Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Adam Carter]

On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 10:56 AM Dale  wrote:

> I agree.  If you are committing international crimes, terrorism for
> example, they will snoop on you and it doesn't matter much what you do or
> use.  If nothing else, they will put you on a super computer setup that
> will crack whatever you are doing/using and get you that way.  As we know,
> generally speaking, given enough computer power, almost anything can be
> cracked.  It's a time thing mostly.
>

Well implemented modern crypto is still thought of as not being crackable
by anyone. The increase in computing power can be offset with increase in
key length.

There is concern that quantum computing could change this and work is being
done to come up with new quantum resistant crypto standards. Bad random
number generators, code errors etc are ways around crypto but there's no
public info that, say AES, has any fundamental flaw that makes feasible to
crack.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Adam Carter wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 7:49 PM Neil Bothwick  > wrote:
>
> > So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?
>
> There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope, and
> maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.
>
>
> Datapoint - looks like Bloomberg is starting to walk back its complete
> support of the original implant story.
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/super-micro-says-third-party-test-found-no-malicious-hardware
>
> Also they have assigned another reporter that was not involved in the
> original story, to attempt to verify the claims of the original story...
>
> Others have made the point that the Amazon and Apple denials left them
> no wriggle room in the event that implants are found and shareholders
> launch a class action, and that this indicates a genuine belief that
> there are no backdoors.
>
> Considering risk;
> If you are of interest to a nation state, you're pretty much stuffed
> anyway, and I think this discussion has been around implants made via
> Chinese government action.
> The management processor issue is a real problem because they're not
> well understood, on by default, cant be (or cant easily) be disabled,
> and has to be software maintained. However, given all the other issues
> like the never ending stream of security issues in software, i'm not
> sure it changes the overall risk profile significantly. Only time will
> tell.
>
> Sorry for further polluting your thread Dale :)
>


I agree.  If you are committing international crimes, terrorism for
example, they will snoop on you and it doesn't matter much what you do
or use.  If nothing else, they will put you on a super computer setup
that will crack whatever you are doing/using and get you that way.  As
we know, generally speaking, given enough computer power, almost
anything can be cracked.  It's a time thing mostly. 

While off topic sort of, it is still relevant.  This might fit better on
the encryption thread but I still find it interesting. It is technology
related too.  It seems we agree on one thing here, we can't trust much
of anything or anyone completely.  So, no need for the apology.  I still
learn from the posts even if I don't post a reply to some. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Adam Carter]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 7:49 PM Neil Bothwick  wrote:

> > So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?
>
> There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope, and
> maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.
>

Datapoint - looks like Bloomberg is starting to walk back its complete
support of the original implant story.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-11/super-micro-says-third-party-test-found-no-malicious-hardware
Also they have assigned another reporter that was not involved in the
original story, to attempt to verify the claims of the original story...

Others have made the point that the Amazon and Apple denials left them no
wriggle room in the event that implants are found and shareholders launch a
class action, and that this indicates a genuine belief that there are no
backdoors.

Considering risk;
If you are of interest to a nation state, you're pretty much stuffed
anyway, and I think this discussion has been around implants made via
Chinese government action.
The management processor issue is a real problem because they're not well
understood, on by default, cant be (or cant easily) be disabled, and has to
be software maintained. However, given all the other issues like the never
ending stream of security issues in software, i'm not sure it changes the
overall risk profile significantly. Only time will tell.

Sorry for further polluting your thread Dale :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[J. Roeleveld]

On December 11, 2018 10:48:01 AM UTC, Dale  wrote:
>Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:00:45 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
>>
 So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their
>back
> doors?
>
> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems
>made
> in China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
>
> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of
>security.
>  
>>> So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?
>> There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope,
>and
>> maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.
>>
>>
>
>I sent a reply off list to Taiiden.  Mine was longer but basically, no
>Govt can really be trusted and they have proved it.  If they can do
>something and hide it, they will.  Snowden revealed some things but I'm
>sure there is a lot of stuff going on that the public knows nothing
>about. 
>
>None of us should trust anything until it is well tested and done so
>over time. 
>
>Dale
>
>:-)  :-) 

Which was exactly my point.
There is NO government that can be trusted to take their citizens interests 
before their own. It is inherent in the phrase "power corrupts", of which I am 
a firm believer as I have seen the corrupting effects power has on people.

The classical Communist idea (Note: Russia did NOT have true Communism as the 
communist party effectively became a multi headed dictatorship) might be 
trustworthy, but then only if your fellow citizens can be trusted to work 
towards bettering the entire community and not think of themselves first. 
Humanity will need to grow up a lot more to reach a state where I would trust 
my fellow humans enough.

And please let this rest in this thread now. If anyone wants to continue this 
discussion, lets open a seperate thread for it so people not interested in this 
can easily filter it out.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[J. Roeleveld]

On December 11, 2018 2:00:45 AM UTC, "taii...@gmx.com"  wrote:
>On 12/10/2018 05:54 PM, Dale wrote:
>> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>>> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
>>>
> Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I
> wouldn't trust Western European countries either.  
 USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
 backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made
>hardware
 such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.
>>> So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
>>> doors?
>>>
>>> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made
>in
>>> China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
>>>
>>> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
>>>
>
>So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?

I can't think of any.

>Name one other country on earth besides america where you can say no to
>a governmental request for a backdoor in your hardware or software
>products and not end up in prison.

The USA can send someone to prison if he/she refuses a request by the 
government. It is called being a traitor.
In other words, I still don't consider the USA to be a reliable origin either.

>In the mean time will you continue to buy chinese products with proven
>backdoors since getting that is somehow better than something that is
>only almost perfect?

Here is the thing, there isn't anything proven.

>The amd bulldozer and piledriver CPU's like the FX-8350 and its opteron
>counterparts are made in germany (the packaging is done in china but at
>that point afaik there isn't much that can be done to fuck with it) but
>that still wouldn't satisfy you since germany doesn't have anything
>like
>the constitution - they have no freedom of speech.

Please do read up on other countries before making these claims. A Constitution 
is not a requirement for Freedom of Speech. Part of that is Freedom of Press, 
your own President is destroying that as much as he can.

>The future of freedom computing is OpenPOWER and RISC-V since they are
>the only owner controlled archs that have real performance and
>features,
>in other words they have juice.

Unless you are confident production is real and nothing was added, OpenPower 
can be compromised as well.

--
Joost


-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:00:45 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
>
>>> So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
 doors?

 Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made
 in China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.

 Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
  
>> So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?
> There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope, and
> maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.
>
>

I sent a reply off list to Taiiden.  Mine was longer but basically, no
Govt can really be trusted and they have proved it.  If they can do
something and hide it, they will.  Snowden revealed some things but I'm
sure there is a lot of stuff going on that the public knows nothing about. 

None of us should trust anything until it is well tested and done so
over time. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Alan Mackenzie]

On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 21:00:45 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
> On 12/10/2018 05:54 PM, Dale wrote:
> > Neil Bothwick wrote:
> >> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:

>  Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I
>  wouldn't trust Western European countries either.  
> >>> USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
> >>> backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made hardware
> >>> such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.
> >> So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
> >> doors?

