[Pc_Support] It's here!

[Austin Denyer (Ozz)]

Hi Guys.

The nice FedEx man delivered my new workstation today.

Tyan K8WE MoBo, Dual-Opteron246 CPU, 2GB RAM, 2x200GB SATAII HDD, EVGA
GeForce 6600GT, Thermaltake XaserIII V1000A case.

It ROCKS!!!!!

Several people complained that "A machine with that many fans in it
is gonna sound like a jet when you power it up", only to be
awestruck when told that it was already running.  

I used a modified version of the Debian AMD64 netinstall CD, as the
standard one used the 2.6.8-2 kernel, which has limited hardware
detection.  This had the 2.6.12 kernel (thanks to Len Sorensen
over on the Debian-AMD64 list), and installed fine with the exception of
the network drivers - it only found/loaded drivers for the firewire
networking, which I don't use.  By continuing with the install and
rebooting, the forcedeth drivers loaded fine.  A quick hack of the
network config files and I was up and running. I then just upgraded to
the 2.6.14-2-amd64-k8-smp kernel and I was good to go.  (There is a bug
in the Opteron CPU that causes issues when running in SMP mode, and the
work-around was only just included in that kernel.)

Two gotchas.  
1. When I installed X/KDE it swapped my NICs around (?!?!?).
2. I haven't managed to get the nVidia video drivers working yet.  The
official nVidia drivers will not load on X startup (although they did
appear to compile OK, and modprobe doesn't barf on them), and the nv
driver causes display corruption after a few mins. I'm running the vesa
driver right now without issue.

As far as (2) goes, I've heard that the nVidia drivers don't yet work
with kernels > 2.6.12, but I need the 2.6.14-2 kernel for SMP.
Can anyone confirm/deny/provide pointers for a workaround?

Anyhoo, the thing FLIES!

OpenOffice2 (run from a 32-bit chroot) loads in 3 secs.
The Gimp loads in under 1 sec.

I've only carved up one disk so far - I'm considering going to RAID-1
at some stage.

I've tacked a few stats at the end to get the juices going...

Many, MANY thanks to all who provided input and convinced me to buy
this kit.

Regards,
Ozz.

dev05:/home/adenyer# uname -a
Linux dev05 2.6.14-1-amd64-k8-smp #1 SMP Wed Nov 2 20:53:55 CET 2005
x86_64 GNU/Linux


dev05:/home/adenyer# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 5
model name      : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 246
stepping        : 10
cpu MHz         : 2009.303
cache size      : 1024 KB
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext lm
3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 4021.17
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp

processor       : 1
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 15
model           : 5
model name      : AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 246
stepping        : 10
cpu MHz         : 2009.303
cache size      : 1024 KB
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext lm
3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 4017.97
TLB size        : 1024 4K pages
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management: ts fid vid ttp


dev05:/home/adenyer# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda7             7.4G  348M  6.7G   5% /
/dev/sda1              45M   15M   27M  36% /boot
/dev/sda14            103G  5.6G   92G   6% /home
/dev/sda12            7.4G   33M  7.0G   1% /tmp
/dev/sda8              15G  1.4G   13G  10% /usr
/dev/sda9             7.4G  530M  6.5G   8% /var
/dev/sda10             15G   33M   14G   1% /var/www
/dev/sda13             15G  701M   14G   5% /chroot/32bit
/home                 103G  5.6G   92G   6% /chroot/32bit/home
/tmp                  7.4G   33M  7.0G   1% /chroot/32bit/tmp
tmpfs                1006M     0 1006M   0% /dev/shm


fdisk /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           6       48163+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2               7          12       48195   83  Linux
/dev/sda3              13       24321   195262042+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5              13         498     3903763+  82  Linux swap /
Solaris
/dev/sda6             499         984     3903763+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7             985        1957     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/sda8            1958        3902    15623181   83  Linux
/dev/sda9            3903        4875     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/sda10           4876        6820    15623181   83  Linux
/dev/sda11           6821        7793     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/sda12           7794        8766     7815591   83  Linux
/dev/sda13           8767       10711    15623181   83  Linux
/dev/sda14          10712       24321   109322293+  83  Linux


fdisk /dev/hdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System



top - 16:49:15 up 56 min,  2 users,  load average: 0.82, 0.70, 0.49
Tasks:  97 total,   2 running,  95 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s): 13.5% us,  6.7% sy,  0.0% ni, 69.1% id,  7.8% wa,  1.2% hi,
1.7% si
Mem:   2059056k total,  2047008k used,    12048k free,     4096k buffers
Swap:  3903752k total,        0k used,  3903752k free,  1786264k cached