Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, new computer, still a bit confused
On 7/22/2011 9:53 PM, CJoeB wrote: Because this will be a new computer and I may essentially void the warranty if I alter the pre-configuration, I seriously thought about leaving the status quo and putting up with Windows 7. However, I would lose practically as much as losing my first born! I would have to put up with all the things that bug me about Windows and I wouldn't have all the programs that I love in Linux. If you are truly concerned about the warranty issue then you would, of course, want to have someone read the actual warrant paperwork that you have. However, typically the only way to void a hardware warranty is to tamper with the hardware. If you replace Windows with Linux on a new PC, you will may lose any free technical support (for software, drivers, etc( you may be entitled to as long as you continue to run this "unsupported" condition. But if you actually have faulty hardware, they aren't going to refuse to replace or repair it just because you installed software. Plus, Dell in particular "supports" Linux in a marginally useful way on some of their laptops, so they do have self-help information that would be relevant to you on their site. In the worst case, if you needed to ship your machine back to the manufacturer for repairs, you should receive a set of restore media with any new PC that would allow you to put your system back to factory default, and make your manufacturer more than satisfied. What would you recommend that I used for the iso an stage 3? As a reminder my computer is a Dell XPS 8300 with an Intel Core -i7-2600 processor. I'm a little confused between the choices x86 (which seems to only apply to Pentium 4 systems and only utilizes 32-bit processing), amd64 and ia64. "x86" is the name for 32-bit PC processor architecture, such as the older Pentium family, that has been around for decades. (They originally had Intel model numbers like 8086, 80386, 80486, etc.) Very few new PCs are x86 natively, but they will run programs that are meant for x86 machines. This one will "work" on your Core i7 but is probably not the best choice. "amd64" is the name for the 64-bit PC processor architecture, like the Intel Core family processor you have. This is what you'll want to get for your machine. (It's called "amd64" in Gentoo because it was originally produced by AMD, but Intel and AMD's current 64-bit processors are compatible and run the same software. Other operating systems call this "x64", but it's the same exact hardware.) An x64-based CPU will run x86 programs, but for a source-based distribution like Gentoo there isn't really much benefit to doing so. "ia64" is an older and mostly-obsolete Intel attempt at 64-bit processing that was completely incompatible with x86, and came and went very quickly. You can ignore it.
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
Albert Hopkins wrote: On Friday, July 22 at 18:42 (-0500), Dale said: I sort of hate to hear there are no major changes. I was hoping for a fix on my kernel panic problem. Oh well. I'll upgrade anyway. Maybe it will help. Fixing a kernel bug is not considered a "major change". A major change would be something like "oh, we rewrote it in C++" or "Linux is now a microkernel" (ok, maybe not *that* major but you get the idea). I was hoping since it was a whole different numbering scheme that it was a major change. That was the reason for my question. I didn't know if this was major or a normal update or something else. I was hoping for something like when Seamonkey went from version 1.* to 2.* but this is not the case. The reason I was hoping for this was because of my kernel panic issue. I'm still hopeful that something may have been updated that will fix my problem but I'm not as hopeful now since this is nothing great. Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Replace root with aufs-united sda & squashfs
As part of Project:Protogenoi [1], I am planning to replace root with a united filesystem using aufs. The layers will be: Top: /dev/xvda3 (Xen/XenServer Virtual Disk device) Bottom: /.root.sqfs The aim would be to generate the smallest .xva (XenServer Virtual Appliance) possible. To achieve this, the 'physical root' at /dev/sda3 will be emptied as empty as possible, except for /etc and /dev. AFAIK, there are files that *must* still exist for this strategy to succeed. However, this post from f.g.o [2] said that those files aren't necessary. So, I should do the following sequence in /etc/fstab : 1. Mount /dev/xvda3 as / 2. Mount /.root.sqfs as / 3. Mount aufs, uniting /dev/xvda3 and /.root.sqfs as / 4. Mount everything else Am I getting this right? [1] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/User:Pepoluan/Project:Protogenoi [2] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-5707187.html?sid=b8feb20174c9d8d9ae74fc82a30ce911#5707187 Rgds, -- -- Pandu E Poluan - IT Optimizer My website: http://pandu.poluan.info/
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, new computer, still a bit confused
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 6:53 PM, CJoeB wrote: > Hi everyone, > > First, thanks for all the input regarding CFLAGS. > > Can I be honest here? My technical skills don't seem to be anywhere > near on a par with most of the people on this list. I've been using > Gentoo since 2004 and the reason I do, is for the control that I have > over my system. > > Because this will be a new computer and I may essentially void the > warranty if I alter the pre-configuration, I seriously thought about > leaving the status quo and putting up with Windows 7. However, I would > lose practically as much as losing my first born! I would have to put > up with all the things that bug me about Windows and I wouldn't have all > the programs that I love in Linux. > > If I am a "chicken shit" and still want Linux, I could install another > distro, like Kubuntu, where you can be almost brain dead and still get a > running Linux system, but then I would sacrifice the control that I know > and love about Gentoo. I'm not willing to do that either at least > not without a fight. > > I've always managed to get my Gentoo system running and maintained, but > I've always used an x86 iso and stage 3. I've googled and didn't really > find a definitive answer to my question so, I am bowing to the experts > on this list and asking you guys to bear with me and help me out. > > What would you recommend that I used for the iso an stage 3? As a > reminder my computer is a Dell XPS 8300 with an Intel Core -i7-2600 > processor. I'm a little confused between the choices x86 (which seems > to only apply to Pentium 4 systems and only utilizes 32-bit processing), > amd64 and ia64. > > Thanks in advance for your help. > > Regards, > > Colleen > > -- > > Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org Hi Colleen, I'm not sure I understand the warranty issue so take this with a grain of salt but most of the pre-configured Windows machines I've received in the last couple of years had some disk space left over outside of the Windows C drive. I'm sure you could install Gentoo on one of those and not void anything, assuming you have one. If you don't then you could do all the Windows install they require and then generate your recovery disks Once you've got the recovery disks you're in pretty good shape to set everything back up like it was when you got it. I don't see how that could void a warranty. William's comment about running Gentoo in a VM is very valid. There really aren't any specific 64-bit things I'm aware of that you need to choose. It's all pretty generic these days, at least with the Intel processors. I've not used an AMD processor in a while. Boot from pretty much any Linux Live CD and then do the stage 3 install and you should be fine. ia64 isn't TTBOMK knowledge something you need to pay attention to. All my Intel i5 & i7 machines are amd64 stable with a few ~amd64 packages. One note about the Sandy Bridge processor is reight now it does require a specific CFLAG setting to get everything to build correctly due to a gcc bug. As for any other distro, once you use Gentoo you won't be happy elsewhere. ;-) Stick with Gentoo, most especially since you have all the hardware power you need to build code at world class speed. Hope this helps, Mark
Re: [gentoo-user] No keyboard or mouse with X after upgrade
On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:39 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > On Sat, 2011-07-23 at 10:18 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: > > On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:00 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > > > Hi All, > > > > > > I recently ran an emerge -NDuav on my system and world lists, and now I > > > can't start X and keep the keyboard or mouse operating. > > > > > > Is this a known issue? Any simple fixes? > > > > > > Thanks in advance > > > > > > Jeff > > > > > > > > > > > Did you follow the rebuild instructions for keyboard/mouse etc in the > > ebuild messages? - yes its a known problem when you dont do that. > > > > BillK > > > Thanks. It looks like I've missed that. Where were the ebuild > messages? I don't see anything on xorg-server-1.10.2 > > Got it - xf86-input-evdev needed to be recompiled to recover keyboard and mouse operation. Thanks Jeff
