Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

Linux-Fan composed on 2021-03-08 03:35 (UTC+0100):

> Wrt. power I usually start from CPU + GPU

I used an online calculator
https://www.bequiet.com/en/psucalculator
on this system with

i3-7100T (TDP 35W) supports up to 3 displays up to 4096x2304
ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro cooler
1 2.5" SSD
2 3.5" Hitachi Deskstars
4 fans
1 DVD writer

The calculator showed I'd be using 37% of a 300W power supply, 25% of the
installed 450W PS.

Finding actual power consumption of a motherboard is apparently brutal. Specs in
the manuals to mine say nothing about power consumption. DDG & Google in 20+
minutes weren't helpful either.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 5:25 PM David Christensen 
wrote:

> On 3/7/21 4:45 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:27 PM David Christensen <
> dpchr...@holgerdanske.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/7/21 4:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
>
> >>> The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
> >>> incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or
> >> otherwise
> >>> misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also
> has
> >>> the modem-router.
>
> >> What a PITA.  Have you tried putting a network interface card into the
> >> problematic computer so that you can run one LAN?
> >>
> >
> > Actually, the problematic computer has two ethernet ports on it, but it
> is
> > a mac, so not so clear how to get a network interface card into it.
>
>
> What model mac?
>

It's a mac pro.


>
>
> Are the two Ethernet ports factory original?  If not, what make/ model?
>

They're original.


>
>
> What OS?  Have you tried reinstalling?  Have you tried any other OS's?
>

It's 10.6.8

Entirely apart from its black box nature, i'm constrained from repurposing
it.  In some ways it is very thoughtfully put together, but it's not part
of the free world.

dan

>
>
> David
>
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

David Wright composed on 2021-03-07 20:01 (UTC-0600):

> On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 20:39:12 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:

>> At retail level, modem-routers seem to be rather uncommon. OTOH, owning your 
>> own
>> modem and router can produce an ISP savings that will pay for a modem and/or
>> router in as little as 6-12 months by buying quality "refurbs". I have 
>> multiples
>> of both, so that an ISP has little opportunity to fault my hardware when I 
>> have a
>> service complaint.

> I've never has two working modems (cable) on site at the same time.
> How do ISPs react to having two different MAC-addressed devices
> connecting from the same customer? (My Internet connection doesn't
> require a login.)

Having != connected. The extras are spares. :)
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Linux-Fan]

David Wright writes:


On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 19:33:42 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:
> The Wanderer composed on 2021-03-07 19:16 (UTC-0500):
> > On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:


[...]


> > Isn't progress fun?
>
> Same kind as when Intel stopped providing PS/2 ports on its motherboards  
> (and chipset support?). I haven't bought an Intel motherboard since.

> There are plenty competitors who know people like their quality ancient
> PS/2 keyboards that don't work with USB adapters.

Just as wasp expired, I acquired a Dell Precision T3500. It must be one
of the last BIOS machines (November 2011), but the good news is that it
has PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, so my ancient IBM keyboard, and a
3-button Logitech mouse, won't be orphaned after all. That was a surprise.


[...]

Newer Dell Precision T models still seem to have PS/2 ports, too.

I am writing from a T5820 (manufactured 2020) that still comes with two PS/2  
ports standard. I have not tested them yet, though, because I am currently  
using only USB input devices.


Btw. wrt. the thread's main topic: I saw many disks being discussed.

The Wanderer wrote:

Any power-related advice for SSDs?


It highly depends on the models. The ones I am using are rated 14W by the  
manufacturer (operating/loaded). I expect other SSDs to use less power  
although it might make a good rule of thumb to just assume "15W per drive"  
for safety?



In the system I'm planning to build, I'm expecting to have something
along the lines of two M.2 SSDs (RAID-1), presumably in the NVMe 2280
form factor you specify, and eight or more SATA SSDs in a 2.5" form
factor (RAID-6), along with a discrete GPU, probably a discrete sound


Is there a specific reason for having so many drives? Sometimes, using the  
M.2 slots on the motherboard will disable certain SATA ports. Most of the  
time, I try to reduce the number of drives to a sensible minimum (four seems  
to be pretty standard for client systems) and rather chose larger disks but  
fewer. YMMV.



card, a collection of fans, and of course whatever the motherboard and
case may need (not excluding USB ports and the devices attached to
them).


Wrt. power I usually start from CPU + GPU (e.g. for my system that would  
be 165W CPU + 150W GPU, then add some estimate for motherboard+fans (e.g.  
70W -- derived from the previous' system's idle power usage) and only  
afterwards think about storage. I could estimate 30W for 2x15W SSD + 20W for  
2x10W HDD. This would total at 435W i.e. 550W PSU would suffice. Of course,  
if the GPU were to be upgraded or significant amount of RAM were to be  
added, that would have to be added as extra. Most of the time, I am relying  
on manufacturer-provided PSUs and for my T5820 configuration, Dell's  
smallest choice was 950W (more than enough...)


The heavier the GPU, the more sense it makes to chose much larger a PSU than  
by the estimate, because modern GPUs tend to require "spikes" of power in  
very short time that can destroy PSUs that would otherwise suffice. I have  
not found a means to find out about this in advance other than reading  
exstensive reviews for the respective GPUs of interest.


HTH
Linux-Fan

öö


pgpy415ofPQYO.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Wright]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 20:39:12 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:

> At retail level, modem-routers seem to be rather uncommon. OTOH, owning your 
> own
> modem and router can produce an ISP savings that will pay for a modem and/or
> router in as little as 6-12 months by buying quality "refurbs". I have 
> multiples
> of both, so that an ISP has little opportunity to fault my hardware when I 
> have a
> service complaint.

I've never has two working modems (cable) on site at the same time.
How do ISPs react to having two different MAC-addressed devices
connecting from the same customer? (My Internet connection doesn't
require a login.)

Cheers,
David.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Wright]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 19:33:42 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:
> The Wanderer composed on 2021-03-07 19:16 (UTC-0500):
> > On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:
> 
> >> I can see how GPT labels would be useful for system drives, but I use 
> >> BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move 
> >> system drives between machines of varying age.

My oldest PC, built in 2000, had no problem booting from a GPT disk.
It was an Intel Seattle2 SE440BX-2 mobo with a Pentium III
(Coppermine) CPU, hosting two PATA disks.

I'm guessing that Grub gets itself installed in the protective MBR,
and once Grub is running, it doesn't care what kind of disk it is.

I was careful to set the disk up with the necessary partitioning:
Part #  filesys sizecoderôle
gina-   1007KiB partition table and alignment space
gina01  -   3MiBEF02BIOS Boot
gina02  FAT32   496MiB  EF00EFI system
gina03  ver 1   500MiB  8200Swap (random-key encrypted)
gina04  ext429 GiB  8300Gina-A (buster 64bit)
gina05  ext429 GiB  8300Gina-B (buster 32bit)
gina06  ext4406 GiB 8300/home (LUKS2)

IOW, it has a BIOS Boot partition for Grub to use. The ESP gina02
is as yet unused, and Gina-A/gina04 will be used in the disk's new
residence. RIP wasp: its PSU gave out.

> > That'll probably stop working past a certain point, at least for some
> > machines. On recent Intel chipsets, Dell has stopped supporting booting
> > from internal hard drives except in UEFI/GPT mode (as in, they no longer
> > offer a setting for it, and their boot-device selection menus won't let
> > you do it), and I gather that Intel's newer chipsets are going to stop
> > including support for the UEFI components that permit MBR-based boot in
> > the relatively-near future (if they haven't in fact done that already).
> 
> > At which point you'll need to maintain two categories of system drives:
> > ones which can work on older machines, prior to that dropping of
> > support, and ones which can work on newer machines, subsequent to the
> > addition of UEFI/GPT booting.

I thought that would be the case here, but none of my BIOS machines
has had problems with disks after reformatting them as GPT. All have
had ESP and BIOS Boot partitions included for future-proofing. The
survival of some of the PATA ones now depends on how long I have
interfaces available. Fortunately, I do have a PATA caddy container
with USB, but it's noisy and slow.

> > Isn't progress fun?
> 
> Same kind as when Intel stopped providing PS/2 ports on its motherboards (and
> chipset support?). I haven't bought an Intel motherboard since. There are 
> plenty
> competitors who know people like their quality ancient PS/2 keyboards that 
> don't
> work with USB adapters.

Just as wasp expired, I acquired a Dell Precision T3500. It must be one
of the last BIOS machines (November 2011), but the good news is that it
has PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, so my ancient IBM keyboard, and a
3-button Logitech mouse, won't be orphaned after all. That was a surprise.

Cheers,
David.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

Dan Hitt composed on 2021-03-07 16:33 (UTC-0800):

> Felix Miata wrote:

> So there seems to be some incompatibility between the old mac and
> the router-modem.  Both however are black boxes and i am constrained from
> just wiping the mac and installing debian on it, to see if this is just a
> software issue.  (And i'm not even sure that i legally own the modem-router
> or if my isp does.)   
> 
At retail level, modem-routers seem to be rather uncommon. OTOH, owning your own
modem and router can produce an ISP savings that will pay for a modem and/or
router in as little as 6-12 months by buying quality "refurbs". I have multiples
of both, so that an ISP has little opportunity to fault my hardware when I have 
a
service complaint.

