9:08 p.m.
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new hardware, but I'm
having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's slightly
above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't gotten
quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
Tips and links appreciated.
10:33 p.m.
On 10/9/19 7:08 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
hardware, but
I'm having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's
slightly above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I
haven't gotten quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration
date).
Why are you finding it difficult? There is very little that isn't
compatible. Just be aware that if you go with NVidia for graphics, you
might need to use the proprietary driver. Are you looking for a desktop
or laptop? I've been putting SSDs in pretty much everything now;
laptops, desktop, and servers. The laptops just have an SSD. The
desktops use the SSD for the OS and NFS for home directories. The
servers use the SSD for the OS and spinning drives for data storage.
10:53 p.m.
Samuel Sieb writes:
On 10/9/19 7:08 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new hardware, but I'm
> having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's slightly
> above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't gotten
> quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
Why are you finding it difficult? There is very little that isn't
compatible. Just be aware that if you go with NVidia for graphics, you
might need to use the proprietary driver. Are you looking for a desktop or
laptop? I've been putting SSDs in pretty much everything now; laptops,
desktop, and servers. The laptops just have an SSD. The desktops use the
Actually I did manage to get a laptop, from linuxlaptops, with a spinning
HD this year. They do still exist.
SSD for the OS and NFS for home directories. The servers use the SSD
for
the OS and spinning drives for data storage.
I just can't get used to the concept on an expiration date on my storage.
I've got rust here that's been spinning for a decade, and I've been banging
away it, constantly. Hard. I'm told that even under constant use modern SSDs
are rated for at least several decades before they croak. I still have a
hard time (pun not intended) accepting that.
And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather not deal with.
it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org lists as not
supported. Surprisingly, Dell sells hardware with Radeon cards, but none of
the Radeon cards they list have a matching name in x.org's Radeon
compatibility chart.
I'm looking at dual-CPU tower; like I said I need all the cores to compile
my stuff. I figure about a $3K price range; and in that range I think I need
to do some due diligence, to make sure Fedora will come up on it.
11:11 p.m.
On 10/10/19 11:53 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather
not deal with. it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org lists as not
supported.
May I ask where that list is located?
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of them?
5:54 a.m.
Ed Greshko writes:
On 10/10/19 11:53 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather not deal with.
> it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org lists as not
> supported.
May I ask where that list is located?
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/
6:56 a.m.
On 10/10/19 6:54 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Ed Greshko writes:
> On 10/10/19 11:53 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>> And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather not deal
with. it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org lists as not
supported.
>
> May I ask where that list is located?
https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix/
But that is the "nouveau" driver and not the proprietary nVidia drivers.
I've not heard of any issues with the nVidia drivers.
--
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of them?
1:29 a.m.
On 10/9/19 8:53 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Actually I did manage to get a laptop, from linuxlaptops, with a
spinning HD this year. They do still exist.
That's not what I meant. Almost all laptops still come with spinning
drives, but I've been replacing them with SSDs. The laptop drives are
so incredibly slow.
I just can't get used to the concept on an expiration date on my
storage. I've got rust here that's been spinning for a decade, and I've
been banging away it, constantly. Hard. I'm told that even under
constant use modern SSDs are rated for at least several decades before
they croak. I still have a hard time (pun not intended) accepting that.
I'm not understanding what you mean here. What's wrong with several
decades?
And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather
not deal
with. it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org
lists as not supported. Surprisingly, Dell sells hardware with Radeon
cards, but none of the Radeon cards they list have a matching name in
x.org's Radeon compatibility chart.
I don't know what list you're looking at, but I think all currently
produced AMD chipsets are supported. It's not really X that matters
anyway, it's the kernel and mesa.
I'm looking at dual-CPU tower; like I said I need all the cores
to
compile my stuff. I figure about a $3K price range; and in that range I
think I need to do some due diligence, to make sure Fedora will come up
on it.
$3K is way overkill. You could get an AMD 16-core with 64GB of RAM for
much less than that. And that would even be more than you need. Most
build systems are not parallel enough to use that many cores. An 8-core
is plenty. Your biggest speed improvement would be that SSD that you
don't want to use. And if you're not wanting to play the latest hot
games, you can get the cheapest graphics card you can find.
6:03 a.m.
Samuel Sieb writes:
On 10/9/19 8:53 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> I just can't get used to the concept on an expiration date on my storage.
> I've got rust here that's been spinning for a decade, and I've been
banging
> away it, constantly. Hard. I'm told that even under constant use modern SSDs
> are rated for at least several decades before they croak. I still have a
> hard time (pun not intended) accepting that.
I'm not understanding what you mean here. What's wrong with several decades?
I've got HDDs that are already that old. They still work fine. They'll
probably work fine for just as long.
SSDs haven't been around long enough, I feel, for their claimed longevity to
be proven. And no matter what it is, SSDs have a ticking clock, counting
down towards failure. I just have a conceptual problem with hardware that's
guaranteed to fail at some point. There's no expiration date on regular HDDs.
