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

[Joe]

On Wed, 10 Mar 2021 11:54:49 +0200
Andrei POPESCU  wrote:

> On Ma, 09 mar 21, 13:35:18, Joe wrote:
> > 
> > As an anecdote, I recall a BT service/router which literally would
> > not work if it detected another NAT on the LAN. It was in a client's
> > network, and I had to reconfigure things to work without the Debian
> > server acting as a firewall. If it had been my network, the wretched
> > thing would have gone back instantly, my network runs through two
> > NATs and that isn't negotiable.  
> 
> What is the benefit of having your network behind two NATs?
> 

Because I can't do much with a router, and I want reasonable firewall
and logging control, and also a 'proper' DMZ in which to incarcerate
visitors who want to use the Net. NAT on the firewall adds a small
extra layer of security in case I make a mistake with the firewall
code, and in the past I have had subtle problems with bridging. I've
never had problems with two NATs (I've stayed away from IPSec, but PPTP
will work through two NATs at each end).

And no, I don't want to get involved with reflashing routers and then
trying to solve problems with my ISP.

-- 
Joe

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

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 09 mar 21, 13:35:18, Joe wrote:
> 
> As an anecdote, I recall a BT service/router which literally would not
> work if it detected another NAT on the LAN. It was in a client's
> network, and I had to reconfigure things to work without the Debian
> server acting as a firewall. If it had been my network, the wretched
> thing would have gone back instantly, my network runs through two NATs
> and that isn't negotiable.

What is the benefit of having your network behind two NATs?

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 09 mar 21, 12:43:51, Dan Ritter wrote:
> 
> Right now, it appears to be a choice between HP and Dell unless
> you want one of the laptop-class APUs (some of which are quite
> nice) in which case Asus and Acer have some systems.

I'm looking into building my own custom system.

A laptop-class APU would be nice, though getting any kind of motherboard 
for it (not to mention all the extension options I want) is unrealistic.
 
> I'm currently at that point where my home desktop is still
> perfectly capable, but notably slower than anything else in the
> house. I'd really like to replace it with a microATX 4700G --
> it's just that for the price I want to pay, HP wants to sell me
> a crappy desktop with sub-par motherboard and NVMe, and very
> likely a whiny power supply.
> 
> Time and patience should fix my problem.

Hopefully mine as well.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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

[Doug McGarrett]

On 3/9/21 6:50 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 3/9/21 3:15 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 1:12 PM David Christensen wrote:

On 3/7/21 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

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



What model mac?



It's a mac pro.



When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant
engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items --
e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number",
"assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc..


I don't have a good way to copy/paste information from the mac gui 
--- is

there
a shell command that i can run that could identify the exact model?
('uname' only
identifies the software; the mac does not seem to have a 'lscpu' 
command.)



The identifying information should be engraved into the chassis, a 
nameplate, a sticker, etc..



David

Getting back to the original question: I recommend finding a machine, if 
possible, with a built-in DVD drive.
It makes installing a new system straightforward, and allows you to copy 
media, including music for

your car player, without having to buy an external usb dvd drive.
--doug

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

[David Christensen]

On 3/9/21 4:25 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 3:50 PM David Christensen 
wrote:


On 3/9/21 3:15 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 1:12 PM David Christensen wrote:

On 3/7/21 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

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



What model mac?



It's a mac pro.



I looked around on the box and did not see any writing or engraving.

However, i was wrong about copying from the gui.  It is possible to copy
some of the identifying strings, although naturally i would prefer to use
the command line to get the info.

The model is "HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GH41N", revision "PQ04".  It is from a long
time ago (at least 13 years old), but the machine still mostly runs fine
for what we use it for.   It is all original equipment except for the disk
drives, one of which is an SSD.  At the time i already did not like to buy
into closed technology but circumstances forced my hand, or so i thought.
For a job i had a few years ago i was issued a much newer mac, a laptop,
which was very fancy, but also had trouble with my modem router [i do not
have that laptop, so i don't know about the model].  Separating the modem
router from the box with a switch does not help, but it does work on a
separate LAN.  The ethernet hardware is identified as PCI, Intel 82574L.
There are two ports.

So the situation is not exactly ideal, but i can live with it.

And thanks for your help and ideas! :) :)



Look at:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201581

https://everymac.com/mac-identification/index-how-to-identify-my-mac.html


13+ years old -- Wikipedia says it is a first generation Mac Pro and 
cannot be upgraded to the current macOS:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_pro


If you cannot upgrade it to the current macOS (11.2.2), I would sell it. 
 If you need an Apple computer, get a newer one that supports the 
current macOS.



