Subj : Slimmed down Debian To : Ky Moffet From : Barry Martin Date : Sun Sep 15 2019 10:56:00 Hi Ky! > KM> whenever anything used that address range, it crashed. Locked out > KM> that range, never crashed again (and that 286 routinely had > KM> uptimes in excess of two years). > I'm impressed! :) The longest continuous run-time I've had is just > under ten months. KM> I've been ruined... Take a shower and you'll feel better. :) KM> --Wedgie, 286, DOS, 2 years twice, 1 year once, in daily use. No KM> crashes; had to do occasional low-level format on MFM hard disk. KM> --Gremlin, P3, first WinME (2yrs) then XP (2.5 yrs 3 times, KM> constrained by power outages beyond UPS's capacity) KM> --Dink, P3 (3rd incarnation), Win98, 5 months (did not have KM> rollover timer bug) KM> --Paladin III, P4, XP, 8 months? KM> --Bullet, quad-core, XP64, 10 mos constrained by power outage KM> beyond the UPS's capacity; doesn't leak resources or get goofed KM> up at all, so absent power outages, would probably run KM> indefinitely. --Silver, quad-core, XP, 8 months; have to restart KM> every few months because of browsers garbaging up RAM. KM> So I think anything less than a few months is embarrassing. :D 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. > As for the address range, yes, if the chip is bad or > the connection to the chip is faulty the effect is the same: doesn't > work. KM> Yep, didn't really matter because not worth replacing either way. Yup: some of the older machines here have been cleaned and stripped of parts because too slow for what I need to have done. Umm, add a "and then set out for recycling" somewhere in there. Fun to play with, but up to a point. "New" system intended for the TV Room in the basement has a newer motherboard in an old case, and reusing the old PSU (which was updated from what was in there originally). > 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. > quite work the same as a real machine, or at least in my extremely > limited experience: overall a slight sluggishness. May be something to > do with me not knowing how to configure fully properly. KM> Will always be slower than the real thing, given it's got at KM> least one extra layer between it and the hardware... am told it KM> really helps to give your VM'd OS plenty of RAM. Yes, I need to look into that more. Pretty much only the Virtual XP for the BBS and X10 (home automation) stuff and eventually those are to be switched to the Ubuntu portion just for convenience. Do have a Virtual Linux machine for 'experimenting': do I like ? > KM> Yeah. I did an actual count via some monitor util, and it was > KM> something like 105 services loaded for Ubuntu, vs 25 for Mint. > KM> Well, no wonder Mint is that much faster! > Only a quarter as many! Of course that doesn't account for how long it > takes to load, but just the three-quarters as many would still speed > things up. KM> I hunted up the monitor util because Mint's startup and KM> especially shutdown were noticeably faster, as in I didn't even KM> start tapping my foot. :) No music to keep the beat to?! 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? > > command that may have been useful: "system-analyze blame". Lists the > > time it takes to load a boot process from longest to quickest. > KM> Oh, that's interesting... It's a systemd command, > KM> and PCLinuxOS doesn't use systemd. (I suppose you've heard the > KM> giant debate about systemd vs how-we've-always-done-it. I have no > KM> religion either way, but am annoyed by binary logs.) But most > KM> distros do use systemd, so useful to know. 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! > I'm sort of going the 'semi-technical hobbyist' route: I'll let the > programmers and developers creating the stuff figure out the details on > "what is best" as I certainly don't have the education. They're (the > programmers and developers) aren't always right but I don't know how to > build so going with their advisements. ..Doesn't mean I won't try > something! 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 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> The old WDs are pretty fast -- almost as fast as the slower SSDs. > KM> Seagates, tho.. slugs. > It seems just about all of the refurbished systems I've purchased and > lately tearing apart have Seagate hard drives. I've been purchasing KM> Yeah, I think what happens is Seagate and WD both try to undercut KM> one another with the OEMs, so the OEMs play 'em against one KM> another. The practical effect being some years you see Seagates, KM> other years WDs. I'd rather see WDs, tho. :) 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 Seagate, though I'm purchasing one or maybe two at a time, not thousands if not tens or hundrdeds of thousands at a time where a ten dollar difference adds up real fast! And I don't have stockholders yelling at my financial department! > 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. > As for hard drive speed vs. slow SSD, my limited experience still has > SSDs as sooo much faster: HDD would take close to two minutes while the > SSD is taking 20-30 seconds. A slightly uneven playing field: part of KM> Yeah... but compare a laptop HD, it's a lot closer to the SSD. OK. ...Lenovo T61 here. > the reason for the storage upgrade was to upgrade