man8user

I suspect it is the Gigabyte BIOS. Here are some links: Gigabyte HPA issues: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4638.0 GA-EP45-UD3R BIOS: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=9433.0 The Pg-51 of the printed mobo booklet shows "Dual BIOS Recovery Source" that defaults to HPA. However, the BIOS would not even provide me that option on next bootup. I went to Gigabyte site to check out what other BIOS revs they made since Dec 2008. I have rev F4. Since then they made 8 more revs ending at F12 dated Jan 2010 and none of these have anything to do with HPA -- at least from their gist of the revs. I guess I have to digest the indignity of letting an external piece of software gaining control of the PC and not letting me have that control back when I want it. Sounds like windoze to me! Next time when I upgrade any of the PCs at home I would select a mobo vendor more carefully. Thanks to tux99 and scarecrow for their input.

Merry X-mas. Had some time today to arrange my PC a bit and I discovered that somehow all 4 of my SATA hard drives got "infected" with HPA. Looking for the source of it, I traced back their purchase from NewEgg about 12-18 months back. Two of them had been exposed to WinXP earlier and so I do not know. But the other 2 had never had any contact with Windoze and they were under Mandriva 2010.0. Installing Mandriva would not put an HPA I believe. Or, would it? I emptied 2 500 GB Seagate ST3500320AS for preparation for MDADM. One had a junk Windoze partition with HPA and I nuked it. The other had an XFS file system with all the usable area and nothing else. That's when I discovered the HPA nightmare. These drives are /dev/sda and /dev/sdb in my setup. On bootup, the "dmesg" is showing HPA as 976,771,055 / 976,773,168 for both of them. The "hdparm -N" is also showing the same information. So, I issued "hdparm -N p976773168 /dev/sda" and then for /dev/sdb and both reported successful for permanent HPA removal. That did not last very long because the very next reboot with power cycle reverted them back to their original HPA 976,771,055 / 976,773,168! Perplexed, I went into Mandriva Control Center and then to "Change Disk Partition" section. These two 500GB disks are showing as 465 GB disks which is correct assuming the HPA is still intact (976,771,055 * 512 is 500.106,780,160 and then dividing by 1024*1024*1024 gets the 465GB number). So, I would appreciate any input on who is reverting back the HPA and with the same HPA size on both disks every time! Thank you. My mobo: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R with Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 at 4Ghz. This is 2 years old. There is no other BIOS related software running. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

Sorry for late response. I frankly do not understand quite well the layering you described. In my PC if I try to find packages I get something like this: [rcomix@localhost ~]$ man cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrkit cdrkit-isotools-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-icedax-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 cdrkit-genisoimage-1.1.9-1mdv2009.1 [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdrtools [rcomix@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cdtools Since "cdrkit" is a name that shows up at package level, I can remove the RPMs with that name. Is that what you suggest? If I do that, it looks it would also remove the "wodim" program by Joerg Schilling! By the way, the wodim and cdrecord are the same program... [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ which cdrecord /usr/bin/cdrecord [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ which wodim /usr/bin/wodim [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ ls -alt /usr/bin/cdrecord lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 26 2009-06-13 15:41 /usr/bin/cdrecord -> /etc/alternatives/cdrecord* [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ ls -alt /etc/alternatives/cdrecord lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 2009-06-13 15:41 /etc/alternatives/cdrecord -> /usr/bin/wodim* [rcomix@localhost ~]$ On a second thought, I think you meant getting down to command line operations to burn CD/DVD. If wodim is the little wonder that does it all, then all the programs like Brasero, K3B, GnomeBaker, etc. are just providing a GUI and converting user requests into wodim commands. Wish I could keep Gnome and use K3B at the same time. K3B always worked for me in the past from Suse and RedHat days. On Windoze I prefer the InfraRecorder to anything else. So, how about getting into WINE environment to burn Cd/DVD and then back to Linux for all other stuff? I mean, how much is the learning curve for WINE? Never needed that before. My PC is a superfast beast now. So, WINE overheads are ignorable. Regards.

