St3v3 Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Often when using the web gui I get the Entropy bunny. Usually only for a few seconds, although he makes me nervous as before now I have simply got stuck on this page. How can I increase the amount if entropy ? MTIA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebkinne Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Feed it more carrots. I hear it likes that. But seriously, I'm not sure what you are trying to accomplish. You want to speed up that bunny? You want him to stay on your page longer? If you are having issues with some tiles only showing the bunny, it is most likely with infusions installed to the SD card. My guess is you are not using a class 10 SD card (we ship class 4) and that can slow the loading of infusions down. Best Regards, Sebkinne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St3v3 Posted March 13, 2014 Author Share Posted March 13, 2014 Well most of the time my SD card doesn't even seem to mount, this I consider an improvement on the one that was shipped that I've not been able to mount /anywhere/. I was assuming that the bunny appears when entropy has run dry, and therefore after hints as to how to prevent this from happening. NB: Given the first statement above, infusions have ended up in main storage (if that's a valid concept), as the SD card has not shown up as an install point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesugarat Posted March 15, 2014 Share Posted March 15, 2014 St3v3, I can't tell if you are serious or just kidding around on the entropy thing... I've always considered the bunny as the equivalent to the Hourglass mouse icon in Windows, so just busy. Of course there may be a concept with Linux and a different definition of entropy that I am completely missing. So is the SD card you are talking about the one that you did the upgrade of the system with? If you were in recovery mode and you put the two files on it to upgrade then during that process it should have formatted that SD card with a data partition and a swap partition. If it is one you put in after the fact I'm assuming you formatted it using the Resources tab so that it gets formatted in exactly the same way as the automated process. If you've done either one and it's still not mounting the SD card there is something else going on. If your SD card is formatted properly it should be a valid destination for installing Infusions. Main storage is a viable option for install as well but it is very limited in space so you run out of space quickly and if you put too many Infusions in Main storage and leave no room then the pineapple can start to behave strangely as it has no swap space. (We sometimes saw that strange behavior in the Mark 4 if you let a log file write to the internal memory and it used it all up, it would usually crash.) I usually only install two very small Infusions to the internal main memory. Usually it's the WiFi Manager and Site Survey so that I can do some basic things even if my SD card breaks or gets corrupted when I'm in the field. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St3v3 Posted March 15, 2014 Author Share Posted March 15, 2014 Well, I'm serious about entropy bunny as my first Pineapple once got to the point where he appeared and wouldn't go away until a reboot, so now I'm nervous when he appears. Often it's only a second or two, but sometimes (still) it's like 5+ seconds, and I think uh-oh. As to Linux concept, I (vaguely) remember there being issues with some Linux distros / configurations whereby they didn't generate enough entropy (could have been device related activity that was feeding it) and thus it would "run dry". The solution was either to ensure that you had sufficient device i/o, or to change the configuration for some device (/dev/random ?), the latter meant that you might not have such good quality "randomness" within your system - which itself could be a problem for a server that as a result might not generate good quality keys. Ok, this latter issue might not be so much of a concern for the pineapple, thus, it might be acceptable to configure a different scheme for /dev/random that would keep the bunny away (i.e. produce "more" entropy but at a lower "quality"). I can imaging that with a more limited suite of devices and device i/o that it might be necessary to make compromises to such aspects of system configuration. As to the SD card, it is formatted ext3, is that "properly" ? It is often not mounted (automatically, nor on request) as if it has a problem. But this is not the card that it was shipped with. I couldn't mount that anywhere. I did format it and copy the install files on to it for the very first boot - the only was I could breath life into my Pineapple, as the SD card that it came with seems to be totally dead (it has failed to mount either in the Pineapple, or on a Linux box). On the rare occasions that I do get it to mount, then it shows up as empty (not hving been there to write anything to... HTH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebkinne Posted March 15, 2014 Share Posted March 15, 2014 If you want speed, grab yourself a class10 micro SD card. Format that to ext4 and it'll run great! Best regards, Sebkinne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesugarat Posted March 16, 2014 Share Posted March 16, 2014 Well I guess it can use ext3 but I'm pretty sure it normally formats to ext4 with some swap space. I'd head to the Resources Tile, USB Tab and use the Format SD card function. That should set it up automatically. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xcellerator Posted March 17, 2014 Share Posted March 17, 2014 Entropy is just a measure of "randomness". It's associated with the order (or lack of order) of a system of particles (or anything else, but usually simplified to terms of just particles). It computing it's usually referring to the entropy in the memory. Writing data to memory will ALWAYS result in a change in heat which in turn causes a change in entropy. So "The Entropy Bunny" is just a loading icon. If it was staying up for too long, it is almost certainly a software bug and it should of disappeared. I'd imagine it's related to when the client mode "connecting" bar stays up too long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