> I'm looking at dual-CPU tower; like I said I need all the
cores to compile
> my stuff. I figure about a $3K price range; and in that range I think I need
> to do some due diligence, to make sure Fedora will come up on it.
$3K is way overkill. You could get an AMD 16-core with 64GB of RAM for much
less than that. And that would even be more than you need. Most build
Where, for example?
systems are not parallel enough to use that many cores. An 8-core is
plenty. Your biggest speed improvement would be that SSD that you don't
want to use. And if you're not wanting to play the latest hot games, you
can get the cheapest graphics card you can find.
Right. I don't need games. But I do need something that just comes up and
works in X without having to fiddle with drivers; and is good enough for
video playback.
10:52 a.m.
On Thu, 2019-10-10 at 07:03 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
SSDs haven't been around long enough, I feel, for their claimed
longevity to be proven.
While that is true, it is hard to predict future performance of a new
product.
And no matter what it is, SSDs have a ticking clock, counting down
towards failure. I just have a conceptual problem with hardware
that's guaranteed to fail at some point. There's no expiration date
on regular HDDs.
That's not true. Look at the warrantee period for a HDD, that's as
much trust in the product as the manufacturer has. Not very long.
I've had drives running for 20 years, and nary a problem. I've had
others go bung really quickly, getting unreadable sectors, or their own
generated heat is enough to make them erratic. I've got some old
drives that began to not want to start up. I had to tap on them to get
them to spin up, sometimes harder than I care to do. And you have the
greenie drives that want to spin down all the time, getting worn out by
spinning and up and down far too often.
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4:38 p.m.
On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 12:53, Tim via users <users(a)lists.fedoraproject.org>
wrote:
On Thu, 2019-10-10 at 07:03 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> SSDs haven't been around long enough, I feel, for their claimed
> longevity to be proven.
I used to work at an oceanographic institute, so many systems got
used at sea (in the North Atlantic, not the gentler parts of the Pacific
Ocean) . HDD failures were an ongoing nuisance. SSD's were clear
winners as soon as they became available. SSD failures during the
5-year replacement cycle were rare.
While that is true, it is hard to predict future performance of a new
product.
Spinning disks have many more failure modes than SSD's, so risks
of a new model turning out to have design flaws are greater for
HDD's than for SSD's.
> And no matter what it is, SSDs have a ticking clock, counting down
> towards failure. I just have a conceptual problem with hardware
> that's guaranteed to fail at some point. There's no expiration date
> on regular HDDs.
That's not true. Look at the warrantee period for a HDD, that's as
much trust in the product as the manufacturer has. Not very long.
In heavy use, HDD's often fail around the end of the warranty period,
enough so some shops just routinely replace drives at end-of-warranty.
HDD's do have predictable wear, but can last a long time with less
demanding workloads. You can say the same of SSD's, but in practice
they haven't been dramatically worse than HDD's, so the other advantages
make them a better choice for most workloads.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/consumer-grade-ssds-actually-last...
https://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-a...
5 years later and SSD's are generally offered in base models from major
vendors.
SSD's are a cheap way to reduce boot times and make a system more
responsive.
Vendors balance those advantages against failure rates.
--
George N. White III
12:28 p.m.
On 10/10/19 4:03 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Samuel Sieb writes:
> I'm not understanding what you mean here. What's wrong with several
> decades?
I've got HDDs that are already that old. They still work fine. They'll
probably work fine for just as long.
SSDs haven't been around long enough, I feel, for their claimed
longevity to be proven. And no matter what it is, SSDs have a ticking
clock, counting down towards failure. I just have a conceptual problem
with hardware that's guaranteed to fail at some point. There's no
expiration date on regular HDDs.
Regular HDDs have a ticking clock just like any other hardware. I've
had ones that lasted a decade, but I've also had ones that lasted only a
year or two. SSDs tend to have more catastrophic failure though, but
that's what RAID is for anyway.
> $3K is way overkill. You could get an AMD 16-core with 64GB of
RAM
> for much less than that. And that would even be more than you need.
> Most build
Where, for example?
I don't know where you are, but I just looked at the prices at my local
computer store.
> systems are not parallel enough to use that many cores. An
8-core is
> plenty. Your biggest speed improvement would be that SSD that you
> don't want to use. And if you're not wanting to play the latest hot
> games, you can get the cheapest graphics card you can find.
Right. I don't need games. But I do need something that just comes up
and works in X without having to fiddle with drivers; and is good enough
for video playback.
Other than NVidia, any cheap card should work. With NVidia, you might
need to install the proprietary drivers.
5:46 a.m.
On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 23:53 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
I just can't get used to the concept on an expiration date on my
storage. I've got rust here that's been spinning for a decade, and
I've been banging away it, constantly. Hard. I'm told that even under
constant use modern SSDs are rated for at least several decades
before they croak. I still have a hard time (pun not intended)
accepting that.
So do what a lot of people do. Put in a SSD *and* a HDD. Install the
OS to the SDD, get the speed where it makes booting (and other things)
fast, and its contents are less precious than your data. But store
your data on the HDD that you have more faith with (which can be /home
*and* various other parts of the directory tree).