My iMac has MacOS and Linux X2. Changing the HD was more work than adding Linux.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[IL Ka]

>
>
> Also ip a. Someday you may no longer have arp:
> <
> https://dougvitale.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/deprecated-linux-networking-commands-and-their-replacements/
> >
>

Yes, "$ ip neighbor" (or "ip n" for short)  is the correct syntax on modern
Linux.
Thanks.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

Dan Hitt composed on 2021-03-07 17:01 (UTC-0800):

> IL Ka wrote:

>>> [Although, i guess i do not know the mac addr of the modem-router  --- is
>>> there a user-level move i can make on my debian box to see what the mac
>>> addr of my modem-router is?

>> $ ping [your_rounter_ip]
>> $ arp -a

>> you should see a list of all your ethernet neighbours along with their ip
>> and mac addresses.

> Awesome, thanks IL!  So now i also know my modem-router's mac addr.  :)

Also ip a. Someday you may no longer have arp:

-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 4:45 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:27 PM David Christensen 
wrote:


On 3/7/21 4:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:



The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or

otherwise

misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
the modem-router.



What a PITA.  Have you tried putting a network interface card into the
problematic computer so that you can run one LAN?



Actually, the problematic computer has two ethernet ports on it, but it is
a mac, so not so clear how to get a network interface card into it.



What model mac?


Are the two Ethernet ports factory original?  If not, what make/ model?


What OS?  Have you tried reinstalling?  Have you tried any other OS's?


David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

The Wanderer composed on 2021-03-07 18:00 (UTC-0500):

> On 2021-03-07 at 17:48, Felix Miata wrote:

>> Don't settle for a motherboard that lacks any M.2 ports that support
>> NVME 2280 form factor storage. Prefer more than one on any board
>> bigger than ITX. I've see reports of <3 second cold boot to
>> multi-user times using NVME. Best I've seen here is <6 seconds with a
>> cheap 120GB NVME and a two core 3.0GHz Pentium G3220 CPU.

> At that point I'd expect the bottleneck is elsewhere in the system,
> rather than with the storage device itself. M.2 SSDs can get *stupidly*
> fast.

Cheap = not so fast, e.g. barely four digit speeds or even down to only 
700MB/s. I
haven't spent any meaningful time trying to minimize startup bloat either.

>> Also be very wary of any power supply included with a case. IME,
>> these lightweight and cheaply made power supplies invariably provide
>> the worst reliability of any type of electronic product I've ever
>> encountered. The best power supplies are heavy. If its weight isn't
>> provided in its specs, look elsewhere, for as much above 3lbs as you
>> can find, preferably more than 4lbs, and if the cabling is much more
>> than minimal, more than 5lbs. If not using a power hungry two-slot
>> multi-fan powered-directly-by-power supply graphics card, lots of
>> 3.5" drives, or multiple discrete CPUs, odds are anything more than a
>> 400W power supply is overkill. Significant excess capacity wastes
>> power needlessly.

> Thanks for the advice.

> Any power-related advice for SSDs?
> 
Nothing much. HDDs run on 12V, while 2.5" SSDs run on 5V. NVME is less clear to 
me
so far. My last NVME 1.3 purchase reported using 3.3V, but I've seen the web
suggest NVME can or does use both 3.3V and 12V. So, make sure to read the PS 
label
to make sure the 3.3V & 5V supplies are suited to needs, while 12V not so much.
Overall maximum advertised power can be misleading. It's possible to need more
total advertised power simply to have enough watts at 3.3V & 5V.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:58 PM IL Ka  wrote:

>
>>
>> [Although, i guess i do not know the mac addr of the modem-router  --- is
>> there a user-level move i can make on my debian box to see what the mac
>> addr of my modem-router is?
>>
> $ ping [your_rounter_ip]
> $ arp -a
>
> you should see a list of all your ethernet neighbours along with their ip
> and mac addresses.
>
>
>

Awesome, thanks IL!  So now i also know my modem-router's mac addr.  :)

dan

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[IL Ka]

>
>
>
> [Although, i guess i do not know the mac addr of the modem-router  --- is
> there a user-level move i can make on my debian box to see what the mac
> addr of my modem-router is?
>
$ ping [your_rounter_ip]
$ arp -a

you should see a list of all your ethernet neighbours along with their ip
and mac addresses.

Debian : Apple iPhone X or 10

[Didier HELFER]

Hello How are you ?

Softwares : parallel use : have the choice between IOS and Debian (image) :
how to do it ?

Secret Chat(tting) : Edward Snowden use irc.indymedia.org : How to do ?

Encryption : what do you think of elliptical curves ?

Thanks for all Yours faithfully

Didier Helfer

Bonjour Comment allez-vous ?

Logiciels : utilisation en parallèle : choisir entre IOS et Debian (image)
Comment faire pour que les 2 systèmes d’exploitation cohabitent /
fonctionnent indépendamment l’un de l’autre ? Choix entre l’un ou l’autre
système selon les besoins

Edward Snowden utilise irc.indymedia.org pour chatter Comment faire ?

D’avance, merci

Bien à vous

Cordialement

Didier Helfer

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:46 PM IL Ka  wrote:

> A random thought:
> Check mac addresses, make sure they aren't the same.
>

Thanks for the thought.

That is a reasonable sanity check.

But as it happens, all the mac addrs on all these boxes are different ---
i've accumulated a list of them due to various adventures in trying to get
the networking functional :) :)

[Although, i guess i do not know the mac addr of the modem-router  --- is
there a user-level move i can make on my debian box to see what the mac
addr of my modem-router is?]

dan


>
>
> On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 3:36 AM Dan Hitt  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:25 PM IL Ka  wrote:
>>
>>>
 The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
 incompatible with one of my computers.

>>> hmm, I never heard about such things)
>>> Is your electrical grounding configured correctly?
>>>
>>> In my country some old apartments do not have third (ground) wire. I've
>>> seen a lot of glitches because of that.
>>>
>>> Have you tried to install an ethernet switch?
>>>
>>
>> yes i did, and it did not work --- just the fact that the router was in
>> contact with the incompatible model even through a switch was enough to
>> make it malfunction.  :(
>>
>> dan
>>
>>>
>>> You can connect your modem-router to the ethernet switch, and connect
>>> all PCs to this switch. It may help.
>>>
>>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[IL Ka]

A random thought:
Check mac addresses, make sure they aren't the same.



On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 3:36 AM Dan Hitt  wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:25 PM IL Ka  wrote:
>
>>
>>> The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
>>> incompatible with one of my computers.
>>>
>> hmm, I never heard about such things)
>> Is your electrical grounding configured correctly?
>>
>> In my country some old apartments do not have third (ground) wire. I've
>> seen a lot of glitches because of that.
>>
>> Have you tried to install an ethernet switch?
>>
>
> yes i did, and it did not work --- just the fact that the router was in
> contact with the incompatible model even through a switch was enough to
> make it malfunction.  :(
>
> dan
>
>>
>> You can connect your modem-router to the ethernet switch, and connect all
>> PCs to this switch. It may help.
>>
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:27 PM David Christensen 
wrote:

> On 3/7/21 4:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 11:01 AM David Christensen wrote:
> >
> >> On 3/7/21 9:55 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> >>
> >>> I indeed use ethernet-over-usb currently, and
> >>> it is fast enough for me.  But if i had a second port, it would be a
> >> little
> >>> less cluttered, so i'd like to do it if it is not too costly and
> doesn't
> >>> interfere with other goals. :)
> >>
> >>
> >> Will the new computer connect to two Ethernet networks?  Why?
> >>
> >>
> > Thanks David for your mail.
> >
> > The new computer will be connected to 2 ethernet networks (conceivably
> > more).
> >
> > The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
> > incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or
> otherwise
> > misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
> > the modem-router.  So i need to have 2 networks because one of my
> computers
> > is incompatible with my modem-router: one network contains the modem
> > router, and one network contains the incompatible computer, and all the
> > other hosts are on both networks.
>
> What a PITA.  Have you tried putting a network interface card into the
> problematic computer so that you can run one LAN?
>

Actually, the problematic computer has two ethernet ports on it, but it is
a mac, so not so clear how to get a network interface card into it.

dan



> > Thanks for the rest of your message, and everything else you have written
> > in this thread, and thanks also everybody else for all this info which i
> am
> > trying to digest.
>
> YW.
>
>
> David
>
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:25 PM IL Ka  wrote:

>
>> The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
>> incompatible with one of my computers.
>>
> hmm, I never heard about such things)
> Is your electrical grounding configured correctly?
>
> In my country some old apartments do not have third (ground) wire. I've
> seen a lot of glitches because of that.
>
> Have you tried to install an ethernet switch?
>

yes i did, and it did not work --- just the fact that the router was in
contact with the incompatible model even through a switch was enough to
make it malfunction.  :(

dan

>
> You can connect your modem-router to the ethernet switch, and connect all
> PCs to this switch. It may help.
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

The Wanderer composed on 2021-03-07 19:16 (UTC-0500):

> On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:

>> I can see how GPT labels would be useful for system drives, but I use 
>> BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move 
>> system drives between machines of varying age.

> That'll probably stop working past a certain point, at least for some
> machines. On recent Intel chipsets, Dell has stopped supporting booting
> from internal hard drives except in UEFI/GPT mode (as in, they no longer
> offer a setting for it, and their boot-device selection menus won't let
> you do it), and I gather that Intel's newer chipsets are going to stop
> including support for the UEFI components that permit MBR-based boot in
> the relatively-near future (if they haven't in fact done that already).

> At which point you'll need to maintain two categories of system drives:
> ones which can work on older machines, prior to that dropping of
> support, and ones which can work on newer machines, subsequent to the
> addition of UEFI/GPT booting.

