Webcam Selection
Hi all, After a number of years just lying in desk drawer my old Logitech spherical webcam died. So, I'm looking for a new one. It's not that I use it a lot. My wife will be heading out of province to our son's place next month to be there for the birth of our first grandson. The plan was to use a webcam to send back pictures later (not on the day of, of course but a week later). Anyhow I need to replace the old with a new webcam. The last time I used the old webcam it was hooked up to a Windows XP system. I've since retired that machine, along with the retirement of three FreeBSD machines, leaving me with a few servers and my FreeBSD laptop. I'm hoping to use the webcam with Pidgin with MSN. Can anyone suggest a brand and model? It needs to have good image quality and needs to work with FreeBSD 9.0. Any suggestions? -- Cheers, Cy Schubert cy.schub...@komquats.com FreeBSD UNIX: c...@freebsd.org Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org The need of the many outweighs the greed of the few. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
FreeBSD GSM Bluetooth Phone
Could anyone point me in the direction of documentation outlining how to setup a Bluetooth phone for wireless Internet access (when WiFi is unavailable). Thanks. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.komquats.com and http://www.bcbodybuilder.com FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org BC Government: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lift long enough and I believe arrogance is replaced by humility and fear by courage and selfishness by generosity and rudeness by compassion and caring. -- Dave Draper ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Optional Wireless Interface
Before I embark on yet another mini project, is there an approach to optionally configure an interface only if another interface has not been configured? If for example rl0 is configured using DHCP ath0 would not be configured. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Tuning Question
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Lowell Gilbert writes: Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I have a question about tuning FreeBSD systems, specifically in regard to memory. At one time on Solaris systems it was recommended to keep scan rate below 200 pages per second. (Today it's 300 pages per second, dependent on the amount of memory, class of system.) Are there any recommendations or rules of thumb a person can use to determine when a memory upgrade is required? My machines are only busy during port builds when the scan rate can vary greatly and the page out rate could reach as high as two pages per second during brief periods. What kind of memory and paging metrics should I use on FreeBSD systems? I'm not convinced that such a simple algorithm makes sense these days. If the system is normally pretty quiet, then it is unlikely you'll see any difference from optimizing memory behaviour further. I believe that when top(1) gives memory sizes, they are in bytes rather than pages as the manual indicates. Top's output, as is free memory on all O/S's these days, is bogus. It's the size of the free memory pool which is available for immediate allocation. Used memory is just as useless. It doesn't matter how much is swapped out, what matters is how much I/O is being performed to support VM. I know at work, which is an Oracle ghetto, paging should be kept at a minimum, especially the SGA. Other apps can afford more. In the case of an average FreeBSD system it's been guesswork. I should also mention that even though Sun recommended certain metrics for their systems. In a previous life as an MVS (IBM mainframe) systems programmer, IBM recommended that no more than 5% of system resources should be used for paging, otherwise you're paging too much. I suppose this might be a good paper for someone to write. (As I'm already writing a book, I probably don't have time to research and write yet another subject.) -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tuning Question
I have a question about tuning FreeBSD systems, specifically in regard to memory. At one time on Solaris systems it was recommended to keep scan rate below 200 pages per second. (Today it's 300 pages per second, dependent on the amount of memory, class of system.) Are there any recommendations or rules of thumb a person can use to determine when a memory upgrade is required? My machines are only busy during port builds when the scan rate can vary greatly and the page out rate could reach as high as two pages per second during brief periods. What kind of memory and paging metrics should I use on FreeBSD systems? -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dual Core Or Dual CPU - What's the real difference in performance?