A two drive system also gives you the benefit of safer system updates.,
as your data isn't on the drive being installed to.
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10:25 a.m.
On 10/10/19 11:53 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
I just can't get used to the concept on an expiration date on my
storage. I've got rust here that's been spinning for a decade,
FWIW, I have several systems using SSD only. The maker being Crucial. I was not an early
adopter.
I looked at the "worst" system which uses the SSD entirely and hosts several
Virtual Machine images
as well as being used for Video processing and compiles, SMART reports a power on time of
16,760 hrs. It also estimates this to be 3% of the expected lifetime. The
Reallocate_NAND_Blk_Cnt is 0.
Just like any storage component if one is concerned with potential failure the protection
against that is RAID.
Nothing stops one from using SSD in a RAID configuration and achieve the performance
advantages.
FYI, I've replaced a WD Red drive in an NFS server after just about 3 years of
operation.
At this rate it is entirely possible that my SSD drives will outlive me. :-(
--
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of them?
8:46 p.m.
On Wed, 09 Oct 2019 23:53:39 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
And Nvidia's proprietary driver is another thing I'd rather
not deal with.
it seems that most vendors ship new Nvidia chipsets that x.org lists as not
supported.
One issue with Nvidia chipsets is that Fedora works fine without the
proprietary driver but only after you've rebooted from Windows. It's
like the nouveau driver fails to initialise the hardware.
5:56 a.m.
On Wed, 9 Oct 2019 at 23:09, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam(a)courier-mta.com> wrote:
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
hardware, but
I'm
having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's slightly
above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't gotten
quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
SSD should greatly reduce compile times for large codes.
You can greatly extend the SSD expiration date by not allowing them to fill
up. Before I retired I working with a group that did remote sensing,
which
involves large amounts of data. Mechanical drives routinely failed on or
about the end of warranty, showing that the manufacturers have very good
understanding of the lifetime under heavy use. This makes stripped disk
arrays for better thruput very reliable during the warranty. SSD's should
be even better understood, and the failure modes should be easily
monitored,
so self-testing and reporting should be better than for mechanical drives.
In general, multiple CPU's only make sense if you need more cores than you
can get (or afford) on one CPU. The exception might be cases like
compiles
where there are lots of independent processes and you benefit from double
the cache, but you can also get CPU models with more cache. There are
extra costs for sockets, cooling, etc for 2 CPU systems, so in most cases
you will be better off with at least one SSD and a higher-end (more cores
and
more cache) single CPU. Intel is like automakers who try to get you to buy
features you don't really need. They can charge more for higher CPU clock
speeds than the increase thruput warrants. For the remote sensing
workloads
it was better to buy cheaper CPU's and spend more on mass storage.
Phoronix.com has lots of linux benchmark results that include compiles.
--
George N. White III
7:14 a.m.
George N. White III writes:
In general, multiple CPU's only make sense if you need more cores
than you
can get (or afford) on one CPU. The exception might be cases like compiles
where there are lots of independent processes and you benefit from double
the cache, but you can also get CPU models with more cache. There are
extra costs for sockets, cooling, etc for 2 CPU systems, so in most cases
you will be better off with at least one SSD and a higher-end (more cores
I understand all of these factors. I'm looking for some links to vendors
that delivered something that Fedora ran on, without issues. Google is not
cooperating.
10:57 a.m.
On Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 08:14:35AM -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
I understand all of these factors. I'm looking for some links to
vendors that delivered something that Fedora ran on, without issues.
Google is not cooperating.
I got a desktop system from Zareason configured with Fedora pre-installed.
They didn't offer any Fedora options at the time but were happy to do so
when I asked -- and now I see it's on their standard drop-down.
If you're going for a laptop, the Lenovo X1 Carbon is used be a lot of the
desktop team and therefore tends to have very good support. I can't really
speak to Zareason or any of the other Linux-out-of-the-box laptop vendors.
The Dell XPS developer edition laptops that ship with Ubuntu should be fine
too.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
12:32 p.m.
On 10/10/19 5:14 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
George N. White III writes:
> In general, multiple CPU's only make sense if you need more cores than
> you
> can get (or afford) on one CPU. The exception might be cases like
> compiles
> where there are lots of independent processes and you benefit from double
> the cache, but you can also get CPU models with more cache. There are
> extra costs for sockets, cooling, etc for 2 CPU systems, so in most cases
> you will be better off with at least one SSD and a higher-end (more cores
I understand all of these factors. I'm looking for some links to vendors
that delivered something that Fedora ran on, without issues. Google is
not cooperating.
I don't know if you could find a desktop that Fedora wouldn't run on out
of the box. (Again, other than having NVidia graphics.) Laptops can
have some tricky hardware, particularly certain wifi chipsets, so you do
have to be careful there. I build my own desktops instead of getting
off-the-shelf systems, so I know exactly what I'm getting and it also
avoids the MS tax.
4:42 a.m.