The Brasero version I have is 2.26.1. There is a CD and a DVD writer in my PC. Tried burning an Audio CD in DVD Writer and it starts moving the slider in the small window that appears after I hit "Burn". However even after 5 minutes that window does not change and there is no LED activity on the DVD writer. Same result with CD writer. It did burn a Data CD just fine. I tried both ways: inserting a blank CD-R and auto-starting Brasero by that chain of events and also by manually starting Brasero and then ignoring the "Blank CD Notification". Brasero does show the two writable devices for CD when I hit burn. In the interim, came across "GnomeBaker CD/DVD Writer 0.6.4" that is a bit unstable but works. You just have to forget adding multiple files at a time. Add one at a time by drag and drop and it works. Add in any other way or with your selection having multiple files, it invariably locks up or crashes. It's file ordering option works pretty good too. Thanks.

Thanks for the details. I would rather wait for 2.6.31 kernel to do the tape transfer project instead of jeopardizing what I already have! Kudos to scarecrow for finding the root problem and the solution.

I do not have codec#0. It is codec#2 for me. Here is the info.. [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ l /proc/asound/card0 total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 7 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 ./ dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 ../ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 codec#2 -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 id -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 oss_mixer dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm0c/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm0p/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm1c/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm1p/ dr-xr-xr-x 4 root root 0 2009-06-10 16:59 pcm2c/ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ head /proc/asound/card0/codec#2 Codec: Realtek ALC889A Address: 2 Vendor Id: 0x10ec0885 Subsystem Id: 0x1458a102 Revision Id: 0x100101 No Modem Function Group found Default PCM: rates [0x560]: 44100 48000 96000 192000 bits [0xe]: 16 20 24 formats [0x1]: PCM [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ l /proc/asound total 0 dr-xr-xr-x 6 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 ./ dr-xr-xr-x 7 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 card0/ dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 card1/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 cards -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 devices lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2009-06-10 17:06 HDMI -> card1/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 hwdep lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2009-06-10 17:06 Intel -> card0/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 modules dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 oss/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 pcm dr-xr-xr-x 2 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 seq/ -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 timers -r--r--r-- 1 root root 0 2009-06-10 17:06 version dr-xr-xr-x 154 root root 0 2009-06-10 10:50 ../ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/cards 0 [intel ]: HDA-Intel - HDA Intel HDA Intel at 0xed200000 irq 22 1 [HDMI ]: HDA-Intel - HDA ATI HDMI HDA ATI HDMI at 0xec010000 irq 17 [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/modules 0 snd_hda_intel 1 snd_hda_intel [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ cat /proc/asound/version Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.18a. [rcomix@localhost ~]$ [rcomix@localhost ~]$ Looks like the patch you pointed to will correctly identify the ALC889A and emit KERN_INFO that I can check. Shall wait for your confirmation however. :)

Well, the sound experts suspect that Mandriva sound drivers may not completely support the Realtek ALC889A soundchip. (Ref Bug# 51440). The motherboard is a relatively new one: Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R. And the sad part is that the Line-in works in the same setup with Gigabyte drivers in windoze xp sp2. Thanks.

Thanks scarecrow. I tried your suggestion but MCC's SoundDrake doesn't offer me to use any driver other than snd_hda_intel. The OSS v.4 was not even in my list of applicable drivers (from Advanced menu). After going to Pacho Ramos's page I tried looking for alternate CODEC. Mine is Realtek ALC889A by default and this is not there in the list of alternate CODECs that he linked to. I next verified that the PCI DevId of my sound dev (0x3A3E) is in the list of supported devs in snd_hda_intel source code. What surprised me is that there are at least two versions of this soundcard on ICH10: 3A3E and 3A6E. The 3A6E I guess is Intel's unmodified stuff but the 3A3E is Gigabyte special! Its sub-vendorId is hardcoded to Gigabyte. I may be wrong but it is possible that the behavior between the two can be subtly different. Hopefully the snd_hda_intel can take care of all these. In the end, I submitted a bug report following Mr. Ramos' format. Regards.

