Re: Recent Laptop experiences sought

[Peter Petrakis]

16GB ram is my minimum for a Linux desktop. 8GB was fine before sandbox
tabbed browsing came
along but today that's where the bulk of the memory is allocated. It works
but it feels cramped sometimes.
KDE is leaner than gnome these days believe it or not. I also don't need a
registry editor or "tweak tool"
to set stuff that matters.

I still have a T510 with an SSD that won't die. I had to replace the cpu
fan recently though, bearings were going.

It might be worth investigating if you can get LineageOS onto the
chromebook. I recently recycled a Samsung
Galaxy S4 from Android 4.4 to Android 9 using LOS (r16?). Thing screams now.

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 4:07 PM Tom Buskey  wrote:

> I tend to use my laptop in one place so I don't really use the battery.  I
> want chrome, xterminals and ssh to my servers.
>
> I had T61p laptops with 8GB and SSD for a long time until the power
> supplies got flakey.
> I upgraded to a T420s from ebay ($100ish) plugged the SSD from the T61p
> and just kept running.
> I like the durability (the T61p was 12 years old!).
> All the newer laptops seem to have chiclet type keyboards.  I prefer more
> of a real keyboard.
>
> I have a chromebook that can run Linux.  It's a bit slower, has only 4GB
> RAM (upper limit for cheap chromebooks), lower resolution and that horrible
> keyboard.  The battery life is fantastic though.
>
> On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 2:13 PM Peter Petrakis 
> wrote:
>
>> You can pickup Thinkpad x220 cheap on ebay with 2/4 core i7 processor and
>> max 16G DRAM + SSD for under $250.
>> Just picked one up for the wife for $179.
>>
>> After that I wouldn't bother with anything less than a P50. They can be
>> had for under $1K and are absolute
>> beasts. Tons of ram capacity, multiple harddrives, nvme, dual gpus,
>> suitable for CUDA dev.
>>
>> https://tinyurl.com/y3keh99t  , Intel i7-6700HQ 2.60GHz 32GB 480GB SSD
>> 15.6", buy it now for $760
>>
>> http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-thinkpad-p50-review-workstation-all/
>>
>> I've been halfway around the world with *business class* Thinkpads and
>> they have never failed me.
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 1:17 PM Mark Ellison  wrote:
>>
>>> Hi-
>>>
>>> As appropriate, please respond with your recent laptop experience...
>>>
>>> I have been using the Lenovo Thinkpad line of laptops with Fedora Linux.
>>>
>>> Currently, have a short list of laptops- the Lenovo Thinkpad T490 and
>>> the HP ProBook, Zbook or Elite with the i7 4-core 8M cache. Screen should
>>> be no larger than 14".
>>>
>>> Some online research turned up 'short battery life' problems with the
>>> T490 that seem resolvable with some BIOS tweaks.
>>>
>>> Any issues, any preferences?  Things to consider pre-sale?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance for all your help!
>>>
>>> Mark Ellison
>>>
>>>
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Re: Recent Laptop experiences sought

[Peter Petrakis]

You can pickup Thinkpad x220 cheap on ebay with 2/4 core i7 processor and
max 16G DRAM + SSD for under $250.
Just picked one up for the wife for $179.

After that I wouldn't bother with anything less than a P50. They can be had
for under $1K and are absolute
beasts. Tons of ram capacity, multiple harddrives, nvme, dual gpus,
suitable for CUDA dev.

https://tinyurl.com/y3keh99t  , Intel i7-6700HQ 2.60GHz 32GB 480GB SSD
15.6", buy it now for $760
http://www.notebookreview.com/notebookreview/lenovo-thinkpad-p50-review-workstation-all/

I've been halfway around the world with *business class* Thinkpads and they
have never failed me.

Peter



On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 1:17 PM Mark Ellison  wrote:

> Hi-
>
> As appropriate, please respond with your recent laptop experience...
>
> I have been using the Lenovo Thinkpad line of laptops with Fedora Linux.
>
> Currently, have a short list of laptops- the Lenovo Thinkpad T490 and the
> HP ProBook, Zbook or Elite with the i7 4-core 8M cache. Screen should be no
> larger than 14".
>
> Some online research turned up 'short battery life' problems with the T490
> that seem resolvable with some BIOS tweaks.
>
> Any issues, any preferences?  Things to consider pre-sale?
>
> Thanks in advance for all your help!
>
> Mark Ellison
>
>
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Re: 16.04 SSD Re: Upstart issues with Ubuntu 14.04.