St3v3 Posted April 10, 2014 Author Share Posted April 10, 2014 Ok, jokes, "loading icon", "Busy indicator", "Carrots" aside. I'm plagued by the entropy bunny rather than the GUI screen being fully presented. Normally he hangs around for a few seconds. But sometimes (like now) he sits there endlressly - well 20 minutes and counting. The only thing that is going to get rid of it is a reboot, but a device that needs rebooting every few page navigations isn't that useful :-( There is no SD card (well I reformatted it ext4 as prompted by the recent 1.2.0 update), but atlas, it's no longer visible / mounted (as has been the case for most of its life). I don't know if this is a card issue or a SD card slot h/w issue, but it has been ropey from day 1 (indeed I had to use a different card to that supplied just to get a flash install - but that was a good job, as there was an out of date firmware on the one supplied). In the old days it was I/O that generated entropy - perhaps that is still the case, perhaps the lack of working SD card is affecting the amount of I/O and this entropy. I had expected that I might get an intelligent answer hereabouts, but no, "Feed it carrots" - from the very person threatening to ban me! Well, just keep those unhelpful comments to yourself, eh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thesugarat Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 You can't be serious, he plainly stated he was joking and you've responded since that post... Yes you need an SD card. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to run without one. And if it isn't showing up, reformat it again under the Resources tile. When it does the reformat via that process it creates storage and swap space. The swap space is what I believe will help your bunny problem the most. You could try a USB thumb drive instead and see if you can create some swap space on that... You can try another SD card. Or it could genuinely be that you're correct and it might be a hardware malfunction with the SD card reader. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sebkinne Posted April 10, 2014 Share Posted April 10, 2014 St3v3, Let me set a few things straight. First of all, your constant mentioning that I (and Mr-Protocol, another admin) threatened to ban you. You put it in your signature, constantly mention it in posts, what good do you think that will achieve? I messaged you about it to explain why. To keep these forums clean, we do not want people making multiple posts on the same issue, cross posting threads etc. Yes, you created multiple threads and one of them was about a different issue. That is our forum policy which we admins enforce. Now in regards to our beloved Entropy Bunny. He is what others call a throbber. A cute little thing we implemented to show that something is loading. It is an homage to the old MKIII days where we used it and you saw it constantly. Now you shouldn't be seeing it much. The point is, Entropy bunny has nothing to do with the concept of entropy. It's just a cute name. My comment on the feed it more carrots was based on the above statement. I honestly wasn't sure if you were being serious or what you wanted to do as the concept of entropy is irrelevant here. My comment was a joke and I stated this. Then I got to the actual subject of what I suspected your issue was. But let me break that one down for you too. Entropy bunny only appears when opening large tiles. What type of large tiles are you opening? The system infusions (bar, info, configuration, resources, karma, autossh, logs, and network)? Or infusions you have installed to your WiFi Pineapple MKV via the WiFi Pineapple Bar? If the latter, where did you install those infusions? Onto internal storage? Onto the SD card? If you installed them to the SD card, my original statement holds. The SD cards we ship are 2GB class 4 SD cards. They are not fast and sadly we have had a bunch of defective ones with customers, which really sucks. From your last post, you formatted your SD card to ext4 - but it seems there are errors. I suggest you go and buy yourself a new SD card. Something like a 16GB class 10. Make sure you get a class 10. They really aren't expensive anymore. Put that into your WiFi Pineapple MKV and format using the webinterface. The larger the SD card, the longer that will take. Also, you never stated what firmware version you are on now. The latest one (and the one you should be on) is 1.2.0. My suggestion for you is the following: Buy yourself a class 10 SD card (max 32GB). Format the SD card to ext4 either using your computer or the Pineapple's webinterface. Insert SD card, boot up WiFi Pineapple MKV Flash your WiFi Pineapple MKV with the 1.2.0 firmware. ??? Profit The above steps should get you up and running. I hope I cleared up the misconceptions on the banning, the Entropy Bunny, and the issue you are having. Best Regards, Sebkinne Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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