Hello, I cannot seem to get past the hurdle of recording via line-in for old cassettes. The 1990's 2-in-1 has headphone out and I connected that to Line-in of the motherboard's Intel HDA port. The Line-out is normal PC speaker which I can hear without problem. When I attempt to record, I can hear what is playing on 2-in-1 via those PC speakers. But nothing gets recorded -- not even a blip. I tried to create some line noise by plugging in and out the audio jack several times while recording but still nothing! There are 2 sound cards in my PC. One is from Gigabyte motherboard and the other from ATI Radeon 34xx PCI Express VGA add-on card. I forced the ATI card with "Unknown" driver during install from my prior experience with 2009.0. So, that ATI card should be doing VGA only, nothing else. Started with Audacity and when it failed I tried with Ardour too without success. Down to comannd line with arecord, aplay, alsamixer, amixer, pavucontrol, etc. but still no success. By the way, the Microphone Input works fine and I can record with Audacity. Since I can hear on PC speakers what I want to record, it looks to me a configuration or software issue. Could someone help? Here are some existing config info: MCC--> Sound Config Screen ========================== There's is no known OSS/ALSA alternative driver for your sound card (ATI RV620 [ Radeon HD 34xx series]) which currently uses "unknown". Enable PulseAudio: Box checked Automatic routing from ALSA to PulseAudio: Box checked Enable 5.1 sound with PulseAudio: Box unchecked Enable user switching for audio apps: Box checked Use Glitch-free mode: Box checked. pavucontrol =========== Configuration: HDA ATI HDMI: Profile = Off HDA Intel: Profile = Output Analog Stereo + Input Analog Stereo. Input Devices: HDA Intel: Front Left = 100%. Front Right = 100%. The LED Bar is dancing. Monitor of HDA Intel: Use as fallback. Front Left = Front Right = 100%. The LED Bar is sielnt. amixer -c 0 =========== Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [off] amixer -c 1 =========== Simple mixer control 'Master',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 64 [100%] [0.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Headphone',0 Capabilities: pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Mono: Front Left: Playback [on] Front Right: Playback [on] Simple mixer control 'PCM',0 Capabilities: pvolume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 255 Mono: Front Left: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB] Front Right: Playback 255 [100%] [0.00dB] Simple mixer control 'Front',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Front Mic',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Simple mixer control 'Front Mic Boost',0 Capabilities: volume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: 0 - 3 Front Left: 2 [67%] Front Right: 2 [67%] Simple mixer control 'Surround',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Center',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'LFE',0 Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Side',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 64 Mono: Front Left: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 51 [80%] [-13.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Line',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 30 [97%] [10.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 30 [97%] [10.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'CD',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Mic',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Front Right: Playback 24 [77%] [1.50dB] [off] Simple mixer control 'Mic Boost',0 Capabilities: volume Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: 0 - 3 Front Left: 2 [67%] Front Right: 2 [67%] Simple mixer control 'IEC958',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Capture channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Capture [on] Simple mixer control 'IEC958 Default PCM',0 Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined Playback channels: Mono Mono: Playback [on] Simple mixer control 'PC Speaker',0 Capabilities: pvolume pswitch Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Playback 0 - 31 Mono: Front Left: Playback 6 [19%] [-25.50dB] [on] Front Right: Playback 6 [19%] [-25.50dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',0 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 46 [100%] [30.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',1 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Capture',2 Capabilities: cvolume cswitch Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 46 Front Left: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Front Right: Capture 44 [96%] [28.00dB] [on] Simple mixer control 'Channel Mode',0 Capabilities: enum Items: '6ch' '8ch' Item0: '6ch' Simple mixer control 'Digital',0 Capabilities: cvolume Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right Limits: Capture 0 - 120 Front Left: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB] Front Right: Capture 60 [50%] [0.00dB] Simple mixer control 'Input Source',0 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' Simple mixer control 'Input Source',1 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' Simple mixer control 'Input Source',2 Capabilities: cenum Items: 'Mic' 'Front Mic' 'Line' 'CD' Item0: 'Mic' /sbin/lsmod | grep snd =================== snd_hda_codec_atihdmi 4128 1 snd_hda_codec_realtek 260900 1 snd_seq_dummy 3236 0 snd_seq_oss 33696 0 snd_hda_intel 29480 2 snd_seq_midi_event 8352 1 snd_seq_oss snd_seq 58240 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event snd_seq_device 8020 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq snd_hda_codec 78272 3 snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel snd_pcm_oss 43520 0 snd_hwdep 8712 1 snd_hda_codec snd_pcm 90216 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_timer 25008 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm snd_mixer_oss 16800 1 snd_pcm_oss snd 72520 15 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_seq_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_c odec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mixer_oss soundcore 8608 1 snd snd_page_alloc 10544 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm Thanks. [moved from Software by spinynorman]

