KCLUG

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RE: Stress Testing Hard Drives
by John D. Frakes 26 Jun '07

26 Jun '07

So what label would come on out of box failure drives? The best thing I can think of is to partiton the drive and format with ext3, setting the block size low and performing a bad block check. Also do some reasearch into SMART and see if you can use smartds to log possible failures. Depending on the drive manufacturer, some log way before the failure. -john frakes -----Original Message----- From: "Billy Crook" <billycrook(a)gmail.com> To: "Geoffrion, Ron P [IT]" <Ron.Geoffrion(a)sprint.com> Cc: kclug(a)kclug.org Sent: 6/26/2007 11:51 AM Subject: Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives I think they should lable hard drives with their halflife. On 6/26/07, Geoffrion, Ron P [IT] <Ron.Geoffrion(a)sprint.com> wrote: > > MTBF is a measure of certainty. > > > Thanks, > > Ron Geoffrion > 913.488.7664 > > > ------------------------------ > *From:* kclug-bounces(a)kclug.org [mailto:[email protected]] *On > Behalf Of *Billy Crook > *Sent:* Tuesday, June 26, 2007 11:45 AM > *To:* Jonathan Hutchins > *Cc:* kclug(a)kclug.org > *Subject:* Re: Stress Testing Hard Drives > > There's nothing quite as reassuring as uncertainty. > > On 6/26/07, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins(a)tarcanfel.org > wrote: > > > > I think the only thing that stress testing a drive would do would be to > > move > > it closer to it's failure point. Either that will be early, in which > > case it > > might possibly happen while testing, not quite as early, in which case > > it > > will happen just after installation instead of a week after > > installation, or > > it will be later in the drive's life - in which case it will just happen > > a > > bit sooner than it would have. > > > > About the only use I can see for this would bet to stress test a few > > examples > > of a certain model of a drive to failure, and see what the MTBF is. > > > > There are also environmental factors to consider. Testing the drive in > > an > > open, bench-configured computer really doesn't give you any information > > about > > how it will perform in a closed case sandwiched between two other hot > > drives. > > This is one reason that some manufacturer's well intentioned MTBF > > estimates > > are inaccurate. > > > > Frankly, throwing it off a high building seems just as informative. > > > > If you can write a pattern to the drive and it passes fsck, and you can > > repeat > > this two or three times, that is going to be about as good a test as you > > can > > usefully perform. A drive that will function that well is an > > unpredictable > > distance from failure. > > _______________________________________________ > > Kclug mailing list > > Kclug(a)kclug.org > > http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug > > > >

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64-bit #2
by lowell 25 Jun '07

25 Jun '07

thx to all who responded; will put that information to work soon I hope...

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64-bit
by lowell 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

</lurk> Would the list care to comment on the current state of Linux on 64-bit mobo's? <lurk>

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DSL and Puppy Linuk user's reports- a shallow comparison.
by Oren Beck 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

Friday midmorning one of my laptop hd's got munged somehow- it's been replaced and forensics are upcoming. The result was a need to resume using that laptop ASAP. I recalled having made a DSL keychain install several meetings ago so I dug out that USB drive and the fun began. This notebook is too old to boot from USB. Up till recently making a linux boot floppy seemed doomed to arcana. RAWRITE/TGZ etc and nonstandard floppy sizes pretty well says "ubergeeken only" to the mundanes viewing the directions. THIS time I Googled and found there was a downloadable floppy image tool that just plain worked. used a windows box to make the floppy, Plugged the USB drive in this laptop, inserted the floppy- booted into DSL which I am now using to post this. It is faster than the cd based DSL and seems pretty freeze or balk resistant so far. For my mundane taskings of webmail,Google,Ebay etc it's been quite acceptable to even impressive at times. Sadly there are some employer demanded Citrix tools that seem to be not Linux compatible. Other than that issue I could consider literally not bothering to install to HD unless somehow forced to! Which brings me to the next contender for a daily use OS on this laptop. Puppy Linux running from a CDR or CDRW that was rercorded as multisession. Certain concepts will hatch independent of any person claiming to have "thought of that first" Though some foilks on this list will recall my importuning the coders among us to enable "write back to a Knoppix CDR" Uh, IIRC that was maybe 2+ years ago? Ah well- the Puppy team has delivered and more on that concept. In an "on disk" footprint close to that of DSL we have a Ramdisk loading Knoppix/Debian derived distro. One that inherently allows removal of the Puppy cd after it loads itsellf into Ramspace.. There is a setup dialog almost close to non tech user viable but still needing some decrufting. Details in a seperate deconstructions report in progress for both of tthese distros, It can be still observed that video defaults going to test then asking " do you see me now?"-fall back on no response is needed at times. The same for the netprobe script- a few changes and it could become press any key upon seeing the "no interface found" message. Repeating that till the next message giving choices for DHCP etc prompts for human aid again. The slickest part however was the save to cd mode actually remembers all the net and video settings! I am going to alternate between these distros for some time now and see if some "grafting" tools from one into the other will bear better fruits. EX: Puppy has a save tool that may be back graftable to DSL and DSL has the infinitely underrated "Xkill" utility that I have not yet found in puppy. Frankly speaking- Xkill would be a desktop mandatory app if I ever presume to whack on a distro that hard. Most of the above comments have been extracted largely from current experiments Friday 1100 to now. In summary - on this pentium 500 laptop with 258 mb ram both distros were quite acceptable for every non windows bound task I needed this weekend.. They just plain worked and worked well. There IS a bit of learning curve to access and use files on another drive or network location witth the tools in these distros, but that's still not a deal breaker. Oren Beck "Sometimes we need to use a computer and not flog obstacles- for that task I suggest Livecds or USB distros"

