Linux-Hardware Digest #388, Volume #10 Wed, 2 Jun 99 01:13:35 EDT
Contents:
Re: Is it possible to build a sub-$500 Linux machine? (Donovan Rebbechi)
Yamaha DS-X6 audio drivers for linux? (Daniel Spangler)
Re: Promise UDMA66 -> can't finde the harddisk (Mike)
Re: choosing an OS for a retired Sun workstation (David C)
Re: Dual cpu problem ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: new cheap Linux box advice wanted (Andrew Comech)
Re: RAID 1 setup (Chip Piller)
Re: Wierd problem with SCSI tape drive. Please help! (David C)
Re: After install, RH5.2 claims "fs iso9660 not supported by kernel" (Fuzzy)
Re: PC->Linux<-Mac???? (David C)
Re: Switch or Relay Output Cards under Linux? (Keith Miller)
Re: Do Travan 4 tape drives work on Linux? (David C)
Re: HP700RX - Linux X-Terminal??? ("Carl R. Friend")
Re: new cheap Linux box advice wanted (Alan Jones)
Trying to install linux (Serial # 0)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: Is it possible to build a sub-$500 Linux machine?
Date: 2 Jun 1999 02:09:05 GMT
On 1 Jun 1999 17:20:24 GMT, xiangdong shi wrote:
>I am new to Linux. Having heard of how wonderful it is, I want to build
>a sub-$500 PC (not including the monitor) with Linux only. I am thinking
>of a machine on par with the other $500 windoz PC on the market in terms
>of the hardware.
You can buy a linux pre-installed machine for less than $500-
from http://www.tcu-inc.com
--
Donovan Rebbechi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Buying computer parts ? How do you know which vendors to trust ?
http://www.resellerratings.com
Impartial and accurate. Straight from the buyers mouth.
( disclaimer: i'm not affiliated with resellerratings.com )
------------------------------
From: Daniel Spangler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.questions
Subject: Yamaha DS-X6 audio drivers for linux?
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 02:40:29 GMT
Any body have them, seen them, heard of them, or wanna make them? :)
------------------------------
From: Mike <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Promise UDMA66 -> can't finde the harddisk
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 03:18:04 +0000
I have a Promise controller and Red Hat 5.2 found it OK. The problems
arose during the last part of the install when LILO gets installed. The
LILO version that came with Red Hat didn't know what to do with more
than 2 IDE channels. I went with a bootdisk install, then downloaded
LILO version 21 and it worked OK.
Frank wrote:
>
> I have the same problem. Untill now I didn't find a way to install
> Suse.
>
> Please let me know if you do !
>
> All advises I had until now where more or less like the ones in :
>
> http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Ultra-DMA.html (5.1 Promise
> udma/33)
>
> But it looks like that RedHat gives you access to a boot prompt and
> Suse don't. I can't figure out how and where to give the mentioned
> 'linux=' command.
>
> Frank
>
> On Tue, 1 Jun 1999 19:52:41 +0200, "Roland Mauer"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Hi!
> >
> >I bought a new system with a Promise Ultra ATA66-Controller. Is there a
> >possibility for the SuSE 6.1 to recognize this controller and my harddisk?
> >
> >Thanks in advance!
> >Roland
> >
> >
> >
--
Mike Wright
------------------------------
From: David C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.unix.bsd.openbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.sys.sun.hardware,comp.unix.solaris,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: choosing an OS for a retired Sun workstation
Date: 01 Jun 1999 23:25:44 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Volker Borchert) writes:
>
>> installing and configuring SunOS is a pain-and-a-half.
>
> I don't think so. Admittedly you can't install it "point&click" but I
> have never had problems. You should work out your disk partitioning
> scheme in advance, however.
That was the hard part. The only docs I had at the time were man pages
from another already-working system and a coworker with more experience.
Once I got the core system installed and running, installing everything
else I like to use wasn't too terrible, though.
When I installed Solaris 2.6 on that same box, it was far easier.