David

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

[Dan Hitt]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 3:50 PM David Christensen 
wrote:

> On 3/9/21 3:15 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 1:12 PM David Christensen wrote:
> >> On 3/7/21 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> >>> On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 5:25 PM David Christensen <
>
>  What model mac?
>
> >>> It's a mac pro.
>
> >> When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant
> >> engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items --
> >> e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number",
> >> "assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc..
>
> > I don't have a good way to copy/paste information from the mac gui --- is
> > there
> > a shell command that i can run that could identify the exact model?
> > ('uname' only
> > identifies the software; the mac does not seem to have a 'lscpu'
> command.)
>
>
> The identifying information should be engraved into the chassis, a
> nameplate, a sticker, etc..
>
>
Hi David,

Thanks for your mail.

I looked around on the box and did not see any writing or engraving.

However, i was wrong about copying from the gui.  It is possible to copy
some of the identifying strings, although naturally i would prefer to use
the command line to get the info.

The model is "HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GH41N", revision "PQ04".  It is from a long
time ago (at least 13 years old), but the machine still mostly runs fine
for what we use it for.   It is all original equipment except for the disk
drives, one of which is an SSD.  At the time i already did not like to buy
into closed technology but circumstances forced my hand, or so i thought.
For a job i had a few years ago i was issued a much newer mac, a laptop,
which was very fancy, but also had trouble with my modem router [i do not
have that laptop, so i don't know about the model].  Separating the modem
router from the box with a switch does not help, but it does work on a
separate LAN.  The ethernet hardware is identified as PCI, Intel 82574L.
There are two ports.

So the situation is not exactly ideal, but i can live with it.

And thanks for your help and ideas! :) :)


>
> David
>
>

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

[David Christensen]

On 3/9/21 3:15 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 1:12 PM David Christensen wrote:

On 3/7/21 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

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



What model mac?



It's a mac pro.



When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant
engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items --
e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number",
"assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc..



I don't have a good way to copy/paste information from the mac gui --- is
there
a shell command that i can run that could identify the exact model?
('uname' only
identifies the software; the mac does not seem to have a 'lscpu' command.)



The identifying information should be engraved into the chassis, a 
nameplate, a sticker, etc..



David

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

[Dan Hitt]

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 1:12 PM David Christensen 
wrote:

> On 3/7/21 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:
> > On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 5:25 PM David Christensen <
> dpchr...@holgerdanske.com>
> > 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.
>
>
> Marketing terms are for separating the rubes from their dollars:
>
> "it is a mac"
>
> "It's a mac pro"
>

The separation was done successfully :) :)


>
>
> When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant
> engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items --
> e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number",
> "assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc..
> Doing so demonstrates your competence and your respect for the readers'
> time.
>

I don't have a good way to copy/paste information from the mac gui --- is
there
a shell command that i can run that could identify the exact model?
('uname' only
identifies the software; the mac does not seem to have a 'lscpu' command.)

And thanks for your help!


>
>
> David
>
>

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

[David Wright]

On Tue 09 Mar 2021 at 11:59:35 (-0500), Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Tuesday 09 March 2021 08:12:47 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, March 09, 2021 12:12:40 AM Felix Miata wrote:
> > > David Wright composed on 2021-03-08 22:37 (UTC-0600):
> > > > I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> > > > then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> > > > modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because
> > > > it has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of
> > > > the line.
> > >
> > > Whenever I get a mind to, I call my ISP, tell them I'm changing
> > > modems, and what the new MAC is. It gives me some confidence it's
> > > still useful. If there's a problem they or I think a modem switch
> > > might shed light on, I do the same.
> >
> > I have DSL service, and a spare modem that I've occasionally put in
> > service (for testing the "main" modem) and have not had to notify the
> > ISP.  (They were both provided by the ISP (Earthlink).)
> >
> > I don't know if cable modems would work the same -- I don't know if
> > the ISP sees the MAC address on a DSL line.
> 
> Generally they do, I too have 2 routers, and own them both, but one has 
> the others MAC cloned into it, so my supposedly volatile ipv4 address 
> has been fixed for over a decade, making namecheap registration of the 
> link in the sig a no-brain-er.

I was under the impression (since 25 May 2019) that your router(s) was
connected to the internet through an ISP-supplied cable modem. Is that
not correct? I've been talking about switching between different *modems*.

Changing just the router, behind a modem, never gave me any cause for
concern about the ISP.

Cheers,
David.

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

[Dan Ritter]

Andrei POPESCU wrote: 
> On Ma, 09 mar 21, 09:54:22, Dan Ritter wrote:
> > Andrei POPESCU wrote: 
 
> There's something curious about that, especially considering that the 
> PRO version (4350GE) is *not* OEM only!?

I don't think that's the case.

> It's almost like they confused the PRO with the retail version.
> 
> Anyway, I wouldn't mind getting the 4350GE instead ;)
> 
> (unless it's too expensive, of course)

There are some 4xxx series processors available, but all of them
are grey-market stripped from industrial flat-packs, and come
with a gigantic price tag as well.

> There might be a chance to get it as a bundle from some "creative" 
> retailers, which would be fine as well if paired with my choice of 
> motherboard and as far as I understand there are retailers that do sell 
> OEM parts.