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Technical side of the game question
by Earle Beason 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

I read a lot on the response to getting games to play with "Wine", "VMware," and "Cedega 5.1" however, we on this forum are here because we want a chose and can afford the opportunity to play around with what ever distro we want. Ask your self, how many computers do you own? what would happen if you lost a system do to experimenting, Chances are your awnser is somewhat like mine, reload the software and see what I did wrong. I betting most of your personnel files are backed up somewhere safe, so you can frag your system and no harm done. The majority of Non-Linx user I encounter have one hard drive, and one computer, and have files of value they don't want to lose. My point behind this is we as a user base need to develop, or put pressure on game companies to make games so that the disc can be inserted, installed and played by people who don't want to rip out their hair, trying to figure Linux out. And the first person who tells me that they should go to microsoft, I swear I going to slap with a salted mackerel, microsoft has too much........

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The key to getting more Windows users to switch to Linux
by Earle Beason 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

Well, This seems to be a no brainier to me, but it in the games. Face it, most Microsoft users, use it to play games. This is a week spot in Linux. If I could figure out how to do it, I would come up with a way to emulate windows from 98 to currant and customize it so that people could emulate any common version of direct X. Then I would pass it around, saying look here a "Freebie" that will let you play your games, and i would try to get some of the game manufactures to put games in Linux

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The key to getting more Windows users to switch to Linux | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com
by Julie 24 Jun '07

24 Jun '07

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=519 Some interesting points can be found in this article. The msg threads can be either quite amusing or exasperating, at least to a point. If you have a zdnet account I hope you chime in. If you don't have an account, there's no big deal in making one. <wink> ENJOY! Julie @};- --------------------------------- Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.

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Re: The key to getting more Windows users to switch to Linux | Hardware 2.0 | ZDNet.com
by John 23 Jun '07

23 Jun '07

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Need script help.
by Jeffrey McCright 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

All, I have a friend who needs to run a shell script to process data in a space or comma delimited file. I think SED or AWK may be needed here, but I don't program so I need help. The ASCII File structure is similar to the following: Lastname Firstname internalphonenumber externalphonenumber phoneextention MACaddress ... Lastname Firstname internalphonenumber externalphonenumber phoneextention MACaddress ... Lastname Firstname internalphonenumber externalphonenumber phoneextention MACaddress ... Lastname Firstname internalphonenumber externalphonenumber phoneextention MACaddress ... The fields are variable length. My friend needs to be able to plug in commands in this script file so that she can have something like: {command} Lastname {command} Firstname {command} internalphonenumber {command} externalphonenumber ... etc... The file contains around 1400 records or more. Each record needs to be processed as above. Does this make sense? Any ideas? Thanks, Jeffrey A. McCright, A+ 816-210-3107 jmccright(a)hotmail.com _________________________________________________________________ Get a preview of Live Earth, the hottest event this summer - only on MSN http://liveearth.msn.com?source=msntaglineliveearthhm

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P4 motherboard?
by Luke-Jr 21 Jun '07

21 Jun '07

Anyone have a spare socket 478 motherboard? (hint: this would be the same kind that came in those 1Us sold on the list some months ago.)

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