Thanks for the pointer, I checked out his website and I discovered I had already downloaded his collection of RPMs. But, they are built for 32-bit. Since I am using only 64-bit nowadays, I went back looking for 64-bit gtklib 2.0. Sure I found it. But installing it implied throwing away almost half of the older 64-bit runtime libraries. I went on anyway but soon the installation failed. Lucky that the failed installation did not leave the urpmi database in a disarray (good job by Mandriva developers). Basically, the PCB part of the gEDA suite is simply not ready yet for 64-bit Mandriva. Shall wait for one of the newer versions of 2009 later this year. My solution was to go back and install Fedora 10 (I selected 32-bit only) and download the gEDA and PCB. Yes, gEDA and PCB work flawlessly on Fedora 10. Thanks once again for the information.

Thanks for your quick response. If I understand correctly, you are saying I got the "pcb" program installed as a by-product of installing the geda-gschem package. But, when I type "pcb" from shell, I get 'Command not found'. That's what prompted me to look for PCB package in source format. I really did not want to install anything outside of urpmi domain. But, if that's the only way... well. This evening I shall look for the devel version of the libgtk+2.0_0 as you suggested and hopefully I shall find it. What is a little troubling to me is the fact that there are downloadable PCB RPMs for Fedora 10, Suse 11 and Mandrake ( as per http://rpm.pbone.net/) but none for Mandriva. The other distros have separated the geda-gschem and PCB into separate packages but not Mandriva. Is that a correct observation? Regards.

I was looking for using the PCB layout tool but only came as far as using gEDA toolset. Initially I thought the gEDA had installed the pcb too. But, then I realized I could go only as far as gsch2pcb. The gEDA package is lacking pcb. Here is a list of my gEDA related packages :- [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ rpmlist | grep geda geda-symbols-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-20060123-4mdv2009.0 geda-gschem-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-docs-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gnetlist-20080127-1mdv2009.0 lib64geda33-20080127-3mdv2009.0 geda-utils-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gattrib-20080127-1mdv2009.0 geda-gsymcheck-20080127-1mdv2009.0 libgeda-data-20080127-3mdv2009.0 geda-examples-20080127-1mdv2009.0 [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ So, I go to "Install Remove S/W" and look for pcb package with internet connected but none showed up (or, that had anything to do with PCB layout). Next, I download the PCB source thinking I could compile and use it but it is looking for gtk+2.4 or more... checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config checking for GTK... no configure: error: Cannot find gtk+ >= 2.4.0, install it and rerun ./configure Please review the following errors: No package 'gtk+-2.0' found [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ So, I look for my gtk related packages and here they are: [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ rpmlist | grep gtk lib64gtkimageview0-1.6.1-2mdv2009.0 lib64wxgtku2.8-2.8.8-1mdv2009.0 gtkspell-2.0.14-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk+-x11-2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64webkitgtk1-1.0.2-0.36309.1mdv2009.0 gtksourceview-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk-linux-fb-2.0_0-2.4.14-9mdv2009.0 wxgtk2.8-2.8.8-1mdv2009.0 python-gtksourceview-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 gtk-sharp2-2.12.4-1mdv2009.0 gtksourceview1-1.8.5-5mdv2009.0 gtkhtml-3.14-3.24.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk+2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64canberra-gtk0-0.9-3mdv2009.0 lib64gtkspell0-2.0.14-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtksourceview-1.0_0-1.8.5-5mdv2009.0 libgtk+-x11-2.0_0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 lib64gtkmm2.4_1-2.14.1-1mdv2009.0 pygtk2.0-libglade-2.13.0-1mdv2009.0 gtk-engines2-2.16.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtkhtml-3.14_19-3.24.0-1mdv2009.0 canberra-gtk-0.9-3mdv2009.0 lib64gtksourceview-2.0_0-2.4.0-1mdv2009.0 xdg-user-dirs-gtk-0.8-2mdv2009.0 gnome-python-gtkmozembed-2.19.1-20mdv2009.0 pygtk2.0-2.13.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtk-engines2-2.16.0-1mdv2009.0 lib64gtkhtml2_0-2.11.1-3mdv2009.0 gtk+2.0-2.14.3-2mdv2009.0 [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ [lamcs@localhost pcb-20081128]$ The "Install Remove S/W" is not able to find any more recent gtk than the ones I have. Is there a way out? Or, back to windoze for the pcb! :unsure: Thanks.

