Jump to content

My new speedy Linux desktop


ianw1974
 Share

Recommended Posts

Finished putting the machine together today, and here is what we have so far:

 

Intel® Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz

8GB RAM (4GB swap)

4 x 250GB Seagates with 32MB cache attached to Adaptec 1430 SA Raid Controller

 

Not using the raid because Adaptec only have kernel modules for Red Hat/SUSE, so I'm just using it as a disk controller with no raid.

 

Partition setup on system:

 

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000adb0c

  Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1			   1		 499	 4008186   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2   *		 500		2990	20008957+  83  Linux
/dev/sda3			2991	   30401   220178857+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000aef4a

  Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1			   1	   30401   244196001   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000b02be

  Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1			   1	   30401   244196001   8e  Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdd: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ac775

  Device Boot	  Start		 End	  Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1			   1	   30401   244196001   8e  Linux LVM

 

/dev/sda being my main system, and the three other disks are assigned as an LVM. Created a volumegroup called vg:

 

esprit / # vgs
 VG   #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize   VFree  
 vg	 3   0   0 wz--n- 698.65G 698.65G

 

and you can see just short of 700GB for that one volumegroup. I can then create logical volumes within this for various mountpoints as and when I need to. But because of the LVM, it's also a good setup for Xen Virtualisation - when I got the system compiled how I want it (Gentoo 2008.0).

 

Sweet :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mention LVM. I was tempted and used it for the server at work.

Then I wasn't able to find any tool that works for managing the LVM, thus defeating the whole idea.

I thought I would be able to add space, resize space, remove space from the LVM, and do this on the live system. I found I was only able to add and resize, and the latter only after the partition was unmounted and in a very awkward way…

 

What do you use for managing the LVM in an efficient and secure manner?

 

For example, resizing (for me) was done by first shrinking the filesystem, and then shrinking the LVM. I don't find it secure at all: both tools speak different units, and I have no clue what each filesystem "overhead" is around its data, and I had no way to check that the second resize wasn't one byte too short or too far compared to the first.

 

Yves.

Edited by theYinYeti
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm just using the console for managing the LVM partitions at present. The group I shouldn't need to resize, since all the partitions will be inside the group, so for creating the partitions I use lvcreate, and so on for the other tools also. I've yet to do it all, but it seems quite straightforward to use LVM.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll let you know how I get on when my machine is finally working. Gentoo is gone now, Ubuntu 8.04 is installed but Xen won't work on it. Trying to get Fedora 9 downloaded so that I can see how Xen will work on this. I wanted CentOS 5 but tbe built-in ethernet on the motherboard doesn't work, and I don't want to be compiling kernels to get everything working correctly :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4GB of swap is a total waste of space, but it's also true that HD space is quite cheap currently...

AFAIK, if you have 2 GB RAM and want to have a working hibernate mode, you need the 4GB RAM. Or am I wrong?... :unsure:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got 8GB of RAM, so probably don't need the swap, but gave it 4GB just in case :) I could have done the double-the-ram theory and left 16GB of swap, but that really would have been a waste :D

 

But yeah, if suspend is going to be used, double-the-ram would still apply for suspend to ram to work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

AFAIK, if you have 2 GB RAM and want to have a working hibernate mode, you need the 4GB RAM. Or am I wrong?... :unsure:

 

You are right, but this is applicable for a laptop system, not a desktop one.

Other than that, even a laptop user can suspend-to-ram and avoid having a huge swap file... but there are also other suspend-to-disk options which do not store the data to the swap partition.

Personally, I am using (on my laptop) a swap partition equal to my RAM, to be able to suspend-to-disk using the usual kernel commands... but I may reconsider, as I rarely use that feature.

On a desktop system with 8G, either no swap at all (or even recompiling your kernel to exclude swap usage), or using a minimal (say 256M) swap, seems more to the point.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I generally played it safe because I'm going to use Xen on the system, so if I have a lot of machines on at the same time, I might need the swap. I dunno yet, until I play with it a bit more and see what happens. I may even reduce it later anyway depending on how it all works out. That's the good thing with Linux, I can move all my partitions about without having to reinstall (providing it's done correctly).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sadly, over the past few days I've not been able to find a distro where Xen is working other than CentOS 5.

 

Gentoo 2008.0 was problematic in getting things to work correctly.

Ubuntu 8.04 just doesn't work with Xen, even though there are installable packages - there is a bug on this already that has gone unfixed since the release.

Fedora 9 is a disappointment on Fedora 8 with lots of things just behaving strangely. Incidently, the Fedora 9 xen kernel will not boot my system at all.

Mandriva 2008.1 Spring also doesn't have a working Xen installation, and it's xen kernel also won't boot my system.

 

After finding another network card (3COM) and installing this instead of using the onboard Altansic Gigabyte card, CentOS 5 is working fine along with Xen.

 

Why other distributions have a problem with this I've no idea. Anyway, I'm completely happy with CentOS 5 just disappointed at all the others. They're better off not having the packages available than having something that is obviously completely broken.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, this would be OK providing that you're not using the full 2GB of ram. If all 2GB was being used when you suspended, then you might have a problem suspending to 1GB. Unless of course, it's suspending to disk and not to ram. Hibernate usually goes to disk rather than to ram because hibernate usually becomes active when the battery is about to run out completely. Therefore, meaning you don't lose it if it was in memory like suspend to ram would be.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...