O.k you can use hdparm to tune your IDE parameters etc, most distros allow this, and they don't make a big thing about it.
As far as i know the kernel IDE driver automatically tries to use dma on the IDE device as default. Only if the disk doesn't support it does it turn it off, which means that anybody who is using a 2.2.x based distro and a dma capable disk shouldn't have to do the above and will have decent IDE throughput. They may have to do the 32 bit IO thing though.
I have tried turning on the 32bit IO option but it doesn't seem to do much for the throughput from either the chipset or the actual disk:
With 32 bit IO:
buffer-cache-reads 105.79 MB/s buffered disk read 12.60 MB/s
Without 32 bit IO:
buffer-cache reads 105.64 MB/s buffered disk reads 12.59 MB/s
They seem to be promoting a 'feature' which is basically in EVERY 2.2.x distro, that's all.
Their blurb says about there being optimized UDMA IDE drivers as part of the distro.
How do they do that. DO they just mean that they are using a later kernel which may/may not have better support for IDE disk transfers (although the difference between 2.2.9 and 2.2.5 can't be that great ?!?!).
Or have they applied patches from else where to the kernel ??
I was wondering if someone could clarify a few points for me about PGCC, EGCS soon to be GCC-2.9.....
1) What is the connection between PGCC and EGCS. I know that PGCC is based on the EGCS code and that the improvements from PGCC are rolled back into the EGCS code base, but how do the two compare on producing optimized code for Pentium/PentiumII machines. Does PGCC have code that doesn't go back into EGCS or does, for example, EGCS 1.1.2 have all the improvements from PGCC 1.1.1 in it?
2) Has anybody done any basic benchmarking of the two ??
If anybody has any answers... then please enlighten me:))
P.S Yes, i know this isn't a mailing list or bulletin board, and the questions are slightly off topic, but please indulge me !!!
2) I seem to remember a post about Linus sorting something out that affected multiprocessor machines in the 2.3.1 pre patches and i assume this is included in the 2.3.1
If you have a uni processor machine then just sit back and enjoy the apparent speed gains whether they are real or not.:)))
I know i had problems with the rpm rpm. It didn't install or create the/usr/lib/rpm directory or the files that were in it, i simply copied the files from a 5.2 system across and all was peachy, but i haven't had it wiping out my rpm database.
Lets face it though, StarBuck was a BETA release so that long standing tinkerers like most of us are can have a good play with it and find the problems before they release 6.0 which needs to be *absolutely* rock solid if linux is going to make the required inroads in the corperate desktop market as most users won't want to have to upgrade all their machines because, as with 5.1, all the image library rpms weren't built correctly.
From now on the big distro's, SuSE, Debian, RedHat et al. are going to be under the spot light with every release they make, where as before they may have got away with not building rpms etc properly becuase a larger number of the users were linux literate and could therefore sort out the problems, with the more general interest in linux and now everybody and his mum is talking about trying linux this kinda' thing won't be exceptable.
Things are going to be interesting over the next few months.
Ok, finally sorted the problem and yet again was reminded of a valuable saying.
"ALWAYS check your kernel logs"
I've been using linux for about 2 years and so i really shouuld have this ingraved into my brain. It's the same as always checking your cabling first if something doesn't work on the hardware side.
pppd for somne strange reason is looking for a.ppprc file. By creating an empty.ppprc file in my home directory all is peachy again.
pppd has a/etc/ppp/ppp-options file which it reads from. Now all of a sudden with 2.2.6 it seems to NEED to have a.ppprc file in my home directory even though it's never needed it in the past.
I can reboot to the 2.2.5 kernel, remove the.ppprc file and it doesn't kick up a fuss about a.ppprc file not being there !!!!
Urgh... i meant 'IN' in the sense that the service was available to the kernel. Of course i tried it both as a module and compiled into the kernel with the same result and as the following post has 2.2.6 and ppp 2.3.7 working it looks like it's something else.
Having upgraded to 2.2.6 from 2.2.5 pppd(2.3.7) now reports that ppp support isn't compiled into the kernel even though lsmod says the the slhc and ppp modules are loaded.
I've checked my kernel config several times to see if i missed something out, but it all looks good.