Ok... I get the picture. That is a nice trick by Yves! You probably break up the input to encoder in two parts first. Thanks to you all. I would probably shoot for Intel Q9550 to make me a little bit future-proof but the trend is clear. There needs to be more multi-threaded apps to extract benefits of quad cores and in future, of those 4,8,16 cores of i7.

Hello, I am not quite sure if this is the right forum for my question but... Having spent enough frustrating hours trying to do video processing with a a 32-bit Sempron, I want to upgrade to a much much faster cpu/motherboard combo. But before I take a leap into Phenoms/Denebs or Core 2 Duo E8600 or Core2 Q9550, it would be nice to know the level of multi-threading used by existing Linux video applications and utilities. It would serve little purpose to go for Core2 Extreme series if I can get by with a Core 2 Duo for example. I am not into games but not afraid to overclock if required to get the extra performance out of a system. I use Cinelerra (at novice level), need ffmpeg frequently, use QDVDAuthor or ManDVD. The Cinelerra rendering to raw video takes 2.3 hour for a 1.5 hour DVD. Rendering to MPEG needs about 4.5 hours. ffmpeg easily eats up 1.5 hour for the same footage. ManDvd or QDVDAuthor takes about 1hr before the DVD structure appears on the hard disk. One mistake at an earlier stage of the workflow and I am back at Cinelerra redoing the editing! This is way too much for my patience. So, any suggestions about what type of cpu/mobo combo would be effective for the typical software available at this time on Linux? Thanks.

This is an update. In the process of installing libstreamXXX for wma codecs I was told to add some non-Free repos and I did that. I was in root account. After that totem was able to play WMA files and I went back working in non-root account. During the process I also did a few ifup/down eth0 from root -- not that it was necessary, but just to check if I can control the eth0 well and at will. Then when I logged in the non-root account, that Bonobo activation server error message failed to appear and the Nautilus icons on desktop did not disappear anymore! Somehow, the problem went away.

I have installed the 2009.0 on desktops only. The one I am using now is 3 yrs old with Awards BIOS and it does not have NumLock control in BIOS. The one at work is also 3 yrs old but much more expensive Dell and I had kept that NumLock disabled in the BIOS there. The one at home now has internet connection, the office PC does not have internet. In both PCs I was unable to stop NumLock service.

I prefer the OS not change the numlock state and leave it as it is from boot time. When I saw the numlock LED change twice during Mandriva boot time I tried to disable the numlock server. By disabling I mean using MCC --> System --> Manage System Service... and stopping it immediately and then disabling the "Start at Boot" option. However, on the next boot, the numlock server was back again flipping the LED. Saw this behavior in another PC with 2009.0 on which there is no internet connection. Is using MCC the right way to configure services or there is some other low level trick involved? While numlock is a minor annoyance to me I worry if I would be able to configure other important services when I would really need to do so. Thanks.

Hi, I was using the most obvious route available on the Options --> Set Font/FontSet and then the small window that appears with Font Menu as Misc, Courier, Fontset. Then I would use the Options --> Save Options (Save options set from the menu above). This method does not save .emacs file and is clearly unreliable. The other way through Customize Emacs, then Faces and the Default Face works fine as it always had before. The presence of the obvious Set Font/Faces in Options menu is a work in progress, I guess. As you said, from the google link I was able to disable text wrap permanently by commenting out the (add-hook 'text-mode-hook 'turn-on-auto-fill) line in the /usr/share/emacs/22.3/lisp/site-start.el file. Thanks, once again.

