PRO-PROJECT CONTINUED

[Sleeping Dog]

You Guys ARE Gonna' believe this one!
Just got back from the service call.  Windows ME ate the document that my client had been working on for two days.  He f@#$ed up and had been saving his only copy to a 1.44 so that he could swap it onto his desktop machine....didn't even save it to the VAIO's HD.  Nothing Peter Norton ever wrote could bring it back.......another ME user learns a hard cold lesson.  Remember....I have now had FIVE clients in the last four months who have lost major stuff because of ME.  (But that's why they pay me the big bucks.)

This is the same client that spent 350 bucks on the latest version of PowerPoint only to discover that you cannot make it play selected video files from a DVD as part of your presentation.  It plays a few seconds of it then craps out.  DVD's have been around for HOW LONG?  PowerPoint has been around for HOW LONG?  DUH!  Won't work under 98SE, won't work under 2K, won't work under ME, (ha), won't work under XP.  They even PAID Microsoft's 35 dollar service charge to have some dumbass there say "I dunno'....sounds like a professional question."  Getting "professional questions" answered costs 250 bucks charged to your VISA or MasterCard.

And now you know two more reasons why we are pursuing this project.  Professional people need systems and solutions that WORK instead of having to put up with this Microsoft bullshit.

Too bad XP-Boozer isn't around so that I can tell him to go stick his head up a Rhino's ass and breathe deeply.  I have been dealing with PC's since the 8086 era.  If these stupid people ever realized that they are paying Microsoft to beta-test their bullshit.....I would lose a lot of work.

Have I ranted enough yet?

Sorry....Had to get that out of my system after being called away on a Sunday night.

Peace.....Love.....and Bill Gates can eat shit and die.

Cheers and Beers

Sleeping Dog

[rtgwbmsr]

!
I get that all the time. Some people need to LEARN TO FUCKING SAVE! It's bad enough they use Winbloze...you'd think they'd learn after losing 10 doc's to save...their loss, our gain.

I tell them "Save money on hiring people like me and by a Mac." about 25% of them do within a year...I am the master of conversion...

ON TOPIC:
 

quote:what about this for a partition scheme?:
hda1 swap 128MB
hda2 / 950MB
hdb1 /wine-c (isnt this what choasforages wanted??)

Beautiful. Simple. Good.

About a /user partition:
We don't need one...the apps are going on hdb1 right?

[Sleeping Dog]

Apps are going on hdb.

You guys are configuring this box....not me.  I'm just the "hands that are on".  I am not making the decisions....you are by your cooperation and discussion.  I just have this hardware and am following your directives.

Sorry about the rant earlier...but it sure felt good to get that out of my system.

Sleeping Dog

[Sleeping Dog]

Should I be considering changing my name to "Sleeping Bob"?

If I did, then we would have to put up with "creebob" and "voidbob".

Lets not go there quite yet.

(chuckle........bob)

SD

[Sleeping Dog]

You know...."ChoasBob" doesn't quite work either......Oh well......If you can't "Bob" for Apples ....go get a big MAC.....(or at least something that runs LINUX)....

Cheers and Dreams

Sleeping Dog

[voidmain]

I don't want to screw up what you guys are working on and I admit I've only been browsing bits of the thread so if I say anything that makes you go "huh?!?", just ignore me. I'm not exactly sure what you are up to but in most any situation it is also good to carefully consider your swap. Now I just noticed you are using two drives. Generally, you want to set your swap up with performance in mind. If you have multiple equal drives you would want to set swap partitions up on each drive.

The Linux kernel will manage the swap in such a way that you will get increased performance spreading across multiple drives. Now, if the drives are not of equal performance I am not sure of the benefit. You may be better off just putting swap on the fastest drive (you can use the "hdparm" command to test the drive throughputs). If you set the same priority on more than one swap partition the kernel will "stripe" your swap and you should see increased swap performance.

Obviously the best performance is achieved by having enough RAM so that paging never occurs but you already knew that. There are documents out there that describe how spreading your swap increases swap performance, and extra swap parameters you can use in your fstab for multiple swap devices. For instance, search for the word "swap" in this doc.

http://linas.org/linux/Software-RAID/Software-RAID-8.html

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by void main:
I don't want to screw up what you guys are working on and I admit I've only been browsing bits of the thread so if I say anything that makes you go "huh?!?", just ignore me. I'm not exactly sure what you are up to but in most any situation it is also good to carefully consider your swap. Now I just noticed you are using two drives. Generally, you want to set your swap up with performance in mind. If you have multiple equal drives you would want to set swap partitions up on each drive.

