Linux-Hardware Digest #707, Volume #10 Thu, 8 Jul 99 19:13:50 EDT
Contents:
Re: To RAID or not to RAID? -that is the question... (Eyal Lupu)
Re: SCSI v. IDE boot conflict (Linux-only system) (Alex Lam)
Re: Celeron, what's the catch? (Jeff Gentry)
Re: Use of extra 9 pin connector (Andy)
Re: Matrox Millenium II and XF86 probs (Alex Lam)
Re: Making MPEG movies from AVI? ("R.K.Aa")
Re: Dual/Quad K6??? (Alex Lam)
Re: AMD K6-2 and Linux (ellis)
Re: Linux doesn't see ide1 :ls-120 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Help on scsi tape needed ! (Stuart R. Fuller)
PCI Hot Plug (Jim Puthukattukaran)
Re: Celeron or PII? (Stuart R. Fuller)
Re: how to's (Tony)
Re: Celeron, what's the catch? (Marc Mutz)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eyal Lupu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.databases.informix,comp.os.linux.setup,comp.periphs.scsi
Subject: Re: To RAID or not to RAID? -that is the question...
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 21:40:36 GMT
Finally someone got it right.... :-)
All you wrote it true. I just want to emphasize one point:
I have help to design and implement a lot of systems which used RAID,
in many cases the customers preferred the RAID-1 over RAID-5 solution
because they could implement it by SOFTWARE and reduce the cost. This
may have some side effects:
A. The writes will be slower, since we actually write twice.
B. Increase CPU load.
C. Might reduce I/O throughput.
but, if one uses a HARDWARE controller, we can avoid the above.
--
Eyal Lupu
Senior UNIX and OpenVMS systems administrator
In article <931333286.482062@cacheraq001>,
"Tony C" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not even close :)
>
> Raid 5 is NOT mirroring. Raid 5 does an XOR of the data spread across
> multiple drives and stores that result on the parity drive. The
parity is
> usually calculated at the block level and the data is stripped across
the
> drives in the Raid set. When a data drive fails, the data on that
drive or
> volume can be 'regenerated' by XORing the parity data with the data
on the
> surviving devices.
>
> As to the original posters comment that Raid 5 will be faster, this
is not
> necessarily true and in most cases Raid-5 will be slower than Raid-1
> (mirroring). This is especially true in when there is a lot of write
> activity. The reason is that when data is written to a Raid-5 volume,
the
> parity for that Raid rank must also be read, recalculated and
re-written.
> This may also involve reading the other data volumes in order to do
the XOR
> calculation. Mirroring on the other hand only requires 2 writes and
if you
> use a caching Raid controller this can be very speedy since the
writes go
> into cache and are later destaged to disk when the disk is less busy.
>
> There are other factors to consider as well such as adding drives,
> increasing the size of the Raid group and so on. Raid-5 is usually
much more
> difficult to add-on to. You usually have to back-up your data,
rebuild the
> raid-5 group and then relay the data back onto disk, which btw
usually
> requires a full rebuild of the Raid-5 parity information.
>
> Good luck
> Cheers
> TC
>
> Salem Lee Ganzhorn wrote in message
<7lu7t5$q3l$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >: Thanks y'all for your comments/suggestions. I guess
> >: I must be missing something cause I did not get what
> >: a lot of people talked about using RAID5. RAID5 will
> >: no doubt be faster but then there is no redundancy.
> >: Maybe two RAID5 channels and then database mirroring
> >: across the two controllers?
> >:
> >: Will someone please comment on this: Suppose I have
> >: a choice of having one single RAID1/0 (or even just
> >: RAID1) controller OR having two Ultra2 SCSI channels
> >: and then use Informix mirroring across the two cont-
> >: rollers. Which one makes more sense?
> >
> >Raid 5 is mirrored. There is enough data mirrored on the disks so if
any
> >one drive goes down you can rebuild the drive completely from the
remaining
> >drives. You get the speed of striping plus the fault tolerance of
> mirroring.
> >
> >Of course you only get 1/2 of the space the drives have to offer.
> >
> >The only downside is you have to have at least 3 drives.
> >Regards,
> >Salem
> >
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
------------------------------
From: Alex Lam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SCSI v. IDE boot conflict (Linux-only system)
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:35:16 -0700
"M. Buchenrieder" wrote:
>
> Alex Lam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> >JeremyDunn wrote:
> >>
>
> [...]
>
> >>
> >> I've tried setting the BIOS to boot as : SCSI, C, A. Also tried D, A, SCSI
> >> (get rid of the IDE in boot sequence), etc.