Yes, you are right. The sony fonts were missing in my installed rpm list! The installer searched it out as "x11-font-sony-misc Version: 1.0.0 Release: 6mdv2009.0 Size: 20KB in disk." I got them installed and Emacs doesn't complain about missing fonts anymore. However, emacs still does not save the changed fonts in .emacs. All I get when I try to save options is "Loading battery ... done" but the .emacs file does not get written over. Probably Mandriva has nothing to do with it and I believe I can use a suitable font spec in .emacs for a workaround. Don't know where the installer got those Sony fonts from because I had internet connected. It is only 20KB on the disk and if it is in DVD, then the dependency should probably extend to that fonts package (or something else if legality is involved). And, I used your lines of .emacs to disable the text wrap ... in an undignified manner...hope you don't mind! ;; Turn on auto-fill mode in text mode and related modes on Column 750. (add-hook 'text-mode-hook '(lambda () (setq fill-column 750) (auto-fill-mode 1))) The .Xdefaults from root is now copied at the non-root account with the emacs font line commented out: "!emacs*font: fixed". I think this issue can be considered solved. A lot of thanks to coverup for detailed help.

I installed Gnome for 2009.0. After a non-root login I got error message box with "Nautilus cannot be used now, due to an unexpected error." Details: Nautilus cannot be used now, due to an unexpected error from Bonobo when attempting to locate the factory. Killing bonobo-activation-server and restarting Nautilus may help fix the problem My input: Immediately after login as a non-root user I see the Gnome 2.24 put out a message box saying something about Mandriva Online Applet. The artwork in this box resembles File Manager icons. I do have eth0 enabled but there is no physical connection to internet. Last night I had the internet connected and installed XFS server (to solve the Emacs font problem I am having). I also played around with a USBcamera and tried to configure Ekiga with my ekiga account. So today, probably the Gnome is assuming there would be internet connection and is trying to validate something about Nautilus from internet. During the 10 second period while it tries to reach internet the screen shows standard icons like Computer, FileSystem, Mounted partitions, etc. But after that the Error Message Box appears and these icons disappear. But even then the System --> Administration --> File Browser remains available for GUI view of filesystems/devs. Finally, I physically connect the ethernet, log out and log back in as a non-root user but still the same problem with Nautilus.

Hi Adamw: I probably do not have that installed... nothing shows up with search string as "100". Just did a rpm -qa | grep font and here is the result: [rrq@localhost ~]$ rpm -qa | grep font x11-font-adobe-75dpi-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 x11-font-alias-1.0.1-13mdv2009.0 ghostscript-fonts-8.11-10mdv2009.0 mkfontdir-1.0.4-2mdv2009.0 fontconfig-2.6.0-3mdv2009.0 fonts-ttf-west_european-1.3-20mdv2009.0 fonts-ttf-dejavu-2.26-1mdv2009.0 libfontenc1-1.0.4-5mdv2009.0 mkfontscale-1.0.5-2mdv2009.0 x11-font-bh-lucidatypewriter-75dpi-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 libfontconfig1-2.6.0-3mdv2009.0 x11-font-cursor-misc-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 xorg-x11-75dpi-fonts-7.3-4mdv2009.0 fslsfonts-1.0.2-2mdv2009.0 x11-font-adobe-utopia-75dpi-1.0.1-6mdv2009.0 x11-font-bh-type1-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 urw-fonts-2.0-22mdv2009.0 font-tools-0.1-17mdv2009.0 libxfont1-1.3.3-1mdv2009.0 x11-font-misc-misc-1.0.0-8mdv2009.0 xfontsel-1.0.2-4mdv2009.0 x11-font-bitstream-75dpi-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 showfont-1.0.2-2mdv2009.0 fonts-ttf-decoratives-1.3-20mdv2009.0 fonts-ttf-liberation-1.04-1mdv2009.0 x11-font-bh-75dpi-1.0.0-6mdv2009.0 [rrq@localhost ~]$ I did install xfontsel as suggested by coverup. I do not have Emacs directory under /etc/X11/app-defaults. Just finished installing 2009.0 and have not yet put a .emacs that I normally use. My .Xdefaults file in root account has quite a few lines regarding emacs as shown below :- emacs*Background: DarkSlateGray emacs*Foreground: Wheat emacs*pointerColor: Orchid emacs*cursorColor: Orchid emacs*bitmapIcon: on emacs*font: fixed emacs.geometry: 80x25 The non-root user account does not have a .Xdefaults file! Now, I do not recall from which account I installed the Emacs 22.3 from the 2009.,0 DVD. It was most probably the root account. The XFS server did not make any difference other than refusing to stop after I started and stopped it a few times. I know very little about font management. In the past I never had to bother about managing emacs font... from the RH 7,8,9 days. Only in the recent versions of Linux I come across this font related issues. The screens these days are larger, size variation is high, anywhere from a laptop 14.5" to a grand 24" desktop with varying resolutions. So, there is learning curve ahead for me I guess. Apart from the font related issues in the context of Mandriva, I believe Emacs22.3 has its own problems in saving options in .emacs. Many a time I saw last night it falsely report "saving .emacs" but the .emacs file remained unchanged! I also just found out that it tries to wrap text when typing gets close to 75-th column on the right margin. The file I was typing had an extension of .txt and Emacs should have no business wrapping text like a word processor! I might have to install a previous version if I can't control 22.3. Regards.