> Isn't progress fun?

Same kind as when Intel stopped providing PS/2 ports on its motherboards (and
chipset support?). I haven't bought an Intel motherboard since. There are plenty
competitors who know people like their quality ancient PS/2 keyboards that don't
work with USB adapters.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 4:16 PM Felix Miata  wrote:

> Dan Hitt composed on 2021-03-07 16:02 (UTC-0800):
>
> > The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
> > incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or
> otherwise
> > misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
> > the modem-router.
>
> A $10 add-in NIC probably could have solved that more simply. Was more
> than one
> ethernet cable tried with the problem PC? Was a crossover cable mistakenly
> used?
>

Thanks Felix for your message.  The incompatible computer is a mac, and it
is not the only mac that had trouble with the router, and the problem is
not just through a cable but also wireless (for a different mac laptop that
i had for a job).  The cable that i used is still in use, but to a LAN
instead.  So there seems to be some incompatibility between the old mac and
the router-modem.  Both however are black boxes and i am constrained from
just wiping the mac and installing debian on it, to see if this is just a
software issue.  (And i'm not even sure that i legally own the modem-router
or if my isp does.)

On the other hand, a usb-ethernet converter is not too expensive, and it
works ok.  So having only one ethernet port on my new computer would be ok,
but if two were on the motherboard then i could use them both.  :)

dan


> --
> Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
> is based on faith, not on science.
>
>  Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
>
> Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/
>
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 4:16 PM, The Wanderer wrote:

On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:



... I use
BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move
system drives between machines of varying age.


That'll probably stop working past a certain point, at least for some
machines. On recent Intel chipsets, Dell has stopped supporting booting
from internal hard drives except in UEFI/GPT mode (as in, they no longer
offer a setting for it, and their boot-device selection menus won't let
you do it), and I gather that Intel's newer chipsets are going to stop
including support for the UEFI components that permit MBR-based boot in
the relatively-near future (if they haven't in fact done that already).

At which point you'll need to maintain two categories of system drives:
ones which can work on older machines, prior to that dropping of
support, and ones which can work on newer machines, subsequent to the
addition of UEFI/GPT booting.

Isn't progress fun?


At some point, I'll recycle the BIOS-only machines and standardize on UEFI.


David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 4:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 11:01 AM David Christensen wrote:


On 3/7/21 9:55 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:


I indeed use ethernet-over-usb currently, and
it is fast enough for me.  But if i had a second port, it would be a

little

less cluttered, so i'd like to do it if it is not too costly and doesn't
interfere with other goals. :)



Will the new computer connect to two Ethernet networks?  Why?



Thanks David for your mail.

The new computer will be connected to 2 ethernet networks (conceivably
more).

The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or otherwise
misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
the modem-router.  So i need to have 2 networks because one of my computers
is incompatible with my modem-router: one network contains the modem
router, and one network contains the incompatible computer, and all the
other hosts are on both networks.


What a PITA.  Have you tried putting a network interface card into the 
problematic computer so that you can run one LAN?




Thanks for the rest of your message, and everything else you have written
in this thread, and thanks also everybody else for all this info which i am
trying to digest.


YW.


David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[IL Ka]

>
>
> The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
> incompatible with one of my computers.
>
hmm, I never heard about such things)
Is your electrical grounding configured correctly?

In my country some old apartments do not have third (ground) wire. I've
seen a lot of glitches because of that.

Have you tried to install an ethernet switch?

You can connect your modem-router to the ethernet switch, and connect all
PCs to this switch. It may help.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 19:04, David Christensen wrote:

> On 3/7/21 12:59 PM, deloptes wrote:

>> IMO UEFI makes sense when you have notebook with secureboot and probably
>> dual boot with windows.
>> For the home server or PC with Linux only ... IMO it is a waste.
> 
> I can see how GPT labels would be useful for system drives, but I use 
> BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move 
> system drives between machines of varying age.

That'll probably stop working past a certain point, at least for some
machines. On recent Intel chipsets, Dell has stopped supporting booting
from internal hard drives except in UEFI/GPT mode (as in, they no longer
offer a setting for it, and their boot-device selection menus won't let
you do it), and I gather that Intel's newer chipsets are going to stop
including support for the UEFI components that permit MBR-based boot in
the relatively-near future (if they haven't in fact done that already).

At which point you'll need to maintain two categories of system drives:
ones which can work on older machines, prior to that dropping of
support, and ones which can work on newer machines, subsequent to the
addition of UEFI/GPT booting.

Isn't progress fun?

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

Dan Hitt composed on 2021-03-07 16:02 (UTC-0800):

> The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
> incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or otherwise
> misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
> the modem-router. 
> 
A $10 add-in NIC probably could have solved that more simply. Was more than one
ethernet cable tried with the problem PC? Was a crossover cable mistakenly used?
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 12:59 PM, deloptes wrote:

David Christensen wrote:


UEFI started coming into x86 motherboard firmware ~10 years ago, so a
BIOS-only machine is going to be at least that old.  That is okay for a
server, but I would want newer Intel integrated graphics for a desktop.
This implies UEFI firmware.


what has the graphic card to do with UEFI?


Chronological coincidence -- newer machines have newer Intel integrated 
graphics and UEFI.




IMO UEFI makes sense when you have notebook with secureboot and probably
dual boot with windows.
For the home server or PC with Linux only ... IMO it is a waste.


I can see how GPT labels would be useful for system drives, but I use 
BIOS/MBR because it is the lowest common denominator and I can move 
system drives between machines of varying age.



David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 11:01 AM David Christensen 
wrote:

> On 3/7/21 9:55 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:
>
> > I indeed use ethernet-over-usb currently, and
> > it is fast enough for me.  But if i had a second port, it would be a
> little
> > less cluttered, so i'd like to do it if it is not too costly and doesn't
> > interfere with other goals. :)
>
>
> Will the new computer connect to two Ethernet networks?  Why?
>
>
Thanks David for your mail.

The new computer will be connected to 2 ethernet networks (conceivably
more).

The reason for the two networks is that my modem-router is electrically
incompatible with one of my computers.  That computer freezes or otherwise
misbehaves when one of its ethernet ports is on a network which also has
the modem-router.  So i need to have 2 networks because one of my computers
is incompatible with my modem-router: one network contains the modem
router, and one network contains the incompatible computer, and all the
other hosts are on both networks.

Thanks for the rest of your message, and everything else you have written
in this thread, and thanks also everybody else for all this info which i am
trying to digest.

dan


>
> On 3/7/21 10:02 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:
>
>  >> Are you comfortable plugging together components to build a
>  >> machine, or do you want to pay for the convenience of having
>  >> someone else do it?
>
>  > I'm comfortable with plugging the components together if it's easy
>
> I built homebrew desktops using Antec tower cases and Intel desktop
> boards for many years.  The last was based on a Sonata chassis with an
> included 500 W PSU.  It's very easy to add/ remove drives and has low
> noise features -- the four internal 3.5" drive bays feature vibration
> isolation grommets, the main cooling fan is large diameter with
> selectable RPM, the PSU fan is speed controlled, etc..  An Intel
> single-socket ATX server board and Antec "silent" tower chassis would be
> a good starting point.  I would buy a new chassis, rather than used; so
> that no parts are missing.
>
>
> David
>
>

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[Brad Rogers]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 13:11:26 -0500
John Boxall  wrote:

Hello John,

>Brad, I agree 100%..unfortunately, like my memory, I use selective 
>action.sometimes I create one and other times :-)

Sadly, Me too.   :-(

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
Life's short, don't make a mess of it
No Time To Be 21 - The Adverts


pgpFl81f6zB6E.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 17:48, Felix Miata wrote:

> Don't settle for a motherboard that lacks any M.2 ports that support
> NVME 2280 form factor storage. Prefer more than one on any board
> bigger than ITX. I've see reports of <3 second cold boot to
> multi-user times using NVME. Best I've seen here is <6 seconds with a
> cheap 120GB NVME and a two core 3.0GHz Pentium G3220 CPU.

At that point I'd expect the bottleneck is elsewhere in the system,
rather than with the storage device itself. M.2 SSDs can get *stupidly*
fast.

> Also be very wary of any power supply included with a case. IME,
> these lightweight and cheaply made power supplies invariably provide
> the worst reliability of any type of electronic product I've ever
> encountered. The best power supplies are heavy. If its weight isn't
> provided in its specs, look elsewhere, for as much above 3lbs as you
> can find, preferably more than 4lbs, and if the cabling is much more
> than minimal, more than 5lbs. If not using a power hungry two-slot
> multi-fan powered-directly-by-power supply graphics card, lots of
> 3.5" drives, or multiple discrete CPUs, odds are anything more than a
> 400W power supply is overkill. Significant excess capacity wastes
> power needlessly.

Thanks for the advice.

Any power-related advice for SSDs?

In the system I'm planning to build, I'm expecting to have something
along the lines of two M.2 SSDs (RAID-1), presumably in the NVMe 2280
form factor you specify, and eight or more SATA SSDs in a 2.5" form
factor (RAID-6), along with a discrete GPU, probably a discrete sound
card, a collection of fans, and of course whatever the motherboard and
case may need (not excluding USB ports and the devices attached to
them).

I'm not at all sure what to target in terms of PSU capacity for
something like that. I want modularity, reliability, and a certain
amount of extra headroom in case I want to either expand later or just
replace some parts with others that are more power-hungry, but what
wattage level is appropriate is really hard to judge; most of the PSU
calculators (etc.) out there, that I recall finding, seem to assume no
more than two hard drives.