> >> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made in
> >> China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.

> >> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.


> So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?

> Name one other country on earth besides america where you can say no to
> a governmental request for a backdoor in your hardware or software
> products and not end up in prison.

Germany.

Whether that is the case or not in the USA is very doubtful.  Apple
recently had to fight hard against such a demand, but the authorities
backed down without the principle being decided upon.

> The amd bulldozer and piledriver CPU's like the FX-8350 and its opteron
> counterparts are made in germany (the packaging is done in china but at
> that point afaik there isn't much that can be done to fuck with it) but
> that still wouldn't satisfy you since germany doesn't have anything like
> the constitution - they have no freedom of speech.

Er, steady on, PLEASE!  Germany HAS a constitution, and freedom of speech
is a prominent part of that.  It is backed up by the constitutional court
at Karlsruhe, which is known for ruling against authorities' powers
relatively frequently.  What's more, unlike in the USA, there is an
explicit constitutional right to privacy, which is taken very seriously,
particularly after the abuses by the state security in the former German
Democratic Republic.

None of which means that the German security services don't get up to
dirty tricks, of course.

Before coming out with any such ignorant falsehoods in the future, I
would recommend you at least to consult Wikipedia, or such like.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Mick]

On Tuesday, 11 December 2018 08:49:25 GMT Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:00:45 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
> > > So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
> > > 
> > >> doors?
> > >> 
> > >> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made
> > >> in China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
> > >> 
> > >> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
> > 
> > So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?
> 
> There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope, and
> maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.

Sure, unless you designed and built the hardware yourself you can't be sure.  
Even then you won't know what vulnerabilities you may have inadvertently 
introduced in your creation and are unaware of.  Nevertheless, Taiidan's 
comments point towards a least worse option, at least based on current 
knowledge of state actors relentless efforts to spy on us all.

POWER9 is impressive in many respects, but for a modern laptop there are no 
similar choices to make.  As far as I know they are all compromised by design 
today.  :-(

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Neil Bothwick]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 21:00:45 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:

> > So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
> >> doors?
> >>
> >> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made
> >> in China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
> >>
> >> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
> >>  
> 
> So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?

There isn't one as you can never be sure. You are presenting hope, and
maybe likelihood, as certainty when this does not exist.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Microbiology: staph only.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[taii...@gmx.com]

On 12/10/2018 05:54 PM, Dale wrote:
> Neil Bothwick wrote:
>> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
>>
 Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I
 wouldn't trust Western European countries either.  
>>> USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
>>> backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made hardware
>>> such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.
>> So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
>> doors?
>>
>> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made in
>> China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
>>
>> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
>>

So tell us what is your perfect country for hardware manufacturing?

Name one other country on earth besides america where you can say no to
a governmental request for a backdoor in your hardware or software
products and not end up in prison.

In the mean time will you continue to buy chinese products with proven
backdoors since getting that is somehow better than something that is
only almost perfect?

The amd bulldozer and piledriver CPU's like the FX-8350 and its opteron
counterparts are made in germany (the packaging is done in china but at
that point afaik there isn't much that can be done to fuck with it) but
that still wouldn't satisfy you since germany doesn't have anything like
the constitution - they have no freedom of speech.

The future of freedom computing is OpenPOWER and RISC-V since they are
the only owner controlled archs that have real performance and features,
in other words they have juice.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Neil Bothwick wrote:
> On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:
>
>>> Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I
>>> wouldn't trust Western European countries either.  
>> USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
>> backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made hardware
>> such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.
> So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
> doors?
>
> Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made in
> China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.
>
> Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.
>
>

I think the best thing to do, trust none of them until proven secure. 
Let people test them, try to hack into them and do other things to see
if there is a backdoor or not.  The same with encryption.  One can say
it is secure but until it is tested very hard for a significant amount
of time, one never knows if it is or not.  Some security problems/holes
don't show up for years. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Neil Bothwick]

On Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:33:10 -0500, taii...@gmx.com wrote:

> > Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I
> > wouldn't trust Western European countries either.  
> 
> USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
> backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made hardware
> such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.

So that proves that US manufacturers are better at hiding their back
doors?

Or is it a numbers game, there are a hell of a lot more systems made in
China, so the chances of a backdoor being discovered is higher.

Either way, lack of evidence of insecurity is not proof of security.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Secret hacker rule #11: hackers read manuals.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[taii...@gmx.com]

On 12/09/2018 01:57 PM, J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On December 9, 2018 6:23:07 PM UTC, "taii...@gmx.com"  wrote:
>> On 12/07/2018 06:47 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:
 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
> you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:
>
>    CPU_FLAGS_X86=""
>
> and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
> CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
> default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.
>

 What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.
>>>
>>> If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set it to
>> an
>>> empty string, you should be able to see which packages make use of
>> the
>>> default flags (like sse and sse2.)
>>>
>>> Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages you
>> have
>>> installed that make use of these flags.
>>>
>>>
 One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When
>> finished,
 I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory
>> all
 on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in
>> upgrading to
 a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to
>> build?
 I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is
>> likely
 overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working
>> just
 fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
 other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
 more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with
>> one?
>>
>> Since the AM3+ and its C32/G34 Opteron counterparts are the last and
>> best x86 cpus without ME/PSP I would say you are better off with what
>> you have - the best piledriver cpus like the FX-8350+ are still able to
>> play the latest games and in a VM via IOMMU-GFX if you want.
>>
>> In any case I would consider a OpenPOWER (ppc64/ppc64le) arch system
>> (like the blackbird or talos 2) as an upgrade path instead of any
>> futher
>> x86 stuff as there aren't any black boxes, there is
>> documentation+firmware sources and the cpus are made in usa.
> 
> Made in USA isn't necessarily a good thing when talking about not wanting any 
> hidden back doors.

Hell of a lot better than buying black box hardware from china.

x86 is definitely backdoored due to the ME/PSP and various other DRM
features that mean you no longer own your x86 computer.

In the US you aren't going to prison for telling the government you
won't put a backdoor in your hardware whereas in china and many others
you would go to jail without even a trial even in western europe people
are jailed for saying the wrong things on the internet. It is currently
the hardest place for an authority figure to lean on you.

Since the only users of POWER are fortune 500's and the government
itself it needs to be secure and not fucked around with, ironically the
chinese government is buying OpenPOWER now as they want a secure, owner
controlled, highly documented and non-x86 high performance CPU (there is
absolutely no hardware code signing not even for the cpu microcode and
no blobs are required for hardware initiation unlike with new x86 stuff)

One doesn't have to put an actual func_backdoor backdoor in a CPU since
something so complex will have exploitable bugs that even the
manufacturer doesn't know about such as the (fixed via microcode) 2014
AMD Piledriver NMI to root exploit where you could get root and SMM
access from a tiny userspace script and that was in there for years
without anyone noticing.

> Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I wouldn't trust 
> Western European countries either.