I installed the 2009.0 Free DVD on a disk with Fedora 9.91 Beta and Suse 10.0 and the installation went smooth. It even fixed the MBR messup that Fedora left after installing 9.91 and I can now tripple-boot into any of these three! Then I installed emacs 22.3 from the DVD itself (no internet connection with Linux PC). The emacs starts OK but it cannot seem to find the standard fonts. Normally the 22.3 would give me an option (at the bottom of GNU Emacs welcome screen) to ditch the first-time Welcome screen on other systems. But on 2009.0 and also on 2008.1 I did not get that option... just the standard GNU Emacs Welcome on a split-screen. So, I look into *Messages* buffer and this is what I see: - Warning: no fonts matching `-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' available [2 times] Warning: no fonts matching `-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' available Warning: no fonts matching `-*-*-*-r-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' available Warning: no fonts matching `-*-*-*-*-normal-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' available Warning: no fonts matching `-*-*-*-*-*-*-16-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1' available [2 times] ("emacs" "/root/.bashrc") Loading paren...done Package auto-show is obsolete Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/desktop-file-utils.el (source)...done Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/python.el (source)...done Loading places from /root/.emacs-places...done For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. Toggling font-lock-mode off; better pass an explicit argument. Loading sh-script...done Setting up indent for shell type bash Loading regexp-opt...done setting up indent stuff Indentation variables are now local. Indentation setup for shell type bash Mark set The Emacs 22.3 is very usable after this. But I would like to get rid off this error (and avoid typing Ctl-X 1 everytime when I start emacs)! Also, when I set the font size to something bigger like Misc 9x15 and save the options, the window size changes and readjusts to 9x15 but all is forgotten when I exit and restart emacs. Thanks.