On Thu, 10 Oct 2019 at 09:15, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam(a)courier-mta.com> wrote:
George N. White III writes:
> In general, multiple CPU's only make sense if you need more cores than
you
> can get (or afford) on one CPU. The exception might be cases like
compiles
> where there are lots of independent processes and you benefit from
double
> the cache, but you can also get CPU models with more cache. There are
> extra costs for sockets, cooling, etc for 2 CPU systems, so in most
cases
> you will be better off with at least one SSD and a higher-end (more cores
I understand all of these factors. I'm looking for some links to vendors
that delivered something that Fedora ran on, without issues. Google is
not
cooperating.
The big vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo) all have Linux "certified"
configurations for higher end model ranges:
https://www8.hp.com/us/en/workstations/hp-linux-advantage.html
https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/overview/cp/linuxsystems
https://support.lenovo.com/ca/en/solutions/pd031426
Pick one you like and Goggle may find someone using Fedora on a
similar model.
Each vendor has user forums where you can search for linux issues.
--
George N. White III
7:48 a.m.
On Wed, Oct 9, 2019 at 9:09 PM Sam Varshavchik <mrsam(a)courier-mta.com>
wrote:
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
hardware, but
I'm
having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's slightly
above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't gotten
quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
My $.02...
I've had very good luck with Gigabyte motherboards. Even had one take a
power surge over Ethernet. Took out the onboard network controller, the USB
ports next to it and the primary BIOS but with the GB dual BIOS it just
tries to post to the first one on bootup gives up and goes to the backup.
Added a PCI-E network card and it's still working great as my MythTV box.
Best bang for the buck is probably the 3rd gen Ryzen 5, I like the 3600.
It's got 6 cores and 12 threads and still a TDP of 65 watts. I have the 2nd
gen 2600 and build software all the time.
I did pair it with a 500GB Samsung M.2 NVME SSD and have a 1TB spinning
disk for /home.
Thanks,
Richard
7:53 a.m.
On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
hardware,
but I'm having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware,
that's slightly above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning
rust (I haven't gotten quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in
expiration date).
You should probably tell people more of your requirements, if you're
after recommendations. Such as do you need a sound card, graphics
card, will on-board do?
I bought a couple of AS Rock B250M Pro4 motherboards, last year. A bit
middle of the road (mine's only i5 CPU), but they were replacing
ancient equipment (so a vast improvement to me), and I don't play video
games, so the on-board video is okay for my needs. I think I had to
manually add this X conf file:
]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-video.conf
Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
That's (at least) to stop screen tearing of moving objects being split
in the middle. Unfortunately, the setting doesn't stop tears from
computers driving you nuts. If only there was a tear free general
setting for managing computers...
]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host
Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 05)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 630 (rev 04)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family USB 3.0 xHCI
Controller
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH Thermal Subsystem
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH CSME HECI #1
00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH SATA controller [AHCI mode]
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH LPC Controller (B250)
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family Power
Management Controller
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation 200 Series PCH HD Audio
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation 200 Series/Z370 Chipset Family SMBus Controller
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I219-V
--
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8:27 p.m.
Tim via users writes:
On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new hardware,
> but I'm having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware,
> that's slightly above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning
> rust (I haven't gotten quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in
> expiration date).
You should probably tell people more of your requirements, if you're
after recommendations. Such as do you need a sound card, graphics
card, will on-board do?
My requirements are not very stringent. Onboard video and audio will do, as
long as it works out of the box with x.org, and has reasonable compositing
and can keep up with full screen video playback. Dual 1GB NIC, a pair of
SATA drives, and then as many cores and RAM as I can get, hopefully 12 cores
at least. I guess what I'm really looking for is some place which offers a
wide selection of hardware that I can match up to within my budget. But all
the places that I looked seemed to be limited to 5-6 models, and quite
limited customizations options. I end up with either having my only video
choices be the latest and greatest Nvidia chipsets that only work with their
binary blobs (no thank you), or all the 12+ core options are ridiculously
overpriced Xeons; or they seem to intentionally hike up their prices by
having no storage options other than high capacity SSDs, for storage.
Dell came pretty close, if slightly pricy. They actually have a workstation
that they certify RHEL for (but ship with Ubuntu). I would've overlooked
having to overpay for Xeons (no AMD options), except that I looked at their
manual. Their motherboards have button cell batteries. Maybe I'm off base,
but who still puts button cell batteries on their motherboards? Dell can't
just pay a few more cents for proper NVRAM? So they go with button cells, to
keep the lights on for the BIOS settings. This is obviously intentional;
this is their business product, clearly the reason for that is to have the
CR2032 go flat in a few years, and lose all BIOS settings; but who cares
since they expect that business will replace their hardware every three
years. Still, this is just plain silly.
8:47 p.m.