Yes it now does iconification. It also does window shading, and it has a couple of small, clean although IMHO slightly boring looking themes provided in the distro as well. Its fast, stable, configurable, what more could you want....:)
By the way, i'm a *tad* biased as i love E to death.:-))
I've seen 3d dispersion graphs for these speakers at 500, 1000 and 7000 Hz, and they produce an almost spherical dispersion characteristic at all those frequencies. At the higher frequencies it's not quite as perfect as lower frequencies, but non the less, much better than conventional pistonic moving coil and even electrostatic speakers. You still get a small amount of cancellation at the edges of the panel but not too much.
How do i know this, cos' i've seen them working and talked to the designer, Dr. Graham Bank. I saw a DML panel of about the same size as a 19" monitor reproduce a music signal over a roughly 200Hz to 20KHz bandwidth. Pretty impressive if you ask me.
I was lucky enough to goto a seminar given this morning by Dr. Graham Bank, one of the chief design engineers at NXT, (one of the few perks of doing an Msc at Essex university in the UK).
The speakers are seriously impressive. He showed us a laptop that had a pair of the DML speakers as slideout panels behind the LCD. They were about 4 inches by 4 inches and the quality of sound is MUCH better than the usual tinny little things that are usually tacked onto laptops. You could play Quake/QuakeII and actually enjoy the sounds for a change.
They're basically a honeycomb like panel which resonates in a random manner when excited at one of it's modal points. Due to the resonance being uncorrelated the resonance of the panel doesn't effect the load the amplifier sees. It's dispersion characteristics are also a damn sight better than the normal cone. I'd expect them to take off in the home theatre area most, but you never know, car windscreens.....
Slashdot Mirror
O.k you can use hdparm to tune your IDE parameters etc, most distros allow this, and they don't make a big thing about it.
As far as i know the kernel IDE driver automatically tries to use dma on the IDE device as default. Only if the disk doesn't support it does it turn it off, which means that anybody who is using a 2.2.x based distro and a dma capable disk shouldn't have to do the above and will have decent IDE throughput. They may have to do the 32 bit IO thing though.
I have tried turning on the 32bit IO option but it doesn't seem to do much for the throughput from either the chipset or the actual disk:
With 32 bit IO:
buffer-cache-reads 105.79 MB/s
buffered disk read 12.60 MB/s
Without 32 bit IO:
buffer-cache reads 105.64 MB/s
buffered disk reads 12.59 MB/s
They seem to be promoting a 'feature' which is basically in EVERY 2.2.x distro, that's all.
Iggy
Their blurb says about there being optimized UDMA IDE drivers as part of the distro.
How do they do that. DO they just mean that they are using a later kernel which may/may not have better support for IDE disk transfers (although the difference between 2.2.9 and 2.2.5 can't be that great ?!?!).
Or have they applied patches from else where to the kernel ??
Anybody know ??
Iggy
I was wondering if someone could clarify a few points for me about PGCC, EGCS soon to be GCC-2.9.....
1) What is the connection between PGCC and EGCS. I know that PGCC is based on the EGCS code and that the improvements from PGCC are rolled back into the EGCS code base, but how do the two compare on producing optimized code for Pentium/PentiumII machines. Does PGCC have code that doesn't go back into EGCS or does, for example, EGCS 1.1.2 have all the improvements from PGCC 1.1.1 in it?
2) Has anybody done any basic benchmarking of the two ??
If anybody has any answers... then please enlighten me
P.S Yes, i know this isn't a mailing list or bulletin board, and the questions are slightly off topic, but please indulge me !!!
Iggy
If you have a multi processor machine then:
:)
:)))
1) You're a lucky bugger
2) I seem to remember a post about Linus sorting something out that affected multiprocessor machines in the 2.3.1 pre patches and i assume this is included in the 2.3.1
If you have a uni processor machine then just sit back and enjoy the apparent speed gains whether they are real or not.
Please, correct me if i'm wrong, but couldn't you
:(
use an FPGA or something similar thereby providing
reconfigurable hardware TCP.
Now that would almost certainly put the cost up and there may be security issues, i'm not too hot on FPGA's.
Anybody know if this has been tried using FPGA's somewhere else ???
Iggy
If the 6.0 release follows the rawhide beta stuff then the following applies
glibc2.1
kernel-2.2.5 or if we are lucky 2.2.6
egcs-1.1.2
GNOME libs 1.0.8
GNOME core 1.0.5
it'll probably have RPM 3.0 as well, even though it was only released today...
Don't quote me but that's a pretty good guess
I know this is probably not the best place to ask but here goes anyway.
Does anybody know of any sites here in the UK where they are doing cheap GPL disks of RedHat, SuSE, Debian etc like CheapBytes is in the US ??
