network stuff, as expected, and also things like xdm, python, mplayer, qt-3...

BTW the firefox tweaks above are all documented at MozillaZine. Just google them to know what they mean.

[NathanZachary]

Now that this issue is resolved, I just have one question about your syntax for updates. I have always done emerge -avuDN system && emerge -avuDN world. Is there some documentation on the new @ syntax? I would assume that it is not significantly different, but we both know what it means to assume.
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[notHerbert]

Ooops, I'm using portage 2.2 which uses a different syntax, but would be meaningless for < portage-2.2.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-696939.html?sid=8b8ae6e397c622569547efb204aaecef


Have a good one.

[NathanZachary]

Thanks a lot for all the help with these issues!
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“Truth, like infinity, is to be forever approached but never reached.” --Jean Ayres (1972)
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[notHerbert]

My pleasure, glad to help.

[Hypnos]

I never had IPv6 slowness, but did have random crashes (esp. on hibernation cycles).

If you aren't using the latest kernel, that might be one thing to try.
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