Re: [gentoo-user] No keyboard or mouse with X after upgrade
On Sat, 2011-07-23 at 10:18 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote: > On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:00 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > I recently ran an emerge -NDuav on my system and world lists, and now I > > can't start X and keep the keyboard or mouse operating. > > > > Is this a known issue? Any simple fixes? > > > > Thanks in advance > > > > Jeff > > > > > > > Did you follow the rebuild instructions for keyboard/mouse etc in the > ebuild messages? - yes its a known problem when you dont do that. > > BillK > Thanks. It looks like I've missed that. Where were the ebuild messages? I don't see anything on xorg-server-1.10.2
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoo, new computer, still a bit confused
On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 21:53 -0400, CJoeB wrote: > Hi everyone, > > First, thanks for all the input regarding CFLAGS. > > Can I be honest here? My technical skills don't seem to be anywhere > near on a par with most of the people on this list. I've been using > Gentoo since 2004 and the reason I do, is for the control that I have > over my system. > > Because this will be a new computer and I may essentially void the > warranty if I alter the pre-configuration, I seriously thought about > leaving the status quo and putting up with Windows 7. However, I would > lose practically as much as losing my first born! I would have to put > up with all the things that bug me about Windows and I wouldn't have all > the programs that I love in Linux. > > If I am a "chicken shit" and still want Linux, I could install another > distro, like Kubuntu, where you can be almost brain dead and still get a > running Linux system, but then I would sacrifice the control that I know > and love about Gentoo. I'm not willing to do that either at least > not without a fight. > > I've always managed to get my Gentoo system running and maintained, but > I've always used an x86 iso and stage 3. I've googled and didn't really > find a definitive answer to my question so, I am bowing to the experts > on this list and asking you guys to bear with me and help me out. > > What would you recommend that I used for the iso an stage 3? As a > reminder my computer is a Dell XPS 8300 with an Intel Core -i7-2600 > processor. I'm a little confused between the choices x86 (which seems > to only apply to Pentium 4 systems and only utilizes 32-bit processing), > amd64 and ia64. > > Thanks in advance for your help. > > Regards, > > Colleen > An option that might sidestep any warranty issues could be to install linux into virtualbox/vmware etc and run it on a barebones win7 - with the power of an i7 and it running full screen, you would not even notice its not on the bare metal! BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] No keyboard or mouse with X after upgrade
On Fri, 2011-07-22 at 22:00 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > Hi All, > > I recently ran an emerge -NDuav on my system and world lists, and now I > can't start X and keep the keyboard or mouse operating. > > Is this a known issue? Any simple fixes? > > Thanks in advance > > Jeff > > > Did you follow the rebuild instructions for keyboard/mouse etc in the ebuild messages? - yes its a known problem when you dont do that. BillK
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
On Friday, July 22 at 18:42 (-0500), Dale said: > I sort of hate to hear there are no major changes. I was hoping for > a > fix on my kernel panic problem. Oh well. I'll upgrade anyway. > Maybe > it will help. Fixing a kernel bug is not considered a "major change". A major change would be something like "oh, we rewrote it in C++" or "Linux is now a microkernel" (ok, maybe not *that* major but you get the idea).
[gentoo-user] No keyboard or mouse with X after upgrade
Hi All, I recently ran an emerge -NDuav on my system and world lists, and now I can't start X and keep the keyboard or mouse operating. Is this a known issue? Any simple fixes? Thanks in advance Jeff
Re: [gentoo-user] Problems with Nvidia fake raid array
Is there anyone who can help me recover my raid array? On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 20:43 -0400, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 09:06 -0400, Michael Orlitzky wrote: > > On 07/18/2011 11:08 PM, Jeff Cranmer wrote: > > > > > > > > > Pardon my additional questions before taking the plunge here. > > > > > > So, given that I have three devices, /dev/sda, /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc, if > > > I run the command mdadm --assemble --scan, would this find all the > > > components and create a /dev/md0 disk without damaging the contents of > > > the original RAID array? > > > > If you've got the space and time, a backup can't hurt. Using --scan will > > make it check the config file, but right now, there's probably nothing > > useful in it. This looks like what you want to do to me: > > > > If the --scan option is not given, then only devices and identities > > listed on the command line are considered. > > > > The first device will be the array device, and the remainder will be > > examined when looking for components. > > > > but I'd figure out where that md0 is coming from (below) first. > > > When I tried mdadm --assemble --scan with nothing uncommented in the > configuration file, I got > mdadm: No arrays found in config file or automatically. > Typing dmesg | grep md0 returned no lines. > > There are a couple of lines in dmesg when I run dmesg | grep md:, but > they read > md: linear personality registered for level -1 > md: raid0 personality registered for level 0 > md: raid1 personality registered for level 1 > md: raid10 personality registered for level 10 > md: raid6 personality registered for level 6 > md: raid5 personality registered for level 5 > md: raid4 personality registered for level 4 > md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect > md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect > md: Autodetecting RAID arrays > md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices > md: autorun... > md: ... autorun DONE. > > I think this means that raid5 is set up correctly in the kernel, but it > can't find the raid array. > > Next I tried adding a line to the config file: > > DEVICE /dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc > mdadm --assemble --scan returned the same results as before > > Next, I tried commenting out the previously added DEVICE line, and > adding > ARRAY /dev/md0 devices=/dev/sda,/dev/sdb,/dev/sdc > > mdadm --assemble --scan returns something different > mdadm: /dev/sdb has no superblock - assembly aborted. > > > > > The only item in /dev/mapper is th default 'control' entry. There is > > > a /dev/md0 item already listed, but presently when I try to mount it, it > > > reports that it is unable to read the superblock. Would the command > > > above fix this? > > > > Depends. Where'd the md0 come from? You probably have something in your > > logs or dmesg, unless that device was created manually on your old system. > > > > > > > Where is the config file mentioned in your e-mail, and do I need to edit > > > it first to add the three raid disks? > > > > It's /etc/mdadm.conf. You don't need it to create or use the array, but > > you'll want to run mdadm when the machine boots and the config file > > tells it what to do. Once the array is working, you can just do, > > > > mdadm --detail --scan >> /etc/mdadm.conf > > > mdadm --detail --scan returns no output. > > Also, I just checked /dev and md0 is now gone from the list. > > Since there are also /dev/sg0, /dev/sg1 and /dev/sg1, I also tried those > instead of /dev/sda, /dev/sdb and /dev/sdc in the ARRAY line, but mdadm > --assemble --scan returned no output > > I tried re-booting, but /dev/md0 is now permanently gone. > > Does this give you any ideas what I can try next?? > > Thanks > > Jeff > > >
[gentoo-user] Gentoo, new computer, still a bit confused
Hi everyone, First, thanks for all the input regarding CFLAGS. Can I be honest here? My technical skills don't seem to be anywhere near on a par with most of the people on this list. I've been using Gentoo since 2004 and the reason I do, is for the control that I have over my system. Because this will be a new computer and I may essentially void the warranty if I alter the pre-configuration, I seriously thought about leaving the status quo and putting up with Windows 7. However, I would lose practically as much as losing my first born! I would have to put up with all the things that bug me about Windows and I wouldn't have all the programs that I love in Linux. If I am a "chicken shit" and still want Linux, I could install another distro, like Kubuntu, where you can be almost brain dead and still get a running Linux system, but then I would sacrifice the control that I know and love about Gentoo. I'm not willing to do that either at least not without a fight. I've always managed to get my Gentoo system running and maintained, but I've always used an x86 iso and stage 3. I've googled and didn't really find a definitive answer to my question so, I am bowing to the experts on this list and asking you guys to bear with me and help me out. What would you recommend that I used for the iso an stage 3? As a reminder my computer is a Dell XPS 8300 with an Intel Core -i7-2600 processor. I'm a little confused between the choices x86 (which seems to only apply to Pentium 4 systems and only utilizes 32-bit processing), amd64 and ia64. Thanks in advance for your help. Regards, Colleen -- Registered Linux User #411143 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