USA is currently the best option since there have never been proven
backdoors in made in usa hardware but plenty in chinese made hardware
such as the recent motherboard hack chip scandal.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

J. Roeleveld wrote:
> On December 9, 2018 6:23:07 PM UTC, "taii...@gmx.com"
>  wrote:
>
> On 12/07/2018 06:47 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>
> On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:
>
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>
> If you want to see all of the installed packages that
> are affected, you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an
> empty string:    CPU_FLAGS_X86="" and then do "emerge
> -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
> CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse
> and sse2 by default, because these are supported by
> all 64-bit CPUs. 
>
> What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that
> way. 
>
> If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set
> it to an empty string, you should be able to see which
> packages make use of the default flags (like sse and sse2.)
> Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages
> you have installed that make use of these flags.
>
> One last question for anyone who has done this recently. 
> When finished, I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at
> 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all on a Gigabyte 970 series
> mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to a whole
> new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to
> build? I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650
> video card is likely overkill for what I do here.  The
> older 200 series card is working just fine.  On one hand,
> my current build is several years old.  On the other,
> computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there
> is more powerful systems out there but would I be any
> better off with one? 
>
>
> Since the AM3+ and its C32/G34 Opteron counterparts are the last and
> best x86 cpus without ME/PSP I would say you are better off with what
> you have - the best piledriver cpus like the FX-8350+ are still able to
> play the latest games and in a VM via IOMMU-GFX if you want.
>
> In any case I would consider a OpenPOWER (ppc64/ppc64le) arch system
> (like the blackbird or talos 2) as an upgrade path instead of any futher
> x86 stuff as there aren't any black boxes, there is
> documentation+firmware sources and the cpus are made in usa.
>
>
> Made in USA isn't necessarily a good thing when talking about not
> wanting any hidden back doors.
> Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I wouldn't
> trust Western European countries either.
>
> --
> Joost
> -- 
> Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. 


I have to say, this is something I thought about.  While some newer CPUs
have even been talked about on this list, I don't recall this one being
included, or the one I currently use.  Given its age, I would think it
would be exposed if it was hackable or had a backdoor, but one never
knows.  As to country it was made in, I don't trust any of them really. 
The NSA is just as bad at snooping as any other country.  Well, some
such as China may be worse but if it has a backdoor, it has a backdoor. 
If one Govt or group knows about it, they all will at some point and
will exploit it for their own means. 

I might add, this is why I'd love to see encryption done by a group that
is not infiltrated by a Govt agency, education system etc and is open
source the the point that a backdoor is impossible.  That would be a
very tall order tho.  Sometimes people with bad intentions get in
despite all the effort to exclude them. 

This is one reason I'm considering splitting off certain directories
that are encrypted.  Thing is, is there one that isn't already hackable
by groups such as the NSA or folks in China etc??  Would we really ever
know if they could or not?? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[J. Roeleveld]

On December 9, 2018 6:23:07 PM UTC, "taii...@gmx.com"  wrote:
>On 12/07/2018 06:47 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:
>>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
 If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
 you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:

    CPU_FLAGS_X86=""

 and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
 CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
 default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.

>>>
>>> What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.
>> 
>> If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set it to
>an
>> empty string, you should be able to see which packages make use of
>the
>> default flags (like sse and sse2.)
>> 
>> Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages you
>have
>> installed that make use of these flags.
>> 
>> 
>>> One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When
>finished,
>>> I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory
>all
>>> on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in
>upgrading to
>>> a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to
>build?
>>> I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is
>likely
>>> overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working
>just
>>> fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
>>> other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
>>> more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with
>one?
>
>Since the AM3+ and its C32/G34 Opteron counterparts are the last and
>best x86 cpus without ME/PSP I would say you are better off with what
>you have - the best piledriver cpus like the FX-8350+ are still able to
>play the latest games and in a VM via IOMMU-GFX if you want.
>
>In any case I would consider a OpenPOWER (ppc64/ppc64le) arch system
>(like the blackbird or talos 2) as an upgrade path instead of any
>futher
>x86 stuff as there aren't any black boxes, there is
>documentation+firmware sources and the cpus are made in usa.

Made in USA isn't necessarily a good thing when talking about not wanting any 
hidden back doors.
Not sure which country would be a reliable location though, I wouldn't trust 
Western European countries either.

--
Joost
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[taii...@gmx.com]

On 12/07/2018 06:47 PM, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
>>> you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:
>>>
>>>    CPU_FLAGS_X86=""
>>>
>>> and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
>>> CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
>>> default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.
>>>
>>
>> What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.
> 
> If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set it to an
> empty string, you should be able to see which packages make use of the
> default flags (like sse and sse2.)
> 
> Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages you have
> installed that make use of these flags.
> 
> 
>> One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When finished,
>> I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all
>> on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to
>> a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to build?
>> I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is likely
>> overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working just
>> fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
>> other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
>> more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with one?

Since the AM3+ and its C32/G34 Opteron counterparts are the last and
best x86 cpus without ME/PSP I would say you are better off with what
you have - the best piledriver cpus like the FX-8350+ are still able to
play the latest games and in a VM via IOMMU-GFX if you want.

In any case I would consider a OpenPOWER (ppc64/ppc64le) arch system
(like the blackbird or talos 2) as an upgrade path instead of any futher
x86 stuff as there aren't any black boxes, there is
documentation+firmware sources and the cpus are made in usa.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Saturday, 8 December 2018 09:40:20 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Hello David,
> 
> On Saturday, 8 December 2018 05:38:17 GMT David Haller wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, David Haller wrote:
> > >On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
> > >>Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > >>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
> > >>> the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
> > >>> once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
> > >>
> > >>That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
> > >>frequency tho.  Did I miss it?
> > >
> > >Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)
> > 
> > Made a little patch (drawn from the gkfreq-2.0 source) to make updates
> > not quite that often (I barely could read them)...
> > 
> > Patch + updated ebuild attached. Have fun.
> 
> I tried this but got an error "/usr/local/portage/x11-plugins/gkrellm-
> gkfreq-2.4.ebuild: does not seem to have a valid PORTDIR structure"
> 
> I have another local overlay in /usr/local/portage/app-admin/localepurge
> which operates as expected, so what am I missing?

Sorry - I had an error in my local tree. Please ignore this.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Peter Humphrey]

Hello David,

On Saturday, 8 December 2018 05:38:17 GMT David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, David Haller wrote:
> >On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
> >>Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
> >>> the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
> >>> once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
> >>
> >>That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
> >>frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 
> >
> >Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)
> 
> Made a little patch (drawn from the gkfreq-2.0 source) to make updates
> not quite that often (I barely could read them)...
> 
> Patch + updated ebuild attached. Have fun.

I tried this but got an error "/usr/local/portage/x11-plugins/gkrellm-
gkfreq-2.4.ebuild: does not seem to have a valid PORTDIR structure"

I have another local overlay in /usr/local/portage/app-admin/localepurge which 
operates as expected, so what am I missing?

