Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Thanks for the responses to my inquiry re how long systems stay up. My feeling for electronics is that equipment needs stability : temperature + humidity should not vary much & electrons need to flow thro' wires regularly. That suggests a machine will do better if left running. I don't like the idea of phoning my ISP's help desk with an ill-defined problem : I can't be sure it will recur if they ask me to go thro' a few restart cycles ; the staff are probably trained to offer a few simple solutions ; they may simply offer to send me a new router or worse to send me a modem instead, which is harder to set up. The problem probably lies in their server : my router enjoys constant conditions & shows no other signs of wear ; if that's the case, ISP help staff may not even know what has changed. I'm planning to build a new machine in the next few weeks, so I also now plan to set it up to do suspend, hibernate etc ; I've grabbed a few dox which explain what's involved. Mick mentioned 'S3' = 'sleep' & 'S4' = 'hibernation' in this connection : what do they mean ? Do they correspond to saving to RAM/disk ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
150903 Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Thu, 3 Sep 2015 11:32:52 -0400, Philip Webb wrote: >> Mick mentioned 'S3' = 'sleep' & 'S4' = 'hibernation' in this connection: >> what do they mean ? Do they correspond to saving to RAM/disk ? > Short answer: Yes > Long answer: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface#Power_states Thanks. -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Thu, 3 Sep 2015 11:32:52 -0400, Philip Webb wrote: > I'm planning to build a new machine in the next few weeks, > so I also now plan to set it up to do suspend, hibernate etc ; > I've grabbed a few dox which explain what's involved. > Mick mentioned 'S3' = 'sleep' & 'S4' = 'hibernation' in this > connection : what do they mean ? Do they correspond to saving to > RAM/disk ? Short answer: Yes Long ansder: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface#Power_states -- Neil Bothwick ** I'm not going to get married again ** ** I'll just find a woman I don't like and give her a house ** pgpzxM3XOq_NC.pgp Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [OT] Was re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Monday 31 August 2015 16:39:26 Alan McKinnon wrote: > On 31/08/2015 15:41, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > I won't tell you what systems used a 24-bit processor and 12 or 16 KB of > > 2us core store backed by a 2MB disk (three feet in diameter), for fear of > > frightening you.;-) > > Nah, I have some experience with such things. I thought I'd be misunderstood. I meant the purposes the computer systems were put to. In one case it was the closed-loop control of a nuclear power reactor (AGR); in the other the analysis and control of the national power grid. And the lights stayed on! > Remember the old horror stories about not smoking in the computer room, > because smoke particles are much bigger than fly height of the disk > heads? The young 'uns here never had to deal with that. Yes, of course. Them was the days - when we was young. Miles of 8-hole tape flying around the room. Entering boot code manually on key-switches. Two-day course in maintenance of ASR-33 and KSR-35. Back injury from manhandling a power supply into position. Aye...hmm... > We understand each other perfectly; Well, that must be a novelty :-) -- Rgds Peter
Re: [OT] Was re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 31/08/2015 15:41, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Monday 31 August 2015 11:42:28 Alan McKinnon wrote: >> On 31/08/2015 10:50, Peter Humphrey wrote: >>> The desktop machine I'm referring to (an Amari "workstation") dates from >>> 2009. It has an i5 processor, 16GB RAM* and two 2GB SSDs as the main >>> power sinks. It sits (runs) in a boxroom 6ft square and keeps it >>> comfortably warm. I haven't noticed any change in ambient temp since the >>> SSDs replaced spinners. >>> >>> * Whoever named that Random Access had a strange understanding of English. >>> The last thing I want from memory is random access! How much better it >>> would have been to call it something like Direct Access. Oh well - much >>> too late now. >> >> It's random access to distinguish it from serial access. In the early >> early days there were a lot of strange methods being tried to build >> memory - like dots on a cathode ray tube! To get to bit you wanted, you >> had to wait till the scanning beam reached that part of the screen - >> serial access. Addressable memory on a grid pattern came much later. > > Yes, of course I know all that, but it's still the antithesis of random - > it's > absolutely specific. Random is what you'd get if you didn't specify anything. Ah, an old timer - I forgot that for a second there :-) > My favourite storage medium was core store. Millions of tiny ferrite rings, > each at an intersection of orthogonal X and Y wires to specify the address, > and a write pulse on another wire on the Z axis. At least, that's as close as > I can remember now, 40 years later. No wonder computers were expensive. 40 years maybe, but still dead on the money. That's exactly how that memory worked. > > I won't tell you what systems used a 24-bit processor and 12 or 16 KB of 2us > core store backed by a 2MB disk (three feet in diameter), for fear of > frightening you.;-) Nah, I have some experience with such things. Remember the old horror stories about not smoking in the computer room, because smoke particles are much bigger than fly height of the disk heads? The young 'uns here never had to deal with that. > >> Random Access really means "able to access any random address as fast as >> any other random address". > > My point is simply that the addresses are very far from randomly chosen. The > distinguishing feature of the store is that you can go directly to the > required location, without having to wait for it to reach the read/write > device. We understand each other perfectly; the odd bit is that word "random". We both know it doesn't have the obvious meaning to a modern eye, and we both know what random access really means > > As I said though, there'd be no point in getting all stressed about it now. > >> RAM is also not the opposite of ROM :-) > > I seem to be having a senior moment here; at least, I don't follow that. When I was still a kid learning about memory, many folks thought ROM was very different from RAM, and that somehow ROM didn't have the same random access qualities that RAM has. It does, except that ROM can't be written (and some RAM needs continual refreshing which ROM doesn't, but that's another topic). Eventually I gave up trying to clarify that part. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 31/08/2015 10:50, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Sunday 30 August 2015 18:26:49 Mick wrote: > >> Modern appliances with Green stickers on them (whatever they're called) are >> more efficient by design. To some extent this is also true with PCs. I >> still have an old Pentium 4 32bit running a couple of test environments and >> back up storage. I can assure you that the room gets hot after it has been >> running for a couple of hours! :-) > > The desktop machine I'm referring to (an Amari "workstation") dates from > 2009. > It has an i5 processor, 16GB RAM* and two 2GB SSDs as the main power sinks. > It > sits (runs) in a boxroom 6ft square and keeps it comfortably warm. I haven't > noticed any change in ambient temp since the SSDs replaced spinners. > > * Whoever named that Random Access had a strange understanding of English. > The > last thing I want from memory is random access! How much better it would have > been to call it something like Direct Access. Oh well - much too late now. > It's random access to distinguish it from serial access. In the early early days there were a lot of strange methods being tried to build memory - like dots on a cathode ray tube! To get to bit you wanted, you had to wait till the scanning beam reached that part of the screen - serial access. Addressable memory on a grid pattern came much later. Random Access really means "able to access any random address as fast as any other random address". RAM is also not the opposite of ROM :-) -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sunday 30 August 2015 18:26:49 Mick wrote: > Modern appliances with Green stickers on them (whatever they're called) are > more efficient by design. To some extent this is also true with PCs. I > still have an old Pentium 4 32bit running a couple of test environments and > back up storage. I can assure you that the room gets hot after it has been > running for a couple of hours! :-) The desktop machine I'm referring to (an Amari "workstation") dates from 2009. It has an i5 processor, 16GB RAM* and two 2GB SSDs as the main power sinks. It sits (runs) in a boxroom 6ft square and keeps it comfortably warm. I haven't noticed any change in ambient temp since the SSDs replaced spinners. * Whoever named that Random Access had a strange understanding of English. The last thing I want from memory is random access! How much better it would have been to call it something like Direct Access. Oh well - much too late now. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [OT] Was re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 31/08/2015 15:41, Peter Humphrey wrote: > On Monday 31 August 2015 11:42:28 Alan McKinnon wrote: >> On 31/08/2015 10:50, Peter Humphrey wrote: >>> The desktop machine I'm referring to (an Amari "workstation") dates from >>> 2009. It has an i5 processor, 16GB RAM* and two 2GB SSDs as the main >>> power sinks. It sits (runs) in a boxroom 6ft square and keeps it >>> comfortably warm. I haven't noticed any change in ambient temp since the >>> SSDs replaced spinners. >>> >>> * Whoever named that Random Access had a strange understanding of English. >>> The last thing I want from memory is random access! How much better it >>> would have been to call it something like Direct Access. Oh well - much >>> too late now. >> >> It's random access to distinguish it from serial access. In the early >> early days there were a lot of strange methods being tried to build >> memory - like dots on a cathode ray tube! To get to bit you wanted, you >> had to wait till the scanning beam reached that part of the screen - >> serial access. Addressable memory on a grid pattern came much later. > > Yes, of course I know all that, but it's still the antithesis of random - > it's > absolutely specific. Random is what you'd get if you didn't specify anything. Ah, an old timer - I forgot that for a second there :-) > My favourite storage medium was core store. Millions of tiny ferrite rings, > each at an intersection of orthogonal X and Y wires to specify the address, > and a write pulse on another wire on the Z axis. At least, that's as close as > I can remember now, 40 years later. No wonder computers were expensive. 40 years maybe, but still dead on the money. That's exactly how that memory worked. > > I won't tell you what systems used a 24-bit processor and 12 or 16 KB of 2us > core store backed by a 2MB disk (three feet in diameter), for fear of > frightening you.;-) Nah, I have some experience with such things. Remember the old horror stories about not smoking in the computer room, because smoke particles are much bigger than fly height of the disk heads? The young 'uns here never had to deal with that. > >> Random Access really means "able to access any random address as fast as >> any other random address". > > My point is simply that the addresses are very far from randomly chosen. The > distinguishing feature of the store is that you can go directly to the > required location, without having to wait for it to reach the read/write > device. We understand each other perfectly; the odd bit is that word "random". We both know it doesn't have the obvious meaning to a modern eye, and we both know what random access really means > > As I said though, there'd be no point in getting all stressed about it now. > >> RAM is also not the opposite of ROM :-) > > I seem to be having a senior moment here; at least, I don't follow that. When I was still a kid learning about memory, many folks thought ROM was very different from RAM, and that somehow ROM didn't have the same random access qualities that RAM has. It does, except that ROM can't be written (and dynamic RAM needs continual refreshing which ROM doesn't, but that's another topic). Eventually I gave up trying to clarify that part, but sometimes (like now) the old habit comes back -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