Nikos Chantziaras wrote: On 07/23/2011 01:54 AM, Dale wrote: Howdy, I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for this shiney new beast? Thoughts? It's just a version number. It was originally going to be 2.6.40. But the patch numbers were growing too big, so they simply renamed it 3.0. It does not represent any kind of big change or whatever. So yes, oldconfig is going to work and there are no major changes at all in kernel 3.0. I sort of hate to hear there are no major changes. I was hoping for a fix on my kernel panic problem. Oh well. I'll upgrade anyway. Maybe it will help. Thanks for all the replies. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 3:54 PM, Dale wrote: > Howdy, > > I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig > will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues > right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. > > I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for > this shiney new beast? > > Thoughts? > > Dale Worked for me. There's nothing very different about 3.0 vs 2.6.X. It's just a decision to start using new numbers. I'm writing you from my laptop which is now running 3.0.0 with nvidia-drivers-275.19. Seems to be working fine - MArk
Re: [gentoo-user] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
Stefan G. Weichinger wrote: Am 23.07.2011 00:54, schrieb Dale: Howdy, I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for this shiney new beast? oldconfig worked for me, on 4 systems so far. x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-275.09.07 as well, I use that related to https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375615 S Thanks for the info. I know sometimes when there is a major update oldconfig don't work or it can have a issue or two to work out, after you ruin your brain trying to figure it out of course. Thanks again. Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
On 07/23/2011 01:54 AM, Dale wrote: Howdy, I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for this shiney new beast? Thoughts? It's just a version number. It was originally going to be 2.6.40. But the patch numbers were growing too big, so they simply renamed it 3.0. It does not represent any kind of big change or whatever. So yes, oldconfig is going to work and there are no major changes at all in kernel 3.0.
Re: [gentoo-user] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
On 22 July 2011 15:54, Dale wrote: > I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig > will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues > right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. Despite the major version changing, 3.0 is basically 2.6.40: no big changes. Doing make oldconfig worked for me (there are some new options, though).
Re: [gentoo-user] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
Am 23.07.2011 00:54, schrieb Dale: > Howdy, > > I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make > oldconfig will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm > having issues right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, > hopefully, version. > > I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for > this shiney new beast? oldconfig worked for me, on 4 systems so far. x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers-275.09.07 as well, I use that related to https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=375615 S
[gentoo-user] sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-3.0 and oldconfig
Howdy, I noticed the new kernel in the tree. Anybody know whether make oldconfig will work when coming from a 2.6.39 series kernel? Since I'm having issues right now, I wouldn't mind trying to new and improved, hopefully, version. I just had a thought, what are the odds the nvidia drivers are ready for this shiney new beast? Thoughts? Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: mysqld invoked oom-killer
On 07/22/2011 11:13 AM, Grant wrote: > Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely > prevent out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? There's always someone who can pull a corner case out of his hat :) I can't remember the details now, but there was a piece of code in the virtualbox svn repository that triggered a bug in gcc. The code in question caused gcc to loop forever while parsing, using more RAM with every iteration. I watched my 4 gigs of RAM slowly fill up, and then watched nervously as my 4 gigs of swap began to fill up as well. After the swapping started, the machine was almost unusably slow. I typed Ctrl-Z and waited about five minutes until the gcc process finally suspended so I could kill the compile.
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Friday, July 22 at 11:13 (-0700), Grant said: > That all makes perfect sense. So the reason a swap larger than maybe > 1GB is not usually implemented is because idle processes don't > normally have more than a few hundred MB of pages in memory? > That's not entirely true, either. For example, My laptop has 4GB of swap. Why? Well, because I use hibernate and hibernate works on the swap partition and I want to make sure that I have enough swap to write all my memory to swap (actually It's now compressed so actually I probablldon't really need that much). > Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely > prevent out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? No. oom killer kicks in when your system is out of virtual memory. Consider this example: You have 4GB RAM You have 0 swap. Therefore you have a total of 4GB virtual memory. The second all your processes try to consume more than 4G of virtual memory, oom killer will kick in* Consider the next example You have 4GB RAM You have 100GB swap. Therefore you have a total of 104GB virtual memory The second all your processes try to consume more than 104GB of virtual memory, oom killer will kick in. Oom killer works on virtual memory (RAM + swap). So it doesn't matter how much RAM you have or how much swap you have, when the total virtual memory is consumed, oom killer is called. The secret is to not run out of virtual memory. There is no *easy* way not to run out of virtual memory. You either don't consume as much VM, or you provide more VM (either through RAM or swap). * This is not entirely true, the system also needs memory for the kernel, buffers, hardware drivers, and other things which simply cannot be paged out to disk, so the actual number will be less than the amount of VM.
Re: [gentoo-user] bind: "dynamic-IP to FQDN" resolving for windows-clients howto?
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 2:30 PM, Jarry wrote: > Hi, > I would like to offer to some friends similar service > as i.e. dyndns.org does: FQDN for their dynamic IP. > But I have no idea how to set-up my bind for this task. > And what is even worse, they are mostly running Windows. > > IIRC, dyndns.org (and similar services) offer some > kind of end-user application which takes care of this. > But I think it should be possible with nsupdate too. > So I downloaded bind4windows, extracted, and tried > to run nsupdate, but it complains about "side-by-side > configuration incorrect, application failed to start". > > So is there some way to accomplish this task? I've never done it, and no idea about Windows-specifics, but maybe this tutorial will contain some answers: http://linux.yyz.us/nsupdate/
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 1:48 PM, Grant wrote: >> ... Then why not have a really big swap file? If swap is useful as a second layer of caching behind RAM, why doesn't everyone with some extra hard drive space have a 100GB swap file? >>> >>> I have 12GB of RAM and 12GB of swap on my main PC. Why? Because... why >>> not? :) After 5 days uptime, it actually has 89M of swap used for some >>> reason. It has over 10GB cached. All of my sysctl vm.* settings have >>> been left to the defaults. So I guess it just pushed some unused stuff >>> out to swap to make room for more caching. > > Uh oh. Did I misunderstand you Paul? Do you have 10GB cached in swap or RAM? > > - Grant > > >> That's what I'm curious about. If some swap is good, why isn't more >> better? Paul has demonstrated that a Linux system will put at least >> 10GB to use and probably much more given the opportunity. Disk space >> is so cheap, why isn't everyone running a 10GB or 100GB swap since >> Linux will actually put it to use? >> >> - Grant In RAM. Total swap usage was only 89M.