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>On 08/12/2018 07:33, David Haller wrote:
>> *Meh*
>> 
>> I miss my Matrox Mystique (first model w/170MHz RAMDAC!) with a
>> whopping 4 MB SGRAM, and not even a heatsink, just the plain naked
>> chip, much less a fan, and it ran in a PCI slot, at about ~4.5W (or
>> was it 5W?) theoretical max usage...
>
>As it happens, I had the exact same card! Well, almost. I had the 2MB
>version. There was a 2MB module that you could use to upgrade to a total of
>4MB, but I was never able to find it anywhere. And there was no "online
>shopping" back then. As result, I was only able to play Tomb Raider 1 at
>512x384 instead of 640x480 :-)

from a lilo.conf back when:

append="video=matrox:vesa:789 ..."

best 2D ever, eh? The con is noticeably much slower on nvidia than
with that matrox at any resolution (from "normal" to whatever)... Oh,
and I could play "Descent" just fine at 800x600 or so. Got sorta dizzy
the first hour or so, but once adjusted, wow, *that's* a 3D game! And
still is! :) I still like to play it (as d1x, patched for max
ammo[1]/energy/shield *hrhrhr* I play alone and for fun, not for
setting records ;) I also patch BfWesnoth in the same vein... *eg*

*ARGH* I should get meself a github account and polish and submit some
of my local patches / new ebuilds ... No, not those "cheating" patches :)
Just e.g. stuff that makes stuff optional for libreoffice... *gnarf*

-dnh

[1] for the gauss, signed short, IIRC.

-- 
 / "When it works, it is just biding its time waiting for  \
 \ a more inconvenient time for it to fail."  -- Joe Moore /

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
>David Haller wrote:
>> On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
>>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
 Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
 the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
 once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
>>> That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
>>> frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 
>> Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)
>
>Oh man.  They added a lot of plugins since I last looked.  I couldn't
>find the one you mentioned but I did find gkrellm-cpupower which seems
>to be it.  Maybe they changed a name recently???

Nah, cpupower seems to be even older that gkfreq, but that is also at
least from 2010 ;) IIRC I found it linked from the gkrellm homepage.

>Thing about that, it takes up way to much room to display. I could
>check it on occasion but I wouldn't want to leave it up there all the
>time. 

You can configure it! But cpupower seems to take at least a
line/CPU-Core. BTW it seems you have to restart gkrellm to have
cpupower update it's config, unlike most other plugins (e.g. gkfreq ;)

>Thanks for the tip tho.  I'm going to check into the other plugins that
>might be nifty to have. 

gkfreq can be configured that it just shows one line (e.g. "Max",
which is how I have it), and which suits me. Oh and with that slower
update-rate in my other follow-up with the patch.

Check both out. You can use both cpupower and gkfreq for testing and
keep whichever you like better ;)

-dnh

-- 
[David hat Thomas einen Geologen genannt]
>Ich bastle auch schon an der Bombe fuer David :-)) 
*JAUL* *duck* *fluecht* *eingrab* *Ach nee, das bringt bei nem
Geo_PHYSIKER_ ja nix* *Heul* *UFO kaper*  
   [Thomas Hertweck und  Haller in suse-talk]

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/12/2018 07:33, David Haller wrote:

*Meh*

I miss my Matrox Mystique (first model w/170MHz RAMDAC!) with a
whopping 4 MB SGRAM, and not even a heatsink, just the plain naked
chip, much less a fan, and it ran in a PCI slot, at about ~4.5W (or
was it 5W?) theoretical max usage...


As it happens, I had the exact same card! Well, almost. I had the 2MB 
version. There was a 2MB module that you could use to upgrade to a total 
of 4MB, but I was never able to find it anywhere. And there was no 
"online shopping" back then. As result, I was only able to play Tomb 
Raider 1 at 512x384 instead of 640x480 :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>> On 08/12/2018 03:01, Dale wrote:
>>> I just noticed the video card that is coming requires a power cable.  I
>>> never had one that powerful before.  O_O
>> You've been out of the loop it seems. GPUs have required power cables for
>> over a decade now. The GPU I use actually needs *two* power cables and places
>> a minimum wattage requirement on the power supply... :-P
> *Meh*
>
> I miss my Matrox Mystique (first model w/170MHz RAMDAC!) with a
> whopping 4 MB SGRAM, and not even a heatsink, just the plain naked
> chip, much less a fan, and it ran in a PCI slot, at about ~4.5W (or
> was it 5W?) theoretical max usage...
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Mystique
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MatroxMystique2MBcard.jpg
>
> I only replaced that ~10yearish ago because my new screen had a
> whopping 1280x1024 on 17", which those 4MB just won't do at decent
> bit-depth... *sigh* For 1152x864 on the CRT it was still good, but
> that screen just got too dark to see anything at all, so I had to
> replace it. Got a nice (expensiveish) PVA-TFT. Still very nice after
> ~10 years, even with CCFL it has darkend only minimally[1] :) And yes,
> I'm still fine with 1280x1024 on 17", TYVM :) I could even set up the
> spare monitor (same size/res) alongside, but I just don't need it.
>
> Now, I've got (again) a passive GPU for PCIe (max. 75W) w/o extra
> power. Main reason: the latest had a fan, which started to scream. As
> in almost not running. Cleaning did not help. So... No fan, no sound,
> and cleaning a heatsink is easy, as opposed to cleaning a fan +
> heatsink combo. And besides, a downward-facing heatsink does not
> tend to clog up as one that has a fan blowing onto it...
>
> -dnh, *darn* Time to clean-out the CPU-heatsink once again too :(
> CPU-temp and fan-speed are still ok though.
>
> [1] I started with IIRC ~30-40% "brightness" as preferred setting, and
> am now at ~40-50%... Which is good for a 10yr+ old CCFL, eh? :)
>


I have some old cards like that too.  One I had given to me and the heat
sink fell off of it before I got it.  I could see the glue that was left
behind and I stuck a new one on there and used it for a long time. 
Later, I added a fan.  It got warm but not hot.  Still, I like to run
things as cool as possible.  The fan ran at a low speed so no noise.

I was digging around the other day and found a couple cards that used to
be used for adding a mouse.  That is a pretty old card.  Of course, I
don't have any working systems that I can plug any of that into.  I'm
actually throwing away old systems that no longer even beep on power up,
which is a lot.  I also found a mid 90's mobo. I think the max ram was
1MBs.  Heck, almost all hard drives have more cache than that nowadays.

How far we have come computer wise.  I've got more memory than I used to
have in hard drive space, even when having more than one drive in a rig.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, David Haller wrote:
>On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
>>Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
>>> the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
>>> once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
>>
>>That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
>>frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 
>
>Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)

Made a little patch (drawn from the gkfreq-2.0 source) to make updates
not quite that often (I barely could read them)...

Patch + updated ebuild attached. Have fun.

