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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
First, many thanks to all who wrote to correct my misunderstanding of how Linux handles memory allocation (in particular, Brian, Greg, and David). I was interpreting the "top" output posted yesterday in terms of how Winblows manages things. Totally inaccurate (and yes, if I had just carefully read the output it would have provided the necessary insights). The bottom line is Linux grabs whatever memory free memory it finds and uses it for disk/file caching. If and when free memory becomes exhausted, the kernel "gives back" memory to the requesting application. Very slick and eloquent. In other words, I could add another 512MB of RAM to the system but after a day or so of use the top output would look similar in terms of "free" memory.
What I find really interesting is the disparity in memory stats between two identical systems (Phaedrus, my notebook, and Janus, my current dev/test box). Both have 512MB of RAM, and both -- at the time the top snapshots were taken -- were running virtually identical processes. The two differences being Janus is a dual processor box, and Phaedrus has KDE 3.1-rc6 installed (versus 3.0.x on Janus). Oh yes, and Phaedrus is running an optimized installation of Gentoo; Janus is on stock RH 8.0.
The top output from Janus is listed in yesterday's post. Here's the output from Phaedrus, again, running the identical apps with the exceptions listed above:
top - 13:27:19 up 2:13, 1 user, load average: 0.09, 0.08, 0.01 Tasks: 84 total, 2 running, 82 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 3.6% user, 2.0% system, 0.0% nice, 94.4% idle Mem: 514128k total, 264588k used, 249540k free, 46876k buffers Swap: 1028152k total, 0k used, 1028152k free, 123268k cached
Most interesting, no? I'll leave it to those smarter than moi to decifer the two.
Today is slated for housekeeping. Mental, computer, household, and whatever else comes along.
Mail server responsibilities for Syroid Manor are back under the watchful eye of Hydras. After monitoring the CommuniGate mailing list for a week, I installed the latest stable release of CommuniGate Pro (4.0.5) this morning, rsync'd the data over from my test bed, and changed the forwarding on my firewall. So far, so good. I also installed Stalker's MAPI connector and plan to test drive its functionality over the weekend.
As for Bynari, their server-side implementation (InsightServer) is top-drawer. Installation is child's play, as is the initial configuration. The product is back-ended with Exim, Cyrus IMAP, SquirrelMail (for webmail), LDAP, ProFTP, and Apache. It's one of the most security oriented "out-of-the-box" installations I've experienced. SSL/TLS is configured as the default. What really impressed me was that all components are chroot'd down under /opt/insight. Very nice touch. I'd like to see more applications set themselves up this way. Unfortunatley, their startup script is broken (it begins by trying to kill processes that do not exist and doesn't start Apache despite saying it has) and the InsightConnector is both quirky and buggy. And given the fact I'm evaluating possible solutions for a business that needs Outlook's groupware stuff (Contacts, Calendaring, etc.), the latter is a show-stopper. InsightServer 4.0 coupled with InsightConnector 2.0 prereleases are due out in a few weeks. I'm impressed enough with the server side of things to re-evaluate things then.
Time to dive into my day... have a good one.
I stuck my head outside the back door last night shortly before retiring and was pleasantly surprised to find the temperature had warmed dramatically (from around -20C to +10C). Which, in this neck of the woods, usually means there's snow in the forecast. I guess my prediction skills are a little rusty; at 4 this morning the temp was still balmy and the sky as clear as a bell. After a week of fridgid air, though, a change -- in whatever form -- is welcome. Even if it means shovelling the driveway this weekend...
It appears my spare workstation/server is again functioning as advertised. The new RAM fixed the spontaneous reboot issue. Yesterday afternoon several keys on the keyboard started to stick. Rather than screw with it, I chased Leah down to store to pick up a new Microsoft Natural Keyboard for me. I've used Natural's for years on all my desktop systems. I like the touch, and my fingers find the layout... well... natural ;-). Before I started using a notebook as my primary system I used to pretty much wear out a keyboard a year. The one I just replaced (I'll probably blow it out, hose it off in the dishwasher, and throw it in the cupboard as a spare) was two years old, so I guess it served its time.
No, the tech didn't show up yesterday to fix my notebook keyboard. He'll be around this morning sometime no doubt. And yes, I'm pretty hard on keyboards. Part and parcel of being a full-time writer.
Despite having 512MB of RAM, Janus still seemed a little "doggy" to me. At first blush I simply passed this off to the fact I'm accustomed to working on a 1GHz machine. Intrigue got the best of me last night, though, and I fired up top last night to gain some insight into system resource allocation. Frankly, I was a bit shocked by the output:
120 processes: 119 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped CPU0 states: 4.3% user, 2.3% system, 0.0% nice, 92.3% idle CPU1 states: 1.4% user, 4.0% system, 0.0% nice, 93.4% idle Mem: 513424K av, 488348K used, 25076K free, 0K shrd, 94456K buff Swap: 1028152K av, 37612K used, 990540K free 242920K cached
488K of 513K used. Yikes and OhMyGosh. The system is not what I'd call heavily loaded. On the server side of things, it's running Bynari InsightServer plus the standard system processes. The above snapshot is taken from KDE 3.0 with three apps running: Mulberry, a terminal window, and JEdit. The short story is the system would benefit from another 512MB of RAM. For the cost of RAM these days, it's not really a big deal to add a couple more DIMMs, but Geez Louise... I guess I've always thought of Linux as being less resource intensive than Windows. I suppose it is when you compare apples to apples; I just never expected KDE, a couple apps, and a few server processes to consume almost 512MB of RAM. Live and learn.