[gentoo-user] bind: "dynamic-IP to FQDN" resolving for windows-clients howto?
Hi, I would like to offer to some friends similar service as i.e. dyndns.org does: FQDN for their dynamic IP. But I have no idea how to set-up my bind for this task. And what is even worse, they are mostly running Windows. IIRC, dyndns.org (and similar services) offer some kind of end-user application which takes care of this. But I think it should be possible with nsupdate too. So I downloaded bind4windows, extracted, and tried to run nsupdate, but it complains about "side-by-side configuration incorrect, application failed to start". So is there some way to accomplish this task? Jarry -- ___ This mailbox accepts e-mails only from selected mailing-lists! Everything else is considered to be spam and therefore deleted.
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
Peter Humphrey wrote: On Friday 22 July 2011 19:13:35 Grant wrote: Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely prevent out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? Of course, on any system with more than a few dozen MB of RAM, but I can't imagine any combination of running programs whose size could add up to even a tenth of that, with or without library sharing (somebody will be along with an example in a moment). For instance I'm running four instances of BOINC projects here, one on each core, with oodles of space to spare and no swapping. Mind you, I do have 16GB RAM :-) Having said that I ought to go and shrink my swap partitions, but my disks are only half-allocated already, so I don't see the point. This sounds like me. I have 16Gbs here too. I have 1Gb of swap . . . . because it has always worked for me. I should have made it 300Mbs tho. The only reason I want swap is to prevent a crash long enough to maybe do something about it. This is just my opinion. Unless you are strapped for memory, mobo can't have that much, you only need a few hundred Mbs really. All you need is enough to prevent a crash and let you know when you are running short. If you have a mobo that maxes out at 1Gb or something, then you may want some swap with enough space to make up for the shortage of ram, realizing of course that it is going to slow things down, most likely a lot. If my main rig starts using swap a lot, I'm going to be very curious. I even used 8Gbs to put portages work directory on tmpfs. I still didn't use any swap. By the way, that doesn't seem to make the compiles any faster. o_O One other thing, don't forget you can adjust swapiness to control how bad thigns get before it starts using swap. A setting of 100 will use swap in a hurry and put about anything in it. I setting of 10, 20 or something means it will only use swap if it is out of ram and it can't make any available. Man it's hot here. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Friday 22 July 2011 18:41:26 Sebastian Beßler wrote: > Am 22.07.2011 16:57, schrieb Alan McKinnon: > > It may look like KDE is the likely culprit based on just the > > information you provide, but I would be more inclined to look at > > browser plugins first, concentrating on those with both Firefox and > > Chromium versions from the same developer team. > > I have zero browser plugins installed. So that is not the culprit. And > why should plugins lock up X when used under KDE but not under XFCE? Maybe because you did not enable compositing in xfce4, but use it with kde4? > The problem that X freezes with KDE4 is more likely with webbrowsers but > happend when using other programms too. But because of the fact that one > or more browsers are nearly always running it is hard to find a freeze > without a browser running. > > > There could be a cornercase bug in KDE that only shows up on your > > specific combination, or maybe there is some edge KDE app you use that > > disagrees with violently with FF. Or maybe it's the video driver that > > doesn't actually do what it tells KDE it can do (remember the > > painfully slow nVidia drivers with early KDE4?) > > I use the opensource drivers for ati-cards. So t is unlikely to be > driver related. Well, have a look at http://www.mail-archive.com/ubuntu- b...@lists.ubuntu.com/msg1483058.html for an example how the open source atidrivers can hang X with firefox. Note that compositing was enabled here (compiz). And here's another one: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=436632 > I use no edge KDE apps only amarok, yakuake, kate, konsole, dolphin, > ktorrent from time to time. All of them but dolphin is still in use > under xfce4 so I think I can rule them out too. > > I know it could still be a truckload of other things, but as a fan of > Ockham's razor I still say that KDE4 is broken. kde4 works for me, firefox works for me. I use closed source nvidia drivers. So Ockham's razor tells us, the ati-drivers are broken. Now more seriously: try attaching gdb to the hanging process and get a backtrace. You are affected by some bug in some OSS. If you want to be helpful, provide the necessary info. Even if you don't understand the backtrace, others do. > Greetings > Sebastian Beßler Regards, Michael
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Friday, July 22 at 19:55 (+0100), Peter Humphrey said: > > Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely > prevent > > out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? > > Of course, on any system with more than a few dozen MB of RAM, but I > can't > imagine any combination of running programs whose size could add up to > even > a tenth of that, with or without library sharing (somebody will be > along > with an example in a moment). The *prime* example is you have a program with a memory leak (omg we have programs with memory leaks?). On a system with only say 2GB swap, that program will cause oom killer to kick in fairly quickly, on a system with 100GB swap, that system is going to have to use all 100GB of swap before oom kicks in. By then your system will probably be thrashing like hell. There is no way you can complete guarantee a system won't run out of virtual memory, unless you can guarantee that there are no misbehaving applications or that some clueless guy won't isn't going to try to open a database dump in vi.* * Well you could set process/user limits to make sure a process gets an error after it tries to allocate a set limit of memory.
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Friday, July 22 at 11:46 (-0700), Grant said: > That's what I'm curious about. If some swap is good, why isn't more > better? Paul has demonstrated that a Linux system will put at least > 10GB to use and probably much more given the opportunity. Disk space > is so cheap, why isn't everyone running a 10GB or 100GB swap since > Linux will actually put it to use? > Vitamin C is good for you, but if you take a whole bottle of vitamin C tablets you will die :P Seriously... I think you are just not understanding what is being said (or maybe just trying to over-generalize it). There is never a time I'm using 100G of vm at one time, so why do i need 100G of swap? Sure, I could create a 100G swap partition, but the kernel is *never* going to need to use 100G of swap at once (unless I have a *seriously* broken app), so why bother? Moreover, 100G is going to take a LONG time to swap in/out (remember disk is slower than RAM). What we are saying is, swap is good for certain conditions (which I don't feel like explaining again).