>> I would recommend a larer hard drive than 1G if you choose to go with
>> a Sun OS. Most of that 1G will be consumed by the system.
>> Fortunately, 2G and 4G drives are pretty inexpensive these days.
>
> Not really. I have a 500 MB system disk and it is big enough to hold
> pre-formatted man pages and about half a dozen kernel build
> directories and still has ample space in /var/tmp etc.
I should have been less ambiguous. I was referring more to Solaris than
SunOS when I said "a Sun OS". Installing a "developer" install of
Solaris 2.6 was impossible on the 500M drive the machine had built-in.
I had to attach an external drive to get everything to fit. (Later on,
when the hard drive finally died of old age, there wasn't any problem
putting everything on the 2G drive I replaced it with.)
> One thing to keep in mind is that SunOS 4.1.x does not support local
> file systems larger than two gig, though it can NFS mount almost any
> size.
Also, make sure to use 4.1.4 and not 4.1.3. 4.1.3 has a nasty bug in
its DNS client that will cause an app to crash if a hostname has more
than 8 "A" records. (www.geocities.com is one such site. It was
completely inaccessible under 4.1.3 because of this bug.)
-- David
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Dual cpu problem
Date: 2 Jun 1999 02:36:56 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in comp.os.linux.hardware:
s>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Swietanowski Artur
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>Dan Taylor wrote:
>>>
>>> What expert setting do I us e to have my dual 350 MHz pentium 2 be
>>> recognized by the RedHat 6 intall program?
>>
>>None. RH 6 by default installs an SMP kernel, and from there on you
>>go parallel! Maybe the installation itself would use only one
>>processor, but would you care?
>>
s>So if I installl RH 6.0 on a single CPU system and then I add a second CPU RH
s>willt ake advantage of the second CPU without any changes?
No. By default RH 6.0 installs non SMP kernel if you don't have the
second CPU. When you add the secnd CPU, you will have to install
kernel-smp.*.rpm and then change your /etc/lilo.conf to point to the new
image (you may also need to create a new initrd image) and run lilo.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrew Comech)
Subject: Re: new cheap Linux box advice wanted
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: 1 Jun 1999 18:49:52 -0500
On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 22:11:46 GMT, Alan Jones wrote:
>I am finaly ready to build a cheap Linux box, but I have some
>remaining questions. Low cost is very important, but I don't want to
>compromise on floating point performance. This will be for single
>user home use, but with some intensive engineering and multiprocessing
>use.
>
> I have tentatively decided on:
[snip]
>64M PC100 ECC RAM (does anything really need 128M?)
128MB of memory is probably a better investment than multiprocessing..
With 64MB, I am seriously losing speed when Maple starts swapping onto a
hard drive (UDMA/33).
To mention, 128MB with parity is just a little more than $100.
>Other parts will come from my old 386 box; 12X IDE CDROM, 1M Trident
>ISA video card, 33.6K ISA modem card, 1520 or 1542b ISA SCSI card.
>(The BH6 only has 2 ISA slots, but that is OK.)
I noticed that K56Flex connects at around 45Kbps even when there is
a high noise level and good solid V.34 modem gives at most 264000bps.
That is, there _is_ a reason to upgrade a modem if you ever download
something.
>I am convinced that UDMA will provide adaquate HD performance at low
>cost. Howver, I know that I also want SCSI to run my Zip drive and
>other SCSI devices. I know that I can get a PCI SCSI controller for
>as little as $40, but I would like the SCSI controller built into the
>MB to free up a PCI slot. 10 Mhz SCSI-II performance would be fine.
>I'm not going to pay an additional $100 or so for a built in SCSI
>controller.
If you are planning on SCSI controller, then probably it is clever
to get SCSI drive as well.. ?
>I would also be interested in mother boards with biult in UDMH/66, but
>only if they hit the market in the week or so. I am also interested
>in CPU upgrade potential. I'm not impressed with the
>price/performance of current PII/PIII offerings. However the
>Coppermine, 700Mhz with 256K full speed L2 cache, might be of interest
>after the world moves to IA64 in a few years. Would I likely be able
>to run this or other high performance CPUs in the ABIT BH6?