Right now, it appears to be a choice between HP and Dell unless
you want one of the laptop-class APUs (some of which are quite
nice) in which case Asus and Acer have some systems.

I'm currently at that point where my home desktop is still
perfectly capable, but notably slower than anything else in the
house. I'd really like to replace it with a microATX 4700G --
it's just that for the price I want to pay, HP wants to sell me
a crappy desktop with sub-par motherboard and NVMe, and very
likely a whiny power supply.

Time and patience should fix my problem.

-dsr-

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

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 09 March 2021 08:12:47 rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 09, 2021 12:12:40 AM Felix Miata wrote:
> > David Wright composed on 2021-03-08 22:37 (UTC-0600):
> > > I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> > > then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> > > modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because
> > > it has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of
> > > the line.
> >
> > Whenever I get a mind to, I call my ISP, tell them I'm changing
> > modems, and what the new MAC is. It gives me some confidence it's
> > still useful. If there's a problem they or I think a modem switch
> > might shed light on, I do the same.
>
> I have DSL service, and a spare modem that I've occasionally put in
> service (for testing the "main" modem) and have not had to notify the
> ISP.  (They were both provided by the ISP (Earthlink).)
>
> I don't know if cable modems would work the same -- I don't know if
> the ISP sees the MAC address on a DSL line.

Generally they do, I too have 2 routers, and own them both, but one has 
the others MAC cloned into it, so my supposedly volatile ipv4 address 
has been fixed for over a decade, making namecheap registration of the 
link in the sig a no-brain-er.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

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

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Ma, 09 mar 21, 09:54:22, Dan Ritter wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU wrote: 
> > On Du, 07 mar 21, 13:56:03, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > > >> Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
> > 
> > The motherboard needs support for it as well, e.g. I'm eying the ASRock 
> > B550M Steel Legend for a fan-less build (unfortunately the Ryzen 3 
> > 4300GE (35W TDP) is nowhere to be found :( )
> 
> None of the Renoir parts are being sold on the general market;
> they are all going directly to system integrators (HP, Dell...)

There's something curious about that, especially considering that the 
PRO version (4350GE) is *not* OEM only!?

It's almost like they confused the PRO with the retail version.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind getting the 4350GE instead ;)

(unless it's too expensive, of course)

> Unfortunately, those system integrators like to sell those parts
> on mediocre motherboards and with second-class components
> attached.

There might be a chance to get it as a bundle from some "creative" 
retailers, which would be fine as well if paired with my choice of 
motherboard and as far as I understand there are retailers that do sell 
OEM parts.

Wouldn't be my first "bag (and manual) only" computer part ;)

(used to be an "integrator" myself for friends and family)

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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

[Stefan Monnier]

> I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because it
> has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of the line.

You should be able to change the MAC used by your device, i.e. you
should be able to arrange for both devices to expose the same MAC so
your ISP won't notice the difference.


Stefan

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

[Dan Ritter]

Andrei POPESCU wrote: 
> On Du, 07 mar 21, 13:56:03, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > >> Another important consideration is memory -- non-ECC vs. ECC.  Desktop 
> 
> The motherboard needs support for it as well, e.g. I'm eying the ASRock 
> B550M Steel Legend for a fan-less build (unfortunately the Ryzen 3 
> 4300GE (35W TDP) is nowhere to be found :( )

None of the Renoir parts are being sold on the general market;
they are all going directly to system integrators (HP, Dell...)

Unfortunately, those system integrators like to sell those parts
on mediocre motherboards and with second-class components
attached.

-dsr-

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

[Joe]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2021 08:12:47 -0500
rhkra...@gmail.com wrote:

> On Tuesday, March 09, 2021 12:12:40 AM Felix Miata wrote:
> > David Wright composed on 2021-03-08 22:37 (UTC-0600):  
> > > I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> > > then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> > > modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work,
> > > because it has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's
> > > end of the line.  
> 
> > Whenever I get a mind to, I call my ISP, tell them I'm changing
> > modems, and what the new MAC is. It gives me some confidence it's
> > still useful. If there's a problem they or I think a modem switch
> > might shed light on, I do the same.  
> 
> I have DSL service, and a spare modem that I've occasionally put in
> service (for testing the "main" modem) and have not had to notify the
> ISP.  (They were both provided by the ISP (Earthlink).)
> 
> I don't know if cable modems would work the same -- I don't know if
> the ISP sees the MAC address on a DSL line.
> 

I used to change routers without telling anyone, but that was years ago.

As an anecdote, I recall a BT service/router which literally would not
work if it detected another NAT on the LAN. It was in a client's
network, and I had to reconfigure things to work without the Debian
server acting as a firewall. If it had been my network, the wretched
thing would have gone back instantly, my network runs through two NATs
and that isn't negotiable.

-- 
Joe

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

[rhkramer]

On Tuesday, March 09, 2021 12:12:40 AM Felix Miata wrote:
> David Wright composed on 2021-03-08 22:37 (UTC-0600):
> > I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> > then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> > modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because it
> > has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of the line.