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Friday 22 July 2011 19:46:25 Grant wrote: > That's what I'm curious about. If some swap is good, why isn't more > better? Paul has demonstrated that a Linux system will put at least > 10GB to use and probably much more given the opportunity. Disk space > is so cheap, why isn't everyone running a 10GB or 100GB swap since > Linux will actually put it to use? On this i5 box I have two 1TB SATA disks in RAID-1 with md and lvm2 on top. There's so much space that I was lavish with swap space: each disk has 1GB at priority 10 and 10GB at priority 1. Far too much: I've never seen more than a few hundred MB swap in use, even when compiling Firefox or OO.o. -- Rgds Peter Linux Counter number 5290
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
Grant wrote: ... To confuse you even more, there is a swappiness setting as well. On my old x86 rig, I have 2Gbs of ram. My hard drive is really slow since it is IDE. I set swappiness to 20. That tells the kernel that I have swap space but don't use it unless you must. For what I use the rig for, 2Gbs is plenty of ram. The lower the swappiness setting, the less the kernel will try to use ram. The higher the setting, the more it will try to use swap. I have a new rig that is amd64 and has SATA drives which are pretty fast. I still have swappiness set to 20. Why do I have it set to 20 when the drives are faster you ask? I have it set to 20 because I have 16Gbs of ram here. Even if I have portage's work directory on tmpfs and am compiling OOo, it should not need swap then either. By the way, my swap partition is 1Gb on both systems. Why have it this way since one machine has 2Gbs and one has 16Gbs? As it has been said, you want a little swap and even using a little swap is OK. You just don't want it to be using swap and actually swapping data all the time. On my old rig, it started out with 512Mbs. I use KDE and it got to the point where it was using enough ram that it was not just using swap and letting things sit, it was actively swapping data from swap and doing so a lot. It would only be using a 100Mbs sometimes 200Mbs. The point is, it was slowing the system down because of the swapping process. I bought a stick of ram and all was well again. It would still use a 100Mbs of swap at times but it would not be actively swapping the data back and forth so it wasn't a big deal. I think the point is this, it is good to have a little swap. It is even OK for it to use a little swap when it is mostly sitting there. When you notice it using swap and it is actively swapping and moving things back and forth, you need more memory. Having the swap may can save you from a crash but is can also give you a "time to add more ram" hint too. If Linux starts using swap a good bit, you need more ram. OK, how can you determine when a machine is actively swapping and moving things back and forth? Do you need to monitor the system with a real-time tool during peak usage? - Grant I use gkrellm on mine. It has a little charty thingy. I think iotop will show if anything is being swapped to. There may be others as well for a console or non-X machine. Most people know of top but that really doesn't help a lot. It doesn't show things moving just how much is being used. I think there is a better command that shows this but dang if I can recall it right now. Somebody help a old fart out here. lol Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Friday 22 July 2011 19:13:35 Grant wrote: > Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely prevent > out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? Of course, on any system with more than a few dozen MB of RAM, but I can't imagine any combination of running programs whose size could add up to even a tenth of that, with or without library sharing (somebody will be along with an example in a moment). For instance I'm running four instances of BOINC projects here, one on each core, with oodles of space to spare and no swapping. Mind you, I do have 16GB RAM :-) Having said that I ought to go and shrink my swap partitions, but my disks are only half-allocated already, so I don't see the point. -- Rgds Peter Linux Counter number 5290
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
> ... >>> Then why not have a really big swap file? If swap is useful as a >>> second layer of caching behind RAM, why doesn't everyone with some >>> extra hard drive space have a 100GB swap file? >> >> I have 12GB of RAM and 12GB of swap on my main PC. Why? Because... why >> not? :) After 5 days uptime, it actually has 89M of swap used for some >> reason. It has over 10GB cached. All of my sysctl vm.* settings have >> been left to the defaults. So I guess it just pushed some unused stuff >> out to swap to make room for more caching. Uh oh. Did I misunderstand you Paul? Do you have 10GB cached in swap or RAM? - Grant > That's what I'm curious about. If some swap is good, why isn't more > better? Paul has demonstrated that a Linux system will put at least > 10GB to use and probably much more given the opportunity. Disk space > is so cheap, why isn't everyone running a 10GB or 100GB swap since > Linux will actually put it to use? > > - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
... >> Then why not have a really big swap file? If swap is useful as a >> second layer of caching behind RAM, why doesn't everyone with some >> extra hard drive space have a 100GB swap file? > > I have 12GB of RAM and 12GB of swap on my main PC. Why? Because... why > not? :) After 5 days uptime, it actually has 89M of swap used for some > reason. It has over 10GB cached. All of my sysctl vm.* settings have > been left to the defaults. So I guess it just pushed some unused stuff > out to swap to make room for more caching. That's what I'm curious about. If some swap is good, why isn't more better? Paul has demonstrated that a Linux system will put at least 10GB to use and probably much more given the opportunity. Disk space is so cheap, why isn't everyone running a 10GB or 100GB swap since Linux will actually put it to use? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Friday 22 Jul 2011 17:18:40 Sebastian Beßler wrote: > Am 22.07.2011 17:05, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann: > > and you strace'd firefox, X or chromium to see where this stuff hangs, > > did you? > > No I did not, a strace is only as good as the person who can read it, > and in my case is that not much, not because I'm too stupid but because > I rather let my drill my teeth before read megabytes of strace output. I > went the easy way, used my time for something useful and fun (analysing > strace output is neither useful nor fun for me, it may be for someone > else) and switched to XFCE4. > > Hurray it works like a charm now so everything is good. > > I didn't need all that KDE4 cruft, eye candy and semantic crap anyway. > > Greetings > > Sebastian Beßler I haven't straced FF because it takes hours before it freezes X. I'll see if it happens again tomorrow and if I can kill it from a console when I login as root. -- Regards, Mick signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
... > To confuse you even more, there is a swappiness setting as well. On my old > x86 rig, I have 2Gbs of ram. My hard drive is really slow since it is IDE. > I set swappiness to 20. That tells the kernel that I have swap space but > don't use it unless you must. For what I use the rig for, 2Gbs is plenty of > ram. The lower the swappiness setting, the less the kernel will try to use > ram. The higher the setting, the more it will try to use swap. > > I have a new rig that is amd64 and has SATA drives which are pretty fast. I > still have swappiness set to 20. Why do I have it set to 20 when the drives > are faster you ask? I have it set to 20 because I have 16Gbs of ram here. > Even if I have portage's work directory on tmpfs and am compiling OOo, it > should not need swap then either. > > By the way, my swap partition is 1Gb on both systems. Why have it this way > since one machine has 2Gbs and one has 16Gbs? As it has been said, you want > a little swap and even using a little swap is OK. You just don't want it to > be using swap and actually swapping data all the time. On my old rig, it > started out with 512Mbs. I use KDE and it got to the point where it was > using enough ram that it was not just using swap and letting things sit, it > was actively swapping data from swap and doing so a lot. It would only be > using a 100Mbs sometimes 200Mbs. The point is, it was slowing the system > down because of the swapping process. I bought a stick of ram and all was > well again. It would still use a 100Mbs of swap at times but it would not > be actively swapping the data back and forth so it wasn't a big deal. > > I think the point is this, it is good to have a little swap. It is even OK > for it to use a little swap when it is mostly sitting there. When you > notice it using swap and it is actively swapping and moving things back and > forth, you need more memory. Having the swap may can save you from a crash > but is can also give you a "time to add more ram" hint too. If Linux starts > using swap a good bit, you need more ram. OK, how can you determine when a machine is actively swapping and moving things back and forth? Do you need to monitor the system with a real-time tool during peak usage? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