I guess Intel will not let you not to upgrade a motherboard. BUT you
could definitely run K6-3 XXX on a super 7 motherboard.
If the money is an issue..
>Do you have any specific recommendations on the HD? The 8.xG HD and
>even UDMA/66 seems to a good value, but am I asking for more trouble
>than a 6.4G or UDMA/33 only drive (which would all be adaquate)?
Make sure UDMA/66 is supported. In my case, Quantum CR UDMA/66 drive was
not UDMA/33 compatible, and I needed to run some EXE thing to change
/66 to /33.
Best,
a.
--
Looking for a Linux-compatible V.90 modem? See
http://www.math.sunysb.edu/~comech/tools/CheapBox.html#modems
------------------------------
From: Chip Piller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: RAID 1 setup
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 18:05:45 -0400
Al Nios wrote:
>
> I'm trying to implement a RAID 1 (software) using linux 2.2.5 - I've read
> all the relevant FAQs.
> I've created two partitions /usr and /usr2 on different disks and would like
> to mirror them. When I follow the instructions (mkraid /dev/md0) in the new
> software FAQ, I get a "device is busy" error and I cannot umount the
> partition. If there a way (and is it a good idea) to create the raid before
> the devices are mounted?
>
> Any help on this matter would be grealtly appreciated.
>
> Al Nios
I am not familiar with raid but have encountered the device is busy and
cannot umount error. This is what I did, it might be the problem you
have.
Suppose I want to mount my cdrom. I start as my normal user piller. I
become user root and mount the cdrom with 'mount /mnt/cdrom'. This
works fine. I then use 'exit' to go back to being user piller. I use
'cd /mnt/cdrom' to get to the cdrom. That works fine.
Then I want to umount the cdrom so I use command 'su' to become root. I
then use the 'cd ' command to move out of the /mnt/cdrom path. I try
command 'umount /mnt/cdrom' but get the error "umount: /mnt/cdrom:
device is busy".
So to fix this I use 'exit' to go from root back to user piller. I then
move to another directory not in the /mnt/cdrom path. Then I become
root and am able to umount the device properly using 'umount
/mnt/cdrom'.
Chip Piller
------------------------------
From: David C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Wierd problem with SCSI tape drive. Please help!
Date: 01 Jun 1999 23:18:30 -0400
James Stafford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I just recently got a Tekram 390F SCSI card and I have a question
> about using it. I have 2 68 pin drives connected to the 68 pin port on
> the card with the last drive terminated. If I put my PD drive on the
> 50 pin port should I terminate the PD drive?
Yes. The PD drive will be at one end of the bus. The drive at the end
of the 68-pn cable is the other end, and should be terminated.
At the interface card, you should configure it to terminate the "high"
signal wires but not the low signal wires. This is because 18 of the 68
wires don't carry through to the 50-pin connector and must be terminated
at the card.
And, as I said in my previous post, be very careful of cable length if
you have any Ultra- or Ultra-Wide devices. (like your hard drives
probably are.)
-- David
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Fuzzy)
Subject: Re: After install, RH5.2 claims "fs iso9660 not supported by kernel"
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 03:22:19 GMT
On Thu, 27 May 1999 21:49:03 -0300, "Luiba" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I had almost the same experience (same kernel, same RH5.2). The only
>diffrence was the fact that the problem started to heppen with a kernel that
>was recompiled by myself. To recompile it I used a .config file that was
>supposed to be the one used in the original distribution. It was not. I
>found that the support for iso 9660 was set as a module and it was not being
>auto loaded in boot time.
Interesting. I don't know much about modularised kernels yet, so how
would I check that? How would I get the module loaded at boot?
Ciao
Fuzzy
:-)
------------------------------
From: David C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: PC->Linux<-Mac????
Date: 01 Jun 1999 23:34:22 -0400
"..Luca T.." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I wasn't able yet to install a LAN server in LINUX that permits the
> visibility between PCs(with windows 98) and Macs.