> Whenever I get a mind to, I call my ISP, tell them I'm changing modems, and
> what the new MAC is. It gives me some confidence it's still useful. If
> there's a problem they or I think a modem switch might shed light on, I do
> the same.

I have DSL service, and a spare modem that I've occasionally put in service 
(for testing the "main" modem) and have not had to notify the ISP.  (They were 
both provided by the ISP (Earthlink).)

I don't know if cable modems would work the same -- I don't know if the ISP 
sees the MAC address on a DSL line.

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

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 07 mar 21, 16:36:34, 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.  :(

This should[1] eliminate any "electrical" problems.

Based on the (limited) information I'd rather suspect the router has 
(probably very buggy) support for some of the Apple-specific network 
stuff.

It might help to simply disable anything in the router's configuration 
related to file sharing, streaming, backup, etc.

[1] famous last words ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Du, 07 mar 21, 13:56:03, Stefan Monnier 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 $.
> 
> 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.

It seems AMD Ryzen CPUs do support ECC, but it's not validated (which is 
why it won't be mentioned in the official specs).

The motherboard needs support for it as well, e.g. I'm eying the ASRock 
B550M Steel Legend for a fan-less build (unfortunately the Ryzen 3 
4300GE (35W TDP) is nowhere to be found :( )

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser


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

[Tixy]

On Mon, 2021-03-08 at 21:16 +0100, Linux-Fan wrote:
> Tixy writes:
> 
> > On Mon, 2021-03-08 at 05:36 -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> > > On 2021-03-07 at 22:53, Felix Miata wrote:
> > > 
> > > > 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
> > > 
> > > Applying the power-consumption handwave estimates from Linux-Fan's
> > > larger mail, that would be:
> > > 
> > > > i3-7100T (TDP 35W) supports up to 3 displays up to 4096x2304
> > > 
> > > 35
> > 
> > TDP is Thermal Design Power, it doesn't mean the max power.
> > 
> > Whilst experimenting with my new desktop, with a 65W TDP CPU, the power
> > of the whole system (measured at the mains supply) went from 16W idle
> > to 170W by executing "while : ; do : ; done" for each core. I'd guess
> > the bulk of that is the CPU, not the memory system.
> 
> Yes, this is good to keep in mind. For my system, the power consumption went  
> from 100W idle to 264W with your test, i.e. +164W which is close to the  
> processor TDP of 165W. Using a different "benchmark" [1], I achived 288W  
> i.e. more than the TDP. Of course, the UPS' power display is slow and hence  
> I would not notice the real spikes :)
> 
> CPU Manufacturers do not seem to publish max power figures AFAICT. Hence it  
> seems best to estimate the additional power needed based on experience/tests?
> 
> > It soon drops to 130W as the thermal protection kicks in, but you'd
> > want a PSU to cope with the peaks. And maxing out all cores isn't just
> > a theoretical exercise, transcoding video files or compiling programs
> > will happily do that.
> 
> The interesting thing with modern CPUs is that even applications that  
> seemingly cause 100% CPU usage (like my benchmark [1]) do not actually  
> stress the CPU most -- I still do not know all the details about that,  
> though. In part, it seems to be related to some instructions needing more  
> power than others (vector extensions are known to be power-hungry).

I agree, though as my test got CPU temperature from 40C to the critical
limit of 100C in about 5 seconds, I'd suggest that more power hungry
tests instructions wouldn't actually draw more power, because the
temperature can't rise any more. The thermal protection would just
reduce clock frequency, or increase idle time, more aggressively to
keep power dissipation (and hence temperature) at the limit.

Actually, in my case, the firmware didn't seem to be doing a good
enough job because I was doing these tests to prove the suddenly hard
resetting I was getting using the computer was due to overheating.
I ended up installing 'thermald' package, to throttle the system to
prevent overheating, as the firmware didn't seem to be doing a good
enough job.

-- 
Tixy

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

[Felix Miata]

David Wright composed on 2021-03-08 22:37 (UTC-0600):

> On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 21:37:37 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:

>> Having != connected. The extras are spares. :)

> I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
> then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
> modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because it
> has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of the line.

> (Similarly, if your modem were to burn out, which is what happened
> to mine after seven years.)

Whenever I get a mind to, I call my ISP, tell them I'm changing modems, and what
the new MAC is. It gives me some confidence it's still useful. If there's a
problem they or I think a modem switch might shed light on, I do the same.
-- 
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 Wright]

On Sun 07 Mar 2021 at 21:37:37 (-0500), Felix Miata wrote:
> 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. :)

I realise that, but if your service were to become unsatisfactory,
then before you complained, you'd want to check that it's not your
modem at fault. Would you expect your spare modem to work, because it
has a different MAC from what's expected by the ISP's end of the line.

(Similarly, if your modem were to burn out, which is what happened
to mine after seven years.)

Cheers,
David.