>> >> Then why not have a really big swap file? If swap is useful as a >> >> second layer of caching behind RAM, why doesn't everyone with some >> >> extra hard drive space have a 100GB swap file? >> >> >> > You've not understood what I said, I think. Swap is not useful as >> > filesystem cache. Swap is as efficient (probably a little less) >> than >> > the files on the disk. It's RAM that's efficient as filesystem >> cache. >> > >> > Where swap comes in is the kernel can swap out pages from "stale" >> > processes, and reclaim the RAM as filesystem cache. >> >> That all makes perfect sense, but if a small swap is good and a large >> swap is not any better, I'm missing something. Maybe the pages from >> stale processes never total more than a small amount? I don't see how >> that could be > > Because you're (likely) never going to be using 100GB of memory at one > time for all your processes, let alone "idle" processes, so what's the > point of allocating all that swap? > > Continuing the analogy, it's like getting a stadium-sized attic that's > 100x bigger than the house your building it on just to store a Christmas > tree and a few other items. > > Here's another way of looking at it. The kernel wants to use *all* your > RAM. RAM is fast (compared to disk). But it wants to use the RAM for > stuff that's actually needed most at the present time. So say you have > 4G RAM. You're only using maybe 1.5G memory for applications. So the > kernel is going to try to use the remaining 2.5G for cache when/if it > needs to. But let's say you're hitting the disk a lot because you're > compiling something, then the kernel might decide it would like to cache > more files than the 2.5G. So it sees you have 300M of paged in process > memory that hasn't been used in a long while. A better use of RAM may > be to swap out those 300M and use it for more filesystem cache, causing > your compilation to run faster. But if you have a 100G swap file and > only 300M of "idle" pages then all that extra swap isn't going to be of > any use. Similarly, you don't want to swap out all of the 1.5G RAM > because some of it is actually being actively used (e.g. by the > compiler). That all makes perfect sense. So the reason a swap larger than maybe 1GB is not usually implemented is because idle processes don't normally have more than a few hundred MB of pages in memory? Wouldn't a sufficiently large swap (100GB for example) completely prevent out of memory conditions and the oom-killer? - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
>> Assuming you have the concept right, if I have 'MaxClients 50' and >> 'MaxSpareServers 10', there should never be more than 60 apache2 >> processes running and I should be able to serve up to 50 simultaneous >> TCP sessions? > > I'd guess it wouldnt go past 50. > >> Can anyone explain why I have 20 apache2 processes running moments >> after an apache2 restart with 'MaxSpareServers 10' and without more >> than 1 or 2 simultaneous TCP sessions? > > Do you have StartServer set to 10 (default is 2 or 3) > Have any TCP sessions recently closed? Maybe the Server isn't > re-cycled until the *_WAIT TCP states have timed out. Do you know if MaxClients includes clients associated with *_WAIT TCP states? I'm trying to figure out the hard limit on apache2 processes according to my config so I can plan for memory usage accordingly, but I get the feeling I'm going about it the wrong way. Doesn't every sysadmin need to do this to make sure they don't run out of memory? I have: StartServers 5 MinSpareServers 5 MaxSpareServers 10 MaxClients 50 MaxRequestsPerChild 1 - Grant
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Kernel panics and more info
Nicolas Sebrecht wrote: On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 10:54:09AM -0500, Dale wrote: Just picking a post to reply here and it may have a good point. I was browsing around to see what software I had for my UPS. I thought I would download the thing, untar it and just check out the README file to see what would be involved in installing it on my rig. It was a tarball so nothing video related or flash related either. It also didn't use the little download helper tool I been using either. I clicked on the link to download and the window popped up to ask me whether to open it or save it. I selected to save it as I have done countless times before. As soon as I clicked that, the window popped up asking where to save it to then kernel panic. This was in Seamonkey. Could this be a network card/driver issue? I have had no problems so far with emerge downloading anything from the command line. I'm going to test this by deleting the tarballs for OOo and then fetching them again. If it doesn't crash, then maybe it is something related to HOW Seamonkey and Firefox access the net. If it does crash, then maybe I need a new network card. I can't believe any userland tool like a navigator could make the whole system crash. It's much deeper than that in the system. Again, it's likely to be a driver issue. You could test your network card by doing a lot of traffic on it (on the LAN to give you better chance to catch any issue), X stopped. Next, you could test X (even mouse and keyboard) by playing some games or whatever you don't do usual. But at *FIRST* as it looks like you didn't do it yet, you have to _check your logs_. That is what I have been trying to figure out. Right now, I just know that Seamonkey and Firefox causes a kernel panic when I try to download something. I have said many times before that I don't think it is Seamonkey or Firefox itself but something they both use or load that is in common with each other. I don't think it is KDE either since it does the same in Fluxbox. I have looked at the logs I know of and I don't see anything in there about this. It is mostly about things loading and such. It seems the log is not going to help me to much on this one. I guess when it panics, it doesn't log anything first. As I posted in another reply, I deleted everything related to OOo source tarballs. It was about 400Mbs or so. I run emerge in a Konsole as root. It has been downloading for a while now with no problems at all. It is almost finished with the download. So, when Seamonkey or Firefox try to download something, besides the web pages itself, I get a kernel panic. Is this weird or what? Dale :-) :-)
[gentoo-user] Re: Kernel panics and more info
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 10:54:09AM -0500, Dale wrote: > Just picking a post to reply here and it may have a good point. I > was browsing around to see what software I had for my UPS. I > thought I would download the thing, untar it and just check out the > README file to see what would be involved in installing it on my > rig. It was a tarball so nothing video related or flash related > either. It also didn't use the little download helper tool I been > using either. I clicked on the link to download and the window > popped up to ask me whether to open it or save it. I selected to > save it as I have done countless times before. As soon as I clicked > that, the window popped up asking where to save it to then kernel > panic. This was in Seamonkey. > > Could this be a network card/driver issue? I have had no problems > so far with emerge downloading anything from the command line. I'm > going to test this by deleting the tarballs for OOo and then > fetching them again. If it doesn't crash, then maybe it is > something related to HOW Seamonkey and Firefox access the net. If > it does crash, then maybe I need a new network card. I can't believe any userland tool like a navigator could make the whole system crash. It's much deeper than that in the system. Again, it's likely to be a driver issue. You could test your network card by doing a lot of traffic on it (on the LAN to give you better chance to catch any issue), X stopped. Next, you could test X (even mouse and keyboard) by playing some games or whatever you don't do usual. But at *FIRST* as it looks like you didn't do it yet, you have to _check your logs_. -- Nicolas Sebrecht
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
Am 22.07.2011 16:57, schrieb Alan McKinnon: > It may look like KDE is the likely culprit based on just the > information you provide, but I would be more inclined to look at > browser plugins first, concentrating on those with both Firefox and > Chromium versions from the same developer team. I have zero browser plugins installed. So that is not the culprit. And why should plugins lock up X when used under KDE but not under XFCE? The problem that X freezes with KDE4 is more likely with webbrowsers but happend when using other programms too. But because of the fact that one or more browsers are nearly always running it is hard to find a freeze without a browser running. > There could be a cornercase bug in KDE that only shows up on your > specific combination, or maybe there is some edge KDE app you use that > disagrees with violently with FF. Or maybe it's the video driver that > doesn't actually do what it tells KDE it can do (remember the > painfully slow nVidia drivers with early KDE4?) I use the opensource drivers for ati-cards. So t is unlikely to be driver related. I use no edge KDE apps only amarok, yakuake, kate, konsole, dolphin, ktorrent from time to time. All of them but dolphin is still in use under xfce4 so I think I can rule them out too. I know it could still be a truckload of other things, but as a fan of Ockham's razor I still say that KDE4 is broken. Greetings Sebastian Beßler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
[gentoo-user] Re: Anyone have any trouble with rc_parallel="YES" ?