I have some comments and observations to post on my experiences over the last couple days working with Bynari's mail server, but that will have to wait until later today or tomorrow. The kids are up early this morning, and I've got to get them fed and watered. And make a lunch for Danielle. And fold the laundry. And cull my Inbox. And finish up two proposals I'm working on. Onward, forever onward...
Be good. TGIF.
Some days it just don't pay to get up. Yesterday was one of those days...
The keyboard on my notebook died. OK, BTDT. So I phoned Dell to a visit from my friendly neighborhood repairman (he's been here so often, we're on a first-name basis). I waited on hold for almost TWO HOURS before I got through to a service rep. Dell's lines were no doubt plugged with after-Christmas buyers wondering where to find the power-on switch. Grrrrr. With that little time sink over, I turned to one remaining machine I could use as an alternate for the day, Janus.
As noted yesterday, I had done a clean install of RH 8 prior to installing Bynari InsightServer and hadn't got around to re-installing all my favorite apps yet. The first task was to get Java on the machine. Have you ever tried to find something on IBM's Web site? What an excercise in frustration. I went to downloads and did a search using the keyword Java. The search engine returned a blank. For crumb's sake people. A blank on Java? There isn't one product in IBM's lineup that doesn't, in some way or another, rely on Java. I finally found the JDK by shear attrition. Download (a 1/2 hour due to the fact the server was throttled at 23 KB/s), install, pulled down the latest JEdit release (pre 8), install that, and... JEdit can't find Java [insert scream here]. Turns out the installer didn't set up the Java environment. After much head-scratching and cursing, I finally added JAVA_HOME= to my local profile. Not the most succinct hack, but it worked.
Then Janus started to spontaneously reboot. Bother. After two hours of troubleshooting, I narrowed the problem to a bum memory DIMM. OK, I got some spare DIMMs around here somewhere... but where? A 1/2 of rummaging turned up one lonely 128 M DIMM. Installing that fixed the problem, but I'm here to tell you, 128 MB of RAM is not enough for RH 8.0 -- unless of course you have the patience of a saint. Which I do not. So I hopped in the car and set out to find a couple 256 MB DIMMs. Now I didn't think this would be a particularly difficult task, but it would seem that my state of mind does not parallel reality. Three stores were out of stock. One store had stock, but the price was stupid. Another store had one. I wanted two, and I didn't want to pair up two different brands. Three hours later, I found two reasonably priced chips; bought them, and drove home only to discover that my wife wanted to kill my son. Sigh. I interceeded, calmed everyone down, installed the DIMMs, made sure everything worked as advertised, and walked away from the world of bits and bytes.
After a good night's sleep, I'm once again ready to slay dragons. The house is quiet -- no one's yelling at anyone else. My fingers are crossed...
Have a good one. And smile, tomorrow's Friday ;-)
Good day. The weather remains cold (-25C) this morning, but there's no wind so the temp is tolerable.
I installed a demo of Bynari's InsightServer yesterday on Janus. I must say, I'm suitably impressed. It too? ... #*$&*#$&&#$ ...
One moment please...
BAH. The 'k' and 'l' keys just quit on my notebook. This is getting most tiring. Prior to installing Bynari InsightServer yesterday I did a clean install of RH. I kept my /home partition, but blew away the rest to ensure I had a squeekly clean environment for the install. So now I've got to dig up and install some apps/tools to get through the day... Back when I get this mess resolved.
There's a large (and heavy ;-) arctic front sitting over our fair land today. Minus 30 early this morning, and from the look of the sky, it ain'ta gonna be warming up an awful lot today. Such is life. At least I don't have to go far to get a fresh cup of coffee...
I updated the kernel on my notebook to gentoo-sources-2.4.20-r1 last night. It comes with a few new drivers (eg, Intel 10/100/1000), the low latency patch, and ACPI. I tried the latter to no avail -- couldn't get the kernel to boot. Ah well. Took out the ACPI option and off it went. So far I don't see a whole lot of difference over 2.4.19, although from a purely observational perspective, KDE seems to start a little faster. I'll run it for a few days and we'll see what we shall see.
To everyone who maintains webs or stores files (backup or otherwise) on Hydras: Please ensure you have off-site copies of anything you can't bear to lose. My 8mm tape drive quit last night without explanation. I checked all the obvious stuff and came up empty-handed (or is that empty-headed?). My plate's too full at the moment to spend a lot of time or resources resolving whatever ails it, so Caveat Emptor.
Let's see now... where are we here... Well, I believe it's Monday. Believe. Someone, apparently, got into my fresh java beans when I wasn't looking and extracted some of the caffeine. I've drank two pots of coffee so far today, and I've yet to fully wake up. As my friend Pooh would say, Bother.
There's been a fair amount of "stuff" bubbling out of the Gentoo camp over the weekend. It looks like Gentoo 1.4 (slated for release tomorrow; no word yet if they'll make this self-imposed deadline or not) is going to ship with a "Gentoo-ized" version of the 2.4.20 kernel. And in response to problems several people have experienced with NTP, the ebuild maintainer has revamped the scripts to make configuration easier and more to the point. Any effort to make anything Linux-related easier for the average user is Good News in my book (no, never had any trouble with NTP, but there again I haven't updated the package for a long time -- it works, I'm happy ;-).
Today I'm mucking around with some revisions to some material I submitted before Christmas. Once I get that off my plate, I need to two new proposals. Given my sleep state today, things are progressing at a much slower pace than I'd hoped for a Monday. Oh well.
Once I get my "spare" (read, OK to destroy any and all contents in the name of testing and research) cleaned up, I'm planning to put an evaluation copy of Bynari's Insight[mail]Server through its paces. If anyone has any direct, or indirect, experience with the product, please drop me a line. I'm interested in any and all comments. Please include the version (both Connector and Server) if you do.
Time to get my nose back to the tasks at hand. Have a great Monday.
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