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

[David Christensen]

On 3/8/21 5:28 AM, songbird wrote:

   aren't there gizmos that measure the watts being
drawn by clipping them around the plug that goes into
the wall?



AC and DC voltage and current can be measured with general-purpose 
electronic test equipment and custom jigs/ cables:


https://www.fluke.com/

https://www.tek.com/


Power is the product of voltage and current, which requires additional 
instruments/ processing.



My latest Fluke multimeter includes Bluetooth and can integrate with a 
iOS/Android app to do data acquisition, historical trending, etc..



Purpose-built power quality monitoring instruments and associated 
software exist, but are expensive.



David

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

[David Christensen]

On 3/8/21 11:39 AM, Dan Ritter wrote:

David Christensen wrote:

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.


Intel made pretty good motherboards, but they stopped in 2015.



Yes, Intel desktop boards were good products.  I put used Intel server 
board/ CPU/ memory combos into two machines prior to the pandemic and am 
very pleased with them.  Since the pandemic, good parts are hard to find 
and pricing has become aggressive.



David

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

[Felix Miata]

David Christensen composed on 2021-03-08 13:11 (UTC-0800):

>>> What model mac?

>> It's a mac pro.

> Marketing terms are for separating the rubes from their dollars:

> "it is a mac"

> "It's a mac pro"

> When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant 
> engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items -- 
> e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number", 
> "assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc.. 
> Doing so demonstrates your competence and your respect for the readers' 
> time.

+ + +
-- 
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 7:09 PM, Dan Hitt wrote:

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.



Marketing terms are for separating the rubes from their dollars:

"it is a mac"

"It's a mac pro"


When posting on a technical mailing list, please include the relevant 
engineering identifiers when referring to hardware or software items -- 
e.g. alphanumeric codes variously named "model number", "part number", 
"assembly number", "serial number", "architecture", "revision", etc.. 
Doing so demonstrates your competence and your respect for the readers' 
time.



David

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

[Linux-Fan]

Tixy writes:


On Mon, 2021-03-08 at 05:36 -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2021-03-07 at 22:53, Felix Miata wrote:
>
> > 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
>
> Applying the power-consumption handwave estimates from Linux-Fan's
> larger mail, that would be:
>
> > i3-7100T (TDP 35W) supports up to 3 displays up to 4096x2304
>
> 35

TDP is Thermal Design Power, it doesn't mean the max power.

Whilst experimenting with my new desktop, with a 65W TDP CPU, the power
of the whole system (measured at the mains supply) went from 16W idle
to 170W by executing "while : ; do : ; done" for each core. I'd guess
the bulk of that is the CPU, not the memory system.


Yes, this is good to keep in mind. For my system, the power consumption went  
from 100W idle to 264W with your test, i.e. +164W which is close to the  
processor TDP of 165W. Using a different "benchmark" [1], I achived 288W  
i.e. more than the TDP. Of course, the UPS' power display is slow and hence  
I would not notice the real spikes :)


CPU Manufacturers do not seem to publish max power figures AFAICT. Hence it  
seems best to estimate the additional power needed based on experience/tests?



It soon drops to 130W as the thermal protection kicks in, but you'd
want a PSU to cope with the peaks. And maxing out all cores isn't just
a theoretical exercise, transcoding video files or compiling programs
will happily do that.


The interesting thing with modern CPUs is that even applications that  
seemingly cause 100% CPU usage (like my benchmark [1]) do not actually  
stress the CPU most -- I still do not know all the details about that,  
though. In part, it seems to be related to some instructions needing more  
power than others (vector extensions are known to be power-hungry).


[1] https://masysma.lima-city.de/32/bruteforce3.xhtml

Linux-Fan
öö

[...]


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Description: PGP signature

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

[Dan Ritter]

David Christensen wrote: 
> 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.

Intel made pretty good motherboards, but they stopped in 2015.

-dsr-

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

[Tixy]

On Mon, 2021-03-08 at 05:36 -0500, The Wanderer wrote:
> On 2021-03-07 at 22:53, Felix Miata wrote:
> 
> > 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
> 
> Applying the power-consumption handwave estimates from Linux-Fan's
> larger mail, that would be:
> 
> > i3-7100T (TDP 35W) supports up to 3 displays up to 4096x2304
> 
> 35

TDP is Thermal Design Power, it doesn't mean the max power.

Whilst experimenting with my new desktop, with a 65W TDP CPU, the power
of the whole system (measured at the mains supply) went from 16W idle
to 170W by executing "while : ; do : ; done" for each core. I'd guess
the bulk of that is the CPU, not the memory system.

It soon drops to 130W as the thermal protection kicks in, but you'd
want a PSU to cope with the peaks. And maxing out all cores isn't just
a theoretical exercise, transcoding video files or compiling programs
will happily do that.

