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I’ve just had quite an ordeal getting my GNU/Linux installation to utilise all my RAM. It’s the first time that I’ve had such a problem and I went for the hard solution rather than the simple one (GUI-based), which would have worked fine. For the record, here’s the process of troubleshooting (publicly logged in the Phoronix channel).

<schestowitz> I have a quick h/w question. Is there any reason why on a dual-core system with 2GB of RAM only 1GB should be reported as visible?
<starkmjolk> schestowitz: not that I’m aware of.
<starkmjolk> schestowitz: is 2GB visible in the BIOS?
<schestowitz> Oh, I’d have to reboot to check this.
<schestowitz> starkmjolk: I’m underutilising. My BIOS shows 2 GB but this system only picks up 1 GB (Mandriva 2008.1 32-bit on an AMD 64-capable).
<redeeman> does it show 1024 or 8xx ?
<starkmjolk> schestowitz: what’s the first number of “free -m” in a terminal?
<schestowitz> Mem: 884 874 9 0 20 338
<redeeman> you are missing highmem
<redeeman> in the kernel
<uncle_fungus> looks like you’re running a lowmem kernel
<uncle_fungus> darn, beat me to it
<schestowitz> Never compiled one before.
<redeeman> weird that mandriva would disable highmem
<redeeman> especially in these days
<redeeman> but i guess they figure people are gonna use 64bit
<schestowitz> Yes, indeed. 2 GB is quite standard.
<redeeman> what cpu is it?
<redeeman> anyway, you should get 64bit
<uncle_fungus> you’ve got the 586 kernel installed.
<schestowitz> Amd Athlon X2 5000
<uncle_fungus> install the equivalent without 586 in the name
<schestowitz> Having already set it all up, I’d be reluctant to mess with the kernel.
<uncle_fungus> kernel-desktop-2.6.24.5-1mnb will do you just fine
<redeeman> you are going to get updates to the kernel eventualy
<redeeman> +l
<schestowitz> It might break something, no?
<uncle_fungus> no
<redeeman> well it can break stuff naturally, but the chances are very slim
<redeeman> and you can always just go back
<redeeman> if it does not work
<schestowitz> Hmmm… assuming I have prior experience building it from source and replacing, no?
<schestowitz> Thanks for the help BTW.
<uncle_fungus> go into rpmdrake and select the kernel-desktop-latest package
<uncle_fungus> and disable the kernel-desktop586-latest package
<schestowitz> Oooo, lots of options there… under ‘kernel-desktop-latest’
<uncle_fungus> the regular one will do
<uncle_fungus> to start with
<uncle_fungus> it should have 2.6.24.5 as the version
<schestowitz> OK, I’m selecting and adding kernel-desktop-latest
<schestowitz> To satisfy dependencies, the following package(s) also need to be installed: kernel-desktop-2.6.24.5-2mnb-1-1mnb1.i586?
<uncle_fungus> yup
<schestowitz> The following 2 packages are going to be installed: - kernel-desktop-2.6.24.5-2mnb-1-1mnb1.i586
<schestowitz> - kernel-desktop-latest-2.6.24.5-2mnb1.i586
<uncle_fungus> yea, one’s the kernel, one’s a meta package that will auto-pull the latest available
<schestowitz> Ok, I trust you on this.
<schestowitz> OK. It’s done. Anything I should do next?
<uncle_fungus> reboot and select your new kernel
<uncle_fungus> if it doesn’t work, reboot and use the old one again
<schestowitz> How would I select the old one? Which one should I try to choose?\
<uncle_fungus> it’ll appear in your boot menu
<schestowitz> Okay, so I’ll try the one without 585 in the name, right?
<uncle_fungus> yup
<schestowitz> Thanks a lot! Hopefully I’ll be back.

[…]

<schestowitz> uncle_fungus: uncle. Dude. You almost killed me.
<uncle_fungus> huh?
<uncle_fungus> i did wonder why you were offline so long
<schestowitz> Here I am 3 hours later with yet another new distro.
<schestowitz> Don’t worry.
<schestowitz> The good news is that I have all 2 gigs now and it’s back to normal. All kernels including the old one went bananas.
<schestowitz>
<schestowitz> Just for details (Michael has this documented, so…)
<uncle_fungus> oh? bananas how?
<schestowitz> After updating the kernel the graphics driver went boom ( ) and I could barely give text input except for in tty1
<uncle_fungus> ah, yes, thats a bit of stupidity in the mandriva update system
<schestowitz> It seems as though the Mandriva conrol centre (MCC it’s called?) had a better procedure for fecthing new kernels with drivers embedded in them.
<schestowitz> uncle_fungus: I agree. I wasn’t faulting you.
<schestowitz> Anyway, I have another new partition (Kubuntu is what I’ve had burned).
<uncle_fungus> depends what drivers you need. The fglrx installer in mandriva is hopeless in my experience. I just do everything manually
<schestowitz> Perhaps more interestingly, Manbo came up in the package management.
<schestowitz> And I’m sensitive to this because Turbolinux swaps code with Microsoft and gets to see their source code.
<schestowitz> That patent deal and Manbo have always been a bit of a mystery, particularly their legal effect. PJ gave up on Mandriva because of it and I debated with Peter Brown of the FSF at the time. No answers. Anyway, Manbo is already *ahem* alive.
<schestowitz> BTW, I’d use the free driver, but michaellarabel insisted that dual-head needs the blob.

What does a man get for jeopardising his life for a computer? He gets arrested. How insane is that?

This is just disgusting. The Great Society of Our Time is once again preparing for a mass-slaughter of innocent animals. It’s hiding the severity of the act behind propaganda words.