>
> Either your SCSI adapter insists on addressing your SCSI drive as "D:"
> whwnever an IDE drive is present, or your motherboard's BIOS is faulty.
> You might want to try a different SCSI card, or a BIOS update from
> the motherboard manufacturer's website.
>
> [...]
>
> >If you have both IDE and SCSI drives. It'll default to the primary IDE
> >drive for booting. If I remember correctly. Nothing is wrong.
>
> Rubbish. What do you think the "SCSI" option in the motherboard's
> BIOS is supposed to do ?
>
Then, I was told the wrong info by a Linux hardware vendor. I've SCSI
boxes and IDE boxes, but not mixing HDDs.
Alex Lam.
> Michael
> --
> Michael Buchenrieder * [EMAIL PROTECTED] * http://www.muc.de/~mibu
> Lumber Cartel Unit #456 (TINLC) & Official Netscum
> Note: If you want me to send you email, don't munge your address.
--
*remove all the Xs (upper case X) if reply by e mail.
** no more M$ Windoze.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jeff Gentry)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Celeron, what's the catch?
Date: 8 Jul 1999 18:09:29 GMT
Bryan (Bryan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: call it a hack - but if it works and works well, why call it bad names? ;-)
Where I come from, calling something a hack is a sign of respect.
--
Jeff Gentry [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"You're one of those condescending UNIX users! ...."
"Here's a nickel kid ... get yourself a real computer."
------------------------------
From: Andy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Use of extra 9 pin connector
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 13:11:03 -0500
Thomas Edward White wrote:
>
> I have an extra 9 pin connector on my pci computer. I am using the
> first connector for my mouse, on /dev/ttyS1. When I boot up, the
> kernel only recognizes this device. I don't have any other serial
> devices set up (no modem, etc.) The motherboard also has two usb
> ports, two ps2 ports, and one parallel connector.
>
> I'd like to use this second 9 pin connector for my pilot, but I can't
> figure out if it should be associated with /dev/ttyS0, or if it shares
> /dev/ttyS1 with the other 9 pin connector. If I try to run any software
> off /dev/ttyS1, it disables the mouse, and if I run it off /dev/ttyS0,
> no port can be found. Can this second connector be set up somehow?
>
> Thanks,
> Tom Ed White
It is probably an extra serial port. Most people disable
the 2nd serial port in the CMOS setup to free an IRQ.
Go into your CMOS setup, look at peripheals to see if
you have a port set to disabled.
-Andy
--
/* Andy
GTW/IT d- s:++ a+ C++>$ US+ P+ L+ !E W+(+) N+++ o-- K? w+ O- M-- V--
PS+ PE++ Y++ PGP- t 5 X !R tv-- b+++ DI+++ D+ G++ e+ h--- r+++ y+++*
Chaos, panic, & disorder - my work here is done **/
------------------------------
From: Alex Lam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Matrox Millenium II and XF86 probs
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 10:42:17 -0700
Kevin wrote:
>
> On Mon, 14 Jun 1999 07:50:54 -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> >I can't speak for your monitor but I use a Millenium II and my best
> >suggestion is to run XF86Setup and select the Millenium II from the
> >video card menu and select one of the generic type monitors from the
> >monitors section.
> >
> Thanks, I'll try that bit about the monitor, I havn't tried one of the
> generic monitors, always just typed in the values specified in my
> monitors hand book.
>
> If it works I'll come back and say so.
>
Just put in the refresh rate frequencies recommanded by your monitor's
handbook.
Alex Lam
> Thanks,
>
> Kevin.
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> ^ ^ ^ , , ^ ^ ^
> / \ \ \0 0/ / / \ What, No Sig ?
> _/_/_/ ^ \_\_\_
--
*remove all the Xs (upper case X) if reply by e mail.
** no more M$ Windoze.
------------------------------
From: "R.K.Aa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Making MPEG movies from AVI?
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 19:31:16 +0200
Jeff Volckaert wrote:
> I have a hauppauge tuner card in my Redhat 6.0 system that i've been using
> XawTV with to watch TV. I've been messing around with the AVI capture
> utility 'streamer' to make movies. I'd like to compress these to MPEG
> movies and downloaded 'mpeg2encode'.
> I have three problems... the first is I can't get sound with streamer. I
> hear sound when it captures, but no sound when I view the AVI. Anyone
> encounter this and fix it?
I have an "old" Hauppauge WinTV/PCI and use xawtv v.2.46.