[Peter Petrakis]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 12:40 AM, Bill Ricker  wrote:

> On Sep 9, 2016 23:05, "Joshua Judson Rosen" 
> wrote:
> >
> > On 09/09/2016 12:06 PM, Richard Kolb II wrote:
> > > Not exactly related, but I just switched from windows 7 on my primary
> > > machine to Ubuntu 16.x LTS. I found it horribly slow, which surprised
> > > me considering it's a faster machine, more ram, and an SSD, over my
> > > 14.x LTS machine.
> >
> > Does it perhaps have a worse graphics card--or perhaps even just
> > a _worse-supported_ graphics card? Bottlenecks can be
> > at the near end just as well as they can be at the far end
>
> If you run "Additional Drivers", it will inform you if there is a nonlibre
> driver that might perform better.
>

+1.

When I used to do hardware enablement for Canonical, I was initially
dismayed
that we were going out of our way to integrate and qualify binary video
drivers.
Then I saw the difference it makes for discrete graphics controllers
(nvidia/ati),
especially on laptops. Having said that, I run all Intel with UMA graphics
and
can drive my 4K monitor with a 5 year old thinkpad.

Checkout the hardware cert db before your next buy.
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ .
If it's there, it'll just work. If the platform chips are the same, it'll
"probably" just work too.
There's a little lag for the binary video drivers making it into the repos
as getting pre-install image done has priority.

> xenial 16.04LTS with SSD, Intel graphics is amazing fast here.
> (Intel NUK6i7kyk and EVO950pro nvme m.2 SSD . mDP works fine, HDMI didn't
> do 4k for me. )
>
> Don't be fooled by SATA mode m.2 SSDs, they're better than rotary drives
> but they aren't the m.2 you are looking for!
>

You ought to be able to get close to 500MB/s sequential write performance
from a good SSD.

Here's a micron m500 that I beat on a lot.

Using this fio file as a starting point:
http://tfindelkind.com/2015/08/24/fio-flexible-io-tester-part8-interpret-and-understand-the-resultoutput/

I have a tweaked one somewhere, I just can't find it atm.

# sequential 4k write
# set readwrite=write
# DESTRUCTIVE TEST: #sudo DISK=/dev/sdb fio perf.ini
Jobs: 4 (f=4): [W(4)] [48.6% done] [0KB/423.9MB/0KB /s] [0/108K/0 iops]
[eta 00m:18s]

good.

# rand 4k write
# # set readwrite=randwrite
# DESTRUCTIVE TEST: #sudo DISK=/dev/sdb fio perf.ini
Jobs: 4 (f=4): [w(4)] [31.4% done] [0KB/319.7MB/0KB /s] [0/81.9K/0 iops]
[eta 00m:24s]

~80,000 IOPS, which is what the spec says,
http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/storage-ssd-m500

OK, lets put a filesystem on and see the difference

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb
mkdir /tmp/scratch
sudo mount /dev/sdb /tmp/scratch

# These tests are non-destructive, we're writing to a file hosted by the
filesystem

# rand 4k write on ext4
# add size=10g to the job description (its more than we need but I don't
care, quick example)
# sudo DISK=/tmp/scratch/randwrite-ext4.out fio perf.ini

Jobs: 4 (f=4): [w(4)] [45.7% done] [0KB/215.2MB/0KB /s] [0/55.8K/0 iops]
[eta 00m:19s]

So there goes a third of my performance :/

But this isn't a typical workload. A 70% read 30% write mix is more typical.

# set readwrite=randrw
# set rwmixread=70
#
# sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb
# mkdir /tmp/scratch
# sudo mount /dev/sdb /tmp/scratch
fio-job-11: (g=0): rw=randrw, bs=4K-4K/4K-4K/4K-4K, ioengine=libaio,
iodepth=32
Jobs: 4 (f=4): [m(4)] [20.0% done] [235.6MB/101.4MB/0KB /s] [60.3K/25.1K/0
iops] [eta 00m:Jobs: 4 (f=4): [m(

85K total IOPS with ~2/3 going to reads. reasonable.

Let's compare that again to block-io performance, same mix.

# sudo umount /tmp/scratch
# DESTRUCTIVE TEST: #sudo DISK=/dev/sdb fio perf.ini

Jobs: 4 (f=4): [m(4)] [20.0% done] [202.2MB/88128KB/0KB /s] [51.8K/22.4K/0
iops] [eta 00m:Jobs: 4 (f=4): [m(

the drop in read performance is probably  because I don't have any vfs page
cache help. my ssd might need to be
wiped too.

So that should give you an idea as to what to expect from your device.
Before you ask, I don't have an opinion
on which fs you should use for SSDs.

If you continue to see slowness once you've eliminated the video driver.
Use iotop  to
see which apps are touching your disk, maybe something is running away.
Also make sure the os isn't
doing something stupid like putting your link to sleep to save power,
powertop can help with this.

Hope this helps.