[OT] Was re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Monday 31 August 2015 11:42:28 Alan McKinnon wrote: > On 31/08/2015 10:50, Peter Humphrey wrote: > > The desktop machine I'm referring to (an Amari "workstation") dates from > > 2009. It has an i5 processor, 16GB RAM* and two 2GB SSDs as the main > > power sinks. It sits (runs) in a boxroom 6ft square and keeps it > > comfortably warm. I haven't noticed any change in ambient temp since the > > SSDs replaced spinners. > > > > * Whoever named that Random Access had a strange understanding of English. > > The last thing I want from memory is random access! How much better it > > would have been to call it something like Direct Access. Oh well - much > > too late now. > > It's random access to distinguish it from serial access. In the early > early days there were a lot of strange methods being tried to build > memory - like dots on a cathode ray tube! To get to bit you wanted, you > had to wait till the scanning beam reached that part of the screen - > serial access. Addressable memory on a grid pattern came much later. Yes, of course I know all that, but it's still the antithesis of random - it's absolutely specific. Random is what you'd get if you didn't specify anything. My favourite storage medium was core store. Millions of tiny ferrite rings, each at an intersection of orthogonal X and Y wires to specify the address, and a write pulse on another wire on the Z axis. At least, that's as close as I can remember now, 40 years later. No wonder computers were expensive. I won't tell you what systems used a 24-bit processor and 12 or 16 KB of 2us core store backed by a 2MB disk (three feet in diameter), for fear of frightening you.;-) > Random Access really means "able to access any random address as fast as > any other random address". My point is simply that the addresses are very far from randomly chosen. The distinguishing feature of the store is that you can go directly to the required location, without having to wait for it to reach the read/write device. As I said though, there'd be no point in getting all stressed about it now. > RAM is also not the opposite of ROM :-) I seem to be having a senior moment here; at least, I don't follow that. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. I'm on Teksavvy, and I run into that on occasion. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? [d531][waltdnes][~] uptime 02:14:01 up 39 days, 5:31, 22 users, load average: 0.16, 0.22, 0.48 No, my machine has not been on for over 900 consecutive hours. It's that long since my most recent full boot. sys-power/hibernate-script in suspend-to-disc mode totally shuts down the machine. It has to read the BIOS on start-up, but it restores all workspaces, and program state with multiple browsers/spreadsheets/etc open, from swap. I have multiple browser profiles, allowing me to dedicate separate instances to each forum. Plus I have ongong personal projects that have spreadsheets or vim open. It's an absolute pain to re-open all the browsers/spreadsheets/etc in each workspace when I do a real reboot for a new kernel. I currently have the display, speakers, modem, router, etc plugged into power bars that are plugged into a slave jack on my UPS. The desktop PC is plugged into the master jack. When the master is drawing power, the slave jack provides power to the power bars. When I hibernate the PC, and it powers down, the slave jack cuts off power to the power bars. So shutting down or hibernating my PC shuts down display, speakers, modem, router, etc. Turning the PC back on powers them up again. If I had your problem, I would move my router/modem to a filtered plug on the UPS. So hibernation would shut down everything except the router/modem. -- Walter Dnes waltd...@waltdnes.org I don't run desktop environments; I run useful applications
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 30/08/2015 06:04, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? Mine depends. I typically do a deliberate reboot only when wanting a new kernel running. Sometimes it's a few days, often up to a month or more. Overnight I usually suspend the machine. This works for me because I usually have a standard array of apps spread over 6 virtual desktops and I forget how everything was set up (advancing age...) It's very seldom that an emerge world needs a reboot so that isn't included in the above. checkrestart and sometimes a log out/log in takes care of getting updated software to run. This is Gentoo not windows, so I see no benefit to frequent daily reboots. Monthly or so, or when new kernels are advised, suits my needs. An aside: I've also proudly played the uptime game, and had remote DNS servers with 1600 days uptime. It looks impressive, but all it really proves is I'm a short-sighted idiot who doesn't do kernel updates :-) So I don't do that extreme anymore. -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: The biggest reason I shutdown, power failure. I use checkrestart to see if/when I need to restart something after doing updates. If for example I update something in the @system area, then I just logout of the GUI, go to boot runlevel, run checkrestart again to see if that did it and then go back to default runlevel. Sometimes, I have to restart something by hand instead of rebooting but not to often. Generally just going to boot runlevel gets the job done. One thing about not rebooting a lot, you use cache a lot which can speed some things up a bit. I have 16GBs here and most of the time, it is almost all used. How much that helps, I dunno but if it didn't help, they wouldn't have it doing it. Another good side, run updates while you sleep. The only bad side, more wear on things like fans and some extra dust. I try to clean my rig at least twice a year or whenever I notice the temps a little higher than they should be. Oh, pulls power all the time which may not matter much depending on your electricity rates. Of course, fixing that connection issue may be a good idea too. ;-) hmmm, if you go to boot run level what is the difference between that and rebooting? After a major update there are so many things to restart that I usually give up and reboot the system, is actually quicker. H, this quoting thing didn't work right again. For me, it is faster. Also, rebooting can uncover a problem that I might not know about. I've had a few times where I couldn't reboot for some unknown reason. Plus, all the common stuff remains in cache. Most of the time tho, just logging out of a GUI, KDE for me, is enough. Using checkrestart should tell me exactly what needs to be restarted and most of the time how. About the only thing I have to restart manually, udev. It's one thing that has a regular update that doesn't restart since it is already started before getting to the boot runlevel. To each his own tho. All of us has our own way of doing things of this nature and for varying reasons. Some shutdown because electricity is expensive. For some, that doesn't matter. Some do it to just reduce noise from the fans etc. One reason I leave mine on all the time is that I almost always have mine doing something. I have tons of TV shows and such on here. If I'm not doing something myself, I have it doing something. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 5:41 AM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: On 30/08/2015 06:04, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? Mine depends. I typically do a deliberate reboot only when wanting a new kernel running. Sometimes it's a few days, often up to a month or more. ++ Typically I reboot every week or two. I try to keep up with stable kernel releases on the latest longterm branch (currently 3.18.20). I'm currently at 19 days, which is a bit on the high side for me, but it seems like 3.18 hasn't had as many updates as some of the other stable series. If you keep a closer eye on security issues and care to track which kernel fixes you do or don't accept, or want to mess with kernel live patching, then you could go longer. I also like to reboot at some frequency just so that if for whatever reason it doesn't reboot I only have a few week's worth of system updates to look at to figure out what changed. I have Gentoo hosts that I don't stay on top of as often and when 5 things break at once I'm playing guessing games (those hosts are all easy to snapshot). -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Mick wrote: On Sunday 30 Aug 2015 18:05:13 Alan McKinnon wrote: On 30/08/2015 19:00, Dale wrote: Don't forget the clothes dryer to, if you have one. Mine is electric and it pulls as much as my water heater does. I just don't use it as much is all. I forgot about that :-) Add in almost all laundry appliances and kitchen power tools too... Modern appliances with Green stickers on them (whatever they're called) are more efficient by design. To some extent this is also true with PCs. I still have an old Pentium 4 32bit running a couple of test environments and back up storage. I can assure you that the room gets hot after it has been running for a couple of hours! :-) True. My old puter, AMD 2500+ with 3GBs of memory, pulled at least double if not more than my current 4 core AMD with 16GBs of ram. I'm not sure this new one has anything green on it but it is less power hungry. My old also helped heat my old room. It had to be pretty cold outside for me to turn the heat on. My dryer tho, it's about 25 years old. I think it pulls around 4500 watts normally. Considering I have retired the heating element at least 5 or 6 times, it may pull a little more than that now. I might add, it takes longer to dry clothes tho. I fear the day I can't tie that element back together. I doubt I will ever find a element for that old thing. I may have to get some new line for my old fashioned clothes dryer. You know, two trees with a wire between them. A tree limb broke my old one. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sunday 30 Aug 2015 18:05:13 Alan McKinnon wrote: On 30/08/2015 19:00, Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On 30/08/2015 17:56, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. A desktop or laptop will typically draw far less power than a single 60W incandescent bulb. I bet you have quite a lot of those. Even if not, the CFLs you'll have to give you light at night still draw much much more than a computer. If saving energy is your personal driver, then you should be looking at water heaters, central heaters, aircon and stove as the main culprits. Everything else, whilst measurable, is a small drop in the bucket and probably not worth worrying about. Assuming of course that your computer is a desktop/laptop, and not a 42U cabinet jam packed full of Dell 2950s Don't forget the clothes dryer to, if you have one. Mine is electric and it pulls as much as my water heater does. I just don't use it as much is all. I forgot about that :-) Add in almost all laundry appliances and kitchen power tools too... Modern appliances with Green stickers on them (whatever they're called) are more efficient by design. To some extent this is also true with PCs. I still have an old Pentium 4 32bit running a couple of test environments and back up storage. I can assure you that the room gets hot after it has been running for a couple of hours! :-) -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
I personally find it beneficial to backup to an online source locally or in an online storage service (as long as encryption incurs etc). DVD are indeed limited in life. You are still better off with other offline storage mediums such as an external hdd or tape indeed. I've found crashplans unlimited storage 10 machine online backup solution to be an excellent solution for desktop machines where connectivity is not guaranteed for cronnd rsyncs etc. Of course it relies on running a fat jar , but it works. As to uptime, I keep my windows desktops machine online more than my linux desktops just due to how frequent kernel updates occur. On Aug 30, 2015 7:11 PM, Michel Catudal mcatu...@comcast.net wrote: Le 2015-08-30 11:56, Peter Humphrey a écrit : On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. Backups are vital for a server in company. At work we do a backup every day. At home, it depends how important your stuff is. For pictures you should always copy them on DVD. I regularly backup pictures for people who have ususable windows systems, for them the pictures are the most important stuff but they do not back them up. Personally I don't like to do regular backups because that involves too many DVDs. I probably should do my backups more often. I do have 3 2TB hard disks with important data copied on each for redudancy. I also have some backups on a 500G driver which is not powered usually. I also make some backup on DVDs sometimes. Anything that is of extreme importance I have in several DVDs which I make copies of every few months. I remembered that in the early days of CD that their life was rather limited and am not taking chances on DVD even though I think the technology is a lot better. -- For Linux Software visit http://home.comcast.net/~mcatudal http://sourceforge.net/projects/suzielinux/
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Le 2015-08-30 00:04, Philip Webb a écrit : How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? For reboots many users may choose to reboot when they do changes, perhaps habit from windows or OS/2. It is usually not necessary unless you change your kernel or bootloader. As for shutdowns there are several arguments for and against. What often kills electronic is the shock between hot and cold so there is an argument about keeping the system on. Whether it is always safe to keep the computer on all the time remains to be proven. My son always leaves his computer on and I had to recently replace it, the mother board was gone. Mine which was purchased around the same time has had no issues, I shutdown every night unless I need to do some updates. An argument against it would be wasting energy. Computers are cheap, so are hard disk. Unless you run a server that has to be on all the time there is no logic in keeping the computer on unless you can get it to go sleep. -- For Linux Software visit http://home.comcast.net/~mcatudal http://sourceforge.net/projects/suzielinux/
