Help with new install
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Hi,
I've come into possession of an old Intel Pentium 4 (HT) HP desktop machine - a colleague at work was upgrading some of our machines and this machine was destined for recycling and he was happy (and generous) for me to take it home. The previous OS which I believe was XP was completely wiped and all data removed before it came into my possession. I believe too that it was used as a server rather than a PC. It has an 80 GB HDD and 4 GB of RAM. I've created boot disks for Trisquel 7.0 32-bit and 64-bit versions. I booted the 64-bit version into a live session and what I've tested so far seems to work. Ethernet connection is working fine and I don't believe there is a wireless card - I may consider getting one separetly owing to the layout of my place. I have a wireless (microsoft branded) keyboard and mouse which I got from a friend who no longer needed them and I've connected it to my tv for a display. These peripherals work although I've found some keys aren't mapped correctly. For example, the pipe character results in the > character and I haven't been able to locate it. It's not mapped to the > key as you might suspect.
I appreciate this is an old machine. I found opening applications not slow but a little sluggish.
(1) Is this because it is the live cd?
(2) Does the fact the 64-bit live cd is operating that the chipset supports a 64-bit OS? Is there a command that I can use to determine this to re-assure myself?
(3) Can someone provide a checklist of tests I should perform through the live cd to see what works and what may not? I'm not new to GNU/Linux but this is my first install. My other machines I purchased pre-installed with Ubuntu (System76, stolen!) and Trisquel (Gluglug - Libreboot X60s).
(4) What would you recommend in terms of partitioning the disk to have sufficient space for the OS and the applications I may install later? I intend this machine to only run distributions of GNU/Linux-libre. Initially, Trisquel but I may consider tinkering with gNewsense and Parabola at some point. I have an old 500 GB external HDD that I have been meaning to offload and I could remove its outer casing and slot into this machine as an additional drive. But if I'm limited to the 80 GB drive how should I partition it - root 20 GB, swap 5-6 GB, home 55 GB?
I am thinking of perhaps experimenting to see if I can use this machine as my own email server, own'cloud' server, gnu social instance so any tips/advice on these subjects would be appreciated. For example should one run such things on the same server? Can one still use the machine as normal if its primary purpose is that of a server? Cheers. TIA.
re (2)
I tried this from a terminal:
$ getconf LONG_BIT
64
re (4)
I'm new to Trisquel myself, I have only a / partition of 20 GB and a /home partition of about 108 GB plus about a 4 GB swap, about as simple as it can be done. I have installed apache2 web server, mariaDB database server and a few smaller packages and I have filled 6.5 GB on the 20 GB / partition. You can use your /home partition when you install another OS, just tell the partition manager to mount it as /home (don't format). That could save some room for the future.
I too had an output of 64 with that command. Thanks too for your input on partitioning.
No. That commands retieves the configuration of the OS not the CPU. The command to know if it is 32 or 64 instruction set is:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 64
If it is, then you'll get an output of 2 lines or more (always paired; 2, 4, 6) depending on cores and threads.
You can put the output here.
>> You can use your /home partition when you install another OS, just tell the partition manager to mount it as /home (don't format). <<
Now that I've killed the NTFS partitions on my laptop, I'm intending to do this. Will it still work if I encrypt the /home partition? If so, can anyone link me to some instructions for authenticating the encrypted /home partition with the new OS?
For example, the pipe character results in the > character and I haven't been able to locate it.
See https://trisquel.info/fr/forum/how-get-keys-thinkpad-t60-german-keyboard-layout#comment-60582
I found opening applications not slow but a little sluggish.
It may be because you are using a Live CD (access to CDs are slow). If you feel the same way after the install, you may want to try Trisquel Mini.
Does the fact the 64-bit live cd is operating that the chipset supports a 64-bit OS?
Yes.
Can someone provide a checklist of tests I should perform through the live cd to see what works and what may not?
Besides graphics (3D acceleration, video decoding acceleration, etc. may not work), everything should be functional. If you buy a Wifi card, go for the only vendors that guarantee Linux-libre can perfectly drive them: http://libre.thinkpenguin.com or http://tehnoetic.com
root 20 GB, swap 5-6 GB, home 55 GB?