On 10/11/19 6:27 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
My requirements are not very stringent. Onboard video and audio will
do,
as long as it works out of the box with x.org, and has reasonable
compositing and can keep up with full screen video playback. Dual 1GB
NIC, a pair of SATA drives, and then as many cores and RAM as I can get,
hopefully 12 cores at least. I guess what I'm really looking for is some
place which offers a wide selection of hardware that I can match up to
within my budget. But all the places that I looked seemed to be limited
to 5-6 models, and quite limited customizations options. I end up with
either having my only video choices be the latest and greatest Nvidia
chipsets that only work with their binary blobs (no thank you), or all
the 12+ core options are ridiculously overpriced Xeons; or they seem to
intentionally hike up their prices by having no storage options other
than high capacity SSDs, for storage.
If you don't mind saying, what country are you in? Would you be
comfortable with building the system yourself? You will probably find
it difficult to get the combination you want otherwise.
Dell came pretty close, if slightly pricy. They actually have a
workstation that they certify RHEL for (but ship with Ubuntu). I
would've overlooked having to overpay for Xeons (no AMD options), except
that I looked at their manual. Their motherboards have button cell
batteries. Maybe I'm off base, but who still puts button cell batteries
on their motherboards? Dell can't just pay a few more cents for proper
NVRAM? So they go with button cells, to keep the lights on for the BIOS
settings. This is obviously intentional; this is their business product,
clearly the reason for that is to have the CR2032 go flat in a few
years, and lose all BIOS settings; but who cares since they expect that
business will replace their hardware every three years. Still, this is
just plain silly.
I don't know where you're looking, but pretty much everyone still uses
batteries on the motherboard. It's to keep the RTC going when the power
is off, not just to keep the settings. The only batteries I've had to
replace were on computers that were well over 10 years old.
7:19 a.m.
Samuel Sieb writes:
On 10/11/19 6:27 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> My requirements are not very stringent. Onboard video and audio will do, as
> long as it works out of the box with x.org, and has reasonable compositing
> and can keep up with full screen video playback. Dual 1GB NIC, a pair of
> SATA drives, and then as many cores and RAM as I can get, hopefully 12 cores
> at least. I guess what I'm really looking for is some place which offers a
> wide selection of hardware that I can match up to within my budget. But all
> the places that I looked seemed to be limited to 5-6 models, and quite
> limited customizations options. I end up with either having my only video
> choices be the latest and greatest Nvidia chipsets that only work with their
> binary blobs (no thank you), or all the 12+ core options are ridiculously
> overpriced Xeons; or they seem to intentionally hike up their prices by
> having no storage options other than high capacity SSDs, for storage.
If you don't mind saying, what country are you in? Would you be comfortable
with building the system yourself? You will probably find it difficult to
get the combination you want otherwise.
USA. I'm ok building everything together, if I can source the motherboard,
chassis, CPU, RAM, and HDDs from one place, and not have to run around
everywhere.
> Dell came pretty close, if slightly pricy. They actually have a workstation
> that they certify RHEL for (but ship with Ubuntu). I would've overlooked
> having to overpay for Xeons (no AMD options), except that I looked at their
> manual. Their motherboards have button cell batteries. Maybe I'm off base,
> but who still puts button cell batteries on their motherboards? Dell can't
> just pay a few more cents for proper NVRAM? So they go with button cells, to
> keep the lights on for the BIOS settings. This is obviously intentional;
> this is their business product, clearly the reason for that is to have the
> CR2032 go flat in a few years, and lose all BIOS settings; but who cares
> since they expect that business will replace their hardware every three
> years. Still, this is just plain silly.
I don't know where you're looking, but pretty much everyone still uses
batteries on the motherboard. It's to keep the RTC going when the power is
off, not just to keep the settings. The only batteries I've had to replace
were on computers that were well over 10 years old.
That's a surprise to me. I haven't opened up my two workstations in several
years, they've been chugging along just fine. I don't recall seeing a button
cell anywhere. But I could be wrong.
2:07 p.m.
On 10/12/19 5:19 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Samuel Sieb writes:
> If you don't mind saying, what country are you in? Would you be
> comfortable with building the system yourself? You will probably find
> it difficult to get the combination you want otherwise.
USA. I'm ok building everything together, if I can source the
motherboard, chassis, CPU, RAM, and HDDs from one place, and not have to
run around everywhere.
I usually order from a store called Memory Express but that's only in
Canada and I don't know what the shipping would be like. newegg.com is
ok, but the selection can be a bit overwhelming. See if you have any
local computer stores that sell parts.
9:39 p.m.
On Fri, 2019-10-11 at 21:27 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Maybe I'm off base, but who still puts button cell batteries on
their
motherboards?
Just about every board I've seen... It's for the clock, more than
anything else. I've seen (old) systems that used a rechargeable
battery, instead, but then you have some very expensive and hard to
find battery to replace every few years, as opposed to an ordinary
battery cell you can buy from anywhere for peanuts.
Of course, you could forgo a battery-powered clock on a 24/7 server,
but I've not seen that offered anywhere. I've got a battery-less NAS,
and it powers-up with the wrong time, and logs everything incorrectly
until the clock syncs up. They could have put a large value capacitor
in there, to keep the time ticking over until power is restored (like
the old VCRs used to do).