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 10:39:49AM +0700, Pandu Poluan wrote: > Spelunking in /etc/rc.conf, I found the rc_parallel setting, > accompanied with a quite significant WARNING. > > Have anyone experienced any trouble setting rc_parallel to "YES"? I did. I have a net configuration with some VLAN. Each VLAN has its own bridge to attach guest virtual NICs. One of the bridge doesn't add the assigned VLAN. Setting rc_parallel to "NO" resolved this issue. -- Nicolas Sebrecht
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
Am 22.07.2011 17:05, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann: > and you strace'd firefox, X or chromium to see where this stuff hangs, did > you? No I did not, a strace is only as good as the person who can read it, and in my case is that not much, not because I'm too stupid but because I rather let my drill my teeth before read megabytes of strace output. I went the easy way, used my time for something useful and fun (analysing strace output is neither useful nor fun for me, it may be for someone else) and switched to XFCE4. Hurray it works like a charm now so everything is good. I didn't need all that KDE4 cruft, eye candy and semantic crap anyway. Greetings Sebastian Beßler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Kernel panics and more info
Nicolas Sebrecht wrote: The 21/07/11, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote: The 21/07/11, Dale wrote: I have not been able to get the nv drivers to work. It has been so long since I had to use them, it appears I have forgot how to use them. I'm not sure I have ever used them since I been using Gentoo. Try VESA. I would suspect the NIC driver, too. I've seen a lot of people touched by a r8169 bug freezing the kernel on large downloads, recently. Just picking a post to reply here and it may have a good point. I was browsing around to see what software I had for my UPS. I thought I would download the thing, untar it and just check out the README file to see what would be involved in installing it on my rig. It was a tarball so nothing video related or flash related either. It also didn't use the little download helper tool I been using either. I clicked on the link to download and the window popped up to ask me whether to open it or save it. I selected to save it as I have done countless times before. As soon as I clicked that, the window popped up asking where to save it to then kernel panic. This was in Seamonkey. Could this be a network card/driver issue? I have had no problems so far with emerge downloading anything from the command line. I'm going to test this by deleting the tarballs for OOo and then fetching them again. If it doesn't crash, then maybe it is something related to HOW Seamonkey and Firefox access the net. If it does crash, then maybe I need a new network card. Thoughts? Going to go run my test now. Dale :-) :-)
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Thursday 21 July 2011 21:08:49 Albert Hopkins did opine thusly: > > "When a linux machine hits swap, it does so very aggressively, > > there is nothing nice about it at all. The entire machine slows > > to a painstaking crawl for easily a minute at a time while the > > kernel writes pages out to disk, and disk is thousands of times > > slower than RAM. > > > > > > This is not entirely true. There's regular swapping and there is > "thrashing". Yes, thrashing is the correct word for what I described. I very seldom see swapping happen as one expects swap to be used, it almost always becomes thrashing shortly thereafter, and we do monitor our machines closely at work. That's what I've observed and it's not a large data set so I could be completely wrong. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Thursday 21 July 2011 17:26:33 kashani did opine thusly: > On 7/21/2011 4:53 PM, Grant wrote: > > So swap isn't treated exactly like RAM. It actually has special > > handling in Linux which makes it beneficial to have on almost > > any > > Linux system? According to Alan, things get very bad when a > > Linux system hits swap. How can behavior like this be > > beneficial: > > > > "When a linux machine hits swap, it does so very aggressively, > > there is nothing nice about it at all. The entire machine slows > > to a painstaking crawl for easily a minute at a time while the > > kernel writes pages out to disk, and disk is thousands of times > > slower than RAM. > > > > It gets so bad that you can't even run a shell properly to try > > and see what's going on and kill the actual memory hog." > > > > Also, aren't you likely to wear out your hard disk sooner using > > swap? > > 1. swap is good. Unless you have a good reason, leave it there. You > do not have a good reason to remove it and neither does anyone > else. > > 2. Don't use the swap that you have. It's slow. It is not a > replacement for RAM. > > 3. If you use a little bit of swap, 100-200MB, that's fine. It's > also a sign you need more RAM. > > 4. If you're using all your RAM and a couple of GB of swap, you're > screwed. Avoid this. > > 5. Swap that you never write to or read from never needs to hit the > drives. If you're worried about drive wear, turn off logging. Excellent summary of swap; says a lot of what I was trying to say but didn't succeed. I might argue with your point #1, but then I would be nit-picking and it's very dependant on circumstance anyway. As in all things IT, YMMV -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Friday 22 July 2011 16:39:41 Sebastian Beßler wrote: > Am 22.07.2011 15:13, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann: > > maybe it is not KDE's fault when firefox is badly coded? > > Lets think. > KDE4+Firefox = X hangs and firefox can't be killed > XFCE4+Firefox = no problems > > Sure, it has to be firefox > > Oh and a test 20 minutes ago showed > > KDE4+Chromium = X hangs and chromium can't be killed > XFCE4+Chromium = no problems > > It looks like there is a pattern but I could be wrong. > > Greetings > > Sebastian Beßler and you strace'd firefox, X or chromium to see where this stuff hangs, did you? -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Friday 22 July 2011 16:39:41 Sebastian Beßler did opine thusly: > Am 22.07.2011 15:13, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann: > > maybe it is not KDE's fault when firefox is badly coded? > > Lets think. > KDE4+Firefox = X hangs and firefox can't be killed > XFCE4+Firefox = no problems > > Sure, it has to be firefox > > Oh and a test 20 minutes ago showed > > KDE4+Chromium = X hangs and chromium can't be killed > XFCE4+Chromium = no problems > > It looks like there is a pattern but I could be wrong. It may look like KDE is the likely culprit based on just the information you provide, but I would be more inclined to look at browser plugins first, concentrating on those with both Firefox and Chromium versions from the same developer team. FF, Chromium, KDE, XFCE are all large projects with large userbases. The odds of dumbass bugs remaining in the code tends to decrease with such projects. Compare that to niche plugins which do not have the same eyeball visibility. There could be a cornercase bug in KDE that only shows up on your specific combination, or maybe there is some edge KDE app you use that disagrees with violently with FF. Or maybe it's the video driver that doesn't actually do what it tells KDE it can do (remember the painfully slow nVidia drivers with early KDE4?) The point I'm making is that your data set and initial conclusions appear far too simplistic and have not taken the real world into account. You have a mere correlation, you cannot conclude causation from that data yet. -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 8:29 PM, Grant wrote: >>> Its more how much i/o rather than the size. If you have a bunch of >>> stuff swapped out, but it hardly ever needs to be swapped in, the >>> impact will be low. >>> >>> Keep an eye on the use with vmstat; >>> >>> adam@rix ~ $ vmstat 5 >>> procs ---memory-- ---swap-- -io -system-- >>> cpu >>> r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us >>> sy id wa >>> 0 0 56700 351244 79564 207848 0 0 3 3 11 7 1 >>> 0 99 0 >>> 0 0 56700 351244 79564 207848 0 0 0 8 52 27 0 >>> 0 100 0 >>> 0 0 56700 351244 79564 207848 0 0 0 0 45 14 0 >>> 0 100 0 >>> 0 0 56700 351244 79564 207848 0 0 0 0 47 17 0 >>> 0 100 0 >>> >>> from the man page; >>> Swap >>> si: Amount of memory swapped in from disk (/s). >>> so: Amount of memory swapped to disk (/s). >>> >>> >> Exactly! My system is the same way. >> >> Right now I've got a 4GB system that's using 708MB swap. But vmstat >> isn't showing any swap activity. Why? Because some processes that I'm >> not aware about because I'm obviously not using, got swapped out a long >> time ago, and Linux is using that reclaimed RAM to compile chromium ;) >> >> If/when I need part of that 708MB becomes active, Linux will swap it >> back in in one short burst that I doubt that I'll even notice. > > Then why not have a really big swap file? If swap is useful as a > second layer of caching behind RAM, why doesn't everyone with some > extra hard drive space have a 100GB swap file? I have 12GB of RAM and 12GB of swap on my main PC. Why? Because... why not? :) After 5 days uptime, it actually has 89M of swap used for some reason. It has over 10GB cached. All of my sysctl vm.* settings have been left to the defaults. So I guess it just pushed some unused stuff out to swap to make room for more caching.