-- 
Tixy

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

[Anssi Saari]

Felix Miata  writes:

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

Well, it's been about a decade since that was written but not much has
changed. One issue is, ifconfig shows only one address per interface
while you can today have more. I was bitten by this last year, I
borrowed a port from what I thought was a co-worker's desktop
switch. Turns out it was actually a router with the end result that my
dev board somehow ended up with two IP addresses, one from that router
and another from the general network. Connections didn't work that well
but ifconfig showed everything was just fine and I had the expected ip
address.

Finally, ip addr showed the actual situation and ip addr del mumble and
some other commands fixed my connectivity issues.

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

[Kenneth Parker]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021, 5:06 AM Richard Owlett  wrote:

> 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?
>

If you include the "reading list" at the bottom of the web page, I have not
found anything better.  (And this is one of the few occasions, where I
responded to the request for financial donations).

Kenneth Parker

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

[Bonno Bloksma]

Hi,

> On 3/7/21 7:24 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)
I have.

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

> Or you can mix and match. I have a router AND a switch, because the router 
> does not have enough ports.
And that is another reason to have an additional switch.

> In my case, I paid no attention to what is connected to what, and everything 
> works.
As it should but sometimes does not. :-(
In my case it was some OLD device, 10+ years old that never heard of a Gigabit 
interface and actually would even work on a 10Mbit port. This device will 
connect correctly on an older gigabit switch but NOT on a more modern Gigabit 
switch. :-(
So I have :
 - A router
 - A POE switch for those devices that need POE
 - A normal Gigabit switch for all the other devices I have
 - An older switch to connect that one device that won't connect properly to 
the modern switch. :-(
All witches are connected to the router, all devices connected to the switches. 
I could have bought a bigger POE switch but I already had the other switch(es) 
before I needed some POE ports.

Bonno Bloksma

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

[Peter Ehlert]

On 3/8/21 5:28 AM, songbird wrote:

The Wanderer wrote:
...

Finding actual power consumption of a motherboard is apparently brutal.=

  Specs in

the manuals to mine say nothing about power consumption. DDG & Google i=

n 20+

minutes weren't helpful either.

I've encountered the exact same problem...

   aren't there gizmos that measure the watts being
drawn by clipping them around the plug that goes into
the wall?
yes: "Kill A Watt" is one brand name, there are probably many others. I 
think some can actually record the highs and lows.



   the rough numbers supplied are interesting thank
you.  the calculator didn't work for me.


   songbird

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

[songbird]

The Wanderer wrote:
...
>> Finding actual power consumption of a motherboard is apparently brutal.=
>  Specs in
>> the manuals to mine say nothing about power consumption. DDG & Google i=
> n 20+
>> minutes weren't helpful either.
>
> I've encountered the exact same problem...

  aren't there gizmos that measure the watts being
drawn by clipping them around the plug that goes into
the wall?

  the rough numbers supplied are interesting thank 
you.  the calculator didn't work for me.


  songbird

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

[Dan Ritter]

The Wanderer wrote: 
> 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).

You can look up maximum power draw for every major component.

For example:

An AMD Ryzen CPU draws between 65W - for a low-end desktop
processor like the 3400G - and 105W - for the top end of desktop
CPUs.

A low-end external GPU can draw 40W, and a high-end 300W.

The motherboard itself will rarely draw 30W.

The most efficient SSDs consume 2W apiece at max load, and the
least efficient can use 5W apiece.

So: a desktop system might have:
105Whigh-end CPU
140Wmid-range GPU
 20Wmotherboard
 40W10 not-so-efficient SSDs

305W

suggests that you want to buy a 350-500W power supply from a
reputable manufacturer -- I especially like Seasonic, Antec and
EVGA, but there are lots of high-quality brands.

If you have a 65W CPU, a 40W GPU, and 1 SSD and 1 spinning disk
(14W max), a 185-250W power supply is a good idea.

Below 185W, there are DC-DC power supplies for low-power systems
that use external AC-DC bricks like laptops (frequently exactly
the same as higher-end laptops) which are efficient, cool and
quiet.

-dsr-

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

[IL Ka]

>
>
> In my case it was some OLD device, 10+ years old that never heard of a
> Gigabit interface and actually would even work on a 10Mbit port. This
> device will connect correctly on an older gigabit switch but NOT on a more
> modern Gigabit switch. :-(


Ethernet ports should negotiate speed, but sometimes they fail to do so.
Setting speed explicitly is worth trying in this case, but it could be that
1Gb switch simply doesn't support 10Mb or this support is buggy, because
the vendor didn't bother with testing a brand new switch against 20 years
old technology. For old hardware cable type is also important: crosscable
can't be used between old NIC and the switch.

But I wouldn't call it "electrical incompatibility". It is more like a
protocol backward compatibility problem:)



>
>

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

[Linux-Fan]

The Wanderer writes:


On 2021-03-07 at 21:35, Linux-Fan wrote:

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

That was in a separate message, so a separate reply would have been
appropriate (to preserve threading by sub-topic), but yes.


Yes, sorry for that. I initially started replying to just the first thing  
and then remembered that I might comment on the other things, too...