-dnh

-- 
And 1.1.81 is officially BugFree(tm), so if you receive any bug-reports
on it, you know they are just evil lies."
(By Linus Torvalds, linus.torva...@cs.helsinki.fi)# Copyright 1999-2018 Gentoo Authors
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

EAPI=6

inherit gkrellm-plugin toolchain-funcs

DESCRIPTION="CPU frequency plugin for gkrellm2"
HOMEPAGE="https://sourceforge.net/projects/gkrellm-gkfreq/;
SRC_URI="mirror://sourceforge/${PN}/${P}.tar.gz"
LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"
IUSE=""
RDEPEND="app-admin/gkrellm:2[X]"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}"

PATCHES=( "${FILESDIR}/gkrellm-gkfreq-2.4-dont_update_too_much.patch" )
diff -purN -x '*~' a/gkrellm-gkfreq.c b/gkrellm-gkfreq.c
--- a/gkrellm-gkfreq.c	2014-12-23 14:23:13.0 +0100
+++ b/gkrellm-gkfreq.c	2018-12-08 05:58:49.732739849 +0100
@@ -172,6 +172,9 @@ static gint panel_expose_event(GtkWidget
 static void update_plugin() {
   gint i;
   
+  // dont do it too much...
+  if ((GK.timer_ticks % 10) != 0) return;
+
   // Get all CPU frequencies and calculate max, avg & min
   for (i=0; i

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

David Haller wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
>>> the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
>>> once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
>> That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
>> frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 
> Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)
>
> HTH,
> -dnh
>

Oh man.  They added a lot of plugins since I last looked.  I couldn't
find the one you mentioned but I did find gkrellm-cpupower which seems
to be it.  Maybe they changed a name recently???  Thing about that, it
takes up way to much room to display. I could check it on occasion but I
wouldn't want to leave it up there all the time. 

Thanks for the tip tho.  I'm going to check into the other plugins that
might be nifty to have. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Sat, 08 Dec 2018, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>On 08/12/2018 03:01, Dale wrote:
>> I just noticed the video card that is coming requires a power cable.  I
>> never had one that powerful before.  O_O
>
>You've been out of the loop it seems. GPUs have required power cables for
>over a decade now. The GPU I use actually needs *two* power cables and places
>a minimum wattage requirement on the power supply... :-P

*Meh*

I miss my Matrox Mystique (first model w/170MHz RAMDAC!) with a
whopping 4 MB SGRAM, and not even a heatsink, just the plain naked
chip, much less a fan, and it ran in a PCI slot, at about ~4.5W (or
was it 5W?) theoretical max usage...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrox_Mystique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MatroxMystique2MBcard.jpg

I only replaced that ~10yearish ago because my new screen had a
whopping 1280x1024 on 17", which those 4MB just won't do at decent
bit-depth... *sigh* For 1152x864 on the CRT it was still good, but
that screen just got too dark to see anything at all, so I had to
replace it. Got a nice (expensiveish) PVA-TFT. Still very nice after
~10 years, even with CCFL it has darkend only minimally[1] :) And yes,
I'm still fine with 1280x1024 on 17", TYVM :) I could even set up the
spare monitor (same size/res) alongside, but I just don't need it.

Now, I've got (again) a passive GPU for PCIe (max. 75W) w/o extra
power. Main reason: the latest had a fan, which started to scream. As
in almost not running. Cleaning did not help. So... No fan, no sound,
and cleaning a heatsink is easy, as opposed to cleaning a fan +
heatsink combo. And besides, a downward-facing heatsink does not
tend to clog up as one that has a fan blowing onto it...

-dnh, *darn* Time to clean-out the CPU-heatsink once again too :(
CPU-temp and fan-speed are still ok though.

[1] I started with IIRC ~30-40% "brightness" as preferred setting, and
am now at ~40-50%... Which is good for a 10yr+ old CCFL, eh? :)

-- 
 "Waking up this morning was a pointless act of masochism" -- Girl

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[David Haller]

Hello,

On Fri, 07 Dec 2018, Dale wrote:
>Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at
>> the side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at
>> once. I've been using it for donkeys' years.
>
>That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
>frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 

Nope. Try your local x11-plugins/gkrellm-gkfreq, see attachment ;)

HTH,
-dnh

-- 
Keep me informed on the behaviour of this kernel..  As the "BugFree(tm)"
series didn't turn out too well, I'm starting a new series called the
"ItWorksForMe(tm)" series, of which this new kernel is yet another
shining example.-- Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.29# Copyright 1999-2018 Gentoo Authors
# Distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2

EAPI=6

inherit gkrellm-plugin toolchain-funcs

DESCRIPTION="CPU frequency plugin for gkrellm2"
HOMEPAGE="https://sourceforge.net/projects/gkrellm-gkfreq/;
SRC_URI="mirror://sourceforge/${PN}/${P}.tar.gz"
LICENSE="GPL-2"
SLOT="0"
KEYWORDS="~amd64 ~x86"
IUSE=""
RDEPEND="app-admin/gkrellm:2[X]"
DEPEND="${RDEPEND}"

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 08/12/2018 03:01, Dale wrote:
>> I just noticed the video card that is coming requires a power cable.  I
>> never had one that powerful before.  O_O
>
> You've been out of the loop it seems. GPUs have required power cables
> for over a decade now. The GPU I use actually needs *two* power cables
> and places a minimum wattage requirement on the power supply... :-P
>
>
>


I've seen them before, online of course, I've just never owned one. Keep
in mind, Kpatience and watching TV from my computer is about as tough as
it gets on my video card.  Until a year or so ago, it was just
Kaptience.  Watching TV does put a bit of a load on the current card but
it works fine even in HD.

I found the card used on ebay.  I think $70.00 is the most I've ever
spent on a video card, even a new one.  That said, the biggest reason
I'm getting a newer card is not because I need the power, I just want
newer and more stable drivers.  My current card uses old drivers.  I've
ran into a couple bad ones recently.  I'm hoping the newer drivers will
be supported better.  They may not but I'm hoping.  Old card uses 340
drivers.  New card can use 410 or 415 drivers.  I might add, the current
card has a LOT of hours on it.  I'm surprised the fan still spins at
all.  Since I plan to keep it as a spare, I'm going to try to find a new
cooling system, either new heat sink or fan or both. 

I found the power supply box and pretty sure I have the right cable. The
ends look right at least.  We'll see when it gets here I guess.

Maybe I can play some sort of game when it gets here.  Hm, I'd
rather have a remote to control the videos on the TV that play from my
puter tho.  Heck, pause, skip forward/reverse would be handy. 

I'm getting up with the big dogs now.  ROFLBO

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 08/12/2018 03:01, Dale wrote:

I just noticed the video card that is coming requires a power cable.  I
never had one that powerful before.  O_O


You've been out of the loop it seems. GPUs have required power cables 
for over a decade now. The GPU I use actually needs *two* power cables 
and places a minimum wattage requirement on the power supply... :-P

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Friday, 7 December 2018 12:41:06 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Peter Humphrey wrote:
>>> On Friday, 7 December 2018 00:19:24 GMT Dale wrote:
 Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just
> fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.
 Got it.  I did some digging but I found it.  I had to add a tab and then
 add it to that.  I also found the options as well.  There are tons of
 things to monitor in there.  Right now, my current CPU is dead on.  It
 reads 3200.  Now when I upgrade, I know where to go look.  I can also
 compare to what cpuinfo says too.
>>> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at the
>>> side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at once. I've
>>> been using it for donkeys' years.
>> That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
>> frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 
> No, I've not seen it either. I see what you mean about adding tabs and 
> digging 
> in KSysGuard. My frequency is varying around 3380, which is pretty near the 
> nominal 3300.
>
> Thanks for showing me this, Dale.
>

Hey, we helping each other here.  LOL  At least I'm pretty sure my puter
isn't going to blow up when I swap CPUs.  lol  I also seem to have a
pretty decent rig here or will after the upgrades anyway.  Found out fan
is here tomorrow, 8TB hard drive Monday and video card is still pending,
could be Monday or Tuesday since it isn't far away. 

