Fedora Media Writer | very slow while browsing files opening a custom Image

I tried to use Fedora Media Writer. While opening for a custom image, it not responses immediately, browsing for files.

I tested on my F34 Mate Spin and also logged in in gnome shell. Same result.
On my Dell laptop same F34 Mate Spin.
Both have 5.12.6-300.fc34.x86_64

If it is a live image, my guess is that it is something to do with squashfs. I found the following note about recent changes to the default squashfs configuration that sound like they might be related to your problem (“high latency” == “not responses immediately”):

Excerpted from OptimizeSquashFS – User Experience:

  • Decreasing the installation image size will reduce cost of mirroring and storing Fedora installation images.
  • Decreasing the installation image size will reduce the download time.
  • Increasing the block size on the current configuration with EXT4 file system, should increase latency while accessing the EXT4 filesystem. The exact impact is to be evaluated.
  • The impact of latency will be reduced, if the plain SquashFS option is be choosen.

I’m not sure if the above change was actually made. Following some of the links leads to a confirmation that a different squashfs-related change was made recently:

https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2489

I don’t know what, if any, impact the above changes might have had on your experience with Fedora Media Writer, but it seems at least feasible that something along those lines might be responcible for the high latency you are seeing.

Also, squashfs has been known to stall out with some kernel configurations:

It is very complicated. Hopefully the above reading might help you to trace down the exact problem.

Good luck. :slightly_smiling_face:

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It seems the problem is slow when choosing a image to write - not in the actual writing process.

For me, MediaWriter has been normal during last week.

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That can be nothing more than a larger file system size causing it to spend longer browsing for the iso image.

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Yesterday, I saw that an translation update has been done. Nothing more.
https://github.com/FedoraQt/MediaWriter/commit/8ccfa2c1168d7632757b5aa8d2b538e59c8dbac6

For me, the tool worked fine on Linux, but I has some Qt- related issues on a Windows host last week. I haven’t tried it yesterday.

Thanks for answering, it is not a live image. Both are installations on SSD drives. And on both let make fedora the partitioning. One was testing and the other was beta when in installed. Both where Mate spins.
And as @sampsonf understood correct it is just the browsing process to choose the image.

On my Fedora 32 on same computer i not had this delay to open files.
The images where locally stored where i wanted to choose.

Try running from the command line with sudo. My extremely unscientific findings are that if you use sudo mediawriter the application works as expected with regard to browsing the local machine for previously downloaded images.

I verified this by then trying the same thing without sudo. Slowed right down again.

Although this doesn’t solve the issue I felt that these findings were somehow indicative of a bigger issue.

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Yes i can confirm, thanks for that input. I was thinking a group media-writer for example would help, but I not could find it.

Probably, one can find a tool here to troubleshoot the issue?
https://github.com/iovisor
Otherwise, there are a couple of alternative installation methods listed in the docs.

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Something like “MultiWrite”.

Havn’t read the whole topic, but I’m respüonding top the topic I got
via mail.

Since media-writer is supposed to be run under root or sudo priviledges in order to do its job properly I don’t really feel that is a problem, although it does seem strange that browsing would take longer when not run as root.

I have never tried using it except as root so had not seen the problem reported. I just tried it as my regular user and it did the browsing in fractions of a second locally and only a couple seconds to update the links from F33 when I last used it to the current F34 images online. Since it is linking to the images online I wonder if the delay is network related and not actually mediawriter related. Note that I ran it from a terminal so I was able to watch as it gave the messages about updating the links. I also was using an F33 host.

Not really, i tested with F32 and there everything works as expected also as normal user alias without sudo. The errors about the changed links i get also.

I do agree that this is also a security issue, that an user without privileges can create a boot system to bypass security and access a computers filesystem.
Then at least wen someone starts the program with the normal link, it should pop up a login for sudo credentials.

I would recommend to open a ticket on the GitHub page I already posted.

link pls :slight_smile:

I don’t see a security issue. It allows browsing of the download site and the actual download as the regular user. When you select to write to the USB it asks for sudo password, so that does not appear to be a security issue.

Sure, I meant this one.
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/fedora-media-writer-very-slow-while-browsing-files-opening-a-custom-image/70729/5?u=ralfs
I think there you may contact the developer.

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done:

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