The Linux kernel will manage the swap in such a way that you will get increased performance spreading across multiple drives. Now, if the drives are not of equal performance I am not sure of the benefit. You may be better off just putting swap on the fastest drive (you can use the "hdparm" command to test the drive throughputs). If you set the same priority on more than one swap partition the kernel will "stripe" your swap and you should see increased swap performance.

Obviously the best performance is achieved by having enough RAM so that paging never occurs but you already knew that. There are documents out there that describe how spreading your swap increases swap performance, and extra swap parameters you can use in your fstab for multiple swap devices. For instance, search for the word "swap" in this doc.

http://linas.org/linux/Software-RAID/Software-RAID-8.html

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: void main ]

The sticking point is that the 2nd HD is going to be running Windows apps under WINE, at least that's my understanding of things.  That may or maynot work; I'm not proficent enough to even make a good guess, but having run WINE, I DO know it's a RAM hog.

[Master of Reality]

i dont think there would be enough space for two swap partitions... unless there was two 64MB swaps

[voidmain]

A 64MB swap partition on each drive would be better than a single 128MB swap partition on one drive. That is, as long as the drives are of equal speed and as long as they are given the same priority in the /etc/fstab.

[Sleeping Dog]

WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW

The drives are a 1.0 Gig Seagate and a 1.2 Gig Western Digital of the same speed.  (hda and hdb respectively.)  It was decided earlier that LINUX could have all of hda and some of hdb.
Both Windows apps (that we will be trying to run under Linux) require some dedicated HD space of their own.  PhotoShop uses something called "Scratch Disks" that are basically folders to which temporary files are written.  AutoCad uses a "Page File" as well as requiring a designated folder for its "autosave" function.  The sizes of these "folders" can vary depending on the size of the graphic image or drawing that is being worked on.  Due to their both being Windows apps, they require these cashing areas to be in a DOS type format.  We can set up both apps to cashe to the same place.  (i.e. a folder called something like D:\cashe)  Thus, the apps will share the spot where their temporary files are stored.  This area should be part of the same partition where the apps live.

The PhotoShop app is about 100 MB in size.  (not including cashe space needed)
The AutoCad app is about 320 MB in size.  (not including cashe space needed)

If we make the cashe area for the apps 180 MB in size, that would make the Windows partition on the second HD 600 total MB in size, or about half of that drive.  The rest of hdb could be used for the LINUX OS or additional Linux apps.

IN SUMMARY:

Between the two HD's we have 1.0 Gig on hda and 0.6 Gig on hdb that can be devoted to LINUX.

Have you reached a consensus on how to partition hda for the OS?

Sleeping Dog

[Sleeping Dog]

P.S.
I am trying to find some more RAM for this thing, but right now, we are stuck with the 64 MEG.

[creedon]

quote:Originally posted by Sleeping Dog:
P.S.
I am trying to find some more RAM for this thing, but right now, we are stuck with the 64 MEG.

At the risk of pissing you off, I'd like to suggest dropping Photoshop in favor of the GIMP; that's a NATIVE Linux app that can use swap space for cacheing, that would free up some space, and most likely, run faster (being a native app).  I'm still voting for 128 Mb swap, a root partition (whatever size everybody agrees on) and a user partition for safety.
Just as a matter of fact, the GIMP lacks very few functions that Photoshop has (I have both; Photoshop's easier; the GIMP is more flexible).  I think at this point, we're still feeling our way along; things can (and will) change, maybe the first priority should be to get the box up and running, so we can start making mistakes and learn from them.  BTW what kind of RAM are you looking for?

[Calum]

yeah what kind of RAM are you looking for? i bet some of us have got some spare kicking about...

[Sleeping Dog]

This is one of those strange Elpina/PC Chips motherboards that can use either SIMMs of DIMMs.  These MB's were sold primarily so that people could upgrade to faster CPU's without also having to buy an ATX case (it is in an AT case).  The DIMMs can be either 3.3 or 5 volt.

Bank 0 and bank 1 can each be occupied by either two SIMMs equaling 128 MB or one DIMM equalling 128 MB.  (Total max RAM for the board is 256 MB)  However, the SIMM and DIMM slots cannot be occupied in a given bank at the same time.

EXAMPLE:

I could have a single 64 MEG DIMM in Bank 0 and two 16 MB SIMMs in Bank 1 equalling 96 MB of RAM.

The box presently has one 32 MB DIMMS in Bank 0 and one 32 MB DIMM in Bank 1 equaling 64 MB RAM.

These were the largest RAM modules that I had on hand.

Sleeping Dog

[Master of Reality]

So the OS still isnt isntalled yet?