the OS, so also went > from Ubuntu 16.04 to 18.04, but I haven't read where Bionic Beaver is > significantly faster. (Now if 19.04 was slower maybe nickname it > 'Catatonic Cat'?!) KM> Haha... I very much doubt it'll be faster. BTW "Present Arms" KM> (forget what he calls his channel) is doing a memory comparison KM> among the desktops which should be interesting. He did a partial KM> but is re-doing it more complete. KM> https://www.youtube.com/user/presentarms KM> Oh, well, that was obvious. :) 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! > > tests for something that isn't there, so I get an message essentially > > meaning "error loading because it's not there". A little > KM> Seen a few of those. Also something like "Error loading error". > Nothing like having a problem because there are no problems! KM> As I was going up the stair, KM> I met a man who wasn't there. KM> He wasn't there again today. KM> I wish, I wish he'd stay away!! Virtual time-shifting! > I also had a problem with "IOMMU" - Input Output Memory Management Unit > - which to me implies it does something different but if it was set to > default (off I think - forgotten) during the OS installation (from DVD) > the USB 2.0 ports were killed. Mouse doesn't function, keyboard doesn't > function - thanks! Did accidentally find USB 3.0 was working so used KM> Input Output... that might be a clue :D Somewhat! > them. LIS in an earlier thread on the build of the first computer using > an UEFI motherboard things were overly complicated by me not knowing > about UEFI, a bad RAM stick, and multiple bad installation attempts > until I found the bad RAM and learned about what switches to flip during > installation. (It's not complicated, just not simple.) KM> That sounds like simply start over :) Prior to that point and when I discovered the RAM problem I did. Amazing how easily the installation went with good RAM and knowing what tweak to set in the BIOS! > As for altering SWAP size, etc., in this instance no way to alter: > overlays a boot partition, maybe a swap, a partition for the utility and > the rest is for the data. KM> Some people are starting to run with no linux swap -- after all KM> why do we need swap on modern systems with piles of RAM? 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. > 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). > 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. > .I'm sort of using hybrid storage here: converting over to SSD, at KM> One of the "new" laptops has a hybrid HD -- 32GB flash RAM and KM> 1TB spinning rust. Certainly is fast... Would be! > least for the boot drive. Any machine which is being used for a lot of > data also has hard drive -- old information where SSDs failed so a KM> They were less than stellar for a few years (well, unless KM> compared to a Maxtor, then SSDs looked great) tho have greatly KM> improved, but there are still a LOT of DOAs and grey market (no KM> warranty unless shipped to Europe) or not-precisely-new, which is KM> why I buy SSDs at Best Buy, where I can return locally if need KM> be. Think I have a full height Maxtor around here, or maybe finally put it out for electronics recyling -- less than a GB?? I have thumbdrives larger! And knock on wood no problems with SSDs. Thumbdrives yes, but only a specific brand and oddly a specific colour combination ==> blue ones were fine but the gold version had problems from the start. And I'm talking about the colour of the case, not a line version. > 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 int he process? > > 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! > KM> Decided to swap slow Seagate for faster SSD. Hung SSD off USB > KM> port using an adapter gadget. Used Partition Wizard Free (they > KM> used to offer a bootable ISO version) to clone system to SSD. On > KM> a whim, rebooted and selected USB as boot device. And up came > KM> Win7... slowly since via USB, but it ran fine! > Woo-hoo!! :) As long as you don't have to boot it too often that slow > boot should be acceptable. Now to see about using the SSD and a faster > communications channel! KM> Yep! And now wondering if it would work with other OSs.. a HD on KM> USB is not the same as a flash drive on USB, but an SSD is small KM> and light enough to shirt-pocket, so... an alternative to KM> VM'ing?? Quite possibly! Thinking there will be some experimenting going on! > > Waiting until get snow-bound and so no interuptions?! > KM> Hahaha then I'll be shoveling snow... probably do it in the brief > KM> respite between summer yard and garden and working on rental > KM> house (painting is finally done) and the extra work of moving > KM> snow around. > 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> If you attended their seminars, they gave you copies of Netware. > KM> I know I have 5.0 and 5.5 but don't recall if they also sent out > KM> 6.0 which IIRC was when they switched to SuSE. > Perhaps https://download.novell.com/Download?buildid=dpIR3H1ymhk~ KM> Huh, thanks, didn't realise that was there. From 2007, I wonder KM> if they actually expect anyone to still buy it after 90 days?? They hope so! ¯ ® ¯ Barry_Martin_3@ ® ¯ @Q.COM ® ¯ ® .... Headline: Larger Kangaroos Leap Farther, Researchers Find --- 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) .