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On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:57 PM, Mark Shields <laebshade@×××××.com> wrote: |
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> On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@×××××.com>wrote: |
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> |
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>> It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine. I feel a |
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>> little sad about it, or I'd just quietly go away. |
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>> |
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>> A few months ago, an update made the machine headless -- well, it could no |
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>> longer bring up X but I could use the console-mode for admin, and log in via |
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>> SSH from my laptop and run GUI programs. I was busy at the time, first |
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>> deciding and then implementing my retirement, so I let it go. |
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>> |
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>> Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up, |
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>> and the latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all. Whatever |
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>> it's trying is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year, |
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>> and I can't even run the consoles. The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the |
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>> motherboard. Like the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe |
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>> support got dropped. But I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the |
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>> ballyhooed thing in Linux Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put |
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>> together these pieces: |
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>> * Two XEON chips. I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores. |
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>> They are old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips. I got the slowest still being |
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>> made, so the clock speed is 1.6 GHz. On 4 cores, it's not bad at all. |
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>> * 2GB of DDR ECC memory |
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>> * about a dozen hard drives (some old, but mostly 500GB - 2TB Sata |
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>> drives), I feel it's still worthy of respect. Some of these are in EZ-Dock |
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>> docking stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site). |
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>> The main directories are on hardware RAID 1 so I have ongoing redundancy. |
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>> * a Smart UPS 1500 for everything except the laser printer. |
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>> |
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>> So, since I am familiar with Ubuntu from work, and have it on a couple of |
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>> laptops, I'm installing from the Ubuntu 11.04 live disk (video is just |
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>> fine). |
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>> |
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>> The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port. |
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>> |
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>> 1) Apache and dynamic (Python CGI) web site. |
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>> 2) Postfix |
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>> 3) About a dozen accounts that just do wget(1) data gathering triggered by |
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>> the cron daemon. |
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>> 4) DNS (I run my own domain on a commercial DSL account) |
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>> 5) NTP client and server |
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>> 6) Whatever else I forgot I set up over the years. |
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>> |
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>> My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic |
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>> when I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the |
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>> most out of it. I can still do that for specific applications I'm working |
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>> on, but otherwise it's really a non-issue now. I have gotten pretty tired |
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>> of updates that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up |
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>> that once or twice led me to rebuild with empty-tree and took a week or so. |
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>> |
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>> |
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>> So I guess I shouldn't complain (and I'm not). I'm just not in the target |
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>> market for Gentoo any more. It was fun, though. |
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>> -- |
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>> Kevin O'Gorman, PhD |
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>> |
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>> |
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> |
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> You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system |
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> scare you away? |
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> |
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> Have you tried using an older live cd? If it's a video issue, maybe |
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> detecting your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's |
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> an option for that)? |
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> |
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> It's doable man, don't give up. |
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> |
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|
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Of course it's doable. It's just the last straw. This left my web site |
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down for a week; I obviously can't always keep up with Gentoo's |
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requirements, so I'm going to an easier distro that I'm equally familiar |
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with. |
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|
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|
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-- |
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Kevin O'Gorman, PhD |