[Eug-lug] This week's meeting - back to basics (and components)

[Linux Rocks!]

T. Joseph CARTER [knghtbrd at bluecherry.net] wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2005 at 05:37:04PM -0800, Linux Rocks! wrote:
> > So, Meeting Tonite... 
> > 
> > Looks like Joseph will be demonstrating his oldworld skills on reletively new 
> > computer gear (brand new last year technology).
> 
> Results of that:
> 
> Jamie's cardboard-covered pool table is an almost flat surface to work on,
> but the lighting was inefficient for Joseph's eyes.  Great thanks is owed
> to Mike O for his expertise--he was able to accomplish in a few minutes a
> series of tasks which would have taken me at least an hour's frustration.
> 
> In the end, we got the box together with an evil OS, Ubuntu, space for
> another Linux with shared /home, and a yet-unformatted space I intend to
> put FreeBSD on.
> 
> 
> I have some very positive things and some very negative things to say
> about the ASUS Terminator barebones case, but have to be at an elementary
> school in about 8 hours, so will not say them now.
> 
> My DVD reader was not working right.  We left Jamie dismantling it to try
> and resurrect the drive by cleaning the crap out of it.  (It's old.)  I
> hope to hear that he got it working next week, since it was a faithful
> drive for many years.

heh.. I got I'll see if I can have  it working by next meeting :)

> 
> Claimed a GF2 (sorry again Neil!) because X11 didn't like my SiS video and
> I couldn't be bothered to make it work since I had the AGP slot.
I have 2 computers with SIS video, they are kind of crappy video
compared to todays 3d cards, but mine did work... 

> 
> 
> > I have Ubunto CD's (the live cd, and the 2 install cd for i386), I dont have 
> > my knoppix or gentoo cd's (left them at a friends...). I have slack 10 
> > install cd's (they both are bootable). 
> 
> I took one of these and am using it now.  I must admit that I was greatly
> pleased to change the DPI setting in the Gnome registry to 130 DPI and
> find that suddenly all of Ubuntu's live CD was readable by a Joseph at
> high resolution.  Now there is just that the Gnome applications for this
> machine's intended purpose are horrid next to the equivalent bits of KDE.
> ;)

We did have a visit from Ed, he had a new packet of ubuntu cds :)

Larry Graciously dontated a router for the livingroom, so now we can
have wired computers...

Larry and I picked up (gotta clean up the pizza ghosts from previous
meetings!) the place a bit.

MrO made a magical aprearance... he was soo helpful, he helped Joseph
build his new computer, and helped me build a new kernel. He also turned
me on to swaret (a slackware package tool). I have to read up on it, it
looks pretty handy.

During the meeting we did compile a new kernel, but because I have a
stupid reiserfs, I had trouble using it, as 2.6 kernels can only seem to
boot to ext partitions nativly. I built an initrd with the reiserfs, but
it wouldnt boot. I built a new kernel with reiser in the kernel (after
compiling reiserfs as a module, to make an initrd with... Anyway, I have
reiserfs support in my initrd, and in my kernel, and now it boots.
reiserfs can be a pain in the ass if its your boot partition.

So, anyway, after the meeting I was able to get my raid array up. 

Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1            160074768 125387616  34687152  79% /
/dev/md/0            392047076     32828 372099400   1% /mnt/raid

See! pretty cool huh. 
So, I still have issue, it functions, but not great. 

doing hdparm -tT on my drives, I find this:
Note:

/dev/hda:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   3124 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1561.46 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  170 MB in  3.03 seconds =  56.13 MB/sec

/dev/hde:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   3112 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1556.24 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  136 MB in  3.03 seconds =  44.95 MB/sec


/dev/md0:
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   3084 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1540.69 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  150 MB in  3.01 seconds =  49.91 MB/sec

My drives: Maxtor, 8M cache, ata133. hda is 160gb, hde and hdg are 200gb

The 200 gb disks are on a sil 680 pci ide raid contoler. 
the 160 is on the onboard IXP150 ide controller.

from my basic testing with hdparm, my conclusion is that my secondary
storage (hard disks...) is fastest with just a regular ide disk on the
primary controller (about 57M/sec). I figured I would get closer to
100M/sec on the raid, but im actually getting less performance on it,
than the regular ide.

The raid setup is raid0, stripped array (performace).

I may pull the dvd off the secondary contrller, and try the raid on that
controller, but it will mean 2 drives on one cable/contrller... 

Still looking for my performace....

Jamie

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