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From: Mark Shields <laebshade@×××××.com> |
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>To: gentoo-user@l.g.o |
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>Sent: Thu, May 26, 2011 9:57:26 PM |
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>Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Goodbye, Gentoo |
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>On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 6:28 PM, Kevin O'Gorman <kogorman@×××××.com> wrote: |
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>It looks like it's time to take Gentoo off of my main machine. I feel a little |
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>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 SSH |
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>>from my laptop and run GUI programs. I was busy at the time, first deciding and |
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>>then implementing my retirement, so I let it go. |
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>>Now, a couple of months into my retirement, I'm trying to fix things up, and the |
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>>latest Gentoo live disk cannot talk to my monitor at all. Whatever it's trying |
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>>is unacceptable to the HD monitor I've had on there for a year, and I can't even |
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>>run the consoles. The video card is an ATI Rage XL on the motherboard. Like |
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>>the rest of the machine, it's vintage 2000, so maybe support got dropped. But |
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>>I'm not inclined to drop the machine -- it was the ballyhooed thing in Linux |
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>>Journal in 2002 when I finished my PHD, so I put together these pieces: |
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>>* Two XEON chips. I didn't know it right away but that means 4 cores. They are |
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>>old Pentium IV-based 32-bit chips. I got the slowest still being made, so the |
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>>clock speed is 1.6 GHz. On 4 cores, it's not bad at all. |
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>> |
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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 drives), I |
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>>feel it's still worthy of respect. Some of these are in EZ-Dock docking |
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>>stations and are used for rotating backups (including off-site). The main |
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>>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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>>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 fine). |
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>>The real headache is all the stuff I'm going to have to port. |
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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 the |
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>>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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>>My original reason for using Gentoo is that this machine was pretty exotic when |
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>>I bought it, and I wanted to be able to tweak the compiler to get the most out |
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>>of it. I can still do that for specific applications I'm working on, but |
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>>otherwise it's really a non-issue now. I have gotten pretty tired of updates |
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>>that take over 48 hours to compile, and the occasional mess-up that once or |
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>>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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>You let a small problem like the latest live cd not booting your system scare |
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>you away? |
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>Have you tried using an older live cd? If it's a video issue, maybe detecting |
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>your monitor wrong, how about turning on the framebuffer (there's an option for |
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>that)? |
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>It's doable man, don't give up. |
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Probably needs to switch to the open source radeon driver instead of the ATI |
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binary driver if he hasn't already too. |
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My 2004 laptop had that issue a couple years back. I initially installed the ATI |
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driver (which I haven't seemed to be able get rid of now), and then they (ATI) |
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dropped support for the R250 line-up. |
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I switched over the open source radeon driver and all works just fine and dandy. |
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Ben |