Peter


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Re: Home server hardware for Ubuntu 14.04?

[Peter Petrakis]

You can deploy openstack to a single machine in a number of ways.

I think this one actually makes an LXC for each instance, I just found this

http://astokes.org/ubuntu-openstack-installer/

Marco's way on the other hand uses --deploy-to N to direct juju to install
the charm to
a specific machine.

http://marcoceppi.com/2014/06/deploying-openstack-with-just-two-machines/

You can also see from his video that he's a BSG fan :)

What I like to do is create a MAAS of VMs and deploy to that. You can
configure IPMI power on/off
behavior by configuring the virsh interface.

When I develop I do something like this for RAD and machine management.
Currently when you
remove a service from juju it leaves that machine behind and provisions a
new one should you deploy
again, this can lead to a ummm. surprising AWS bill. So for example when I
was customizing jenkins
for work here I did this.

ppetraki@:jenkins-ci$ cat Makefile
.PHONY: deploy

clean:
rm -rf charms/trusty

install: clean
mkdir -p charms/trusty
cp -a jenkins charms/trusty/jenkins

deploy: install
juju destroy-environment $(shell juju env) --force -y
juju bootstrap --constraints mem=4G
juju deploy --to 0 local:jenkins --config=jenkins.yaml \
--repository=charms/
juju expose jenkins


Which deploys jenkins to the bootstrap node, which is always node zero. I
make some changes locally, and
the makefile pushes the latest version to my local repo, zaps the old
environment, which destroys everything,
and start a fresh deployment. Hack, rinse, and repeat.

I'm a big advocate of sizing stuff in the cloud so for example you could
see how your media server performs
on various sized AWS machines and then use that as a guide to how much
capacity you really need on your metal.

Peter





On Tue, Oct 7, 2014 at 7:53 AM, Tom Buskey t...@buskey.name wrote:

 My intro to Openstack was someone in sales from Canonical showing how he
 used HP microservers and other parts from eBay to teach himself Openstack.
 Juju was just being introduced and at the time, the minimal recommended
 stack was 12 nodes.

 He had the whole setup in his office.  12 HP Microservers running Intel
 Atom (they have an AMD version too) maxed out to 4 GB RAM each.  I think
 some will go to 8 GB.  He added $30 gigabit PCIe x1 card.  I think there is
 a 2 port card out there.  1 gigabit ethernet switch, 1 APC PDU for when
 IPMI wedges on the HPs.

 Quiet enough to be in his office.  Low power enough to run from the wall
 outlets.  Useful enough that people squawked when he took it down.

 I've been using headless VirtualBox VMs to run my servers in.  It means as
 long as VirtualBox runs on my host, I don't need to reinstall my servers.
 My host does VirtualBox and fileserving.  Everything else is a VM,
 including Plex (my media server).

 I'm planning on moving my VM server to an Openstack cloud.  KVM feels like
 it has less overhead than VirtualBox and like you, I'm doing openstack at
 work also.

 On Sun, Oct 5, 2014 at 10:17 PM, Henry Gessau henry.ges...@acm.org
 wrote:

 Joshua Judson Rosen roz...@geekspace.com wrote:
  Henry Gessau henry.ges...@acm.org writes:
 
  I want to set up a server at home for a bunch of projects and
 experiments.
 
  I need to use Ubuntu 14.04 server for the OS, and an Intel (not AMD)
 CPU.
 
  Canonical's certified list[1] is not very helpful. I assume 14.04 will
 install
  just fine on many systems, but I would prefer to have confirmation from
  someone/somewhere before buying something.
 
  Requirements:
  - Reasonably quiet. It's going to reside near me in my home office.
  - Intel VT-x support.
  - Four cores. More would be nice.
  - Must support at least 32GB RAM.
  - Preferably under $800 for chassis + PS + CPU.
 
  I assume it would need to be some Core i3/i5 variant. I don't need raw
 speed,
  so i7 is probably overkill, and I would prefer to keep the power low.
 I admit
  I don't understand the Xeon family at all.
 
  I was thinking something along the lines of an HP ProLiant
 MicroServer, or a
  Lenovo ThinkServer TS140? But I would be happy to assemble from parts.
 
  If you need more than 32 GB RAM, it doesn't look like you want
  either of those machines: the Levno TS140 appears to max out at 32 GB
 RAM,
  and the HP Proliant MicroServers appear to max out at 16 GB.
 
  Have you looked at ZaReason http://www.zareason.com/,
  or maybe System76 http://www.system76.com/?
 
  I have experience with one of these:
 
  http://zareason.com/shop/Breeze-Server-5880s.html
 
  It's very quiet and seems to meet _almost_ all of your requirements...
  except for the = 32 GB RAM req, which actually seems to be a little
  exotic for this class of machines.