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
Am 22.07.2011 15:13, schrieb Volker Armin Hemmann: > maybe it is not KDE's fault when firefox is badly coded? Lets think. KDE4+Firefox = X hangs and firefox can't be killed XFCE4+Firefox = no problems Sure, it has to be firefox Oh and a test 20 minutes ago showed KDE4+Chromium = X hangs and chromium can't be killed XFCE4+Chromium = no problems It looks like there is a pattern but I could be wrong. Greetings Sebastian Beßler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Thursday 21 July 2011 19:38:53 Mick wrote: > Whatever Dale had on his machine must have infected mine! LOL! > > A 32bit x86 box with KDE4.6, running firefox-3.6.17 and xulrunner-1.9.2.17 > after a few hours and loads of tabs (sometimes up to 15 or so) eventually > hangs X. > > I can switch to a console and login as the user running the X session, then > try to kill the bloody thing with killall, kill -15 and kill -9 . > It won't barge. Mind you I haven't tried this as root. > > How can this be? don't know, but the next time this happens try to strace firefox. -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
On Friday 22 July 2011 13:54:09 Sebastian Beßler wrote: > Am 21.07.2011 20:38, schrieb Mick: > > Whatever Dale had on his machine must have infected mine! LOL! > > > > A 32bit x86 box with KDE4.6, running firefox-3.6.17 and > > xulrunner-1.9.2.17 after a few hours and loads of tabs (sometimes up to > > 15 or so) eventually hangs X. > > I had the same problem with firefox and KDE4.6, X just froze and I could > not kill firefox. This happend sometimes twice a day. > I had to kill everything with altgr+print+e, nothing else worked. > > After my change to XFCE4 the problem has never occured again for now 2 > month. Maybe the people at KDE should use time to fix bugs and make it > stable before putting more and more eyecandy and stuff in it. maybe it is not KDE's fault when firefox is badly coded? Using KDE4 with konqueror+chromium for days and weeks of uptime without problems. -- #163933
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 22:16:41 -0400, Albert Hopkins wrote: > Think of it this way: You have a house with an attic. Now the attic is > not as "efficient" as say, the middle of your living room. You have a > Christmas tree, but you only use that Christmas tree maybe once a year. > Now it's much more efficient to keep that Christmas tree in the attic > for 11 months of the year and use that reclaimed space in your living > room for.. say a coffee table. Then, when you need that Christmas tree > in December, you pull it out of the attic and maybe put the coffee table > up in the attic for a month. And the winner of the Analogy of the Month award is... This has to be the best explanation of how swap is used I have ever read. -- Neil Bothwick All right, set phasers to deep fat fry! signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Can't kill Firefox!
Am 21.07.2011 20:38, schrieb Mick: > Whatever Dale had on his machine must have infected mine! LOL! > > A 32bit x86 box with KDE4.6, running firefox-3.6.17 and xulrunner-1.9.2.17 > after a few hours and loads of tabs (sometimes up to 15 or so) eventually > hangs X. I had the same problem with firefox and KDE4.6, X just froze and I could not kill firefox. This happend sometimes twice a day. I had to kill everything with altgr+print+e, nothing else worked. After my change to XFCE4 the problem has never occured again for now 2 month. Maybe the people at KDE should use time to fix bugs and make it stable before putting more and more eyecandy and stuff in it. Greetings Sebastian Beßler signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] mysqld invoked oom-killer
On Thursday 21 July 2011 21:44:51 Alan McKinnon wrote: > Sounds like a case for a swap partition that can be activated when you > need it for big emerges. I hit the same thing with firefox-5 oddly > enough. I have one smallish swap partition at PRI=10 and a bigger one at PRI=1. > As for OOo, long ago I figured the pain wasn't worth the gain so now I > use the -bin packages. Or switch to Libre Office. Its compiler requirements seem lighter than OO.o. -- Rgds Peter Linux Counter number 5290
[gentoo-user] Re: Kernel panics and more info
The 21/07/11, Nicolas Sebrecht wrote: > The 21/07/11, Dale wrote: > > > I have not been able to get the nv drivers to work. It has been so > > long since I had to use them, it appears I have forgot how to use > > them. I'm not sure I have ever used them since I been using Gentoo. > > Try VESA. I would suspect the NIC driver, too. I've seen a lot of people touched by a r8169 bug freezing the kernel on large downloads, recently. -- Nicolas Sebrecht
[gentoo-user] Re: Kernel panics and more info
The 21/07/11, Neil Bothwick wrote: > On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:14:11 -0500, Dale wrote: > > > > It's the standard video driver, x11-drivers/xf86-video-vesa > > > And I change nvidia to vesa or do I need to unmerge nvidia first? > > If you keep xorg.conf, change it to use vesa. Or move it to /root. > > Also, are these done as modules like nvidia is? Hmmm, if I > > remove xorg.conf, how does it know which driver to use? > > Hardware detection. If you don't use third party drivers, you can usually > do without an xorg.conf. Or just read /var/log/Xorg.0.log after started X. -- Nicolas Sebrecht