> Does anyone knows how or where should i find the answer for this? (or
> tomorrow i won't have the money to eat)
For Windows accessibility, you can either run SAMBA or PC-NFS on the
Linux box. Windows will be able to access the SAMBA volume as if it was
another Windows box. (with one glitch: it may not show up in the
"network neighborhood" window. But that's not a catastrophic problem:
if you do a "find computer" and type in the name of the server, you'll
be able to access it.)
SAMBA will also allow printer sharing.
Win95 also includes (I think) a client for PC-NFS. I don't know if it
includes drivers for regular NFS.
Windows NT (don't know about 98) should include the "TCP/IP printing"
service, which will allow you to print to LPR-based printers, such as
those most UNIX systems use natively. You can install it from the
services page of the Network control panel. (I know it comes with NT
server. I don't remember if Workstation includes this service or not.)
For Mac accessibility, I'm not 100% sure. I don't know of anyone makes
an AppleShare-compatible server for Linux (which would allow Macs to
mount the volumes and printers as if they were native Mac devices.) I
do think you can get MacOS clients for NFS, PC-NFS and LPR.
Good luck.
-- David
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Keith Miller)
Subject: Re: Switch or Relay Output Cards under Linux?
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 23:08:15 GMT
I don't see why not..
they have to be controlled.
all you need is the ports and information to controll the relays.. then write
a custom C or C++ Program.
In article <FTd43.4330$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Art Botterell"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Anyone have any leads or experience on switch/relay output boards under
>Linux? (I know they're used a lot in process-control aps, but that's about
>it...)
>
>I've got to make a recommendation to a client on whether we can do his
>project in Linux... I'd prefer to, but must solve the switch output problem
>first (the switch-closure outputs are needed to trip external alarms when
>certain things happen.)
>
>- Art Botterell
> Datacast Consultant
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: David C <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Do Travan 4 tape drives work on Linux?
Date: 01 Jun 1999 23:36:37 -0400
"Jun Yang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I am considering buying a Seagate Travan 4 tape drive with the EIDE
> interface. Does it work with RedHat 5.2? I checked the Hardware
> Compatibility HOWTO but didn't find the answer for TR4 and QIC-3095,
> the native format of the drive. Anybody who has experience with it?
No experience with that drive in particular, but if the drive is
properly ATAPI compliant, it shouldn't matter what kind of tape the
drive uses. It should work like any other ATAPI drive.
But just in case it doesn't work, I'd buy the drive at a store with a
30-day no-questions-asked return policy.
-- David
------------------------------
From: "Carl R. Friend" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: HP700RX - Linux X-Terminal???
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 19:30:57 -0400
Tim Cain wrote:
>
> I've got hold of an old HP700RX, which appears to be in full working
> order
>
> I want to find out if it is feasible to hang this off my pc as an
> X-Terminal...
If it has the X code in ROM you should be good to go -- hook it to
your LAN, assign it an IP address and tell it to either broadcast for
XDM service or configure it to do a directed query.
If it does not have ROMmed X code, you'll have to find some
sympathetic soul who has a copy of it and will cut you one. With that,
it should be possible to get it to boot with TFTP. Documentation on
that would be a _big_ plus.
--
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
| Carl Richard Friend (UNIX Sysadmin) | West Boylston |
| Minicomputer Collector / Enthusiast | Massachusetts, USA |
| mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] | |
| http://www.ultranet.com/~crfriend/museum | ICBM: N42:22 W71:47 |
+------------------------------------------------+---------------------+
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Alan Jones)
Subject: Re: new cheap Linux box advice wanted
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 06:06:48 GMT
On 1 Jun 1999 18:49:52 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrew Comech)
wrote:
>On Tue, 01 Jun 1999 22:11:46 GMT, Alan Jones wrote:
>>I am finaly ready to build a cheap Linux box, but I have some
>>remaining questions. Low cost is very important, but I don't want to
>>compromise on floating point performance. This will be for single
>>user home use, but with some intensive engineering and multiprocessing
>>use.