In my current system (two SATA SSDs, four SATA HDDs, plus an extra port
for a cold spare drive in case one of the RAID arrays develops a
problem), the storage subsystem is probably the single largest part of
the power consumption except when the GPU is running high, but I don't
know of a practical way to calculate that with the tools I have
available.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Felix Miata]

songbird composed on 2021-03-07 13:06 (UTC-0500):

>   apparently Gigabyte has/had some strange ideas about UEFI.

No such here. Gigabyte made the first motherboard I ever acquired with UEFI 
that I
used with UEFI, so it's where I learned how UEFI works. For multibooting I 
highly
recommend UEFI if available. Once understood, UEFI is easy, and much less 
trouble
from one installation usurping boot control from another. The only downside is 
the
system won't be free of anachronistic M$ filesystem formatting.

Another recommendation: If using IGP, and you anticipate ever wanting to use 
more
than one display at a time, be sure the motherboard provides enough ports. I've
yet to see one with any one type duplicated, but it need not be an issue if at
least one is a DisplayPort. Inexpensive DisplayPort to HDMI converters are
available, but not so for HDMI to DisplayPort. My oldest only has three video
ports, lacking DisplayPort, but each of the other four have four: DisplayPort,
HDMI, DVI and VGA. My two newest are Intel IGP supporting up to three displays 
at
once. Two older AMD support only two at once.

Regarding bays: 2.5" SSDs don't really need bays in a desktop or floor standing
case that never gets moved except for repairs, upgrades or cleaning. They are 
very
lightweight, held in place well enough by the cables connected to them to stick
anywhere there is some space.

Don't settle for a motherboard that lacks any M.2 ports that support NVME 2280
form factor storage. Prefer more than one on any board bigger than ITX. I've see
reports of <3 second cold boot to multi-user times using NVME. Best I've seen 
here
is <6 seconds with a cheap 120GB NVME and a two core 3.0GHz Pentium G3220 CPU.

All my cases are more than 10 years old. Among my collection my favorites are 6
great 17" tall 21+ year old Antec towers that were given to me, several AOpen
16.5" towers equally old, and an Antec 21" of unknown age also given to me.

Be wary of any case made of aluminum where screws are needed. The cheap stamped
screws provided with them will readily strip the threads if great care is not
used. You don't want barely visible metal shards falling in the wrong spot on a
motherboard or expansion card.

Also be very wary of any power supply included with a case. IME, these 
lightweight
and cheaply made power supplies invariably provide the worst reliability of any
type of electronic product I've ever encountered. The best power supplies are
heavy. If its weight isn't provided in its specs, look elsewhere, for as much
above 3lbs as you can find, preferably more than 4lbs, and if the cabling is 
much
more than minimal, more than 5lbs. If not using a power hungry two-slot 
multi-fan
powered-directly-by-power supply graphics card, lots of 3.5" drives, or multiple
discrete CPUs, odds are anything more than a 400W power supply is overkill.
Significant excess capacity wastes power needlessly.
-- 
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[deloptes]

Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> If you _are_ using add in graphics, then you'll find that the latest cards
> effectively tie into UEFI. You may possibly find that attempting to use
> legacy/MBR may cause some problems.

It would be good to have more reading on that. I had it on my todo list to
move to UEFI the machines at home.
Well the FW does not have any idea of UEFI :)
I moved the desktop last week, but left the server.
For the notebooks however it is really no fun anymore as the bios requires
special settings to be even able to install/boot debian.
I noticed already that modern server hardware goes UEFI only, so does modern
linux OS, but it would be interesting to know the technical background
behind.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 16:24, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 07, 2021 at 04:06:07PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> On 2021-03-07 at 15:59, deloptes wrote:

>>> what has the graphic card to do with UEFI?
>> 
>> If you're not using an add-in graphics card, but are relying on 
>> integrated graphics, then the available graphics will depend on
>> what you can get built in to the motherboard.
> 
> If you _are_ using add in graphics, then you'll find that the latest
> cards effectively tie into UEFI. You may possibly find that
> attempting to use legacy/MBR may cause some problems.

I should have thought of that, actually. I'm in a bind at the moment
because of it; I have one of the last generation of pre-UEFI
motherboards, and a brand-new recent-generation GPU that won't POST on
that motherboard, and there's apparently a known issue in which that GPU
chipset (and newer) is not compatible with BIOSes.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Mar 07, 2021 at 04:06:07PM -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2021-03-07 at 15:59, deloptes wrote:
> 
> > David Christensen wrote:
> > 
> >> UEFI started coming into x86 motherboard firmware ~10 years ago, so
> >> a BIOS-only machine is going to be at least that old.  That is okay
> >> for a server, but I would want newer Intel integrated graphics for
> >> a desktop. This implies UEFI firmware.
> > 
> > what has the graphic card to do with UEFI?
> 
> If you're not using an add-in graphics card, but are relying on
> integrated graphics, then the available graphics will depend on what you
> can get built in to the motherboard.
> 

If you _are_ using add in graphics, then you'll find that the latest cards
effectively tie into UEFI. You may possibly find that attempting to use
legacy/MBR may cause some problems.

> If the motherboard is old enough to not have UEFI, then the integrated
> graphics on that motherboard will be comparably old.
> 
> (And some motherboards - particularly server motherboards - may not even
> support add-in graphics cards at all. I wouldn't especially expect that,
> at least not since the demise of the AGP slot, but one never does know.)
> 
> > IMO UEFI makes sense when you have notebook with secureboot and probably
> > dual boot with windows.
> > For the home server or PC with Linux only ... IMO it is a waste.
> 
> What do you see as being the point / purpose / benefits of UEFI,
> especially in those circumstances where you do think it makes sense?
> 
Late model motherboard may only support UEFI = legacy support is deprecated.

> Because I'm trying to understand the perspective behind your statement,
> and so far not managing very much.
> 

Just my perspective - all best - Andy C.

> -- 
>The Wanderer
> 
> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
> persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
> progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
> 

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 15:59, deloptes wrote:

> David Christensen wrote:
> 
>> UEFI started coming into x86 motherboard firmware ~10 years ago, so
>> a BIOS-only machine is going to be at least that old.  That is okay
>> for a server, but I would want newer Intel integrated graphics for
>> a desktop. This implies UEFI firmware.
> 
> what has the graphic card to do with UEFI?

If you're not using an add-in graphics card, but are relying on
integrated graphics, then the available graphics will depend on what you
can get built in to the motherboard.

If the motherboard is old enough to not have UEFI, then the integrated
graphics on that motherboard will be comparably old.

(And some motherboards - particularly server motherboards - may not even
support add-in graphics cards at all. I wouldn't especially expect that,
at least not since the demise of the AGP slot, but one never does know.)

> IMO UEFI makes sense when you have notebook with secureboot and probably
> dual boot with windows.
> For the home server or PC with Linux only ... IMO it is a waste.

What do you see as being the point / purpose / benefits of UEFI,
especially in those circumstances where you do think it makes sense?

Because I'm trying to understand the perspective behind your statement,
and so far not managing very much.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[deloptes]

David Christensen wrote:

> UEFI started coming into x86 motherboard firmware ~10 years ago, so a
> BIOS-only machine is going to be at least that old.  That is okay for a
> server, but I would want newer Intel integrated graphics for a desktop.
> This implies UEFI firmware.

what has the graphic card to do with UEFI?

IMO UEFI makes sense when you have notebook with secureboot and probably
dual boot with windows.
For the home server or PC with Linux only ... IMO it is a waste.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 11:00 AM, ghe2001 wrote:
All of my current boxes are pretty old, and they all have vanilla BIOSes.  I have a Dell laptop that came with a UEFI BIOS, and it was no fun at all getting it to run Debian -- it may still be misconfigured for all I know.  



If you want to start a new thread, perhaps we can help you with the Dell 
UEFI issue(s).




Looking for a genuine BIOS might be worth the trouble.



UEFI started coming into x86 motherboard firmware ~10 years ago, so a 
BIOS-only machine is going to be at least that old.  That is okay for a 
server, but I would want newer Intel integrated graphics for a desktop. 
This implies UEFI firmware.



David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 11:03 AM, Celejar wrote:


There are, however, disadvantages as well (besides the fact that
anything used involves some risk): these types of machines can have
proprietary and non-standard aspects. E.g., I wasted a great deal of
time (and some money) during deployment of my Z440 when I made the
fatal decision to enable Secure Boot in the BIOS. When Secure Boot is
enabled, the system will fail to boot if it finds peripherals not in a
whitelist. The Z440 has no onboard graphics, and the consumer RX-570 I
had installed was definitely not on the whitelist, so the machine
refused to boot, and I couldn't disable Secure Boot without graphics
output. (Even blindly resetting CMOS may not work, since HP flashes a
code on the screen which you have to enter via the keyboard to confirm
changes, at least under certain circumstances.) I eventually wound up
spending $13 for a Nvidia NVS 315 that was on the whitelist, and then
another $8 for a DMS-59 adapter to make the thing work with a normal
monitor ...



Interesting story.  I have encountered baffling engineering by HP more 
than once over the years, and therefore avoid their products.  But, no 
brand is immune from this effect.  My strategy has been "to stay in the 
middle of the herd" with Intel and Dell products.  The issues I 
encounter are often known and can be solved with Google.



David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Celejar]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 00:48:04 -0800
David Christensen  wrote:

> On 3/6/21 9:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 8:59 PM Dan Hitt  wrote:
> > 
> >> I think that i will need to get new desktop hardware, so i'm trying to
> >> figure out what to do.