--
uname -rsvp
Linux 3.10.0-1062.1.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Sep 30 14:19:46 UTC 2019 x86_64
Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.
7:13 a.m.
On Fri, 11 Oct 2019 at 22:27, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam(a)courier-mta.com> wrote:
Tim via users writes:
> On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new hardware,
> > but I'm having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware,
> > that's slightly above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning
> > rust (I haven't gotten quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in
> > expiration date).
>
> You should probably tell people more of your requirements, if you're
> after recommendations. Such as do you need a sound card, graphics
> card, will on-board do?
My requirements are not very stringent. Onboard video and audio will do,
as
long as it works out of the box with x.org, and has reasonable
compositing
and can keep up with full screen video playback. Dual 1GB NIC, a pair of
SATA drives, and then as many cores and RAM as I can get, hopefully 12
cores
at least. I guess what I'm really looking for is some place which offers
a
wide selection of hardware that I can match up to within my budget. But
all
the places that I looked seemed to be limited to 5-6 models, and quite
limited customizations options. I end up with either having my only video
choices be the latest and greatest Nvidia chipsets that only work with
their
binary blobs (no thank you), or all the 12+ core options are ridiculously
overpriced Xeons; or they seem to intentionally hike up their prices by
having no storage options other than high capacity SSDs, for storage.
Video and AI drive the market for high-end workstations. For a niche
application you either configure your own or look for the best match
in mainstream hardware. When get into heavy processing, the cooling
system becomes an important consideration. The big vendors have
gone to some lengths to ensure CPU's don't slow down under heavy
workloads. For remote sensing and video workloads, heat from HDD's
was an issue some years ago. These days the HDD's are all in
external cabinets and the workstations boot from SSD's.
There are core i9 models with 18 cores and 165 watt TDP (14 nm process)
https://techgage.com/article/intel-core-i9-9980xe-in-linux/
In 2017:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i9-7900x-skylake-x,5092-9...
says: "Intel’s Core i9-7900X is a good choice for enthusiasts running
well-threaded
professional tasks, particularly when a Xeon-based workstation might be
overkill. "
Dell came pretty close, if slightly pricy. They actually have a
workstation
that they certify RHEL for (but ship with Ubuntu). I would've overlooked
having to overpay for Xeons (no AMD options), except that I looked at
their
manual. Their motherboards have button cell batteries. Maybe I'm off
base,
but who still puts button cell batteries on their motherboards? Dell
can't
just pay a few more cents for proper NVRAM? So they go with button cells,
to
keep the lights on for the BIOS settings. This is obviously intentional;
this is their business product, clearly the reason for that is to have
the
CR2032 go flat in a few years, and lose all BIOS settings; but who cares
since they expect that business will replace their hardware every three
years. Still, this is just plain silly.
I've had those batteries die after a couple years in lowest bid
no-name boxes, but the big vendors use higher quality batteries
and maybe lower power demand clock/BIOS backup memory.
Failures were rare under a 5-year replacement schedule.
https://www.custompcreview.com/computer-builds/best-workstation-pc-builds/
says:
"You’ve checked out Dell, you’ve checked out HP. Companies like these want
$5,000+ for a PC that would suit your needs, and unfortunately while you’d
be
happy to blow $2,000, you’re not ready to drop $5,000. Understandable. What
can you do? Well, how about buying some hardware and building it all
yourself!"
They are using Windows, but for $3000 you can afford to swap out problematic
components. Note the advice on graphics cards.
https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-Series-3D...
offers Fedora on Core i9 workstations. They only sell the high end i9's
in a case with power
and cooling for multiple graphics cards. For your needs that is overkill,
but most systems
with high-CPU's are used with multiple graphics cards.
--
George N. White III
7:42 a.m.
George N. White III writes:
<URL:https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-
Series-3D-CAD-p/w299.htm>https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-
Core-i9-SkyLake-Series-3D-CAD-p/w299.htm
offers Fedora on Core i9 workstations. They only sell the high end i9's in
a case with power
and cooling for multiple graphics cards. For your needs that is overkill,
but most systems
with high-CPU's are used with multiple graphics cards.
Looks like they do have some AMD systems, which appear to give more bang for
the buck than Intel; but it's still overkill for me, with their liquid-
cooled setup.
10:16 a.m.
On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 at 09:43, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam(a)courier-mta.com> wrote:
George N. White III writes:
> <URL:https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-
> Series-3D-CAD-p/w299.htm>
https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-
> Core-i9-SkyLake-Series-3D-CAD-p/w299.htm
>
> offers Fedora on Core i9 workstations. They only sell the high end
i9's in
> a case with power
> and cooling for multiple graphics cards. For your needs that is
overkill,
> but most systems
> with high-CPU's are used with multiple graphics cards.
Looks like they do have some AMD systems, which appear to give more bang
for
the buck than Intel; but it's still overkill for me, with their liquid-
cooled setup.
I think AMD provides/requires their own liquid cooled system.
