[K12OSN] 8 GB RAM on 32-bit Edubuntu with AMD 64 processors

[Tom Wolfe]

.... So Jim what do you have to say about this?? From what I recall you 
report good performance with PAE/LTSP and 16 GB RAM with 100+ users.

Regards,
Tom Wolfe

---
 	Tom Wolfe, IT Specialist 	twolfe at sawback.com
 	Stoney Educational Authority	tel: (403) 881-2650
 	Box 238, Morley AB, T0L 1N0	fax: (403) 881-2793
Morley Community School | Chief Jacob Bearspaw School | Ta-otha School


On Mon, 26 Nov 2007, James P. Kinney III wrote:

> On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 12:09 -0500, Tom Wolfe wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> a.k.a. the never-ending quest for sound with flash on 64-bit con't
>>
>> I've been running gnash for a few weeks now as a solution to
>> flash-with-sound-and-64-bit-edubuntu. For the most part it works fine, but
>> I've noticed that it does a poor job with text in some cases.
>>
>> A few teachers are demanding a better solution.
>>
>> So I've decided to give the 32-bit Edubuntu a shot to put my eternal
>> struggles with 64-bit to rest for a while. I know this is the tact that
>> Jim K. has taken.
>
> Sort-of. The solution I found that does work is:
>
> 64 bit OS to make use of greater than 4GB RAM. Now also load 32-bit
> applications for firefox, flash, sound and all related libs (ugh). No
> use official Adobe flash code (32-bit) and magic (often. usually)
> happens. Be sure to remove the 64-bit firefox or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN
> (tm).
>>
>> I'm wondering though about how to use > 4GB RAM. Is this possible on a
>> 32-bit Edubuntu with AMD 64 CPUs? If not, is PAE the solution, or is PAE
>> only for Pentium CPUs?
>
> The PAE will be a nightmare for the heavily shared setup of LTSP. In
> short, the system will thrash doing high page swaps to access RAM. If
> all processes under current request are spread over multiple pages, the
> performance will be beyond horrible.
>
> If you _must_ use 32-bit on a AMD-64 bit machine, put no more than 4GB
> RAM in the system. Even then you may loose 512MB (depends on mainboard
> chipset). I'm not sure if the Nvidia chips will loose RAM as all of my
> servers using those have 8GB or higher and 64-bit OS.
>>
>> Can anyone point me in a direction to get me going with this?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Tom Wolfe
>>
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>>
> -- 
> James P. Kinney III
> CEO & Director of Engineering
> Local Net Solutions,LLC
> 770-493-8244
> http://www.localnetsolutions.com
>
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
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>