Hello, I ran my tests again over the weekend, this time more systematically and have better results to share. I guess I was not comparing apples to apples in my initial post. My test program is still the same, using aio_read/write in Linux and ReadFileScatter() in Windows. Shall try to tweak the hd-params when I get some more time. But for now, I am happy to see that Linux has similar performance numbers as Win XP for sequential disk reads. Here are the results using three PCs and various EIDE/SATA drives without tweaking hard disk params. All numbers are in MegaBytes/Second :- _______________________________________________________________________ PC-Gigabyte, Model Year 2005: Gigabyte PCI motherboard, 2 GB RAM, AMD Sempron 1.8 GHz single proc CPU. _______________________________________________________________________ 1. With Seagate ST3250410AS with 16 MB cache, 7200 RPM, 250 GB SATA that shows 85 MB/Sec on Buffer Reads using "hdparm -tT" under Mandriva. 1.1 Mandriva 2008.1, ReiserFS: 81, 76, 61. 1.2 Fedora 9, Ext3: 78, 82, 78, 83, 82. 1.3 WinXP SP2, NTFS: 84, 85, 87, 86. 2. With Caviar WD400BB, 8 MB cache, 7200RPM, 40 GB EIDE that shows 47 MB/Sec on Buffer Reads using "hdparm -tT" under Mandriva. 2.1 Mandriva 2008.1, ReiserFS: 40, 37, 34, 42, 39. 2.2 Fedora 9, Ext3: 45, 45, 45, 48. 2.3 WinXP SP2, NTFS: 46, 46, 45, 44. 3. With Maxtor 541DX, 2 MB cache, 5400 RPM, Year-2002. 20 GB EIDE that shows 35 MB/Sec on Buffer Reads using "hdparm -tT" under Suse 10.0. 3.1 Suse 10.0, ReiserFS: 28, 26, 37. 4. With Western Digital WD400BB-22JHCO, 8 MB cache, 40 GB EIDE. 4.1 Win XP SP2, NTFS: 40, 43. _______________________________________________________________________ PC-Pent4, Model Year 2005: Dell PCI Motherboard (?), 1 GB RAM, Pentium 4 Dual Core 3.4 GHz. _______________________________________________________________________ 5. With Seagate ST380012AS, 8 MB cache, 80 GB SATA that shows 55 MB/Sec on Buffer Reads using "hdparm -tT" under Suse 10.0. 5.1 Mandriva 2008.1, Ext3: 52, 52, 52. 5.2 Suse 10.0, ReiserFS: 41. 5.3 Win XP SP2: 54, 55, 42, 55. _______________________________________________________________________ PC-Latest, Model Year 2008: Dell PCI Expr Motherboard (?), 4 GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 @ 3 GHz. _______________________________________________________________________ 6. With Seagate ST3250310AS, 7200 RPM, 8 MB cache, 250 GB SATA. 6.1 Win XP SP2, NTFS: 102, 103, 103. _______________________________________________________________________ Note: 1. The tests were done as follows. Create a few files of size 2 to 5 GB, then reboot the system and then immediately run the tests on these files just once. 2. The SUSE 10.0 filesystem in #3 with Maxtor 541DX has been heavily used over three years. All other systems are newly installed within past 20 days. 3. In 5.3, the number 42 looked suspicious. So, I ran the test back to back to see the reads closely. It looked as if there are some failing sectors on the disk which are to blame. The performance should haved increased on back to back reads but that did not happen in this case; the number remained as 42 in 3 successive tests. Thanks.

Thanks for responding Yves. Within a couple of days I shall try to do exactly what you suggested and post the timing values. My object is to read huge preexisting files ( > 7-8 GB) from local hard disk and do processing with them. The processing requires that a file be read in sequential manner, from start to end. The processing algorithm works on almost any practical buffer size (like 4 MByte buffer) and is fast enough in that the time to read-in the buffer into application memory is much more than the time to process the buffer. So, to me, the problem seems to be how fast can I sequentially move that application buffer window (or, windows in general) over the entire file. By the way, my filesystem is a freshly installed 2008.1 Free using ReiserFS. It has not seen any serious use yet and only a month old. No updates, no internet connection. Regards.

Hello, I installed 2008.1 Free version on a 32-bit single cpu AMD 1.8 GHz (?), 2GB RAM and Gigabyte motherboard with an older EIDE 20 GB Seagate and have been trying to speed up disk reads (from the Seagate) using standard aio_read() and pthreads in my C application program, no GUI involved. Well... the fastest I could do is about 30 MBytes/second. Since the same hardware setup with a similar Seagate and Windows XP SP2 would give me close to 55 MBytes/sec, there must be a way to speed things up in Linux. I suspect there is heavy kernel caching going on which needs to be stopped for my app. So, tried to open the file with O_DIRECT and align the buffers on 512-byte boundary but the program would not compile! The #ifdef before O_DIRECT (in fcntl.h) is coming alive somehow. I have offset64 enabled to handle huge files and thinking it could have some effects, I just copy the octal constant for O_DIRECT in my code and get past the compilation. But, during execution, the very first aio_read() ends up with err code 22 (Invalid Argument). I used CreateFile( O_NONBLOCK | O_OVERLAPPED), VirtualAlloc(), ReadFileScatter() and WaitForISingleObject() in Windows to get that 55 MByte/sec. Shouldn't the O_DIRECT and aio_read/write calls be sufficient to produce equivalent performance? Regards.