opteron 146 thoughts on motherboards

[Robert L Cochran]

Peter Arremann wrote:

>On Sunday 08 January 2006 21:22, Robert L Cochran wrote:
>  
>
>>Thanks Peter. I was just wondering, and you make some good points here
>>that I haven't thought of. I'm not sure I fully understand what
>>lm_sensors will give you -- is this the ability to remotely check things
>>like the CPU temperature? Using SNMP? 
>>    
>>
>lm_sensors is the underlaying code for accessing SMBus implementations. SMBus 
>(System Management Bus) is a very simple serial bus based on I2C that is used 
>to monitor the system. What can be monitored depends on the board but usually 
>its things like temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. I've seen PCI bus 
>usage implemented once but unusual stuff like that is rare. 
>lm_sensors implements drivers for the various SMBus controllers used on 
>various boards. Ontop of that you have many different programs like gkrellm 
>to do the actual monitoring for you. 
>
>  
>
>>And yes, the driver issue is an 
>>interesting one. I had a tough time with the driver for the NIC until I
>>installed the latest FC4 kernel. I really need to learn how to compile a
>>Fedora kernel, even though in this case there wasn't the need -- it
>>would have been more work.
>>    
>>
>Yeah - I warned you about that issue :-) I have a bunch of really cheap 
>network cards so its no problem but it shows the issue I meant. Imagine its 
>2am, you only got FC4 cd's and no spare network card... enjoy :-) 
>
>As for the kernel rebuild - Bryan posted a link to a kernel rebuild document 
>recently he has written on one of the fedora mailing lists recently. Look for 
>it - it has all you need. 
>
>  
>
>>I really I don't have any complaints about the board and I like it; I'm
>>glad to have saved some money while I'm still focused on applications
>>programming.  I'm using it as a desktop board obviously. I am more than
>>pleased with the CPU speed. I recently did an 'rpmbuild -ba' of Firefox
>>1.5 from source code that completed so quickly I didn't quite realize it.
>>    
>>
>You're so lucky. I'm stuck doing most of my work on a P4 2.4Ghz laptop with 
>the slowest drive I've ever seen... Compile for my current project (small, 
>just about 15000 C++ lines I've written over the past few weeks) takes almsot 
>3 minutes - on my desktop FX-55 it takes about 45 seconds... 
>Ordered a Dell with a Centrino Duo - but it won't be shipped till mid febrary 
>*grrrr*
>
>Peter.
>
>  
>
His blog on kernel rebuilds is here, I think

http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/10/kernel-26-on-fedora-based-systems.html

I believe Bryan is trying to say that as a user you can make your actual 
kernel changes somewhere between steps 2 and 3. I tried posting a 
comment to this effect and ended up signing up for my own blog, much to 
my surprise.

As to the slow laptop hard drive, it is possible to change the drive to 
a faster one for about $100 or so. I did exactly that with my wife's 
Compaq nx9010 notebook. Now I have a 7200 rpm drive running FC4. 
However, I made no attempt to migrate data from the old drive to the new 
one. The old drive is sitting in a nice antistatic bag, too. It was not 
that hard to install but I still sweated heavily until finally pushing 
the power button.

Some day maybe I'll be able to change a laptop's motherboard. I know -- 
keep dreaming on that one.

Bob