Subj : Re: Slimmed down Debian To : Barry Martin From : Ky Moffet Date : Fri Sep 13 2019 01:03:00 BARRY MARTIN wrote: > Hi Ky! > KM> Might have been a side effect of that system having some bad RAM > KM> that was locked out by guessing the address until it stopped > KM> crashing. > > No necessarily bad, just not fully compatible. My 486 had some RAM No, this was bad; it had all identical RAM (chips on board, not SIMMs), tho it tested okay. Might have been a trace on the motherboard rather than the chip, but the effect was the same -- whenever anything used that address range, it crashed. Locked out that range, never crashed again (and that 286 routinely had uptimes in excess of two years). > which worked-but-didn't. Tested fine; swapped with the guy who built > the system for me and he never had any problems. Seen that... then again, it might be bad for real and one machine has more tolerance for errors. I think that's what happened with Silver (quad core that's presently the everyday) -- was gifted some RAM marked "bad". Worked fine far as I could tell, for a long time. Eventually developed a habit of every time RAM usage climbed above 2GB, that application crashed. (Usually meaning the browser.) Swapped out RAM, no more crashes. In the Closet is a really crappy Amptron board, P4 2.8GHz so not nearly as ancient as it cold be, but has some weird habits re RAM. Supposed to take up to 2GB as two sticks. In reality, I've only gotten it to accept a 512mb and a 256mb, and then only if they're different speeds. (Plug in random sticks til it finally agrees to boot. Go through entire pile before finding a couple it likes.) Not like any of it is high-value so if that's what it wants... would make a nice fast platform for that very rare need for Win9x, but is otherwise useless. > > If I were to troubleshoot Mint being based on Ubuntu would be a starting > > point. As for bullet- an bombproof, should be, but nothing is. > KM> You'd think. But Mint is basically Ubuntu Lite -- only loads > KM> about 25% as much Stuff. (And runs WAY faster on the same > KM> hardware. Mint will run perfectly fine on a PC where Ubuntu won't > KM> even load.) So the problem might actually have been something > KM> that was omitted. Except I vaguely recall hearing that Ubuntu 17 > KM> had the same problem, except with a different trigger. Which > KM> still doesn't eliminate "something omitted". > > The "something omitted" seems to make sense, especially with the loads > faster (because some stuff isn't being loaded!). FWIW came across a Yeah. I did an actual count via some monitor util, and it was something like 105 services loaded for Ubuntu, vs 25 for Mint. Well, no wonder Mint is that much faster! > command that may have been useful: "system-analyze blame". Lists the > time it takes to load a boot process from longest to quickest. Oh, that's interesting... It's a systemd command, and PCLinuxOS doesn't use systemd. (I suppose you've heard the giant debate about systemd vs how-we've-always-done-it. I have no religion either way, but am annoyed by binary logs.) But most distros do use systemd, so useful to know. And it has many functions: https://www.tecmint.com/systemd-analyze-monitor-linux-bootup-performance/ Oh, a much handier list of some of the same free books it links to: https://www.prophethacker.com/2016/09/10-useful-free-linux-ebooks.html > KM> Of course if you want Ubuntu Really Lite and Really Fast, there's > KM> Puppy, which is based on U. but is only about 10% as big. > > I've been cheating and pulling some of the old hard drives out, > replacing them with SSDs. One had a 20 GB HDD in it! Actually the hard > drive was fine, just took forever to load -- good thing was 7200 RPM and > not 5400! The old WDs are pretty fast -- almost as fast as the slower SSDs. Seagates, tho.. slugs. > KM> That, BTW, was one of my ongoing gripes with older linux: why on > KM> earth does the average user need to load every daemon every > KM> written? Apache webserver, running for no reason on a desktop > KM> machine, WTF?? No wonder performance was so awful. Most of 'em > KM> seem to have stopped loading that sort of stuff, having finally > KM> noticed that server and desktop are not contiguous functions. > > Um, just in case? No, no reason to load something if it isn't being > used. LIS in another message, I've seen 'error messages' because it > tests for something that isn't there, so I get an message essentially > meaning "error loading because it's not there". A little Seen a few of those. Also something like "Error loading error". > sloppy but suppose has to be tested for that piece of hardware at boot. > (Thinking of Bluetooth, which I don't have on this machine.) Yeah, see, there's the problem with amateur OSs... usually testing is "what do you mean, it nuked your system? You must have messed up." > Pretty much here too. My Big Issue when building the last two large > machines here was not being familiar with UEFI, IOMMI, and a bad RAM Not familiar with UEFI myself. Turn it on, turn it off. I know that much. :) > Yes. I have run into the hard drive size where internal drives have a > maximum limit but that external drives can be a heck of a lot larger. Because the external drive does its own translation. > And not sure if this is accurate but the Raspberry Pi 3 takes > significantly longer to start up with a large SD card. IIRC 8- and > 16-GB cards load in a few seconds but a 64 GB card takes a couple of > minutes. Dunno what you're running on it, but with Winders... remember to limit the swapfile to something like 2GB, because otherwise it'll be the same size as RAM, which is stupid if you have more than 2GB of RAM. And slow to write. Linux swap is getting recommended downsized too, after all the idea is to use fast RAM, not slow HD! Clever trix dept: Use an SSD for the OS, and an SD card for swap. Even cleverer trix: use a RAMdisk for swap, for stupid programs that won't run if they don't see a swapfile. (*cough*photoshop*cough) Since my "new" Win7 box has 32GB, why not? something needs to use all that RAM!! > KM> It has 8 3TB HDs. It had 4 480GB SSDs, which got filched to > KM> upgrade other stuff. Did I mention how I accidentally made a USB > KM> bootable Win7?? :) > > Not yet! Decided to swap slow Seagate for faster SSD. Hung SSD off USB port using an adapter gadget. Used Partition Wizard Free (they used to offer a bootable ISO version) to clone system to SSD. On a whim, rebooted and selected USB as boot device. And up came Win7... slowly since via USB, but it ran fine! > KM> Supported OSs, handy in a Dell notice today: > KM> PowerEdge R510 > KM> Operating System: > KM> Novell SuSE Linux ES 11, > KM> Windows Server 2008 x64, > KM> Windows Server 2012, > KM> Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, > KM> Windows Server 2012 R2, > KM> Windows Server 2008 x86, > KM> Windows Server 2003 x64, > KM> Suse Linux ES 10 > KM> It can also run ESXi (Bare Metal Hypervisor, VMware). There > KM> exists a free version which I've fetched but haven't looked at > KM> yet. > > Waiting until get snow-bound and so no interuptions?! Hahaha then I'll be shoveling snow... probably do it in the brief respite between summer yard and garden and working on rental house (painting is finally done) and the extra work of moving snow around. > KM> I haven't seen a linux server edition since Novell switched to > KM> SuSE some 15 years ago (that was also their last seminar), so > KM> pretty clueless there! Its big selling point was really good > KM> remote management. > > And IIRC you are able to get that, for a year or two anyway. If you attended their seminars, they gave you copies of Netware. I know I have 5.0 and 5.5 but don't recall if they also sent out 6.0 which IIRC was when they switched to SuSE. þ RNET 2.10U: ILink: Techware BBS þ Hollywood, Ca þ www.techware2k.com --- QScan/PCB v1.20a / 01-0462 * Origin: ILink: CFBBS | cfbbs.no-ip.com | 856-933-7096 (454:1/1) .