20 GB for / is a lot unless you plan to install several heavy games, you use applications that write a lot to /tmp (Popcorn Time for instance), etc. You can take a look at how much space you use in the root partition of your other systems (and maybe double the number to feel at ease):
$ df -h
5-6 GB for a swap partition is a lot too. When the system swaps (because the main memory is all used), it becomes close to unusable and I doubt you will have the patience to run a desktop system that uses 5-6 GB of swap. That said, if you want to suspend your system (to save energy), then be aware that the whole memory that is used is dumped to the swap partition, which must therefore be sufficiently large.
Thanks for the forum link - I'll check it out in greater detail when I've the machine up and running. Thanks too for your input on my other queries. In terms of the size of partitions I was basing it on my other machine. Perhaps, you can explain the differences between the attached screenshots. Does swap comprise everything other than the various sda partitions in the df output? The volumes don't seem to add up. Merci.
Perhaps, you can explain the differences between the attached screenshots. Does swap comprise everything other than the various sda partitions in the df output? The volumes don't seem to add up.
I guess the difference is that 'df' uses kB, MB and GB (1 kB = 1000 bytes, 1 MB = 1000 kB and 1 GB = 1000 MB), whereas GParted uses kiB, MiB and GiB (1 kiB = 1024 bytes, 1 MiB = 1024 kiB and 1 GiB = 1024 MiB). The swap partition does not have a filesystem. That is why 'df' does not list it.
>> When the system swaps (because the main memory is all used), it becomes close to unusable and I doubt you will have the patience to run a desktop system that uses 5-6 GB of swap. <<
Ah! This may explain the trouble I've been having with my laptop, a "netbook" with only 1BG RAM. I recently reinstalled Belenos with a 4GB swap and the performance has been woeful, particularly when I open a number of "web applications" in different ABrowser tabs.
Can you explain why the swap is not actually useful on a desktop system? Would I be better to use a smaller spam (say 2GB, or even 1GB)?
Laptop or desktop doesn't matter. And the size of swap doesn't matter as long as you don't run out of memory+swap.
The access times for disk (swap) are an order of magnitude slower than memory. Just like how the access to the various L caches the CPU uses are again an order of magnitude faster than RAM. In the image below (of the memory test suite that comes with Trisquel too, memtest86+) we see the sizes and speeds of various memory blocks.
So computers have a little bit of really fast memory and then larger and larger chunks of slower memory and then finally disk which are ridiculously huge these days.
When you're out of memory and have to use swap and the computer is accessing the disk like crazy and nothing seems to be happing this is called trashing.
If you intend to hibernate, you need (about) as much swap as you have memory. (The image does get compressed, so not quite as much.)
Memory is pretty cheap these days. Having said that I only have 1 gig myself and don't usually need any more. YMMV
I now have 2 HDDs for this machine to play around with. One 80GiB the other 300GiB. As previously mentioned I would like to try other free distros. Would it make sense to install these on separate partitions on the 80GiB drive and use the larger drive as my /home. My thinking/wish is that then this /home is separate from the boot partitions and available to each one (whatever the number) in a cleaner more manageable setup or is this a meaningless cobsideration. Thoughts? Many thanks.
One potential problem with that setup is different distros use different versions of packages. They might have difficulties reading the config files from each others.
Probably not a big problem but something to keep in mind in case of trouble.
Won't the config files in /home be overwritten as soon as a second distro is
installed?
I am a member!
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If you tell the distros not to format /home it should be ok.
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Yes, but the other distros must *have* access to a /home directory- and if you
direct them all to use the same /home, then as soon as another distro installs
a copy of the same program (such as utilities and programs common to all GNU
distributions) the configuration files will be overwritten.
It might work just fine. Give it a go.
I don't know why you expect that to happen, and it doesn't. There's nothing about the installation of a program that causes existing config directories to be erased like that. Such behavior would be potentially annoying and completely pointless, not to mention needlessly difficult to implement.
1) Yes
2) Yes if u didn't messed up the discs
3) Check your wireless card if it has one and if you'll use it. Also wireless mouse and keyboard if exists.
4)First, if you're going to Suspend-2-Disk, you need a swap of the same amount of your total RAM; if you won't S2D then don't make a swap partition. Second, use one HDD for the system and the other one for your /home to improve performance. Make a /boot partition (500MB), a / partition (until the end or until the swap) and a /swap partition (if needed). Make a /home partition on the entire other drive.
5) (not numbered by you, concerning as a server) No. Its power consumption is too much an such expensive in the bill. Moreover, the heat it generates is the fucking hell at home. You'll end consuming air conditioning and paying a huge bill -.-
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