The AVI capture feature there is invoked from menuline
or R, but in the popup menu that appears it states "No sound".
The capture uses "streamer" that comes with xawtv, far as I understand.
So - no sound :/
> The second problem is I can't play the AVI movies under Windows. I can play
> them under Linux (w/o sound), but both realplayer and media player don't
> work.
Hmm. Download Xing for windows and test that - if it can't read your AVI
files, nothing can. (Xing also has a Linux version.)
> The third problem is I can't figure out how to convert the AVI movies to
> MPEG in mpeg2encode. It wants a parameter file. I copied one of the sample
> parameter files and they all want seperate files for each frame. Anyone
> used this program before?
Not a clue.
> BTW, once I get this all figured out I want to convert family video to MPEG
> movies to ship downstate to the rest of the family. I have another little
> one on the way (i.e. baby) and want to be setup in the next few weeks.
Hmm. Good luck, but perhaps you'd want to use the windows AVI capture
features for this stunt (the original Hauppauge applet) - it does sound.
Depending on what OS'es you have installed.
Xing also has an AVI2mpeg applet but that one might be commercial
If you're really desperate i know it's "around" though. Or nag at
someone
to convert it for you?
The author of kWinTV has AVI-sound on the "todo" list, but no news
since april - if your deadline is in two weeks you may be in trouble.
Congratulations btw.
K.
------------------------------
From: Alex Lam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Dual/Quad K6???
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 11:15:45 -0700
"Andrew J. Norman" wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
> Just a correction to make to your post: The K6 DOES support SMP
> operation, but do to licensing restrictions from Intel it does not support
> MPS 1.1 or 1.4 and the Intel chipsets do not support the protocol that AMD
> and Cyrix use. The same is true for the line of Cyrix processors. This
> means that while it is possible to find dual and quad pentium boards, the
> K6 can not operate correctly in an SMP mode on them.
>
> The new K7 will run on a different platform with a non-intel chipset
> (either a VIA or a DEC...well formerly DEC). This chipset will support the
> SMP modes of the new AMD processor. As well as the DEC Alphas (see
> Digital's information on their new chipsets)
>
I've heard rumors that there'll be dual SMP mobo out for the K-7 by
year end, or early 2000.
Alex Lam.
> Andrew J. Norman
> ______________________________________________________________
> Dept. of Physics Phone: 757-221-3571
> College of William & Mary [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
> what is essential is invisible to the eye" -The Little Prince
> ______________________________________________________________
>
> On Tue, 29 Jun 1999, Dave Howland wrote:
>
> > unfortunately amd's k6 line doesn't support SMP, it's exclusive to intel's
> > processors. although the new athlon (k7) that amd recently released is
> > supposed to be SMP capable...
> >
> > good luck
> >
> > dave
> >
> >
> > On Tue, 29 Jun 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > > Hello All,
> > >
> > > I am looking for a motherboard (supported under Linux) that will support
> > > Dual if not Quad AMD K6 CPUs. I prefer a 100mhz board so I can use the
> > > K6-II chips. Does anyone know of such a motherboard? If so, where can
> > > I buy one?
> > >
> > > Thanks
> > > Scott
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Scott Boss
> > > Atlanta Perl Mongers Fearless Leader
> > > website: http://atlanta.pm.org
> > > community: http://www.dejanews.com/~apm
> > >
> > >
> > > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> > > Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> >
>
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> Charset: noconv
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--
*remove all the Xs (upper case X) if reply by e mail.
** no more M$ Windoze.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (ellis)
Subject: Re: AMD K6-2 and Linux
Date: 8 Jul 1999 19:03:18 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Alessio Checcucci <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>What can i try???
Have you check to see if a BIOS update is needed?
--
http://www.fnet.net/~ellis/photo/linux.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Linux doesn't see ide1 :ls-120
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 19:02:20 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Make sure the drive is detected before the
system boots. You should
> see it listed during the power-on-self-test
(POST)
Yes but:)
attempting to use a superdisk ( ls-120 )
Ihave tried IDE0, Ide1, IDE2.
The drive is detected during boot as hd[b - f],
as it should be.
There is something else we are missing, it seems
as it should be linked to another driver or /dev,
in order to determine disk type and access.
If anyone knows what the moule is or where the
source is I'm willing to try understanding it, if
they included a comment or two :)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stuart R. Fuller)
Subject: Re: Help on scsi tape needed !
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 22:00:04 GMT
Wojciech Beska ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: Cannot read files beyond the first eof marker ? How to solve the problem ?
: Do you know any tools to access scsi tapes under linux ?