> 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?

A combination of three reasons: the desire for RAID (to be resilient
against drive failures), the need for a certain minimum total capacity
(to avoid capacity loss relative to the existing system which this is to
be built to replace), and the hope to avoid letting the budget balloon
past what even I can consider reasonable.

The RAID-6 goal means I need a bare minimum of four drives on the SATA
side of things. To achieve the capacity goal with 2TB per drive and
RAID-6, I need (if I recall my calculations correctly) eight total such
drives. More than 2TB per drive, with SSDs, gets too expensive for my
expectable budget.

The reason for counting the M.2 SSDs separately is because of A: their
different performance characteristics, B: their different price per
gigabyte, and C: that (last I checked) GRUB wouldn't support booting
from mdadm RAID-6 but would from mdadm RAID-1, so I need a separate
RAID-1 in any case, and connecting those drives to physically different
ports makes a good way to split it out. (The RAID-1 will get the
"system" partitions, and the RAID-6 the "data" partitions - the latter
being largely /home and /opt, since I've learned that /var should really
be counted in the "system" category.)


Makes sense, yes. I'd be interested to hear how it performs once it is  
online :) No first-hand experience with RAID6 here...


[...]


> 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)

How did you measure / calculate that latter? I have mine plugged in
through a wall box with a display, but am not sure the result is
reliable, given the multiple components and the variability of power
draw - and of course having such a thing in the power chain is not
typical for most people.


My measurement is at least as unreliable as yours. I turned off the other  
components and then read what the UPS' power meter says. Given that at the  
same time, an ethernet switch and small (ARM SBC) computer were still  
attached and online, I expect my 70W to include some of their power draw,  
too. My previous machine was an 1U server (named pte5) and there, `sensors`  
also reported a (probably even less reliable?) measure for the PSU power  
draw which was at around 50-65W for typical idle states IIRC.


Before I had the server, I used a HP Z400 workstation (masysma-3) for which  
I had measured (using a cheap power meter attached to the wall outlet) about  
80W idle power draw. For the current system (masysma-18) again measured  
including ethernet switch and an idle Intel NUC (larger small computer :) ),  
the UPS reports around 100W.


To summarize, here are my "idle" power measures:

System  PSU Size  Measurement  Reported by  Components included

masysma-3   475W  80W  cheap meter  just the computer

pte5300W  70W  UPS  computer + switch + ARM SBC
 50-65W   sensors/PSU  just the computer

masysma-18  950W  100W UPS  computer + switch + Intel NUC

Of course, all of these systems have differently sized RAM, CPUs and GPUs.  
Only the number of HDDs is pretty constant with four for each machine (it  
was 2x3.5" HDD + 2x2.5" SSD at the time of measurement).


Note that the UPS' power meter is probably even less reliable than the wall- 
plugged dedicated devices for the purpose. When I shutdown the main system,  
it constantly reports 0W although switch and Intel NUC are up and running :)


[...]

HTH
Linux-Fan

öö


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Description: PGP signature

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

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 22:53, Felix Miata wrote:

> 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

Applying the power-consumption handwave estimates from Linux-Fan's
larger mail, that would be:

> i3-7100T (TDP 35W) supports up to 3 displays up to 4096x2304

35

> 1 2.5" SSD

+15

> 2 3.5" Hitachi Deskstars

+20

> 1 DVD writer

+10 (assuming the same power requirements as a HDD, which seems at least
ballpark plausible)

> ARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro cooler
> 4 fans

+ some unknown factor.

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

35 + 15 + 20 + 10 is 80. 25% of 450 is 112.5. 112.5 - 80 is 32.5.

32.5 watts for the fans plus the motherboard, and allowing for wiggle
room for mis-estimation, doesn't seem terribly unreasonable.

> 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.

I've encountered the exact same problem...

-- 
   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



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

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

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 21:35, Linux-Fan wrote:

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

That was in a separate message, so a separate reply would have been
appropriate (to preserve threading by sub-topic), but yes.

> 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?

A combination of three reasons: the desire for RAID (to be resilient
against drive failures), the need for a certain minimum total capacity
(to avoid capacity loss relative to the existing system which this is to
be built to replace), and the hope to avoid letting the budget balloon
past what even I can consider reasonable.

The RAID-6 goal means I need a bare minimum of four drives on the SATA
side of things. To achieve the capacity goal with 2TB per drive and
RAID-6, I need (if I recall my calculations correctly) eight total such
drives. More than 2TB per drive, with SSDs, gets too expensive for my
expectable budget.

The reason for counting the M.2 SSDs separately is because of A: their
different performance characteristics, B: their different price per
gigabyte, and C: that (last I checked) GRUB wouldn't support booting
from mdadm RAID-6 but would from mdadm RAID-1, so I need a separate
RAID-1 in any case, and connecting those drives to physically different
ports makes a good way to split it out. (The RAID-1 will get the
"system" partitions, and the RAID-6 the "data" partitions - the latter
being largely /home and /opt, since I've learned that /var should really
be counted in the "system" category.)