...

> >> I'm sort of thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron but maybe i should buy
> >> from a linux vendor instead, such as 76?  Presumably at least in that case
> >> at least i wouldn't have to worry about the bios.
> 
> I tend to buy/ build used Dell and Intel stuff, because it is readily 
> available and affordable.

...

> I have seen desktops go from 5.25" HDD's to 3.5" HDD's to 2.5" SSD's to 
> M.2 SSD/NVMe's.  The available drive bays and interfaces has changed 
> accordingly.  You might want to look at workstations, servers, NAS, or 
> homebrew chassis if you really need three 3.5" HDD's (internal and/or 
> rack mount).

...

> >> In a way, i'd like to have something with 2 ethernet ports on the
> >> motherboard, although i've found that usb-to-ethernet is adequate for my
> >> purposes.
> 
> Dual Ethernet is uncommon on desktop boards/ chassis.  You can find them 
> on workstations, servers, NAS chassis, and router chassis.
> 
> 
> HDD's, and espcially SSD's, can now saturate Gigabit.  I am starting to 
> consider upgrading my SOHO LAN to 10 Gb copper.  This means PCIe x4 
> NIC's and a matching switch.
> 
> 
> >> And i think i'd like to stick with debian, but i would consider any free
> >> OS.  (So if i bought a Dell, i would add a disk drive or two, and boot off
> >> the debian disk, probably removing the windows disk.)
> >>
> >> I'd appreciate any pointers or recommendations.
> >>
> > 
> > And i forgot to add that i would like to be able to easily run qemu or
> > other virtual machines.  How would that affect the choice of processor,
> > amount of memory, and disks?
> 
> Get a processor with extensions that support virtualization.  For Intel, 
> that means VT-d, VT-x, etc.. A Core i5 or better should suffice for 
> desktop virtualization.  For a virtualization server, you want a Xeon.
> 
> 
> Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
> stuff has the former, workstation and server stuff done right has the 
> latter.  STFW "memory error", "bit rot" and related.  I prefer computers 
> with ECC memory.

Just a few comments regarding workstations: my desktop is an HP Z440,
and I really like it. I purchased it used on eBay, where you can find
all sorts of Z420s and Z440s (as well as similar Dell Precisions, etc.)
at very affordable prices (e.g., $250~$300 for a system including a
decent Xeon and 16GB (ECC) RAM is common, and you may do substantially
better with a good deal, although you'll probably want / need to buy
drives, GPU, etc. separately). You can also go barebones and buy even
the processor and RAM separately.

The advantage of this route is great value for money, including Xeon
and ECC RAM compatibility, various other workstation features, and
excellent build quality.

There are, however, disadvantages as well (besides the fact that
anything used involves some risk): these types of machines can have
proprietary and non-standard aspects. E.g., I wasted a great deal of
time (and some money) during deployment of my Z440 when I made the
fatal decision to enable Secure Boot in the BIOS. When Secure Boot is
enabled, the system will fail to boot if it finds peripherals not in a
whitelist. The Z440 has no onboard graphics, and the consumer RX-570 I
had installed was definitely not on the whitelist, so the machine
refused to boot, and I couldn't disable Secure Boot without graphics
output. (Even blindly resetting CMOS may not work, since HP flashes a
code on the screen which you have to enter via the keyboard to confirm
changes, at least under certain circumstances.) I eventually wound up
spending $13 for a Nvidia NVS 315 that was on the whitelist, and then
another $8 for a DMS-59 adapter to make the thing work with a normal
monitor ...

But again, the advantages of the hardware quality once you get this
sort of nonsense ironed out are substantial ...

Celejar

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 9:55 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:


I indeed use ethernet-over-usb currently, and
it is fast enough for me.  But if i had a second port, it would be a little
less cluttered, so i'd like to do it if it is not too costly and doesn't
interfere with other goals. :)



Will the new computer connect to two Ethernet networks?  Why?


On 3/7/21 10:02 AM, Dan Hitt wrote:

>> Are you comfortable plugging together components to build a
>> machine, or do you want to pay for the convenience of having
>> someone else do it?

> I'm comfortable with plugging the components together if it's easy

I built homebrew desktops using Antec tower cases and Intel desktop 
boards for many years.  The last was based on a Sonata chassis with an 
included 500 W PSU.  It's very easy to add/ remove drives and has low 
noise features -- the four internal 3.5" drive bays feature vibration 
isolation grommets, the main cooling fan is large diameter with 
selectable RPM, the PSU fan is speed controlled, etc..  An Intel 
single-socket ATX server board and Antec "silent" tower chassis would be 
a good starting point.  I would buy a new chassis, rather than used; so 
that no parts are missing.



David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[ghe2001]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256






‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Saturday, March 6, 2021 9:59 PM, Dan Hitt  wrote:

> I think that i will need to get new desktop hardware, so i'm trying to figure 
> out what to do.
>
> When i got my last hardware, one challenge was UEFI booting, iirc.  After 
> dealing with it, i sort of lost track of what was happening in that arena.  
> However, i don't want to get involved with that again.
>
> I'm sort of thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron but maybe i should buy 
> from a linux vendor instead, such as 76?  Presumably at least in that case at 
> least i wouldn't have to worry about the bios.
>
> I certainly would want to get something which supported 2 or 3 internal 
> disks, but i would also like to get something that could be booted from an 
> external usb drive.  Does that make sense?
>
> Would it make sense to look for something where all usb ports are usb 3.0?  
> I've never used usb 3.0 at home, so i'm kind of unclued.
>
> In a way, i'd like to have something with 2 ethernet ports on the 
> motherboard, although i've found that usb-to-ethernet is adequate for my 
> purposes.
>
> And i think i'd like to stick with debian, but i would consider any free OS.  
> (So if i bought a Dell, i would add a disk drive or two, and boot off the 
> debian disk, probably removing the windows disk.)
>
> I'd appreciate any pointers or recommendations.

Over the past 20 or so years, I've had great luck with the bottom-of-the-line 
tower type Dell servers -- they've been on the 'Net 24/7, and I've never had 
one fail.  Obsoleted, sure.  And disk failures from time to time (but that's 
what RAID1 is for).

And Dell will sell the servers with no Windows OS on the disks, so you don't 
have to DBAN them to get the Microsoft bits out of your computer.  The one in 
front of me right now is a Supermicro workstation.  The Dells have been 
Internet servers, and the Supermicro is better for my desk because it's easier 
to futz with.

All of my current boxes are pretty old, and they all have vanilla BIOSes.  I 
have a Dell laptop that came with a UEFI BIOS, and it was no fun at all getting 
it to run Debian -- it may still be misconfigured for all I know.  Looking for 
a genuine BIOS might be worth the trouble.

All of the above (except the laptop) have multiple internal disks -- 2 in the 
Dells, 4 in the Supermicro.

USB3 is a good thing.  But if you don't need high USB bandwidth, USB2 still 
works.  USB3, though, has a significantly higher power output.

The Supermicro has two motherboard Ethernets; the Dells, one.
On all of them, I've loaded up with disks and installed from a Debian 
netInstall CD. 
A blast from the past, but I hope it's of some use.

--
Glenn English


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Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
>> stuff has the former, workstation and server stuff done right has the 
>> latter.  STFW "memory error", "bit rot" and related.  I prefer computers 
>> with ECC memory.
>   it's a really poor choice that that did not become standard
> just because manufacturers wanted to save a few $.

IIUC the reason is not "to save a few bucks" but to segment the market
such that ECC products can be sold at much higher prices.


Stefan

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[John Boxall]

On 2021-03-07 1:06 p.m., songbird wrote:


   apparently Gigabyte has/had some strange ideas about UEFI.
sadly i didn't know this and couldn't shop other than through
the phone line talking to someone so i had to rely upon them
selecting a motherboard for me.  don't really want to sent it
back either.



I have two Gigabyte m/b's I've been using for some time and only 
recently got things, sort of, figured out. Here are a few suggestions 
and I hope they work for your m/b:


- disablbe IOMMU support (more on this in a moment)
- specify "UEFI and Legacy" for "Boot Mode Selection"
- specify "Legacy first" for "Storage Boot Option Control"
- specify "Legacy OPROM" for "Other PCI Device ROM Priority"
 - though this will depend on your installed hardware
- I have switched "SATA mode selection" to "AHCI" instead of "IDE"
- your choice

- If you decide to _not_ use EFI, __ALWAYS_ go into the boot menu to 
select the BIOS mode boot for the USB stick you are using.


- Once in the Debian installer boot menu:
- in BIOS mode press the "TAB" key (I __SO__ wish I had found
  out about this months ago)
- add the following to the "linux" command line:
iommu=soft
- if you are going to create a raid array (mine is  
  raid5) also add this to the "linux" line:
rootdelay=10
- press the  key
- if you choose EFI boot mode, edit the install command line as
above

Until I started using the above I couldn't get any of the USB ports to 
function and the raid array to come up properly.


YMMV.

--
Regards,

John Boxall

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[Brian]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 13:07:54 -0500, John Boxall wrote:

> On 2021-03-07 12:45 p.m., Brian wrote:
> > On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 17:34:59 +, Brian wrote:
> > 
> > John,
> > 
> > I forgot to ask before - and forgot again! What device are you using?
> > 
> 
> An Epson Perfection 2480 Photo.

An oldie! What you have done is the only way to to export this scanner
to the network. Hats off to the SANE project.
 