AMD has: https://www.amd.com/en/where-to-buy/workstations-cpu
If you plan to run a high-end i9 cooling will be an issue. At my former
work there
are lots of Dell Xeon workstations. My group snagged one with dual
12-core CPU's
for remote sensing applications, but when I turned it on my 1500kV UPS was
overloaded. On investigation I discovered it had been configured to run
tasks
in a distributed numerical model at startup. After configuring for a
softer start the
UPS was OK, but in normal operation it would pull over 800 watts. I think
those
CPU's were 250 TDP and core i9's are 165, so you might get down to 300 watts
with one i9 at full throttle. If you are in Alaska or on top of a
mountain and don't
have high-end GPU's you might get away without room A/C and liquid cooling,
but
vendors have to plan for a range of environments.
Have you considered renting cloud capacity for your compiles? I see many
people using cloud systems who work with large existing C++ codes, fixing
bugs or adding features, but developing a big system from scratch might
be a stretch. Many people use laptops as their main system, which allows
them to move around and has built-in UPS (in Europe many people work on
trains, using mosh to get a bash shell in the cloud).
https://www.linode.com/products/standard-linodes/
Google has a free introductory offer of $300 worth of cloud services.
--
George N. White III
2:09 p.m.
On 10/12/19 5:42 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
George N. White III writes:
>
<URL:https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-Serie...
>
>
> offers Fedora on Core i9 workstations. They only sell the high end
> i9's in a case with power
> and cooling for multiple graphics cards. For your needs that is
> overkill, but most systems
> with high-CPU's are used with multiple graphics cards.
Looks like they do have some AMD systems, which appear to give more bang
for the buck than Intel; but it's still overkill for me, with their
liquid-cooled setup.
At work a couple of years ago, we built two computers for the science
people with dual 16-core AMD CPUs and there was no special cooling
needed for those.
4:03 p.m.
On Sat, 12 Oct 2019 at 16:10, Samuel Sieb <samuel(a)sieb.net> wrote:
On 10/12/19 5:42 AM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> George N. White III writes:
>
>> <URL:
https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-Series-3D...
>
https://www.titancomputers.com/Titan-W299-Intel-Core-i9-SkyLake-Series-3D...
>>
>>
>> offers Fedora on Core i9 workstations. They only sell the high end
>> i9's in a case with power
>> and cooling for multiple graphics cards. For your needs that is
>> overkill, but most systems
>> with high-CPU's are used with multiple graphics cards.
>
> Looks like they do have some AMD systems, which appear to give more bang
> for the buck than Intel; but it's still overkill for me, with their
> liquid-cooled setup.
At work a couple of years ago, we built two computers for the science
people with dual 16-core AMD CPUs and there was no special cooling
needed for those.
There are benchmark results for a 32-core / 64-thread AMD Threadripper
2990WX
(250 Watt TDP) at
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd-2990wx-coolin...
"Besides the Cooler Master Threadripper heatsink, AMD also included the
Enermax Liqtech TR4 240 with
the Threadripper 2 review hardware." The Enermax ran consistently cooler
through the benchmarks.
There are plots of temperature over time that show all the coolers
recovered quickly between
iterations, but many of them showed a rising trend for the duration of the
benchmark. If you know
your workload provides some idle periods then air-cooling seems practical.
If you do have the
odd large task then thermal throttling will slow it down, but that may be
an acceptable trade-off
for a built-by-user system.
Hardware vendors have to configure for demanding workloads heavy on both
I/O and CPU and
include the heat from a caseload of high-end HDD's. SSD's help to reduce
overall cooling
requirements.
Liquid cooling generally simplifies airflow design issues. The big
vendors can afford lots of
testing and custom air ducts, etc. that you don't get with the average user
build.
--
George N. White III
9:41 p.m.
On Sat, 2019-10-12 at 08:42 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
but it's still overkill for me, with their liquid-cooled setup.
If you're considering multi-processor things for lots of actual
computing, then I'd say cooling is going to be a consideration. A
newer system with all that is probably going to run hotter than older
ones. They nearly always seem to want more power than ye olde PC.
And liquid cooling has the benefits of being far less noisy, and less
plagued by dust clogging (fans are not drawing air through internal
heatsinks).
--
uname -rsvp
Linux 3.10.0-1062.1.2.el7.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon Sep 30 14:19:46 UTC 2019 x86_64
Boilerplate: All unexpected mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted.
I will only get to see the messages that are posted to the mailing list.
10:22 p.m.
On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
hardware,
but I'm
having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's
slightly
above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't
gotten
quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
Tips and links appreciated.
_______________________________________________
Sam,
If you can stand the price, the Lenovo ThinkPad P73 "mobile
workstation" could be a serious horse for you. It offers two NVME slots
that can support two very fast 2T SSDs. My ThinkPad P72 has those and
64GB of ECC memory. It can be ordered with an internal SATA hard drive
if you really want "spinning rust." The only thing I haven't been able
to figure out is how to disable the touchpad -- I'm a mouse guy.
--Doc Savage
Fairview Heights, IL
7:22 a.m.
Robert G (Doc) Savage via users writes:
On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new hardware,
> but I'm
> having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's
> slightly
> above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I haven't
> gotten
> quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
>
> Tips and links appreciated.