>128MB of memory is probably a better investment than multiprocessing..
>With 64MB, I am seriously losing speed when Maple starts swapping onto a
>hard drive (UDMA/33).
>To mention, 128MB with parity is just a little more than $100.
Well, what I meant was minimal(?) concurrent processing such as number
crunching in the background and something more interactive like text
editing or Web surfing in the foreground. I think Netscape wants 64M
of real RAM. $100 for a 128K PC100 ECC DIMM sounds very good.
BTW, I just got Maple V r 3 installed on my 8M 386 under Win 3.1.
What are you doing to get it use more than 128M? You know you can
get it to do garbage colection, and other memory saving clean ups.
>>I am convinced that UDMA will provide adaquate HD performance at low
>>cost. Howver, I know that I also want SCSI to run my Zip drive and
>>other SCSI devices. I know that I can get a PCI SCSI controller for
>>as little as $40, but I would like the SCSI controller built into the
>>MB to free up a PCI slot. 10 Mhz SCSI-II performance would be fine.
>>I'm not going to pay an additional $100 or so for a built in SCSI
>>controller.
>
>If you are planning on SCSI controller, then probably it is clever
>to get SCSI drive as well.. ?
Maybe, but I did not call for clever, my key words were cheap but not
foolish. UDMA is a better value. I do have a small 100M SCSI HD, and
1G SCSI HD that I could install, The 1G will only sustain about
3.5M/s transfer rate. So I doubt if I would even want to use it say
as a separate swap partition, given a new large fast UDMA/33 drive.
$ wise, I could spend an extra $100 on a good SCSI MB, use the old
SCSI HD, take the net $50 (or so) saved by not buying an 8,4G UDMA HD
and buy 5 more Zip disks. This sounds foolish to me. Are there any
good cheap MBs with UDMA and SCSI?
>> I am also interested
>>in CPU upgrade potential. I'm not impressed with the
>>price/performance of current PII/PIII offerings. However the
>>Coppermine, 700Mhz with 256K full speed L2 cache, might be of interest
>>after the world moves to IA64 in a few years. Would I likely be able
>>to run this or other high performance CPUs in the ABIT BH6?
>
>I guess Intel will not let you not to upgrade a motherboard.
My question is, does the ABIT BH6 provide voltage levels and
multipliers suitable for future high performance slot 1 CPUs, or might
spending a little more on an ASUS or other board be a wise investment
at this time?
> BUT you
>could definitely run K6-3 XXX on a super 7 motherboard.
>If the money is an issue..
Yes, I have visited your "Cheap Box" web site and I know that you
favor the AMD CPUs. I still don't want to compromise on FP
perfomance, especialy for matrix computations, and the Celeron still
wins on price/performance there. That also represents the end of the
line for super 7 MBs. The upcoming K7 will require a new MB, while
the slot 1 MB still has upgrade potential, especialy from a Celeron.
>Make sure UDMA/66 is supported. In my case, Quantum CR UDMA/66 drive was
>not UDMA/33 compatible, and I needed to run some EXE thing to change
>/66 to /33.
My understanding is that at this time UDMA/66 is currently supported
only with the Promise-66 addapter which would cost an additional $50
or so and add little real performance for my intended uses. If built
into the MB it might not cost $10 more. A UDMA/66 drive might only
cost an additional $10 and be well worth it to hold its future value.
It also migh have a larger cashe, or other modest enhancement over a
comparable UDMA/33 HD. I was considering the Quantum CR. Do you have
to manualy run that EXE thing everytime to start or is done once to
change firmware, or done automaticaly during boot?
>Best, a.
Thanks, Alan Jones, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Serial # 0)
Subject: Trying to install linux
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 04:46:28 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Trying to install linux
Hi !
I have been trying many times to install linux on a intel 386 with 4
Mo RAM !
But i never work !
i have tried ;
- kheops
- red hat 5.1 French version
- mandrake 5.3 french version
but the install always stop when it says :
found compressed RAM disk at block 0
Can someone help ?
Please answer at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Hardware Digest
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