I just noticed the video card that is coming requires a power cable.  I
never had one that powerful before.  O_O 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
>>> you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:
>>>
>>>    CPU_FLAGS_X86=""
>>>
>>> and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
>>> CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
>>> default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.
>>>
>>
>> What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.
>
> If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set it to
> an empty string, you should be able to see which packages make use of
> the default flags (like sse and sse2.)
>
> Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages you have
> installed that make use of these flags.
>
>

I'm pretty sure I tried it empty as well.  On one hand, it makes sense
that it only affects video type packages since those are mostly about
video stuff, right?  I'd never thought about it before.  I just always
get the info from that gcc command or the cpu flag tool and put them
in.  I never paid any attention to what packages it affected. 


>> One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When finished,
>> I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all
>> on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to
>> a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to build?
>> I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is likely
>> overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working just
>> fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
>> other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
>> more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with one?
>
> If you don't play video games, it's fine

Since my mobo will be the oldest part, I may keep a eye out for a sale
on them, after the holidays maybe.  If I find one, buy it and just stick
it on the shelf in case I need it.  I replaced the power supply just a
few years ago.  It should be fine for a while longer.  Still, I may can
catch one of those on sale too.  ;-)  If I keep going with this, I'll be
looking for a case too. ROFL 

According to the tracking, my CPU fan should be here tomorrow.  That's
what I'm waiting for.  I got the CPU several days ago.  May get busy
tomorrow or Sunday.  o_O

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 07/12/2018 09:30, Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:

   CPU_FLAGS_X86=""

and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.



What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.


If you comment it out, it will have default values. If you set it to an 
empty string, you should be able to see which packages make use of the 
default flags (like sse and sse2.)


Note it's a pretend emerge (-p). Just to check which packages you have 
installed that make use of these flags.




One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When finished,
I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all
on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to
a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to build?
I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is likely
overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working just
fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with one?


If you don't play video games, it's fine.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday, 7 December 2018 12:41:06 GMT Dale wrote:
> Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > On Friday, 7 December 2018 00:19:24 GMT Dale wrote:
> >> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> >>> I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just
> >>> fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.
> >> 
> >> Got it.  I did some digging but I found it.  I had to add a tab and then
> >> add it to that.  I also found the options as well.  There are tons of
> >> things to monitor in there.  Right now, my current CPU is dead on.  It
> >> reads 3200.  Now when I upgrade, I know where to go look.  I can also
> >> compare to what cpuinfo says too.
> > 
> > Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at the
> > side of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at once. I've
> > been using it for donkeys' years.
> 
> That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
> frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 

No, I've not seen it either. I see what you mean about adding tabs and digging 
in KSysGuard. My frequency is varying around 3380, which is pretty near the 
nominal 3300.

Thanks for showing me this, Dale.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Friday, 7 December 2018 00:19:24 GMT Dale wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just
>>> fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.
>> Got it.  I did some digging but I found it.  I had to add a tab and then
>> add it to that.  I also found the options as well.  There are tons of
>> things to monitor in there.  Right now, my current CPU is dead on.  It
>> reads 3200.  Now when I upgrade, I know where to go look.  I can also
>> compare to what cpuinfo says too. 
> Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at the side 
> of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at once. I've been using 
> it for donkeys' years.
>

That's what I generally use.  I don't see a place for it to show the CPU
frequency tho.  Did I miss it? 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Alec Ten Harmsel]

On Fri, Dec 07, 2018 at 01:30:48AM -0600, Dale wrote:
> 
> One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When finished,
> I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all
> on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to
> a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to build? 
> I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is likely
> overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working just
> fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
> other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
> more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with one?
> 
> Thanks to all for the help on this. 
> 
> Dale
> 
> :-)  :-) 
> 

IMO that's totally fine. I just built a new rig to use for programming
and some "light" gaming and it's not even that good. My specs are AMD
Ryzen 5 1600 (6 core, 3.2 GHz) and 16GB RAM.

This replaced a rig that was 7 years old that had a better CPU (Intel
3930K) and more RAM (32GB) :D.

Alec

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Peter Humphrey]

On Friday, 7 December 2018 00:19:24 GMT Dale wrote:
> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

> > I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just
> > fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.
> 
> Got it.  I did some digging but I found it.  I had to add a tab and then
> add it to that.  I also found the options as well.  There are tons of
> things to monitor in there.  Right now, my current CPU is dead on.  It
> reads 3200.  Now when I upgrade, I know where to go look.  I can also
> compare to what cpuinfo says too. 

Have you tried gkrellm? It's very neat. Sits in a vertical strip at the side 
of your screen and shows a whole load of things all at once. I've been using 
it for donkeys' years.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 07/12/2018 07:10, Dale wrote:
>> Now this is odd.  I changed the settings and ran emerge.  I decided to
>> use -UDNa options to see if it would catch the changes.  It did.  Thing
>> is, outside a few video type packages, there were no packages to be
>> rebuilt.  It seems very few packages actually notice those settings.
>
> That's correct. Some software has compile-time flags to enable/disable
> specific CPU features. The ebuilds for that software use CPU_FLAGS_X86
> to enable the relevant compile-time flags.
>
> Most software doesn't contain low-level assembly code. Software that
> does usually deals with video, audio or graphics, where hand crafted
> low-level optimizations by the developers make sense.
>
> If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected,
> you need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:
>
>   CPU_FLAGS_X86=""
>
> and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because
> CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by
> default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.
>

What I did, I commented out the whole line and ran it that way.  I also
tried other settings too.  It didn't list much but all of it was video
related stuff regardless of the setting.  I didn't see anything that
should affect booting or even logging into KDE itself.  I may not be
able to watch videos but I should have a bootable OS and a working GUI
as well it would seem.  Or am I missing something?  It sounds right. 


>
>> My only question left, will those flags affect the kernel image itself?
>> I may just have to make sure my USB stick works.
>
> No. The kernel configuration is completely separate from anything in
> make.conf. CFLAGS or CPU_FLAGS_X86 do not affect kernel builds.
>
>
>


That sounds good.  If the above is true then I should have a bootable
kernel, a bootable OS and most likely a working GUI.  Things like ffmpeg
and mplayer may not work but that can be fixed after the new CPU is
installed.  I'll have the correct flags from the CPU itself at that
point.  Plus it will compile faster anyway.  ;-) 

This is starting to sound good.  All this upgrading and the hardest part
is going to be the hardware itself.  Yeppie!!

Still can't believe LVM is going to be that easy.  I found a howto
someone sent me and read it too.  It still sounds to easy.  Something
has to go wrong here.  Lightening coming out the hard drive or
something.  ROFL  I have Grant's email on standby.  He included a list
of commands.  :-) 

One last question for anyone who has done this recently.  When finished,
I'll have a FX-8350 CPU with 8 cores at 4.0/4.2GHz, 32GBs of memory all
on a Gigabyte 970 series mobo.  Would there be any point in upgrading to
a whole new rig or is what I have about as fast is reasonable to build? 
I don't do gaming or anything.  Even the GTX 650 video card is likely
overkill for what I do here.  The older 200 series card is working just
fine.  On one hand, my current build is several years old.  On the
other, computers seem to have reached their peak.  I'm sure there is
more powerful systems out there but would I be any better off with one?