> _______________________________________________
Sam,
If you can stand the price, the Lenovo ThinkPad P73 "mobile
workstation" could be a serious horse for you. It offers two NVME slots
that can support two very fast 2T SSDs. My ThinkPad P72 has those and
64GB of ECC memory. It can be ordered with an internal SATA hard drive
if you really want "spinning rust." The only thing I haven't been able
to figure out is how to disable the touchpad -- I'm a mouse guy.
I love my old W520 Thinkpad. But I want to replace my workstations, with two
spinning plates of rust inside each one.
Insofar as X, if you want to disable the infernal click-to-tap, just create
the following file:
[mrsam@thinkpad ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-disable-taps.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "tap-by-default"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "TapButton1" "0"
EndSection
This gets rid of the biggest annoyance, when it comes to touchpads.
4:18 p.m.
On Sat, 2019-10-12 at 08:22 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Robert G (Doc) Savage via users writes:
> On Wed, 2019-10-09 at 22:08 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> > My C++ compiles are getting longer. It's time to get new
> > hardware,
> > but I'm
> > having some difficulty finding Fedora-friendly hardware, that's
> > slightly
> > above average grade, such as dual CPU and spinning rust (I
> > haven't
> > gotten
> > quite aboard the SSD train, with its built-in expiration date).
> >
> > Tips and links appreciated.
> > _______________________________________________
>
> Sam,
>
> If you can stand the price, the Lenovo ThinkPad P73 "mobile
> workstation" could be a serious horse for you. It offers two NVME
> slots
> that can support two very fast 2T SSDs. My ThinkPad P72 has those
> and
> 64GB of ECC memory. It can be ordered with an internal SATA hard
> drive
> if you really want "spinning rust." The only thing I haven't been
> able
> to figure out is how to disable the touchpad -- I'm a mouse guy.
I love my old W520 Thinkpad. But I want to replace my workstations,
with two
spinning plates of rust inside each one.
Insofar as X, if you want to disable the infernal click-to-tap, just
create
the following file:
[mrsam@thinkpad ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-disable-taps.conf
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "tap-by-default"
MatchIsTouchpad "on"
Option "TapButton1" "0"
EndSection
This gets rid of the biggest annoyance, when it comes to touchpads.
Sam,
I tried to reply to you privately about this, but your mail system
rejected it.
I'm afraid creating that little file had no effect on my touchpad. I
can disable the touchpad in Windows with a BIOS setting, but F30
doesn't seem to care.
--Doc
8:42 p.m.
Robert G (Doc) Savage via users writes:
On Sat, 2019-10-12 at 08:22 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Robert G (Doc) Savage via users writes:
>
> Insofar as X, if you want to disable the infernal click-to-tap, just
> create
> the following file:
>
> [mrsam@thinkpad ~]$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-disable-taps.conf
> Section "InputClass"
> Identifier "tap-by-default"
> MatchIsTouchpad "on"
> Option "TapButton1" "0"
> EndSection
>
>
> This gets rid of the biggest annoyance, when it comes to touchpads.
Sam,
I tried to reply to you privately about this, but your mail system
rejected it.
I'm afraid creating that little file had no effect on my touchpad. I
can disable the touchpad in Windows with a BIOS setting, but F30
doesn't seem to care.
This disables the click-to-tap, not the entire touchpad. I found this to be
the biggest annoyance with touchpads.
There's likely a way to do this, just have to read through the entire,
massive, xorg.conf man page. Someone on x.org's mailing list would probably
be able to point you in the right direction much faster than anyone here.
P.S.:
Oct 14 15:43:14 shorty courieresmtpd[6567]: error,relay=::ffff:
208.70.211.20,port=49183,from=<dsavage(a)peaknet.net>: 517 HELO
asp.reflexion.net does not match ::ffff:208.70.211.20
Your Internet provider's mail server, that attempted to send your message
from IP address 208.70.211.20, claimed that it's really "asp.reflexion.net",
which is a completely different IP address. No sale. In any case, this is of
general knowledge that's useful to be discussed publicly.
10:25 p.m.
On 10/14/19 2:18 PM, Robert G (Doc) Savage via users wrote:
I'm afraid creating that little file had no effect on my
touchpad. I
can disable the touchpad in Windows with a BIOS setting, but F30
doesn't seem to care.
That doesn't make sense. The BIOS setting should disconnect the
touchpad regardless of the OS.
If you're using Gnome, in the control panel you can disable the
touchpad. I don't know if the other DEs have that option. If you're
using Xorg and not Wayland, you can disable it using xinput. Run
"xinput" to get a list of devices, then run "xinput --disable
<number>"
where <number> is the id number it showed in the list.
1648
days inactive
1653
days old
36 comments
9 participants
participants (9)
-
Ed Greshko -
George N. White III -
Matthew Miller -
Michael Schwendt -
Richard Shaw -
Robert G (Doc) Savage -
Sam Varshavchik -
Samuel Sieb -
Tim