 Yeah, after much browsing I have come to the conclusion that most small
 home
 servers seem to max out at 16GB. The price class seems to be the factor.

 I have upgraded both my work laptop and my home desktop to 32GB, and I
 ain't
 going back. :) I work and play with OpenStack, where I spin up a bunch of
 VMs
 and 

Re: Home server hardware for Ubuntu 14.04?

[Peter Petrakis]

Henry,

I remember the HP uS were used to  create personal openstack clusters so I
know that works. Unless
you have some esoteric RAID card you're interested in anything you buy
should just work
out of the box. It's really desktops that benefit the most from
certification because the BIOS gets hardened
(well ACPI) so all those runtime features, especially suspend/resume, just
work.

If you're really just experimenting I suggest you pick up an EC2 account
with say an m3.medium
is just 0.070/hour. New accounts get 700 hrs of t1 micro for free.

You should also check out juju. You can deploy services locally using LXC
containers (instead of the cloud) and link them up,
no VX instructions extension required. A fast disk helps.

Hope that helps.

Peter /me worked for canonical for about 5 years

On Sat, Oct 4, 2014 at 3:16 PM, Henry Gessau henry.ges...@acm.org wrote:

 I want to set up a server at home for a bunch of projects and experiments.

 I need to use Ubuntu 14.04 server for the OS, and an Intel (not AMD) CPU.

 Canonical's certified list[1] is not very helpful. I assume 14.04 will
 install
 just fine on many systems, but I would prefer to have confirmation from
 someone/somewhere before buying something.

 Requirements:
 - Reasonably quiet. It's going to reside near me in my home office.
 - Intel VT-x support.
 - Four cores. More would be nice.
 - Must support at least 32GB RAM.
 - Preferably under $800 for chassis + PS + CPU.

 I assume it would need to be some Core i3/i5 variant. I don't need raw
 speed,
 so i7 is probably overkill, and I would prefer to keep the power low. I
 admit
 I don't understand the Xeon family at all.

 I was thinking something along the lines of an HP ProLiant MicroServer, or
 a
 Lenovo ThinkServer TS140? But I would be happy to assemble from parts.

 Looking forward to any advice and thoughts on home server hardware.


 [1] http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/server
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Re: [GNHLUG] MerriLUG: April 2nd 2013 - Bitcoin

[Peter Petrakis]

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 11:48 AM, Ben Scott dragonh...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:42 AM, Peter Petrakis
 peter.petra...@gmail.com wrote:
  If you can buy puts against this then it's easy money. Why don't they
  suspend trading during a DoS or an institute an uptick rule?

   I thought one of the big things about Bitcoin is that there is no
 they, it's all peer-to-peer.  Yes/no?


stock exchanges are also peer to peer in a sense and have similar
polices for trading securities. If there isn't stock in one market,
my broker will route the order to another market. So here's an
exchange where you can bid on bitcoins.

http://www.mpex.co/

If I were up to no good I could buy bucket of put contracts
at the current price, issue the DoS order to my *friends*
from an [insert unsavory  country here] and as it plummets
sell my contracts back where demand is higher making an
insane profit; or I just buy during the dip and sell after
the attack.

It's classic market manipulation and it doesn't appear
that I can go to the SEC for relief. If the exchanges
actually talked to each other they could halt trading
during these events which would freeze the price,
preserving the value of your investment.

This currency just swung like the VIX (tracks market
volatility), based on what?



 -- Ben
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new member - introductions

[Peter Petrakis]

Hello,

My name is Peter Petrakis, I'm local in Nashua, NH, and have been active
in opensource since 1999; instead of buying my first car, I built an LX164
Alpha instead :). I was the president of the UMASSLUG in Amherst, MA for
a while and I'm the custodian of alphalinux.org (yes it could use facelift,
volunteers?).
These days I work as a SWE for Canonical.

Technical interests include:
- storage
- performance
- architecture
- cloud


blog: http://peterpetrakis.blogspot.com/
aka I use google to remember things for me

I get busy sometimes but I will eventually reply to your email :)

Regards,
Peter
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Re: new member - introductions

[Peter Petrakis]

Thank you all for the warm welcome!

Peter

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 12:27 PM, Richard Kolb II richard.k...@gmail.comwrote:

 I had a Monte Carlo once, it was a decent car


 On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 11:44 AM, David Rysdam da...@rysdam.org wrote:

 On Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:27:49 -0400, Greg Rundlett (freephile) 
 g...@freephile.com wrote:
  I have a more complicated memory system that includes Google, mediawiki,
  drupal and various hard drives :-)

 I have a Monte Carlo simulation of a memory.
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 --
 Richard Kolb II

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