When posting queries for help, include at least the following:
- what you typed, EXACTLY
- what message(s) you got, EXACTLY
- Linux distribution name and version
- Relevant hardware (we don't care about the size of your monitor)
Generally, on most modern tape drives, the tape drive will write an "end of
data" marker on the tape at the last point it was written. On subsequent
reads, the tape drive will usually NOT go past that point.
Stu
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Puthukattukaran)
Subject: PCI Hot Plug
Date: 8 Jul 1999 21:53:46 GMT
Any one out there know any platforms that support PCI Hot pluggable devices? I
heard that Compaq is coming out (or has come out) with one. Please confirm.
BTW, for those interested, there is a PCI Hot Plug project underway for Linux.
The mailing list for it was created by Alan Cox. It is
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Please let me know if you are interested in the project.
thanks,
Jim Puthukattukaran
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Stuart R. Fuller)
Subject: Re: Celeron or PII?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 22:00:05 GMT
Bryan (Bryan@[EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
: Robert L. McCormick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: : How is it that Linux is able to stress the CPU more or less than Windows?
:
: windows sometimes sits there idle waiting for events. unix (linux)
: can multitask in a true fashion - so it makes better use of the cpu.
: it also executes the HLT instruction to save power (heat) when there's
: REALLY nothing to do at the current jiffy.
Well, the use of the HLT instruction will save power, but the real reason that
multitasking operating systems use the HLT instruction is so that the
processor gets off the I/O and/or memory bus(ses) to permit DMA traffic full
use of the bus.
Stu
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 18:26:55 -0700
From: Tony <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.slakware
Subject: Re: how to's
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate group for your post but here you go.
This is a mirror of the LDP's site:
http://acm.cs.virginia.edu/LDP/HOWTO/Kernel-HOWTO.html
Rbtech wrote:
> can anyone point me in the direction of the howto's for kernel recompiling?
> I would greatly appreciate it.
> thank you
> richard
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 23:19:45 +0200
From: Marc Mutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.intel
Subject: Re: Celeron, what's the catch?
Michael wrote:
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (chrisv) wrote:
>
> >Nonsense. The extra cache of the k6-3 does you no good whatsover for
> >having "numerous multiple windows open." Do you really think that
> >the extra peasly 128k helps with this? Not.
> >
> You really don't know what your talking about. How fast is your
> celeron without that peasly 128 cache that Intel grafed onto the
> cacheless one? Is your Celeron a hotrod without that cache?
>
Sorry to interrupt your little dispute, but I want to clarify on the
subject of cache size from the point of view of someone who spends much
of his time in the linux-kernel mailing list et al. Also, you might take
a look at my signature.
Mike, you cannot compare the performance ratio of pre-A celeron (with no
L2 cache) to post-A celeron (with L2 cache) with the speed ratio of two
cache-equipped chips. Here's why:
On a chip w/o L2 cache and only a few kB of L1 cache, almost every data
fetch will result in DRAM access, hence will be slow if the dataset
needed will exceed the size of the L1. That is something everyone agrees
with, I guess.
Now it shows when you do measurements of *real world* applications
(BAPCo comes to mind), the size of the L2 does almost nothing. The
difference is too small to be readily distunguished from the statistial
blur of measurements.
Read my lips: It does _not_ matter if you have L2's of 256K@66MHz,
512K@100MHz, 1M@100MHz, 2M@133MHz. The performance difference will be in
all these cases within 5% and don't tell me 5% will make any difference
that you can see.
The same applies to 128K@400MHz or 512K@200MHz. The only difference you
will find is when measuring L2 bandwidth.
_What_ will make a difference, though, is whether you are running with
512K@100MHz (like the AMD K6-2) or 256K@400MHz with the added benefit of
having decoupled L2 and DRAM/L3 paths (like the K6-3).
Regarding the difference in BitBlt that you may or may not feel between
celeri and K6-3's: It is *much* more likely to be a driver related issue
(setting MTRRs correctly, using 3Dnow to do some nifty tricks that
increase bandwidth, optimzed for AMD, not Intel...) or - even more
likely - an issue of the chipset.
Again, read my lips: Doubling the L2 != doubling the speed (even of
redraws).
You may _tell_ what you want, I _know_ better. Prove what you say :-0
Marc
--
Marc Mutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://marc.mutz.com/
University of Bielefeld, Dep. of Mathematics / Dep. of Physics
PGP-keyID's: 0xd46ce9ab (RSA), 0x7ae55b9e (DSS), 0x31748570 (DH)
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