> So, having read a little further, maybe I could have used the Epson offering
> for a driver. I didn't because, well, I hadn't read further and because "it
> just worked" under Bullseye.

The epson2 free backend works for you. Stick with it.

> I haven't rebuilt the specific system in question to Buster yet, but on my
> test system with the scanner attached the bug report fix worked fine.

That is good to know. Debian + SANE + you work well together and for the
benefit of everyone..

-- 
Brian

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[songbird]

Kenneth Parker wrote:
...
> I was dragged, "kicking and screaming" to UEFI booting.  But, now that I'm
> here, it's "sort of" grown on me.
>
> What helped me, a lot, is a package called Refind.  It's available on
> Debian, through normal Apt-Get, though it's good to, carefully read the
> Documentation before Installing.

  some motherboards have issues.  i just replaced a motherboard
and had it boot with grub instead of refind.  i expected refind.
i reinstalled refind hoping that would take care of it, nope.  i'm
not about to remove grub as i'm not sure i want to mess things up
that ways.  i should update my netinst image and make sure it 
boots from the USB stick before i try anything like that.

  apparently Gigabyte has/had some strange ideas about UEFI.
sadly i didn't know this and couldn't shop other than through
the phone line talking to someone so i had to rely upon them
selecting a motherboard for me.  don't really want to sent it
back either.

  now that i'm back on-line i see there is some words on the
refind site about this type of problem, but i'm not confident
enough with the suggestions to try them and i don't really have
the time either so i may not get back to this until next winter.

  the previous board i had by Asrock didn't have any problems
at all booting in either legacy or UEFI and didn't have troubles
with USB devices either.  i'm not so sure about this board.


  songbird

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[songbird]

David Christensen wrote:
...
> Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
> stuff has the former, workstation and server stuff done right has the 
> latter.  STFW "memory error", "bit rot" and related.  I prefer computers 
> with ECC memory.

  it's a really poor choice that that did not become standard
just because manufacturers wanted to save a few $.


  songbird

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[John Boxall]

On 2021-03-07 12:47 p.m., Brad Rogers wrote:

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 17:34:59 +
Brian  wrote:

Hello Brian,


put it there because I tend to forget changes I make in /etc! In this


You're using a computer; you don't /need/ to remember those changes.
Use the computer to do it for you.

IOW, create a text file documenting those system additions you've made.
Put a link to the file on your desktop.  You'll never forget the document
is there.  Then, when you get curious enough to look at the file again,
your memory will be jogged.



Brad, I agree 100%..unfortunately, like my memory, I use selective 
action.sometimes I create one and other times :-)


--
Regards,

John Boxall

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[John Boxall]

On 2021-03-07 12:45 p.m., Brian wrote:

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 17:34:59 +, Brian wrote:

John,

I forgot to ask before - and forgot again! What device are you using?



An Epson Perfection 2480 Photo.

So, having read a little further, maybe I could have used the Epson 
offering for a driver. I didn't because, well, I hadn't read further and 
because "it just worked" under Bullseye.


I haven't rebuilt the specific system in question to Buster yet, but on 
my test system with the scanner attached the bug report fix worked fine.


--
Regards,

John Boxall

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 8:54 AM Dan Ritter  wrote:

> Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 8:59 PM Dan Hitt  wrote:
> >
> > > I think that i will need to get new desktop hardware, so i'm trying to
> > > figure out what to do.
>
> What are your needs, and what's your budget?
>
> Are you comfortable plugging together components to build a
> machine, or do you want to pay for the convenience of having
> someone else do it?
>

Thanks Dan for your message.

I'm comfortable with plugging the components together if it's easy :) :).

That is, for some boxes, it is very easy to attach a drive.  On these old
mac pros, the side slips off, and you basically can just shove in a drive.
On the machine that i am replacing, it's a little harder, because you have
to attach a cable to the drive and i think maybe a power cable as well,
iirc.  But on some machines it is very hard because the cable may be tight,
or the insides might be all jammed together.  So i guess part of what i
want is a box that opens and expands easily.  I'm just a little leery of
adding cards, though, because in my experience they can destabilize a
system.

And as to what i'm using it for, well, just the usual---internet,
programming, viewing images, listening to audio, etc.  Nothing fancy like
controlling real-time hardware (i'd want a dedicated box before doing
something like that).

dan


>
> -dsr-
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Hitt]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 5:11 AM IL Ka  wrote:

>
>> When i got my last hardware, one challenge was UEFI booting, iirc.  After
>> dealing with it, i sort of lost track of what was happening in that arena.
>> However, i don't want to get involved with that again.
>>
>
> Motherboard firmware could be switched to the legacy BIOS/MBR mode, so you
> do not have to use UEFI if you do not want to.
> But I do not see any reason to do so: UEFI just works fine nowadays.
>
> In UEFI world, PC has a special small fat32-formatted partition with
> ".efi" file: it is an application written for UEFI. Motherboard's
> firmware (we call it BIOS, but technically it should be called UEFI) runs
> this application and it loads OS.
> In Linux, GRUB provides this efi app.
>
> If your harddrive is larger than ~4terabytes, you would need to use GPT
> instead of MBR, and I believe you would need UEFI to boot from it.
>
>
>
>> I'm sort of thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron but maybe i should buy
>> from a linux vendor instead, such as 76?  Presumably at least in that case
>> at least i wouldn't have to worry about the bios.
>>
>
> It is better to buy a PC recommended by a vendor. System76 is good.  Here
> is another approach: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop
> Otherwise you would need to check carefully that all hardware is supported
> by Linux.
> Not all devices have Linux drivers, unfortunately.
>
>
>> I certainly would want to get something which supported 2 or 3 internal
>> disks, but i would also like to get something that could be booted from an
>> external usb drive.  Does that make sense?
>>
>> Many motherboards have three SATA III ports. If you need something very
> fast you may also use nvme.
> Almost all motherboards produced in the last 13 years can boot from
> external USB.
>
> Would it make sense to look for something where all usb ports are usb
>> 3.0?  I've never used usb 3.0 at home, so i'm kind of unclued.
>>
> USB 3 is much faster and backward compatible with USB 2.0.
> You do need this speed for mouse and keyboard, but it could be useful for
> pendrive.
> All modern motherboards have 3.0. Even if some ports are 2.0, use them for
> keyboard/mouse.
> In most cases 3.0 ports are blue, 2.0 are black.
>
>
>> In a way, i'd like to have something with 2 ethernet ports on the
>> motherboard, although i've found that usb-to-ethernet is adequate for my
>> purposes.
>>
> It is an uncommon requirement) Why?
> Are you building a router or something with channel bonding
>


>
> There are USB ethernet adapters, but if you buy one, double check that it
> is supported by Linux!
>

Thanks IL for your message.  I indeed use ethernet-over-usb currently, and
it is fast enough for me.  But if i had a second port, it would be a little
less cluttered, so i'd like to do it if it is not too costly and doesn't
interfere with other goals. :)

dan

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[Brad Rogers]

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 17:34:59 +
Brian  wrote:

Hello Brian,

>put it there because I tend to forget changes I make in /etc! In this

You're using a computer; you don't /need/ to remember those changes.
Use the computer to do it for you.

IOW, create a text file documenting those system additions you've made.
Put a link to the file on your desktop.  You'll never forget the document
is there.  Then, when you get curious enough to look at the file again,
your memory will be jogged.

-- 
 Regards  _
 / )   "The blindingly obvious is
/ _)radnever immediately apparent"
We're going to hell anyway, let's travel first class
Saturday Night - Kaiser Chiefs


pgp3SXYKdg259.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[Brian]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 17:34:59 +, Brian wrote:

John,

I forgot to ask before - and forgot again! What device are you using?

-- 
Brian.

Help with understanding touchpad acceleration on libinput/Wayland

[Laura Smith]

Hi. Day 2 of Debian for me! I'm a long time on-off Ubuntu/Raspberry Pi OS user 
though - but first time with a standard Debian install, and first time with 
Wayland.

I'd love some pointers about how (if at all) I can change the acceleration of 
my touchpad. Truth is, I'm not sure what I want to change though. On Ubuntu I 
couldn't make it feel how I wanted either. I just want it to feel how it does 
on Windows! I struggle to hit anything small, such as a window close button or 
grabbing the edge of a window to resize. I can't put my finger on what's 
different. Maybe I just need time to get muscle memory? It somehow just feels a 
bit fatiguing using it, too, like getting where I want is an effort...? I've 
tried changing the speed, obviously.

I've got a Lenovo IdeaPad 710S-13IKB running Gnome on Buster. I've got a 13" 
screen scaled at 100% in Gnome, which does make everything a bit small, which 
may have something to do with the problem. I'm using Large Text in Universal 
Access to get around the absence of fractional scaling.

libinput doesn't seem to have a support channel, as far as I can find, and I 
haven't got a bug, so I thought I'd ask here. On Ubuntu/X11 I've tried changing 
acceleration parameters with xinput, but I see from the libinput FAQ that they 
are aiming for as few user-configurable options as possible.

Thanks for your help!
Laura

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[Brian]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 12:07:30 -0500, John Boxall wrote:

> On 2021-03-05 12:04 p.m., Brian wrote:
> > 
> > Thank you, too. In the light of your issue, the Troubleshooting section
> > now has a link to the bug report. Hopefully, this will help users.
> > 
> 
> Brian, in the reference to the bug report, were you referring to the file:
> 
> /etc/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules
> 
> Contents:
> ENV{libsane_matched}=="yes", RUN+="/bin/setfacl -m g:scanner:rw
> $env{DEVNAME}"

I was.