Thanks to all for the help on this. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 07/12/2018 07:10, Dale wrote:

Now this is odd.  I changed the settings and ran emerge.  I decided to
use -UDNa options to see if it would catch the changes.  It did.  Thing
is, outside a few video type packages, there were no packages to be
rebuilt.  It seems very few packages actually notice those settings.


That's correct. Some software has compile-time flags to enable/disable 
specific CPU features. The ebuilds for that software use CPU_FLAGS_X86 
to enable the relevant compile-time flags.


Most software doesn't contain low-level assembly code. Software that 
does usually deals with video, audio or graphics, where hand crafted 
low-level optimizations by the developers make sense.


If you want to see all of the installed packages that are affected, you 
need to set CPU_FLAGS_X86 to an empty string:


  CPU_FLAGS_X86=""

and then do "emerge -puDN --with-bdeps=y @world". This is because 
CPU_FLAGS_X86 is not empty by default. It contains sse and sse2 by 
default, because these are supported by all 64-bit CPUs.




My only question left, will those flags affect the kernel image itself?
I may just have to make sure my USB stick works.


No. The kernel configuration is completely separate from anything in 
make.conf. CFLAGS or CPU_FLAGS_X86 do not affect kernel builds.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 07/12/2018 01:23, Dale wrote:
>> Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
>>> On 06/12/2018 23:45, Dale wrote:
>> I also sometimes convert videos which can get CPU and/or memory hungry.
>
> Video encoding is one of the prime example where more cores will scale
> very well. You can almost halve encoding time by doubling the amount
> of cores.
>
>
>> I use the sensors built into the kernel.  Last time I tried lm-sensors,
>> I couldn't get it to work right.
>
> I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just
> fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.
>
>
>


Got it.  I did some digging but I found it.  I had to add a tab and then
add it to that.  I also found the options as well.  There are tons of
things to monitor in there.  Right now, my current CPU is dead on.  It
reads 3200.  Now when I upgrade, I know where to go look.  I can also
compare to what cpuinfo says too. 

Thanks much.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 07/12/2018 01:23, Dale wrote:

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:

On 06/12/2018 23:45, Dale wrote:

I also sometimes convert videos which can get CPU and/or memory hungry.


Video encoding is one of the prime example where more cores will scale 
very well. You can almost halve encoding time by doubling the amount of 
cores.




I use the sensors built into the kernel.  Last time I tried lm-sensors,
I couldn't get it to work right.


I don't use lm-sensors either. KSysGuard sees the kernel sensors just 
fine without it. You just need to add them in the KSysGuard options.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 06/12/2018 23:45, Dale wrote:
>>>
>>> You won't get anything close to double the speed. The extra cores will
>>> mostly go unused, unless you use applications that make use of them.
>>>
>>> You will still get a speed up due to the newer CPU architecture and
>>> the higher frequency.
>>
>> What I was thinking about is something like when compiling and all the
>> cores are used.  In other words, CPU is at max load.  Right now, I have
>> only 4 cores.  New CPU doubles that and each core is faster as well.  As
>> a example, Firefox takes about a hour to compile.  I was hopeful that
>> would drop to 30 or 35 minutes or so.
>
> Oh that. Yeah, there will be a 2x speedup when emerging packages
> (MAKEOPTS="-j8"). I was referring to application performance when
> using the machine. I don't consider package installation as "using the
> machine" :-)
>
>

Well, one thing I been doing that uses a LOT of memory and CPU, scanning
images and editing them in Gimp.  The biggest problem was Dolphin and
its memory leak, which at the time I didn't realize was abnormal.  At
one point, just opening the directory with a lot of large images made
Dolphin go crazy with memory usage.  I've since realized that Dolphin
has a bug.  Still, having 32GBs of ram is better since I can now compile
Firefox and others in tmpfs instead of on the hard drive.  That said,
Gimp uses quite a bit CPU power at times too.  I also sometimes convert
videos which can get CPU and/or memory hungry. 


>>> The two speeds specify the lower and upper speeds, depending on how
>>> many CPU cores are currently being under load, and also how much load
>>> there is. You don't have to worry about it though. It's all automatic.
>>> [...]
>>
>> That's good to know.  That I was wondering about and couldn't find a
>> clear answer on.  I didn't know if I needed to install something to
>> manage that or what.
>
> The kernel takes care of that. You should be able to observe the CPU's
> frequency and temperature in KSysGuard. Here's how it looks here:
>
>   https://i.imgur.com/Xogy3h0.png
>
> In that screenshot, the CPU has all 4 cores clocked down to 1.6GHz
> because they're all mostly idle. Once there's high CPU load, it will
> crank up the clocks towards 4GHz.
>
> You need to add these sensors manually to KSysGuard though. But if you
> do, it's a good way to verify things are working as intended.
>
>
>


I use the sensors built into the kernel.  Last time I tried lm-sensors,
I couldn't get it to work right.  I enabled and recompiled the kernel
with the needed drivers and I haven't had any trouble since.  That was
on a previous rig too.  I guess I can cat /proc/cpuinfo to see if it is
working as well.  As long as I can see it is working as it should, I'm
not going to worry about checking it much.  I use gkrellm to monitor my
stuff.  I do check Ksysguard at times tho. 

Right now, I'm waiting on a new fan for my CPU.  I noticed when I turned
the rig back on last time, it was slow to get going.  I had to give it a
little push with my finger.  Since it has a lot of hours on it, I oiled
it a bit to help it along temporarily and ordered a new fan.  I plan to
clean the CPU cooler real good, replace the fan and upgrade the CPU all
at one time.  Then the video card and hard drive stuff after that. 

What I'm doing, upgrading to almost a new system.  I have a Gigabyte 970
mobo.  With the new CPU, video card, memory and such, I should get
several more years unless something burns out.  Looking at newer stuff,
I'm not sure it is worth building a whole new rig at this point. 
Computers seem to have sort of peeked unless you spend lots of money.  I
just wonder what will come next that gives a whole new generation of
computing.  It seems clock speed has pretty much reached its limit or
something. 

Dale

:-)  :-)

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/12/2018 23:45, Dale wrote:


You won't get anything close to double the speed. The extra cores will
mostly go unused, unless you use applications that make use of them.

You will still get a speed up due to the newer CPU architecture and
the higher frequency.


What I was thinking about is something like when compiling and all the
cores are used.  In other words, CPU is at max load.  Right now, I have
only 4 cores.  New CPU doubles that and each core is faster as well.  As
a example, Firefox takes about a hour to compile.  I was hopeful that
would drop to 30 or 35 minutes or so.


Oh that. Yeah, there will be a 2x speedup when emerging packages 
(MAKEOPTS="-j8"). I was referring to application performance when using 
the machine. I don't consider package installation as "using the 
machine" :-)




The two speeds specify the lower and upper speeds, depending on how
many CPU cores are currently being under load, and also how much load
there is. You don't have to worry about it though. It's all automatic.
[...]