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Hello, Philip. On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I switch my PC on in the morning when I want to start using it. I switch it off before going to bed, or going out shopping, or things like that. I don't like wasting electricity. I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. Unfortunately, I need to leave my router permanently powered up, which I resent. German telephone companies have been offering only VOIP telephone connections for some while, now, which basically means that instead of the companies converting IP packets into a telephone signal, every subscriber's got to do it himself. So where people could previously simply buy a telephone handset and plug it into the wall, they've now potentially got to spend extra on a router and somehow manage to configure that router. And of course, the router contuously wastes electricity, waiting for that occasional incoming call, whereas previously the handset was only powered up, from the exchange, when a call was in progress. Progress this is not. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca -- Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 11:56 AM, Peter Humphrey pe...@prh.myzen.co.uk wrote: No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. I have a multi-tier strategy. Anything I'm going to complain about losing is backed up daily to S3 with duplicity, end of story. Stuff like MythTV recordings and such which would be an inconvenience to lose gets backed up daily to ext4 just in case btrfs gives out on me. Otherwise I trust mirroring enough for that sort of thing. If it isn't automatic, daily, and offsite, it isn't backed up as far as I'm concerned. -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Alan McKinnon wrote: On 30/08/2015 17:56, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. A desktop or laptop will typically draw far less power than a single 60W incandescent bulb. I bet you have quite a lot of those. Even if not, the CFLs you'll have to give you light at night still draw much much more than a computer. If saving energy is your personal driver, then you should be looking at water heaters, central heaters, aircon and stove as the main culprits. Everything else, whilst measurable, is a small drop in the bucket and probably not worth worrying about. Assuming of course that your computer is a desktop/laptop, and not a 42U cabinet jam packed full of Dell 2950s Don't forget the clothes dryer to, if you have one. Mine is electric and it pulls as much as my water heater does. I just don't use it as much is all. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Le 2015-08-30 11:56, Peter Humphrey a écrit : On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. Backups are vital for a server in company. At work we do a backup every day. At home, it depends how important your stuff is. For pictures you should always copy them on DVD. I regularly backup pictures for people who have ususable windows systems, for them the pictures are the most important stuff but they do not back them up. Personally I don't like to do regular backups because that involves too many DVDs. I probably should do my backups more often. I do have 3 2TB hard disks with important data copied on each for redudancy. I also have some backups on a 500G driver which is not powered usually. I also make some backup on DVDs sometimes. Anything that is of extreme importance I have in several DVDs which I make copies of every few months. I remembered that in the early days of CD that their life was rather limited and am not taking chances on DVD even though I think the technology is a lot better. -- For Linux Software visit http://home.comcast.net/~mcatudal http://sourceforge.net/projects/suzielinux/
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Mick wrote: On Sunday 30 Aug 2015 08:54:16 Dale wrote: cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: The biggest reason I shutdown, power failure. I use checkrestart to see if/when I need to restart something after doing updates. If for example I update something in the @system area, then I just logout of the GUI, go to boot runlevel, run checkrestart again to see if that did it and then go back to default runlevel. Sometimes, I have to restart something by hand instead of rebooting but not to often. Generally just going to boot runlevel gets the job done. One thing about not rebooting a lot, you use cache a lot which can speed some things up a bit. I have 16GBs here and most of the time, it is almost all used. How much that helps, I dunno but if it didn't help, they wouldn't have it doing it. Another good side, run updates while you sleep. The only bad side, more wear on things like fans and some extra dust. I try to clean my rig at least twice a year or whenever I notice the temps a little higher than they should be. Oh, pulls power all the time which may not matter much depending on your electricity rates. Of course, fixing that connection issue may be a good idea too. ;-) hmmm, if you go to boot run level what is the difference between that and rebooting? After a major update there are so many things to restart that I usually give up and reboot the system, is actually quicker. H, this quoting thing didn't work right again. For me, it is faster. Also, rebooting can uncover a problem that I might not know about. I've had a few times where I couldn't reboot for some unknown reason. Plus, all the common stuff remains in cache. Most of the time tho, just logging out of a GUI, KDE for me, is enough. Using checkrestart should tell me exactly what needs to be restarted and most of the time how. About the only thing I have to restart manually, udev. It's one thing that has a regular update that doesn't restart since it is already started before getting to the boot runlevel. To each his own tho. All of us has our own way of doing things of this nature and for varying reasons. Some shutdown because electricity is expensive. For some, that doesn't matter. Some do it to just reduce noise from the fans etc. One reason I leave mine on all the time is that I almost always have mine doing something. I have tons of TV shows and such on here. If I'm not doing something myself, I have it doing something. Dale :-) :-) What do you do if you install a new kernel? You have to reboot then, yes? Of course. Don't you? I just don't have a huge need to update the kernel that often. I'm not running some server that has to worry about getting hacked 10,000 times a day. I just update it when I can. I might add, I'm stuck on the current kernel because NONE of the newer ones will boot. There's another thread on that where someone else has the issue. So, until that is fixed and I CAN update, no need worrying about a new kernel needing to be loaded. That just leaves me with power failures and such. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Am 30.08.2015 um 06:04 schrieb Philip Webb: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? suspend to ram. Only reboot when there is a kernel update I actually install.
