Subj : Slimmed down Debian To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Sun Jun 07 2020 10:13:00 Hi Ky! KM> Ancient history comes back to haunt you. :D I sometimes interpret that as if I wait long enough the answer to my question will come! > Have you noticed it seems like the newer the machine the shorter the > time it runs? 286: two years. Something-or-other 4-core: 3/4 year > (rounded and to keep the time unit consistent. KM> Not mine! Bullet (quadcore) *never* needs a restart, and only KM> happens when the power is out beyond the UPS's capacity. And the KM> stack of Dells don't get restarted enough to notice, either. (Tho KM> what's with all the kernel updates this year? Seems like it's one KM> every day!) That wasn't me! I hadn't made the correlation of newer expiring sooner. And hopefully my 8-core last longer than barely half a year! ...Maybe they had better heatsinks and fans earlier! Thinking of the "AMD approved" heatsink/fan combo which kept the FX-8320 processor sufficiently cool as long as it didn't do much work. And knock-on-wood there have been power glitches but no power outages so far this year, "Partial-house" generator would be nice (I don't need to have everything running per normal when the power fails); might not be budgetable again this year as have to have the roof replaced (hail damage and the insurance only paying a portion, though more than thought they would), plus the deck and porch needs replacing. As for power-up times, this one has been running for 17+ days since the last reboot (probably a major update), the computer running the MythTV Backend probably closer to a couple of months. Not sure about the 'constant' kernel updates as I have LivePatch turned on. ...Last I knew LivePatch won't work with a 32-bit system, though sloppy advisement as just indicates something wrong with the log-in to Ubuntu1 instead of the real reason. > > Could create a virtual machine on your mega-toy you were gifted -- the > > one with the three multi-terabyte hard drives. Unfortunately VMs don't > KM> Yeah, that's why I went ahead and maxed RAM on the i7... not like > KM> Win7 needs 32GB, but thinking I should resurrect all the old > KM> systems in VMs. > Yes, I'd max out the RAM in that instance also -- did here with this one > even though right now only 6 GB of the 32 GB being used. XP VM only > using 1.9 GB out of 3.6 GB. KM> I give XP 4GB and other VMs 8GB, seems like since I've got it and KM> the base OS doesn't need it, I might as well use it for KM> something. Does make a considerable difference in performance... KM> can't tell this XP from the real thing. I'll have to play around later. Did check and I am currently running 4096 MB (so 4 GB) memory for this XP Virtual Machine. I do recall increasing to that amount definitely improved the response. Seems moreI have an issue with video sluggishness: Video Memory at 20 MB currently, which seems horrendously tiny but off-hand don't recall the reasoning. Use the XP portion only for BBSing, so text and it seems to keeo up . The only video issue is if move a window around (in XP) and some juttering: move-stop-move-stop-move-stop.... As I don't watch any videos on the XP VM probably no need to alter, though may be worthwhile to know for the Linux test VM. > LIS in other messages, I've sort of restricted myself to Ubuntu because > Mythbuntu (MythTV with the stand-alone OS) was based on Ubuntu and less > confusing for me to deal with one Operating System (though Raspbian on > the Raspberry Pi's is fun!). I could probably install a different Linux > OS in some of the old machines I have/had here -- just what for? KM> I sometimes ask myself that. Yeah, some are just for fun. I KM> mean, I have WinXP, why do I need ReactOS? Because it's there! Sounds like a worthwhile reason to me! I'll admit to trying to keep things the same aorund here just because it's easier and less confusing, plus I have no real need to run separate systems. Well, almost did because 'needed' XP for the BBS and X10 (home automation) but those could have been converted to a Linux utility. > KM> Then again, I might install Mageia as an alternate, and it uses > KM> systemd. > Will you call that machine "Milk"? Then you could have Milk of Mageia! KM> LOL! Sounds like a plan. :D KM> Tho I have a (black) cat called Milk (Do you want Milk? do you KM> want Milk2?) and they might get confused. I'd probably name the machine something else. Was sort of like when I had Honey (RIP) - my Lhasa Apso I adopted: did some hypenated commands so she (hopefully) wouldn't