> I suppose I could have changed /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules to include
> that line. Not sure which is cleaner. If I upgrade the system from Buster to
> Bullseye the file I created would be redundant.
> 
> Thoughts?

Putting a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/ is, I believe, cleaner as it is an
addition to what the system provides. However, you (and I) know that the
buster /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules cures the issue. Actually, I
put it there because I tend to forget changes I make in /etc! In this
case, I cannot envisage any harm would be done, but what the wiki says
and what a user might do are two different things; the wiki has to be
accurate.

-- 
Brian.

Re: Sharing a scanner from a Buster system

[John Boxall]

On 2021-03-05 12:04 p.m., Brian wrote:


Thank you, too. In the light of your issue, the Troubleshooting section
now has a link to the bug report. Hopefully, this will help users.



Brian, in the reference to the bug report, were you referring to the file:

/etc/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules

Contents:
ENV{libsane_matched}=="yes", RUN+="/bin/setfacl -m g:scanner:rw 
$env{DEVNAME}"



I suppose I could have changed /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libsane.rules to 
include that line. Not sure which is cleaner. If I upgrade the system 
from Buster to Bullseye the file I created would be redundant.


Thoughts?

--
Regards,

John Boxall

Re: Fwd: Impresión rebelde

[Camaleón]

El 2021-03-06 a las 09:30 +0100, Camaleón escribió:

> El 2021-03-05 a las 13:55 -0300, Jorge A. Secreto escribió:
> 
> > El vie, 5 de mar. de 2021 a la(s) 11:27, Camaleón (noela...@gmail.com) 
> > escribió:
> > >
> > > El 2021-03-05 a las 10:10 -0300, Jorge A. Secreto escribió:
> > >
> > > > El vie, 5 de mar. de 2021 a la(s) 06:43, Camaleón (noela...@gmail.com) 
> > > > escribió:
> > > > >
> > > > > Hola,
> > > > > 
> > > > > 2. El nuevo menú de impresión de Firefox 86.0 (versión de Mozilla), 
> > > > > que
> > > > > no me desagrada, no me permite seleccionar una salida a doble cara, 
> > > > > tengo
> > > > > que volver al menú antiguo para poder habilitarlo. O no está la opción
> > > > > o no la veo...
> > > > >
> > > > cerca del final del menu, en mas opciones, si la impresora lo permite,
> > > > aparece la posibilidad de doble cara.
> > >
> > > Pues... no lo veo.
> > >
> > > https://justpaste.it/97b7e
> > >
> > > La impresora es una HP Laserjet color 4600 (admite duplex) pero no lo
> > > veo dentro del nuevo menú → más ajustes :-?
> > >
> > > Si a ti te lo muestra, ¿qué versión de Firefox tienes? ¿Y qué impresora?
> > 
> > version de firefox y menu en
> > https://justpaste.it/8z93k
> > La impresora es una Ricoh SP 377SFNwX con el controlador Generic PCL
> > Laser Printer por socket
> 
> Pues muchas gracias por los datos.
> 
> He probado añadiendo una nueva impresora en CUPS (test), pero con un 
> controlador genérico PCL3, y tampoco me aparece esa opción.
> 
> https://justpaste.it/53fp8
> 
> Lo curioso es que si le digo que use el diálogo del sistema, sí detecta 
> la doble cara, independientemente del controaldor que use (postscript, 
> hplip, hpcups pcl3)... no sé qué pensar, quizá este sistema simplificado de 
> impresión aún está en fase de pruebas :-?

Abrí un bug en Mozilla y parece que el culpable es la versión de CUPS, 
con la 2.2.1 no aparece la opción pero con la 2.3.3 sí:

No duplex option for new print box
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1696738

Saludos,

-- 
Camaleón 

Re: Debian 11. Conviene instalarlo antes que sea stable??

[Camaleón]

El 2021-03-07 a las 13:29 -0300, Marcelo Eduardo Giordano escribió:

> Hola amigos. No doy mas, quiero instalar debian 11 en mi computadora. La
> ansiedad es mas que yo

:-)
 
> Me gustaría saber de los genios de la lista dos opiniones
> 
> 1) Si lo instalo ahora, cuando la versión 11 se convierta en stable, hay que
> reinstalar algo? o es transparente?

Sólo tienes que asegurarte de que la lista de repositorios apunte al 
nombre de la versión, (bullseye) y no a la denominación genérica 
(testing). De manera predeterminada usa el nombre de la versión.
 
> 2) Que grado de inestabilidad puede tener debian 11 en este momento? he
> leído que muy poco

Yo tengo una testing con entorno XFCE y funciona sin problemas en un 
netbook ya viejito. Ahora bien, es otro kernel, antes de instalarla 
ejecuta primero desde una versión Live-CD/USB para asegurarte que no te 
dará problemas o instala en paralelo al sistema actual.

Saludos,

-- 
Camaleón 

Re: ISO de debian 11 KDE

[Camaleón]

El 2021-03-07 a las 13:27 -0300, Marcelo Eduardo Giordano escribió:

> Quiero instalar debian 11 con escritorio kde y no lo puedo encontrar.
> 
> Entré a https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst
> 
> y ahi me baja la versión 10.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/amd64/

Saludos,

-- 
Camaleón 

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Dan Ritter]

Dan Hitt wrote: 
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 8:59 PM Dan Hitt  wrote:
> 
> > I think that i will need to get new desktop hardware, so i'm trying to
> > figure out what to do.

What are your needs, and what's your budget?

Are you comfortable plugging together components to build a
machine, or do you want to pay for the convenience of having
someone else do it?

-dsr-

Re: ISO de debian 11 KDE

[Fran Blanco]

El soporte de instalación es el mismo para todos los escritorios. Solo has
de seleccionarlo durante la instalación.

Saludos

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021, 17:27 Marcelo Eduardo Giordano <
marcelogiord...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hola amigos.
>
> Quiero instalar debian 11 con escritorio kde y no lo puedo encontrar.
>
> Entré a https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst
>
> y ahi me baja la versión 10.
>
>
>

Debian 11. Conviene instalarlo antes que sea stable??

[Marcelo Eduardo Giordano]

Hola amigos. No doy mas, quiero instalar debian 11 en mi computadora. La 
ansiedad es mas que yo


Me gustaría saber de los genios de la lista dos opiniones

1) Si lo instalo ahora, cuando la versión 11 se convierta en stable, hay 
que reinstalar algo? o es transparente?


2) Que grado de inestabilidad puede tener debian 11 en este momento? he 
leído que muy poco


Muchas gracias

ISO de debian 11 KDE

[Marcelo Eduardo Giordano]

Hola amigos.

Quiero instalar debian 11 con escritorio kde y no lo puedo encontrar.

Entré a https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst

y ahi me baja la versión 10.

Re: SOLVED - Re: Deb10 installer can't install grub

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 7:03 AM Dave Sherohman  wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 10:28:34AM -0500, Marc Auslander wrote:
> > One potential gotcha.  When you boot from an mdadm file system containing
> > /boot/grub, grub will not write to the file system.  In particular, it
> will
> > not update grub/grubenv even if you have a save_env line in grub.cfg.
> So if
> > you use grub-reboot to specify an alternate line in grub.cfg, you need to
> > reset grubenv afterwards.  I do this in a root @reboot cron job.
> >
> > If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't need to
> worry
> > about this.
>
> I don't *know* know what you're talking about, but I think I get the
> gist of it.  I'm not doing anything fancy enough to have to deal with
> the details of grubenv and grub-reboot, but your initial comment about
> grub refusing to write to a mdadm filesystem is consistent with what I
> was seeing, and it's nice to have confirmation that it actually does
> work that way.
>

Dave the issues you describe dealing with mdadm setup, well that's why I
eventually
just switched to LVM-based mirroring and striping. Early on, LVM wasn't
supported as a boot
volume, but the original code base had supported that on HP-UX and AIX. So
years ago now,
that restriction was lifted. Another mdadm issue is just the use of it in a
kind of
"oral tradition": it's not that setup is hard, it just still seems like
magic spells after all this time.

-- 
> Dave Sherohman
>
>

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[IL Ka]

>
>
> When i got my last hardware, one challenge was UEFI booting, iirc.  After
> dealing with it, i sort of lost track of what was happening in that arena.
> However, i don't want to get involved with that again.
>

Motherboard firmware could be switched to the legacy BIOS/MBR mode, so you
do not have to use UEFI if you do not want to.
But I do not see any reason to do so: UEFI just works fine nowadays.

In UEFI world, PC has a special small fat32-formatted partition with ".efi"
file: it is an application written for UEFI. Motherboard's firmware (we
call it BIOS, but technically it should be called UEFI) runs this
application and it loads OS.
In Linux, GRUB provides this efi app.

If your harddrive is larger than ~4terabytes, you would need to use GPT
instead of MBR, and I believe you would need UEFI to boot from it.



> I'm sort of thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron but maybe i should buy
> from a linux vendor instead, such as 76?  Presumably at least in that case
> at least i wouldn't have to worry about the bios.
>

It is better to buy a PC recommended by a vendor. System76 is good.  Here
is another approach: https://certification.ubuntu.com/desktop
Otherwise you would need to check carefully that all hardware is supported
by Linux.
Not all devices have Linux drivers, unfortunately.


> I certainly would want to get something which supported 2 or 3 internal
> disks, but i would also like to get something that could be booted from an
> external usb drive.  Does that make sense?
>
> Many motherboards have three SATA III ports. If you need something very
fast you may also use nvme.
Almost all motherboards produced in the last 13 years can boot from
external USB.