The proposal “is killing pure and simple to balance the books for an agency whose reckless management has caused immeasurable harm to a national treasure at considerable cost to the American taxpayer,” Heyde said.

Maybe it’s not the ‘unfit to live’ horses that should be euthanized after all. What happened to human mercy? Whose planet is it?

[These are some quick notes, nothing formal, but might be of use to Brits in this blog who wish to buy a PC soon…]

Things have improved drastically, even in the land of Bill & Tony, which is likely to be last to embrace FOSS (along with the US).

I’ve just spent about 3 hours trying to find a new PC. I found one.

I decided that living with antiques can be fun and very viable as long as you stick to GNU/Linux, but productivity is never optimal. With just 256 MB or 512 MB you soon develop some memory management habits that affect the way you perform tasks.

So, off I went looking for what’s available out there. One system that appears to be very popular and sold widely across the nation is the eSys Linux box, which is in some way associated with a company in India (I know this because I called them for support in 2005 and a person from India answered). Anyhoo…

Its cost varies from about GBP 100 to GBP 200, depending on how much the seller wants to pocket as a price difference/margin. Tesco still sells these with Ubuntu LTS (6.06) as far as I can tell and so do some other shops, not only those that specialise in Linux. I saw a few.

Dell sells Linux in the UK. It even has some nice Web page to guide those who know what they are looking for (can search for “Linux” or “Ubuntu” and you can’t really miss it). For various peculiar reasons, I decided to skip Dell. The decision seems poor because Dell’s offer depends on demand, but then again, Dell is a kickback-loving business where scandal and corruption is just part of ’success’. Moreover, they offered no AMD options, which means that Charity Killer (Intel) would get a buck. I could care less about the NVidia-only option because while NVidia doesn’t stock FOSS (for now… someone reliable tells me that a big announcement has yet to come but it’s embargoed) it has been relatively kind to Linux over the years, compared with ATI (before the strategic 360 anyway). So that’s Dell anyway. Rumours suggest that there are hardly any savings if one buys a Linux PC from them (it varies depending on offers and nations). I didn’t check this carefully.

Then there’s Dabs, which 3 years ago I decided not to buy from due to poor (irresponsible) service. They probably still have some Linux PCs around, but their defective site has a dysfunctional search feature. It doesn’t do anything. Maybe it wants JavaScript to be enabled.

I could recall a company called Nov*something from comp.uk (or uk.comp). It was discussed several years ago. It was mentioned regularly in the UK NGs because they don’t force you to buy Windows and AMD is available too. They have a nice-looking site at the moment and there’s a considerable discount for those who steer away from Windows, so I went for that offer.

The new rig will be overpowered for my needs, but at least it’s built to stay ahead of the curve even in the future. It comes with a dual-head-compatible GPU, so it’s more than enough; I’ve hardly played games in the past year. Anyway, the plan is to get this multi-core box also a multi-head box.

I turned for some quick advice to the public Phoronix IRC channel and an online friend was there to help.

<schestowitz> I have a quick query. I’m about to close a deal on a PC any moment. Does the Nvidia Geforce 7300GT 256MB work with dual head OK?
<michaellarabel> schestowitz: Using the binary driver, yes.
<schestowitz> Thanks a million! I was going to pick just the favourites, but no seller in the UK does that. I was relived enough to find Linux+AMD (quad-core)… but only NVidia among the options.
<schestowitz> *relieved
<michaellarabel> No problem. To set it up, just look at TwinView in nvidia-settings.
<schestowitz> I’ve made a note, thanks.
[…]
<schestowitz> michaellarabel, would it be possible (no matter how hard) to combine two of these cards for triple-head?
<michaellarabel> schestowitz: Yes, using Xinerama.
* m-c has quit (”Ex-Chat”)
<schestowitz> Thanks. I ask because my first Xinerama experience (2003) burned half a day. Afterwards it took no more than half an hour. Nothing scares me more than editing x config files (CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE and pray )
* m-c (n=mmm@ubuntu/member/desertc) has joined #phoronix
<michaellarabel> it shouldn’t be that hard to configure it these days.

So it seems like I’ll go out to get another GPU tomorrow. Novatech’s delivery schedule seems impressive, if they stick to it. They deliver within one day (or so they say, depending on ordering volume).

Other shops I came across were interesting too. Some offered to sell Linux CDs, Ubuntu was a popular choice for preinstalls and some shops were too small to be trustworthy. Also, Google Checkout seemed a tad problematic.

I remembered Jim Moore who used to post in COLA (USENET Linux advocacy). The first site I visited with the intent of buying a PC was his. But having followed the link he posted in his .sig I got just a default server page. I wonder what he’s up to.

Can we trust NASA?

NASA’s press office “marginalized or mischaracterized” studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, the agency’s own internal watchdog concluded.

One has to wonder if any Federal or public body has actually remained decent.

Are we human are we just animals?

‘ve covered here before some incidents (or widespread phenomena rather) such as use of Africa as the garbage dump for poisonous artifacts, disposed of by the western world. People are supposed not to know about this, or at least not to care.

Some years ago I was seeing protests from animal activists, whose signs also showed living monkeys with their skulled stripped. “It’s all for science,” the researchers would say and now comes this article from the CNN.

Other strocities include the testing of bad or experimental drugs in Africa where it’s wrongly assumed that life is cheap. People get treated like statistics; if a few die as a result, then “the experiment is compete” rather than a “murder is committed.” Business can be ruthless.

Not so long ago I saw some articles about the police using laws that were devised against “terrorists” to battle animal activists.

The only animals out there are often pretentious people in suits — people who put money before human life. Those are people to whom everything is to be exploited. This is just sad.