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Am 30.08.2015 um 15:26 schrieb Alan Mackenzie: Hello, Philip. On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I switch my PC on in the morning when I want to start using it. I switch it off before going to bed, or going out shopping, or things like that. I don't like wasting electricity. I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. Unfortunately, I need to leave my router permanently powered up, which I resent. yeah, a fritzbox needs so much power
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 30/08/2015 17:24, Daniel Frey wrote: On 08/30/2015 06:24 AM, Michel Catudal wrote: As for shutdowns there are several arguments for and against. What often kills electronic is the shock between hot and cold so there is an argument about keeping the system on. Whether it is always safe to keep the computer on all the time remains to be proven. Recently I've had to help someone migrate off of a failed computer. This computer was old (I had to find an IDE adapter to recover some files) from late 90s/early 00s. Some time ago I told him to have it running all the time, mostly because of age. So he kept it running nonstop and literally a week or two ago shut it down as he was getting new flooring installed. He called me after hooking it back up again as it wouldn't start. I went over to check and the motherboard finally failed. He hadn't powered it off in 4-5 years. For myself I use a smart power bar and suspend my PC when not in use. This caused me all sorts of grief with systemd hanging on shutdown after a suspend, ultimately causing my RAID array to be rebuilt on every reboot/shutdown and so I've finally abandoned it and am running openrc again. The only thing about using suspend is that if the PC is in a sleep state it won't wake up and shut down when the power goes out. This just happened to me yesterday (big wind storm here.) One of the reasons sysadmins have old servers out there that still have huge uptimes, is that we dare not switch them off. We don't know if the drives will spin up again from cold! Technically, we should do a power down test every 6 months or so, but that turns out not to be a yes/no test in real life; it's a yes/destroy test and no-one wants to make a decision either way. So we all sit in limbo and wait for some exterior event to decide for us (like black-outs) Sad, init? -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 30/08/2015 17:56, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. A desktop or laptop will typically draw far less power than a single 60W incandescent bulb. I bet you have quite a lot of those. Even if not, the CFLs you'll have to give you light at night still draw much much more than a computer. If saving energy is your personal driver, then you should be looking at water heaters, central heaters, aircon and stove as the main culprits. Everything else, whilst measurable, is a small drop in the bucket and probably not worth worrying about. Assuming of course that your computer is a desktop/laptop, and not a 42U cabinet jam packed full of Dell 2950s -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 11:54 AM, Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com wrote: Technically, we should do a power down test every 6 months or so, but that turns out not to be a yes/no test in real life; it's a yes/destroy test and no-one wants to make a decision either way. So we all sit in limbo and wait for some exterior event to decide for us (like black-outs) Half the time these are ancient services that have long been replaced but nobody can bring themselves to make the call to get rid of the old servers. Maybe there were 10M records in the database and 9.998M of them were migrated to a new database, but due to some issue the rest couldn't be, so the old server stays up just in case anybody ever needs the old data, and so on. Typically these would just stick around until finally some hardware component fails, and then it gets written off. Sadly, this course of forcing hands seems to be going away. At work somebody tried to hand me an ancient system to look after in my spare time. Apparently they just finished virtualizing it. Go figure - they have VAX VMs available for Linux these days. The problem is that KT and maintaining documentation and not being the person who gets the finger pointed at when something goes wrong costs the company time and money, and in this case for almost zero value. Usually the problems with technology aren't technical in nature... -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 30/08/2015 19:00, Dale wrote: Alan McKinnon wrote: On 30/08/2015 17:56, Peter Humphrey wrote: On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. A desktop or laptop will typically draw far less power than a single 60W incandescent bulb. I bet you have quite a lot of those. Even if not, the CFLs you'll have to give you light at night still draw much much more than a computer. If saving energy is your personal driver, then you should be looking at water heaters, central heaters, aircon and stove as the main culprits. Everything else, whilst measurable, is a small drop in the bucket and probably not worth worrying about. Assuming of course that your computer is a desktop/laptop, and not a 42U cabinet jam packed full of Dell 2950s Don't forget the clothes dryer to, if you have one. Mine is electric and it pulls as much as my water heater does. I just don't use it as much is all. I forgot about that :-) Add in almost all laundry appliances and kitchen power tools too... -- Alan McKinnon alan.mckin...@gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Alan Mackenzie a...@muc.de wrote: On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I switch my PC on in the morning when I want to start using it. I switch it off before going to bed, or going out shopping, or things like that. I don't like wasting electricity. Most discussions I've read on this matter tend to end up around here, both for economy and wear. Turn on the computer when you are going to need it, and turn it off at the end of the day, or similar. It probably isn't worth powering it off for lunch (though I do put it to sleep). For my server it runs 24x7. I'm always amused when I look at the SMART stats on failed drives. They usually have thousands of hours of power-on time, and maybe a dozen spin-ups. Then again, that one batch of Seagate 1TB drives seemed to die barely broken in (suffice it to say I've gotten very proficient at their RMA process, which is decent). -- Rich
