Subj : LINUX the Cross Roads
To   : Angus Mcleod
From : Spaceman Spiff
Date : Sun Jan 09 2005 09:32 pm

  Re: LINUX the Cross Roads
  By: Angus Mcleod to Spaceman Spiff on Thu Jan 06 2005 09:01 am

 >   Re: LINUX the Cross Roads
 >   By: Spaceman Spiff to All on Wed Jan 05 2005 20:08:00
 > 
 >  > Well, it finally happened.
 > 
 > Welcome!
 > 
 >  > I wrote over the old WIndows2000Pro installation on the P2. The drive tha
 >  > in the machine was a real small one, 1.6 GIG, I couldn't load all the ext
 >  > server stuff, but I figured I would get a taste of LINUX.
 > 
 > 1.6 gig isn't big, but you should be able to get a fairly comprehensive
 > Linux install on it.  I usually count on 1 gig for the OS and most of the
 > common server apps and general OS utilities.  If you want the whole of
 > GNOME *and* KDE, probably more than 1 gig, though.
 > 
 > Of course, if you start installing loads of extra packages.....  ;-)
 > 
 >  > So far, pretty cool. I need to figure out a few things, but I managed to 
 >  > able to surf the web, downloaded FireFox for Linux, works good....
 > 
 > Good for you!
 > 
 >  > I think I need to pick up a bigger drive, the machine seems a little
 >  > slow, everytime I to run an application, I wait and the drive runs and
 >  > runs.
 > 
 > Well, an old 1.6 gig drive probably isn't as fast as a newer drive.  And
 > it probably isn't in the best of shape.  Try su-ing to root and running
 > 
 >      hdparm -i /dev/hda
 > 
 > to learn more about the drive, and then
 > 
 >      hdparm -t /dev/hda
 > 
 > several times in a row until the numbers peak out.  That will tell you
 > what your drive is doing, performance wise.
 > 
 >  > I am not sure if it is the slowness of the machine or the fact that there
 >  > such little free space on the Hard drive that machine is slowing because 
 >  > doing a virtual memory thing on the hard drive?  Does Linux use a virtual
 >  > memory thing like Windows and the MAC OS?
 > 
 > Yes, try running (root again):
 > 
 >      sfdisk -l /dev/hda
 > 
 > and you should see how the drive was sliced.  You will almost certainly
 > see one or more partitions labeled as "Linux swap".  These are the areas
 > used by the kernel for demand-paged virtual memory.  If you have no
 > objection, I'd like to seee the output of this, just to know how the disk
 > is sliced.  By the way:
 > 
 >      cat /proc/meminfo
 > 
 > to see how much memory (real and virtual) you've got, and how it's being
 > used at any moment.
 > 
 >  > Anyway...I guess I have a lot to learn, but it looks pretty cool and ther
 >  > lots of resources.
 > 
 > Enjoy.  Ask if you have a question.
 > 
This is what I got, at least one command works. :)
[mark@localhost mark]$ hdparm -i /dev/hda
bash: hdparm: command not found
[mark@localhost mark]$ hdparm -t /dev/hda
bash: hdparm: command not found
[mark@localhost mark]$ cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal:        94180 kB
MemFree:          1664 kB
Buffers:          6456 kB
Cached:          38588 kB
SwapCached:      16008 kB
Active:          67976 kB
Inactive:        10140 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:        94180 kB
LowFree:          1664 kB
SwapTotal:      338648 kB
SwapFree:       273784 kB
Dirty:              76 kB
Writeback:           0 kB
Mapped:          54636 kB
Slab:            10848 kB
Committed_AS:   102288 kB
PageTables:       1232 kB
VmallocTotal:   933880 kB
VmallocUsed:      3484 kB
VmallocChunk:   929292 kB
[mark@localhost mark]$

And i am having better luck tonighty with COPY and Paste and running the SHell
- Konsole


STAPLES Had a Maxtor 7200 RPM ATA133 250Gig HD for $129, maybe i should pick
one up for this LINUX machine, of couse the old PII probably can't handle the
drive.

Thanks again and any pointers are appreciated.
73 mark

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