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Mike Meyer writes: Generally, more processors means things will go faster until you run out of threads. However, if there's some shared resource that is the bottleneck for your load, and the resource doesn't support simultaneous access by all the cores, more cores can slow things down. Of course, it's not really that simple. Some shared resources can be managed so as to make things improve under most loads, even if they don't support simultaneous access. Generally speaking the performance increase is not linear. At some point there is no benefit to adding more processors. In a former life when I was an MVS systems programmer the limit was seven processors in a System/370. Today we can use 16, 32, even 64 processors with a standard operating system and current hardware, unless one of the massively parallel architectures is used. To answer the original posters question, there are architectural differences mentioned here, e.g. shared cache, I/O channel, etc., but the reason the chip manufacturers make them is that they're more cost effective than two CPUs. The AMD X2 series of chips (I have one), they're not truely a dual processor chip. They're analogous to the single processor System/370 with an AP (attached processor) in concept. What this means is that both processors can execute all instructions and are just as capable in every way except external interrupts, e.g. I/O interrupts, are handled by the processor 0 as only that processor is wired to be interrupted in case of external interrupt. I can't comment about Intel's Dual Core CPUs as I don't know their architecture but I'd suspect the same would be true. Chips in which there are two dual core CPUs on the same die, I believe one of each of the dual core CPUs can handle external interrupts. From an operating system perspective an AP means that processor 0 will receive the interrupt and put it on it's queue. Then either processor 0 or processor 1 would take the interrupt off the queue and do something with it. To add another dimension to this discussion, hyperthreading uses spare cycles in a single processor to pretend there are two processors, increasing performance for some apps and reducing performance for other apps. For example Sun T2000 systems have multiple CPUs each with multiple cores and each core capable of hyperthreading, presenting to Solaris 32 processors where in fact there are only two CPU chips (I may have the numbers wrong as I spend most of my time in management mode at work and you know managers don't have brains). Generally speaking, dual core is an inexpensive way to get SMP into the hands of people who could not normally afford SMP technology as it was. I have a mortgage so spending money on computers is not a high priority in relation to that priority but dual core does give me an opportunity to enter the market relatively inexpensively and get good value for the money I spend on the technology. That's really what it's all about, how much performance you get for the money you spend. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Dual Core Or Dual CPU - What's the real difference in performance?
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Nicole Harrington wri tes: --- Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Mike Meyer writes: Generally, more processors means things will go faster until you run out of threads. However, if there's some shared resource that is the bottleneck for your load, and the resource doesn't support simultaneous access by all the cores, more cores can slow things down. Of course, it's not really that simple. Some shared resources can be managed so as to make things improve under most loads, even if they don't support simultaneous access. Generally speaking the performance increase is not linear. At some point there is no benefit to adding more processors. In a former life when I was an MVS systems programmer the limit was seven processors in a System/370. Today we can use 16, 32, even 64 processors with a standard operating system and current hardware, unless one of the massively parallel architectures is used. To answer the original posters question, there are architectural differences mentioned here, e.g. shared cache, I/O channel, etc., but the reason the chip manufacturers make them is that they're more cost effective than two CPUs. The AMD X2 series of chips (I have one), they're not truely a dual processor chip. They're analogous to the single processor System/370 with an AP (attached processor) in concept. What this means is that both processors can execute all instructions and are just as capable in every way except external interrupts, e.g. I/O interrupts, are handled by the processor 0 as only that processor is wired to be interrupted in case of external interrupt. I can't comment about Intel's Dual Core CPUs as I don't know their architecture but I'd suspect the same would be true. Chips in which there are two dual core CPUs on the same die, I believe one of each of the dual core CPUs can handle external interrupts. Wow I love ansking questions without too many specifics as I learn so much more. With this however it really seems to be a love hate relationship with dual core. Based on what you stated above, would that mean that when using a dual core system, using polling interupts might be better or perhaps monumanally worse? No. CPU 0 would be interrupted. It would schedule the interrupt in the queue. Either CPU could service the interrupt once the interrupt was queued. Some devices need to be polled as they do not generate interrupts or they generate spurious interrupts. Otherwise allowing a device to interrupt the CPU is more efficient as it allows the CPU to do other work rather than spinning its wheels polling. This is the Von Neumann model. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CVSup Touch