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sunday 30 Aug 2015 14:26:36 Alan Mackenzie wrote: Hello, Philip. On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I switch my PC on in the morning when I want to start using it. I switch it off before going to bed, or going out shopping, or things like that. I don't like wasting electricity. Same here. Unless I am somewhere near the desk the laptop is on sleep. Overnight it is shut down. I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. I think that it may be better troubleshooting your ISP PPPoE negotiation (or whatever protocol they are using) than changing your usage habits. Well, I would be doing this anyway, out of curiosity. :-) Unfortunately, I need to leave my router permanently powered up, which I resent. German telephone companies have been offering only VOIP telephone connections for some while, now, which basically means that instead of the companies converting IP packets into a telephone signal, every subscriber's got to do it himself. So where people could previously simply buy a telephone handset and plug it into the wall, they've now potentially got to spend extra on a router and somehow manage to configure that router. And of course, the router contuously wastes electricity, waiting for that occasional incoming call, whereas previously the handset was only powered up, from the exchange, when a call was in progress. Progress this is not. I Power cuts can cause re-syncs and a lower sync rate for my connection, so I leave the router powered up 24-7 and connected to a UPS. The waste of electricity is tiny. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? As others have mentioned consider hibernation for overnight purposes (S4) and sleep (S3) for when you are away from your desk for longer periods of time. However, I would be intrigued as to what might be wrong with the ISP network authentication. ;-) -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sunday 30 August 2015 00:04:43 Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? No-one has yet mentioned taking backups. I'm still using a brute-force approach, in which I shut down each of my two machines once a week to make a backup to external disk. Otherwise they're on 24 hours a day running BOINC projects. On the desktop PC kmail makes a daily archive of messages, and once a day a cron job copies my user directory to /home/me.bu/ . I know it burns energy but I'm prepared to make my small contribution to what I think is a good cause. -- Rgds Peter
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sunday 30 Aug 2015 08:54:16 Dale wrote: cov...@ccs.covici.com wrote: Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: The biggest reason I shutdown, power failure. I use checkrestart to see if/when I need to restart something after doing updates. If for example I update something in the @system area, then I just logout of the GUI, go to boot runlevel, run checkrestart again to see if that did it and then go back to default runlevel. Sometimes, I have to restart something by hand instead of rebooting but not to often. Generally just going to boot runlevel gets the job done. One thing about not rebooting a lot, you use cache a lot which can speed some things up a bit. I have 16GBs here and most of the time, it is almost all used. How much that helps, I dunno but if it didn't help, they wouldn't have it doing it. Another good side, run updates while you sleep. The only bad side, more wear on things like fans and some extra dust. I try to clean my rig at least twice a year or whenever I notice the temps a little higher than they should be. Oh, pulls power all the time which may not matter much depending on your electricity rates. Of course, fixing that connection issue may be a good idea too. ;-) hmmm, if you go to boot run level what is the difference between that and rebooting? After a major update there are so many things to restart that I usually give up and reboot the system, is actually quicker. H, this quoting thing didn't work right again. For me, it is faster. Also, rebooting can uncover a problem that I might not know about. I've had a few times where I couldn't reboot for some unknown reason. Plus, all the common stuff remains in cache. Most of the time tho, just logging out of a GUI, KDE for me, is enough. Using checkrestart should tell me exactly what needs to be restarted and most of the time how. About the only thing I have to restart manually, udev. It's one thing that has a regular update that doesn't restart since it is already started before getting to the boot runlevel. To each his own tho. All of us has our own way of doing things of this nature and for varying reasons. Some shutdown because electricity is expensive. For some, that doesn't matter. Some do it to just reduce noise from the fans etc. One reason I leave mine on all the time is that I almost always have mine doing something. I have tons of TV shows and such on here. If I'm not doing something myself, I have it doing something. Dale :-) :-) What do you do if you install a new kernel? You have to reboot then, yes? -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 12:04:43AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I generally power off whenever I won't be using my desktop for more than 7-8 hours, since it has a big CPU, lots of RAM, decent GPU, etc. and hence draws a lot of idle power. So usually the most uptime I get on it is around 2 or 3 days. Alec
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
On 08/30/2015 06:24 AM, Michel Catudal wrote: As for shutdowns there are several arguments for and against. What often kills electronic is the shock between hot and cold so there is an argument about keeping the system on. Whether it is always safe to keep the computer on all the time remains to be proven. Recently I've had to help someone migrate off of a failed computer. This computer was old (I had to find an IDE adapter to recover some files) from late 90s/early 00s. Some time ago I told him to have it running all the time, mostly because of age. So he kept it running nonstop and literally a week or two ago shut it down as he was getting new flooring installed. He called me after hooking it back up again as it wouldn't start. I went over to check and the motherboard finally failed. He hadn't powered it off in 4-5 years. For myself I use a smart power bar and suspend my PC when not in use. This caused me all sorts of grief with systemd hanging on shutdown after a suspend, ultimately causing my RAID array to be rebuilt on every reboot/shutdown and so I've finally abandoned it and am running openrc again. The only thing about using suspend is that if the PC is in a sleep state it won't wake up and shut down when the power goes out. This just happened to me yesterday (big wind storm here.) Dan