That's good to know.  That I was wondering about and couldn't find a
clear answer on.  I didn't know if I needed to install something to
manage that or what.


The kernel takes care of that. You should be able to observe the CPU's 
frequency and temperature in KSysGuard. Here's how it looks here:


  https://i.imgur.com/Xogy3h0.png

In that screenshot, the CPU has all 4 cores clocked down to 1.6GHz 
because they're all mostly idle. Once there's high CPU load, it will 
crank up the clocks towards 4GHz.


You need to add these sensors manually to KSysGuard though. But if you 
do, it's a good way to verify things are working as intended.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Dale]

Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
> On 06/12/2018 11:27, Dale wrote:
>>
>> I've bought but not yet installed a FX-8350 CPU.  I have this in my
>> make.conf file:
>>
>> CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
>> USE_CPU="
>
> USE_CPU does not do anything, AFAICT. CPU features are specified in
> CPU_FLAGS_X86. You can get appropriate flags using the
> app-portage/cpuid2cpuflags tool. For example, here:
>
> $ cpuid2cpuflags
> CPU_FLAGS_X86: aes avx mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1
> sse4_2 ssse3
>
> So in my make.conf, I use:
>
> CPU_FLAGS_X86="aes avx mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1
> sse4_2 ssse3"
>
>

I was wondering if those are used anymore.  I did that a long time
ago.  Things change.  After I do the swap, I'll get the settings up to
date.  No need changing things now just to change them again later. 
Besides, the current settings may be better when I install the new one. 
I did have the correct one in make.conf but didn't notice it to post.  I
did comment out the old unused one tho.  The current setting is this:

CPU_FLAGS_X86="3dnow 3dnowext mmx mmxext popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4a"

I'll update that when I get the new CPU installed.  I already have
cpuid2cpuflags installed.  At least now I know it is the current tool to
use.  ;-) 

I wish the monthly news letter would come back to let us know about some
of these changes.  Some things don't require a news item but we still
need to know when we can remove outdated stuff and add new stuff. 


 
>> Those were put there ages ago, likely when I built and installed Gentoo
>> on this rig.  Do I need to change those to something that is compatible
>> with both CPUs and then change to the new CPU after it is installed?  Or
>> will the new CPU be close enough that it won't matter?  Right now, I
>> don't know for sure what the new CPU supports or doesn't.
>
> Just install the new CPU and run cpuid2cpuflags to see what to put in
> CPU_FLAGS_X86. You can delete USE_CPU as that doesn't seem to be used
> for anything.
>
>

Old setting gone.

>
>> While at it, going from a 4 core CPU at 3.2GHz to a 8 core CPU at
>> 4.0/4.2GHz, just how much increase can I expect?  Will it double and
>> that's about it or will it be more than that?
>
> You won't get anything close to double the speed. The extra cores will
> mostly go unused, unless you use applications that make use of them.
>
> You will still get a speed up due to the newer CPU architecture and
> the higher frequency.
>
>

What I was thinking about is something like when compiling and all the
cores are used.  In other words, CPU is at max load.  Right now, I have
only 4 cores.  New CPU doubles that and each core is faster as well.  As
a example, Firefox takes about a hour to compile.  I was hopeful that
would drop to 30 or 35 minutes or so.  I realize there is some overhead
on this so it isn't a exact thing.  I was just curious about a rough
number to expect.  I know upgrading from 16GBs of ram to 32GBs has
helped.  I tested Dolphin the other day and it still have its memory hog
issue.  At least this time I had enough memory that it didn't cause a
crash.  ;-)


>> Also, since it has two
>> speeds, will it run at the slower or faster one?  Will it depend on
>> load?  I've never had a CPU with two clock speeds like this before.
>
> The two speeds specify the lower and upper speeds, depending on how
> many CPU cores are currently being under load, and also how much load
> there is. You don't have to worry about it though. It's all automatic.
> When you're not running anything that stressed the CPU, clock speeds
> are actually lower than 4GHz (some CPUs can clock down to 1GHz or so
> when they're idle and not doing anything.) Once something CPU-heavy
> runs, it will clock up to 4.2GHz. If you run something that stresses
> all CPU cores, then it will go to 4.0GHz to avoid overheating.
>
> But again, all this is automatic.
>
>
>


That's good to know.  That I was wondering about and couldn't find a
clear answer on.  I didn't know if I needed to install something to
manage that or what.   At least now I know to install the CPU and it
will do its own thing without me having to worry about it.  BTW, I know
my video card does that too.  The processor on it varies its clock speed
by a fairly wide margin.  Speaking of, I also found a MSI GeForce GTX
650 1GB Video Card.  It is a used card but it is faster I think than my
current 220 series.  Keep in mind, my idea of gaming is Kpatience.  The
biggest load is watching TV.  ;-)

Thanks for the info.  This answers a lot of questions I had.  Makes me
hopeful that this will work like I expect. 

Dale

:-)  :-) 

[gentoo-user] Re: CPU upgrade and LVM questions.

[Nikos Chantziaras]

On 06/12/2018 11:27, Dale wrote:


I've bought but not yet installed a FX-8350 CPU.  I have this in my
make.conf file:

CFLAGS="-march=native -O2 -pipe"
USE_CPU="


USE_CPU does not do anything, AFAICT. CPU features are specified in 
CPU_FLAGS_X86. You can get appropriate flags using the 
app-portage/cpuid2cpuflags tool. For example, here:


$ cpuid2cpuflags
CPU_FLAGS_X86: aes avx mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 
sse4_2 ssse3


So in my make.conf, I use:

CPU_FLAGS_X86="aes avx mmx mmxext pclmul popcnt sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 
sse4_2 ssse3"




Those were put there ages ago, likely when I built and installed Gentoo
on this rig.  Do I need to change those to something that is compatible
with both CPUs and then change to the new CPU after it is installed?  Or
will the new CPU be close enough that it won't matter?  Right now, I
don't know for sure what the new CPU supports or doesn't.


Just install the new CPU and run cpuid2cpuflags to see what to put in 
CPU_FLAGS_X86. You can delete USE_CPU as that doesn't seem to be used 
for anything.





While at it, going from a 4 core CPU at 3.2GHz to a 8 core CPU at
4.0/4.2GHz, just how much increase can I expect?  Will it double and
that's about it or will it be more than that?


You won't get anything close to double the speed. The extra cores will 
mostly go unused, unless you use applications that make use of them.


You will still get a speed up due to the newer CPU architecture and the 
higher frequency.




Also, since it has two
speeds, will it run at the slower or faster one?  Will it depend on
load?  I've never had a CPU with two clock speeds like this before.


The two speeds specify the lower and upper speeds, depending on how many 
CPU cores are currently being under load, and also how much load there 
is. You don't have to worry about it though. It's all automatic. When 
you're not running anything that stressed the CPU, clock speeds are 
actually lower than 4GHz (some CPUs can clock down to 1GHz or so when 
they're idle and not doing anything.) Once something CPU-heavy runs, it 
will clock up to 4.2GHz. If you run something that stresses all CPU 
cores, then it will go to 4.0GHz to avoid overheating.


But again, all this is automatic.