netsurf slow

wondering why netsurf slow, takes like 5 min to start up, and pages slow?? (but i did connect to internet successfully!) i thought might be doing something like populating fonts for unicode when starting so i tried to remove as many as i could but it still looks for some in rom. i tried a few earlier versions. i just saw bug reporting page maybe will try on there if you all dont know. i think i have pi 1 or something and riscos 5.21 rom and the screen setting and things work so i am a little afraid to change that for now. i recently had block chain cluster error as a couple of directories refuse to be removed. it is netsurf 3.8 and same with 3.0. i tried dragged to ram disc. 1.0 and 2.0 or something would not start. i downloaded the roms myself. still have to press cancel many times on startup because ‘filer cant find app’ or something.

Sounds like you have either faulty or very slow media. Try a different SD and check you have the correct init_emmc_clock speed set in CONFIG.TXT. NetSurf normally loads in under a second.

You’ll also want to update your Pi firmware and RISCOS as 5.21 is really old. 5.26 is the current stable release, which is only available via NOOBS, or use the 5.27 nightly build from here.

YEAH, CORRECTION. I HAVE A PI 1 700MHZ NOT 2 B. HOW FAST CAN I EXPECT THEN?

The same : a few seconds to load with a correct SD Card.

There’s something seriously wrong with your OS install. As NOOBS is currently broken, build a fresh 5.24 with the SD image on the download page and update the firmware/OS to a nightly build.

a few seconds to load with a correct SD Card.

NetSurf on my RPi1 running on a conventional two partition SD card starts up in about a second.

However with an “incorrect” SD card on the RPi3B+ I can achieve a start up time of about a minute. That may turn into 2 or 3 or more minutes on an RPi1.

This results from using a 2GB unpartitioned SD card with the HardDisc4 image and !NetSurf in the root alongside the firmware and ROM.

The setup is to prepare the test SD card with the firmware as usual but add the HD4 self extracting image and a downloaded NetSurf zip. Configure FileSystem to SDFS. Start up with this card and go the the Desktop. The self extracting HD4 image took a good twenty minutes to self extract and the NetSurf installation was somewhat lugubrious.

So far I have failed to understand why this (creative) setup is so slow! It may not be the issue here anyway.

As NOOBS is currently broken

NOOBS Lite still works.

how to do this(work with 4scrap, fonts)? i clicked on ’’scrap! and think i tried moving to root directory. still was slow starting on my older setup. tried setting 4netsurf fonts to default. tried not using 4homerton font. that was idea from 4Sourceforge 4Netsurf forum.
about David_J._Ruck "
When Netsurf starts up it scans your fonts and makes a cache in !Scrap, if you’ve got a lot of fonts or large unicode ones, this can be very slow. If you don’t preserve your !Scrap (if storing it on a RAM disc), it will be slow starting every time."

Not sure if I understand it right but there is a file “ruflcache”(? … No RISC OS here ;-)) you should not delete. Save it and copy to RAM cache before you start Netsurf. Without netsurf starts very slow because it must be recreate.

If you are using RAMDisc as Scrap, then you could use the PostDesk directory to make an ObeyFile to save it to disc, and then, with a created-file in Tasks, recreate it in RAM on re-boot.

The precise mechanism I will leave to others, as I’m on my 2nd bottle.

Such is life!

If this seems relevant, investigate, if not …

I didn’t keep my old copy of Netsurf, but the new one is using InetDBase$Path which is where the certfile now lives since AcornSSL came into being. It is standard format but maybe a different name.

Edit: Looks like InetDBBase$Path is used to check if there is a network on the machine.
There is a new ca-bundle file in !Netsurf.Resources, actually updated CertData with it

For wget I keep a copy of same ca-bundle file in RAMFS Scrap and being unixlib will find it with /tmp/ca-bundle
Does Netsurf keep a copy of the certfile in memory or does it look it up on every visit to an https site?
Could be that would save some disk reading too.

Edit: I am posting this from my Iyonix with the Netsurf ca-bundle renamed (after netsurf is running) so the answer must be yes, it keeps a copy loaded in memory while running.
Nothing to see here/do there, move on.
New Netsurf usability on this forum really is improved with version 3.10, I find the history images good for returning after an immediate logon.