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Dale rdalek1...@gmail.com wrote: Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? root@fireball / # uprecords # Uptime | System Boot up +--- 1 193 days, 09:28:37 | Linux 3.5.3-gentooSat Sep 22 07:50:38 2012 2 116 days, 16:24:24 | Linux 3.16.3-gentoo Mon Oct 13 20:27:52 2014 3 111 days, 00:34:49 | Linux 3.18.7-gentoo Tue Mar 31 18:57:19 2015 4 101 days, 18:34:17 | Linux 3.5.3-gentooWed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 572 days, 12:03:16 | Linux 3.9.5-gentooSat Jul 13 19:11:24 2013 669 days, 00:44:23 | Linux 3.11.6-gentoo Mon Jan 6 03:33:34 2014 766 days, 11:00:52 | Linux 3.9.5-gentooThu Oct 31 15:54:27 2013 851 days, 23:49:06 | Linux 3.13.6-gentoo Sun Mar 23 15:53:30 2014 946 days, 01:07:54 | Linux 3.16.0-gentoo Thu Aug 28 15:48:57 2014 1036 days, 11:40:14 | Linux 3.14.0-gentoo Mon May 19 16:05:48 2014 +--- - 28 6 days, 20:58:28 | Linux 3.18.7-gentoo Sun Aug 23 02:14:26 2015 +--- 1up in 1 day , 01:40:30 | atMon Aug 31 00:53:23 2015 t10 in29 days, 14:41:47 | atMon Sep 28 13:54:40 2015 no1 in 186 days, 12:30:10 | atThu Mar 3 10:43:03 2016 up 1179 days, 07:42:13 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 down 15497 days, 20:30:4 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 %up7.071 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 root@fireball / # The biggest reason I shutdown, power failure. I use checkrestart to see if/when I need to restart something after doing updates. If for example I update something in the @system area, then I just logout of the GUI, go to boot runlevel, run checkrestart again to see if that did it and then go back to default runlevel. Sometimes, I have to restart something by hand instead of rebooting but not to often. Generally just going to boot runlevel gets the job done. One thing about not rebooting a lot, you use cache a lot which can speed some things up a bit. I have 16GBs here and most of the time, it is almost all used. How much that helps, I dunno but if it didn't help, they wouldn't have it doing it. Another good side, run updates while you sleep. The only bad side, more wear on things like fans and some extra dust. I try to clean my rig at least twice a year or whenever I notice the temps a little higher than they should be. Oh, pulls power all the time which may not matter much depending on your electricity rates. Of course, fixing that connection issue may be a good idea too. ;-) hmmm, if you go to boot run level what is the difference between that and rebooting? After a major update there are so many things to restart that I usually give up and reboot the system, is actually quicker. -- Your life is like a penny. You're going to lose it. The question is: How do you spend it? John Covici cov...@ccs.covici.com
[gentoo-user] system uptime
How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? -- ,, SUPPORT ___//___, Philip Webb ELECTRIC /] [] [] [] [] []| Cities Centre, University of Toronto TRANSIT`-O--O---' purslowatchassdotutorontodotca
Re: [gentoo-user] system uptime
Philip Webb wrote: How long do desktop users typically leave their systems between reboots ? How long between power off/on's ? I've long been in the habit of switching everything off while I sleep, then restarting after I've woken got going again myself. However recently, I've run into delays getting my router (only 1 device attached) to shake hands successfully with my ISP's server, which have been requiring several power off/on's before it works. As a result, I've started rebooting only after my weekly system update -- it means I get to use the new versions of everything -- not powering off at all ; the monitor + Xscreensaver are off whenever I'm away from the machine for = 1 hr (approx). Are there any pro's/con's I sb aware of ? root@fireball / # uprecords # Uptime | System Boot up +--- 1 193 days, 09:28:37 | Linux 3.5.3-gentooSat Sep 22 07:50:38 2012 2 116 days, 16:24:24 | Linux 3.16.3-gentoo Mon Oct 13 20:27:52 2014 3 111 days, 00:34:49 | Linux 3.18.7-gentoo Tue Mar 31 18:57:19 2015 4 101 days, 18:34:17 | Linux 3.5.3-gentooWed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 572 days, 12:03:16 | Linux 3.9.5-gentooSat Jul 13 19:11:24 2013 669 days, 00:44:23 | Linux 3.11.6-gentoo Mon Jan 6 03:33:34 2014 766 days, 11:00:52 | Linux 3.9.5-gentooThu Oct 31 15:54:27 2013 851 days, 23:49:06 | Linux 3.13.6-gentoo Sun Mar 23 15:53:30 2014 946 days, 01:07:54 | Linux 3.16.0-gentoo Thu Aug 28 15:48:57 2014 1036 days, 11:40:14 | Linux 3.14.0-gentoo Mon May 19 16:05:48 2014 +--- - 28 6 days, 20:58:28 | Linux 3.18.7-gentoo Sun Aug 23 02:14:26 2015 +--- 1up in 1 day , 01:40:30 | atMon Aug 31 00:53:23 2015 t10 in29 days, 14:41:47 | atMon Sep 28 13:54:40 2015 no1 in 186 days, 12:30:10 | atThu Mar 3 10:43:03 2016 up 1179 days, 07:42:13 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 down 15497 days, 20:30:4 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 %up7.071 | since Wed Dec 31 18:00:00 1969 root@fireball / # The biggest reason I shutdown, power failure. I use checkrestart to see if/when I need to restart something after doing updates. If for example I update something in the @system area, then I just logout of the GUI, go to boot runlevel, run checkrestart again to see if that did it and then go back to default runlevel. Sometimes, I have to restart something by hand instead of rebooting but not to often. Generally just going to boot runlevel gets the job done. One thing about not rebooting a lot, you use cache a lot which can speed some things up a bit. I have 16GBs here and most of the time, it is almost all used. How much that helps, I dunno but if it didn't help, they wouldn't have it doing it. Another good side, run updates while you sleep. The only bad side, more wear on things like fans and some extra dust. I try to clean my rig at least twice a year or whenever I notice the temps a little higher than they should be. Oh, pulls power all the time which may not matter much depending on your electricity rates. Of course, fixing that connection issue may be a good idea too. ;-) Dale :-) :-)