Would it make sense to look for something where all usb ports are usb 3.0?
> I've never used usb 3.0 at home, so i'm kind of unclued.
>
USB 3 is much faster and backward compatible with USB 2.0.
You do need this speed for mouse and keyboard, but it could be useful for
pendrive.
All modern motherboards have 3.0. Even if some ports are 2.0, use them for
keyboard/mouse.
In most cases 3.0 ports are blue, 2.0 are black.


> In a way, i'd like to have something with 2 ethernet ports on the
> motherboard, although i've found that usb-to-ethernet is adequate for my
> purposes.
>
It is an uncommon requirement) Why?
Are you building a router or something with channel bonding?

There are USB ethernet adapters, but if you buy one, double check that it
is supported by Linux!

Re: SOLVED - Re: Deb10 installer can't install grub

[Dave Sherohman]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2021 at 10:28:34AM -0500, Marc Auslander wrote:
> One potential gotcha.  When you boot from an mdadm file system containing
> /boot/grub, grub will not write to the file system.  In particular, it will
> not update grub/grubenv even if you have a save_env line in grub.cfg.  So if
> you use grub-reboot to specify an alternate line in grub.cfg, you need to
> reset grubenv afterwards.  I do this in a root @reboot cron job.
> 
> If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't need to worry
> about this.

I don't *know* know what you're talking about, but I think I get the
gist of it.  I'm not doing anything fancy enough to have to deal with
the details of grubenv and grub-reboot, but your initial comment about
grub refusing to write to a mdadm filesystem is consistent with what I
was seeing, and it's nice to have confirmation that it actually does
work that way.

-- 
Dave Sherohman

Re: Debian sid, résolution Razer Kiyo

[F. Dubois]

Bon, je me réponds, car j'avance.
Premièrement il semblerait que de nombreux programmes, dont cheese, ne 
peuvent pas gérer ces hautes résolutions. PAs de piste pour l'instant. 
Donc ils retombent systématiquement à une résolution moindre. Camorama 
le ferait (?), disparu des dépôts debian sid...


Deuxièmement, pour changer la résolution cette commande fonctionne bien

v4l2-ctl -v width=1920,height=1080,pixelformat=H264

Avant
v4l2-ctl --get-fmt-video
Format Video Capture:
    Width/Height  : 640/480
    Pixel Format  : 'YUYV' (YUYV 4:2:2)
    Field : None
    Bytes per Line    : 1280
    Size Image    : 614400
    Colorspace    : sRGB
    Transfer Function : Rec. 709
    YCbCr/HSV Encoding: ITU-R 601
    Quantization  : Default (maps to Limited Range)
    Flags :
Après

v4l2-ctl --get-fmt-video
Format Video Capture:
    Width/Height  : 1920/1080
    Pixel Format  : 'H264' (H.264)
    Field : None
    Bytes per Line    : 3840
    Size Image    : 655360
    Colorspace    : sRGB
    Transfer Function : Rec. 709
    YCbCr/HSV Encoding: ITU-R 601
    Quantization  : Default (maps to Full Range)
    Flags :
Donc relancer la commande quand nécessaire.
Automatisable avec udev, on verra plus tard...

https://superuser.com/questions/471597/linux-v4l-webcam-make-settings-stick

Troisièmement, un test en ligne me donne bien du 1080p !


 Information sur la webcam

Nom de la webcam:   Razer Kiyo
Rang de qualité:2091
Microphone intégré: None
Haut-parleur intégré:   None
Taux de trame:  20 FPS
Type de flux:   video
Mode image: rgb
Webcam Mégapixels:  2.07 MP
Résolution de la webcam:1920×1080
Norme vidéo:FHD
Ratio d'aspect: 1.78
Taille du fichier PNG:  4.11 MB
Taille du fichier JPEG: 1.59 MB
Débit binaire:  32.21 MB/s
Nombre de couleurs: 114873
Couleur RVB moyenne:
Légèreté:   35.69%
Luminosité: 34.43%
Brillance:  34.90%
Teinte: 7°
Saturation: 8.79%

Conclusion, relancer la commande à chaque utilisation, accepter la 
résolution ensuite forcé par le logiciel utilisé. Je vais tester avec 
jitsi dès que j'ai pu contacter un collègue...

Voilà,

Si vous avez d'autres idées. Car c'est quand même limite de l'arnaque ce 
truc, même sous Windows 10 (PC de ma femme, eh oui nul n'est parfait !) 
le problème était le même. J'ai testé pour mettre à jour le firmware, et 
puis voir, Synapse (logiciel de Razer) n'a rien changé ! Mais j'ai vu 
que j'avais bien le dernier firmware.

Bon dimanche

Fabien

No icon in notification area for qt applications

[Alexis Grigoriou]

Greetings, Debian users

I have Debian Buster fully updated. After fiddling with some themes, qt
applications (vlc, qbittorrent and others I guess) stopped showing
their icons in the xfce notification area. I tried removing and adding
again the notification area thingie, but no luck.

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[Richard Owlett]

On 03/07/2021 12:48 AM, Kenneth Parker wrote:

[snip]
I was dragged, "kicking and screaming" to UEFI booting.  But, now that 
I'm here, it's "sort of" grown on me.


What helped me, a lot, is a package called Refind.  It's available on 
Debian, through normal Apt-Get, though it's good to, carefully read the 
Documentation before Installing.




I quickly browsed http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/, its homepage, which 
contains many references. Any other recommended reading on UEFI?

Re: debian gnome login fingerprint

[tomas]

On Sat, Mar 06, 2021 at 04:55:11PM +, Tiago Zaniquelli wrote:
> Hello everybody.
> 
> I am trying to setup my notebook with fingerprint login but I didn't have 
> success.

There is a related thread over at debian-project. It starts
here:

  https://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2021/02/msg4.html

and spills over to the next month.

Cheers
 - t


signature.asc
Description: Digital signature

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/7/21 12:48 AM, David Christensen wrote:
The Debian x86 installer detects if you have booted the computer in BIOS 
or UEFI mode, and works accordingly.


"Debian amd64 installer" is more accurate.


David

Re: on the verge of shopping for new desktop hardware, recommendations?

[David Christensen]

On 3/6/21 9:02 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 8:59 PM Dan Hitt  wrote:


I think that i will need to get new desktop hardware, so i'm trying to
figure out what to do.

When i got my last hardware, one challenge was UEFI booting, iirc.  After
dealing with it, i sort of lost track of what was happening in that arena.
However, i don't want to get involved with that again.


UEFI and Secure Boot were hard in the past, but not so much any more. 
The Debian x86 installer detects if you have booted the computer in BIOS 
or UEFI mode, and works accordingly.



That said, I have several older computers.  I put drive racks in my 
desktops and servers, put each OS on its own 2.5" SATA SSD, and use 
BIOS/ MBR.  This allows me to mix and match as needed.




I'm sort of thinking about getting a Dell Inspiron but maybe i should buy
from a linux vendor instead, such as 76?  Presumably at least in that case
at least i wouldn't have to worry about the bios.


I tend to buy/ build used Dell and Intel stuff, because it is readily 
available and affordable.



System 76 has their own Linux distribution that they have validated on 
their hardware.  This should provide for pleasant OOTB and ownership 
experiences.




I certainly would want to get something which supported 2 or 3 internal
disks, but i would also like to get something that could be booted from an
external usb drive.  Does that make sense?



I have seen desktops go from 5.25" HDD's to 3.5" HDD's to 2.5" SSD's to 
M.2 SSD/NVMe's.  The available drive bays and interfaces has changed 
accordingly.  You might want to look at workstations, servers, NAS, or 
homebrew chassis if you really need three 3.5" HDD's (internal and/or 
rack mount).



Most x86 computers made in the past 20 years can boot from USB.  I 
maintain a Debian installation on a USB 3.0 flash drive for maintenance 
purposes.  I ran a Samba server this way for a few years.  Now, used 
2.5" SSD's are cheap enough to put in every machine.  If and when I do 
Rasperry Pi, etc., I will probably go with a high-endurance SD card.




Would it make sense to look for something where all usb ports are usb
3.0?  I've never used usb 3.0 at home, so i'm kind of unclued.


Again, it depends upon the vintage of the computer and your external I/O 
needs.  eSATA, Firewire, and Thunderbolt are other options.




In a way, i'd like to have something with 2 ethernet ports on the
motherboard, although i've found that usb-to-ethernet is adequate for my
purposes.


Dual Ethernet is uncommon on desktop boards/ chassis.  You can find them 
on workstations, servers, NAS chassis, and router chassis.



HDD's, and espcially SSD's, can now saturate Gigabit.  I am starting to 
consider upgrading my SOHO LAN to 10 Gb copper.  This means PCIe x4 
NIC's and a matching switch.




And i think i'd like to stick with debian, but i would consider any free
OS.  (So if i bought a Dell, i would add a disk drive or two, and boot off
the debian disk, probably removing the windows disk.)

I'd appreciate any pointers or recommendations.



And i forgot to add that i would like to be able to easily run qemu or
other virtual machines.  How would that affect the choice of processor,
amount of memory, and disks?


Get a processor with extensions that support virtualization.  For Intel, 
that means VT-d, VT-x, etc.. A Core i5 or better should suffice for 
desktop virtualization.  For a virtualization server, you want a Xeon.



Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
stuff has the former, workstation and server stuff done right has the 
latter.  STFW "memory error", "bit rot" and related.  I prefer computers 
with ECC memory.



David