I know i had problems with the rpm rpm. It didn't install or create the /usr/lib/rpm directory or the files that were in it, i simply copied the files from a 5.2 system across and all was peachy, but i haven't had it wiping out my rpm database.
Lets face it though, StarBuck was a BETA release so that long standing tinkerers like most of us are can have a good play with it and find the problems before they release 6.0 which needs to be *absolutely* rock solid if linux is going to make the required inroads in the corperate desktop market as most users won't want to have to upgrade all their machines because, as with 5.1, all the image library rpms weren't built correctly.
From now on the big distro's, SuSE, Debian, RedHat et al. are going to be under the spot light with every release they make, where as before they may have got away with not building rpms etc properly
becuase a larger number of the users were linux literate and could therefore sort out the problems, with the more general interest in linux and now everybody and his mum is talking about trying linux this kinda' thing won't be exceptable.
Things are going to be interesting over the next few months.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Ok, finally sorted the problem and yet again was reminded of a valuable saying.
.ppprc file. By creating an empty .ppprc file in my home directory all is peachy again.
/etc/ppp/ppp-options file which it reads from. Now all of a sudden with 2.2.6 it seems to NEED to have a .ppprc file in my home directory even though it's never needed it in the past.
.ppprc file and it doesn't kick up a fuss about a .ppprc file not being there !!!!
:)
"ALWAYS check your kernel logs"
I've been using linux for about 2 years and so i really shouuld have this ingraved into my brain. It's the same as always checking your cabling first if something doesn't work on the hardware side.
pppd for somne strange reason is looking for a
pppd has a
I can reboot to the 2.2.5 kernel, remove the
Go figure....
Thanks for all the various suggestions.
Iggy
I try that next. It's weird. I also had a clean patch between 2.2.5 and 2.2.6, no warnings... Compile went cleanly.
:)))
I tried recompiling ppp 2.3.7 against the 2.2.6 headers, no change....
pppd just seems to refuse to admit that there is ppp support in the kernel, it's almost as though the service isn't being registered.
Oh the joys of using linux
Funny thing is... there's absolutely *NO* way i would go back to using WinBlows...
Urgh... i meant 'IN' in the sense that the service was available to the kernel. Of course i tried it both as a module and compiled into the kernel with the same result and as the following post has 2.2.6 and ppp 2.3.7 working it looks like it's something else.
:)
Thanks anyway, i should have been clearer
Iggy
Has anybody noticed whether ppp is now broken ??
Having upgraded to 2.2.6 from 2.2.5 pppd(2.3.7) now reports that ppp support isn't compiled into the kernel even though lsmod says the the slhc and ppp modules are loaded.
I've checked my kernel config several times to see if i missed something out, but it all looks good.
Anybody had the same problem/know a fix
Yes it now does iconification. It also does window shading, and it has a couple of small, clean although IMHO slightly boring looking themes provided in the distro as well. Its fast, stable, configurable, what more could you want.... :)
:-))
By the way, i'm a *tad* biased as i love E to death.
Iggy
I've seen 3d dispersion graphs for these speakers at 500, 1000 and 7000 Hz, and they produce an almost spherical dispersion characteristic at all those frequencies. At the higher frequencies it's not quite as perfect as lower frequencies, but non the less, much better than conventional pistonic moving coil and even electrostatic speakers. You still get a small amount of cancellation at the edges of the panel but not too much.
How do i know this, cos' i've seen them working and talked to the designer, Dr. Graham Bank. I saw a DML panel of about the same size as a 19" monitor reproduce a music signal over a roughly 200Hz to 20KHz bandwidth. Pretty impressive if you ask me.
Talk about timing.
I was lucky enough to goto a seminar given this morning by Dr. Graham Bank, one of the chief design engineers at NXT, (one of the few perks of doing an Msc at Essex university in the UK).
The speakers are seriously impressive. He showed us a laptop that had a pair of the DML speakers as slideout panels behind the LCD. They were about 4 inches by 4 inches and the quality of sound is MUCH better than the usual tinny little things that are usually tacked onto laptops. You could play Quake/QuakeII and actually enjoy the sounds for a change.
They're basically a honeycomb like panel which resonates in a random manner when excited at one of it's modal points. Due to the resonance being uncorrelated the resonance of the panel doesn't effect the load the amplifier sees. It's dispersion characteristics are also a damn sight better than the normal cone. I'd expect them to take off in the home theatre area most, but you never know, car windscreens.....
Just my 2p worth
Iggy