> Sometimes, using the M.2 slots on the motherboard will disable
> certain SATA ports.

I'm aware. I've read motherboard reviews in some depth, and planned my
motherboard selection and drive purchases in part around the motherboard
SATA-port capacity after taking such disabling into account.

> 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.

It's reasonable, and in an ideal world I'd prefer to do that myself;
prior to starting to work out the numbers, I was expecting to go for a
4-to-6 drive max on the SATA side of things. However, once I actually
did the calculations, my constraints are what they are.

>> 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)

How did you measure / calculate that latter? I have mine plugged in
through a wall box with a display, but am not sure the result is
reliable, given the multiple components and the variability of power
draw - and of course having such a thing in the power chain is not
typical for most people.

> 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.

All reasonable; thank you. By that metric, I'd probably be targeting
something in the range from a 650W-800W PSU; that's a step down in
capacity (and therefore probably up in efficiency, as well as in price)
from my current machine's 1KW unit.

I will of course apply at least one online power-supply calculator just
to see if I can get any meaningful benefit out of it, but I don't expect
it'll change the results 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 

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

[The Wanderer]

On 2021-03-07 at 21:35, Linux-Fan wrote:

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

That was in a separate message, so a separate reply would have been
appropriate (to preserve threading by sub-topic), but yes.

> 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?

A combination of three reasons: the desire for RAID (to be resilient
against drive failures), the need for a certain minimum total capacity
(to avoid capacity loss relative to the existing system which this is to
be built to replace), and the hope to avoid letting the budget balloon
past what even I can consider reasonable.

The RAID-6 goal means I need a bare minimum of four drives on the SATA
side of things. To achieve the capacity goal with 2TB per drive and
RAID-6, I need (if I recall my calculations correctly) eight total such
drives. More than 2TB per drive, with SSDs, gets too expensive for my
expectable budget.

The reason for counting the M.2 SSDs separately is because of A: their
different performance characteristics, B: their different price per
gigabyte, and C: that (last I checked) GRUB wouldn't support booting
from mdadm RAID-6 but would from mdadm RAID-1, so I need a separate
RAID-1 in any case, and connecting those drives to physically different
ports makes a good way to split it out. (The RAID-1 will get the
"system" partitions, and the RAID-6 the "data" partitions - the latter
being largely /home and /opt, since I've learned that /var should really
be counted in the "system" category.)

> Sometimes, using the M.2 slots on the motherboard will disable
> certain SATA ports.

I'm aware. I've read motherboard reviews in some depth, and planned my
motherboard selection and drive purchases in part around the motherboard
SATA-port capacity after taking such disabling into account.

> 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.

It's reasonable, and in an ideal world I'd prefer to do that myself;
prior to starting to work out the numbers, I was expecting to go for a
4-to-6 drive max on the SATA side of things. However, once I actually
did the calculations, my constraints are what they are.

>> 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)

How did you measure / calculate that latter? I have mine plugged in
through a wall box with a display, but am not sure the result is
reliable, given the multiple components and the variability of power
draw - and of course having such a thing in the power chain is not
typical for most people.

> 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.

All reasonable; thank you. By that metric, I'd probably be targeting
something in the range from a 650W-800W PSU; that's a step down in
capacity (and therefore probably up in efficiency, as well as in price)
from my current machine's 1KW unit.

I will of course apply at least one online power-supply calculator just
to see if I can get any meaningful benefit out of it, but I don't expect
it'll change the results 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 

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

[Doug McGarrett]

On 3/7/21 7:24 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?

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


Or you can mix and match. I have a router AND a switch, because the 
router does not have enough ports.
In my case, I paid no attention to what is connected to what, and 
everything works. In your case, you might
want to connect the complaining computer to the switch, and everything 
else to the router directly, if
there are enough ports. This may work better--maybe the problem really 
is something in common to the

computer and something else that's plugged into the router.
--doug

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.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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

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

[Kenneth Parker]

On Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 12:03 AM 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.
>>
>
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'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?
>>
>
Yes it does.   As I said, I had a lot of trouble with UEFI at the beginning
and, so had a workaround of setting it up to (by default) boot from an
external USB Stick, but boot Linux Partitions on the main Hard Drive.

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 have a mix on my HP Pavilion Desktop, with the two I boot most being
Debian Bullseye and Mint 20.

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?
>

That's one reason I am running Bullseye:  I set up qemu-kvm on Mint 20, put
a guest in, and promptly ran low on space.  So I wanted to export it to
Debian, but found that the version of qemu was higher than the one on
Buster (which wouldn't allow the Import).  So I'm on Bullseye.  Research
the differences between the versions of qemu and you might want Bullseye
also.

TIA!
>
> dan
>

Happy to help.

Kenneth Parker

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

[Dan Hitt]

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.
>
> 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.
>

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?

TIA!

dan

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

[Dan Hitt]

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.

dan