What is a CVSup Touch? What is it? (A touch, right?) Why does it happen? What triggers it? e.g. Touch ports/devel/makeplus/files/patch-main.mk,v Touch ports/devel/makeplus/pkg-descr,v Touch ports/devel/makeplus/pkg-plist,v I have a CVSup that's been running here for 15 minutes touching every ,v file in ports. It still has not competed. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CVSup Touch
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED], Kent Stewart writes: On Friday 02 February 2007 07:26, Kevin Kinsey wrote: Cy Schubert wrote: What is a CVSup Touch? What is it? (A touch, right?) Why does it happen? What triggers it? e.g. Touch ports/devel/makeplus/files/patch-main.mk,v Touch ports/devel/makeplus/pkg-descr,v Touch ports/devel/makeplus/pkg-plist,v I have a CVSup that's been running here for 15 minutes touching every ,v file in ports. It still has not competed. Could we see your supfile? Looks as if CVSup is, err, barking up the wrong tree? I suspect that it is part of decoupling FreeBSD-4.x from the port tree. That's what I suspect. I think that the files were either updated or touched to make sure that the whole tree was propagated the next time people did a CVSup of the tree itself. It's not a big deal, it the first time I've noticed CVSup do that as I usually just look at the exit status of my cron job and go onto the next email. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Semi FreeBSD Related Fedora Linux Question
I have a situation where I need to install Fedora Linux on a computer however the CDROM drive is not bootable (old SCSI cdrom drive and an old Adaptec 1542 controller which does not support CDROM boot) and as Fedora no longer supports floppy installs as FreeBSD does, I'm left with the possibility of a network install. Anyhow I had the idea today, while walking my dog, to use one of the FreeBSD systems on my network as a Red Hat kickstart server. It should work, shouldn't it? Red Hat kickstart is just a bootp server with a TFTP server to boot the kernel and an NFS server to install off of, just like a Solaris Jumpstart server would. If I put all the right bits and pieces in the right places, one of my FreeBSD systems should be able to serve as a Red Hat Linux kickstart server, or so I would think. Has anyone done this before? I suppose for that matter a FreeBSD system could even serve as a Solaris Jumpstart server. All the proprietary bits and pieces are served over the network via NFS while the client executes any proprietary code. A Red Hat kickstart server would work similarly so this should work, at least in theory, in both cases. -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Second if_ed Device
Is there any way to enable a second ISA ed device, as in ed1 under 6.1? I have two SMC 3c509-combo cards in the same machine. My device.hints file contains: hint.ed.0.at=isa hint.ed.0.disabled=0 hint.ed.0.port=0x280 hint.ed.0.irq=10 hint.ed.0.maddr=0xd8000 hint.ed.1.at=isa hint.ed.1.disabled=0 hint.ed.1.port=0x240 hint.ed.1.irq=5 hint.ed.1.maddr=0xd4000 It only sees the first device and when I do bring it online to use it the system panics. I do recall having this problem a few years ago however I did replace the device with a PCI version. (Of course a system here with two PCI versions of the if_ed card works fine.) The last time this worked was under 4.X (or was it 3.x, it's been so long I can't remember) using: device ed0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 iomem 0xd8000 device ed1 at isa? port 0x240 irq 5 iomem 0xd4000 Any ideas? -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(no subject)
Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 cc: Fcc: note Subject: Second if_ed Device (fwd) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii That should be an Elite-16 which is based on the WD8013 chip. I have so much old hardware here I really should get rid of it. --- Forwarded Message Date:Fri, 19 May 2006 08:29:45 -0700 From:Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Second if_ed Device Is there any way to enable a second ISA ed device, as in ed1 under 6.1? I have two SMC 3c509-combo cards in the same machine. My device.hints file contains: hint.ed.0.at=isa hint.ed.0.disabled=0 hint.ed.0.port=0x280 hint.ed.0.irq=10 hint.ed.0.maddr=0xd8000 hint.ed.1.at=isa hint.ed.1.disabled=0 hint.ed.1.port=0x240 hint.ed.1.irq=5 hint.ed.1.maddr=0xd4000 It only sees the first device and when I do bring it online to use it the system panics. I do recall having this problem a few years ago however I did replace the device with a PCI version. (Of course a system here with two PCI versions of the if_ed card works fine.) The last time this worked was under 4.X (or was it 3.x, it's been so long I can't remember) using: device ed0 at isa? port 0x280 irq 10 iomem 0xd8000 device ed1 at isa? port 0x240 irq 5 iomem 0xd4000 Any ideas? - -- Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org e**(i*pi)+1=0 --- End of Forwarded Message ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cross Compiling
Is it possible to build runnable 4.X and 5.X systems from a 6.0 system? Cheers, Cy Schubert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.komquats.com FreeBSD UNIX: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.FreeBSD.org BC Government: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