get confused: "you want to go outside- bathroom?", hopefully coupling the 'outside' concept of "do you want to go outside" to play, go for a walk, etc., and not confuse with one of saying we had to go to the bathroom. ....So "Mageia"..... Nothing coming even semi-clever coming to mind. > KM> I can see both sides of the argument. But with all the complaints > KM> about systemd, still no one has produced a viable fork. There's a > KM> video, "The Tragedy of systemd" that's worth a look. > May have to take a look, though I'd probably still not going to do much > about it as I don't know enough to do my own change. (Tangent: like I'd KM> Yeah, it's more a matter of knowing what other people are griping KM> about. KM> From userland, I don't really care so long as it works, and KM> doesn't annoy me with lagging, crashes, or too many obvious KM> vulnerabilities. Which is more my side of the coin. I don't know, so I have to go with what others offer. Ubuntu was selected out of the myriad of Linux offerings because MythTV used it. And sort of based on my "let's not get too mixed up" philosophy with MythTV being based on Ubuntu it sort of made sense to learn or at least be more familiar with Ubuntu to troubleshoot MythTV. > been a perfect candidate for an electric car when I needed to buy the > current replacement years ago: local driving, so no need to be concerned > about charging sites. Big block to purchase was the cost.) KM> I live where the power goes out in bad weather. I like gas KM> engines. Good point! :) The power has been more and more reliable here over the years -- main issue was the squirrels or birds getting too curious about the transformer on the pole in the back yard: peck-peck-BOOM! They eventually replaced the transformer as getting near end-of-life due to the excessive shorts -- the supervisor said something like eleven more times and the transformer would have to be replaced. He asked if wanted to have it replaced now -- Memorial Day, which was the beginning of summer and we immediately said yes as preferred a long replacement outage while it was cool as opposed to delaying and needing it done on a 100ø summer day or during a snowstorm. As for powering a generator, the little ones tend to put out square waves which will ruin electronics and some electrical. The bigger gas- powered ones have the disadvantage of needing to be refilled, and so shut down and cooled down so any spilt gas doesn't ignite. And int he middle of a rainstorm or snowstorm going to be a little grumbling about that. So probably would go with a natural gas powered generator as have NG here, plus at one time there was a NG air conditioner cooling the house (!) -- previous owner of the house owned several gas stations and one had to be demolished to make room for something -- I think the building of the second I-74 Bridge, not to be confused with the new bridges being built currently, which caused the demolishment of the replacement gas station. Anyway, makes sense here to have a NG generator; now to have the necessary 'spare' money...... > Right. I'm pleased when I can get a Western Digital in a refurbished > system (though lately not needing systems as reusing hardware and cases > and just updating motherboards). As for buying, I'll buy a WD over KM> Yeah, I do a lot of recycling... I have a handful of PCIe KM> vidcards, since I don't do modern games, why do I care how much KM> RAM or GPU power they have so long as it's "enough" and isn't a KM> drag on the system? So Fireball got one that's probably 12 years KM> old, but works fine for the purpose, and it's paid for ($15 off KM> ebay). Around $1.25 per year -- not bad! My systems have had to 'go up' because of MythTV usage -- MythTV not being the hog but the high definition playback is. Standard definition I could probably get by with a 486 (guessing) but why? > > Western Digital since my XT days because of some super-good customer > > service they gave me when I was upgrading. > KM> That, and that when they plan to die, they usually give plenty of > KM> notice. > Good, though I can't recall having one die. Decades ago did come home > to find a hard drive which decided to become a 60 or maybe 80 GB one > (from 250 or 500 GB) but don't recall the brand. Thinking not Western > Digital as that would have stiffled my preference. KM> That kind of bug typically comes from the system BIOS. They don't KM> actually know over 64gb (or sometimes 137gb), but will pretend KM> they do until data exceeds that boundary. In this instance definately was the hard drive: left for work one morning and the system was fine; came home and -- what happened?! Eventually pulled the hard drive and another system interpreted it as the smaller size. > KM> Just for the record, my PCLOS/KDE (which has every K-app known to > KM> man installed, and various other crap) uses 690mb at startup, or > KM> 730mb after it's been busy a while. About 100mb of that is > KM> probably the nVidia driver and similar junk; default naked > KM> install uses about 550mb. > Know I know what to do with my 512 MB and 1 GB sticks! KM> Someone gift me seven 1GB sticks of DDR3, but the old slow stuff KM> nothing newer than the very earliest DDR3 systems can use. I have KM> no idea why seven, either... that's just weird. They'd given me a KM> vidcard and this was in there too. Here's a sucker, they'll take KM> it off my hands! :D Have read where some businesses' software can't be upgraded to something more current just because it doesn't exist so they have to stick with antique hardware to run the software. As for you seven 1GB sticks, odd, but semi-sorta makes sense: I have an old Lenovo system with came with three 1 GB sticks -- four slots and the fourth slot was empty. Lenovo said the system could use up to 8 GB (4x 2GB), so eventually upgraded -- and the system wouldn't boot. Fiddle- fiddle. Eventually just let it run with 2+2+1+1 (6 GB) as didn't seem to like a 2GB stick in the 'upper' slots. > True, though like you said some of the programmes check to see Swap is > available, though seems like they check for a Swap partition is present > but not necessarily the size of the partition. KM> Some do, some don't. Photoshop is particularly stupid; it insists KM> on a swapfile, but doesn't check if it's big enough before trying KM> to use it. Weird. Would guess a section of old code they haven't figured how to get around. > > As for the current Ubuntu machines, this one has 32 GB of RAM and 32 GB > > of Swap -- I don't recall who set the swap size, probably the > > installation disk. I haven't seen this machine use more than 7 GB of > KM> So that's pretty much wasted swap space. > Yup. OTOH I'm not too concerned as have only used 12% of the hard drive > (298 GiB of 2.7TiB). KM> Haha... I think PCLOS defaults to a 4GB swap. I've never seen it KM> use any, even on the 8GB system. I've spot checked and there have been times when Swap has something in it though not required by human thinking. I'd guess a pending update has been written there: I have seen something like 'ureadahead will be updated at the next boot'. Right now: Memory: 7.4 GiB (23.7%) of 31.3 GiB Swap: 163.2 MiB (0.5%) of 32.0 GiB > > Same for the other system I'm using as the MythTV Backend: 'only' 16 GB > > of RAM in it, think uses not quite half (5 GB?). IIRC that system > > installed a 2 GB Swap. > KM> Which seems more rational. > Yes. Not sure why this system has such a huge Swap partition. KM> Stupid installer, that's why. Come to think of it, that's why KM> Mint would not install on some smallish HD -- it took some for KM> root and some for swap and there was none left. Didn't ask, just KM> did. Mint is basically Ubuntu Lite, so... Oops! ...I sort of stopped using smaller hard drives on the various MythTV Frontends as they took a relatively long time to boot. > > little gun-shy. There are some machines now with just a SSD. All have > KM> Yeah, the "new" i7 boxen are eating up the surplus SSDs :) Made > KM> a big difference with Win7, which seems to have a lot of lag > KM> during disk reads compared to XP and Vista. > Perhaps doing verification processes? "Did I read this corrently?" "Did > I write this correctly?" Verifications being done before going on to > the next step in the process? KM> Nope, just doing I/O stupidly, I think. Microsoft: where we write a new operating system, test, release, then find it doesn't work right so we create a new OS. Profits are great!! > > Sounds a bit like some of the But Firsts around here! > KM> I have way too many of these But Firsts laying around... today's > KM> was Mow the Durn Lawn. > You forgot "Before It Turns To Hay"! KM> Too late! Tho I did finally get Jurassic Weedpark under control.. KM> mostly... The weather here has been ideal for growing grass: the weather guy mentioned some yards needing to be mowed three times in one week! ¯ ® ¯ Barry_Martin_3@ ® ¯ @Q.COM ® ¯ ® .... It's pretty cool how the Chinese made a language entirely out of tattoos --- MultiMail/Win32 v0.47 þ wcECHO 4.2 ÷ ILink: The Safe BBS þ Bettendorf, IA --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .