Raven

Raven was a desktop computer. I think I donated it to the high school in Fresno where my brother in law works.

History

11-11-2011 I took the RevoDrive out for a long time, its performance is really not stellar. Today I decided to put it back in since it is just gathering dust.

Fall 2010 upgrade with RevoDrive 120GB SSD and 2TB Caviar Black

2010 Nov 17 -- OH! Raven changed so MUCH today. 3 way boot setup; Windows 7 Ultimate, Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop, and Ubuntu 10.10 Server on SSD

Fall 2009 upgrade with Patriot 32GB SSD Spring 2009 - initial build

Hardware

• Shuttle SX48P2 Deluxe case and motherboard
• Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz
• 8GB DDR3 1066 memory

Drives

• WD Velociraptor 300, WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U3, FwRev=04.04V05, s/n WD-WXL608035725

(which replaced this one that died under warranty WD Raptor 10K RPM SATA, WDC WD3000HLFS-01G6U0, s/n WD-WXLY08084357)

• OCZ REVODRIVE 120GB, FwRev=1.20, s/n OCZ-GYY134R2861260WR Nov 2010
• Caviar Black 2TB, WDC WD2001FASS-00W2B0, FwRev=05.01D05, s/n WD-WMAY00310595 Nov 2010

I used to use this, it's not installed anywhere right now.

• Patriot "Warp V2" 32 GB SSD, SATA I/II, 2.5" s/n MK050943085B30039 Fall 2009

The case includes a fingerprint scanner, bluetooth and a wifi card. I pulled the wifi card (which has a USB interface) and use it somewhere else now.

Software

It is currently running 11.10 Ubuntu.
I often use it to run VirtualBox so that I can use ESRI ArcGIS.

I did a Ubuntu Server install to get the RevoDrive going, then did

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop to make it back into a desktop
sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback to allow GNOME instead of Unity

I need synaptic, and this got it going again

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface toolkit-accessibility false

Other packages I needed

ubuntu-restricted gnome-tweak-tool wine gimp emacs23
gnome-sushi cairo-dock avant-window-navigator

Changing themes, fonts, other settings requires the gnome tweak tool and wine provides nice MS fonts that can be used in Gnome UI in addition to letting me run SketchUp

Then I more or less followed these outdated instructions: http://www.howtoforge.com/mac4lin_make_linux_look_like_a_mac

In gnome_tweak-tool, change settings

Fonts:

Default: Trebuchet MS Bold
Doc: Aquabase Medium 
Monospace: Monospace
Window title: Lucida Grande Semi-bold

Theme:

Cursor theme: Mac4Lin_Cursors_1.0
Keybinding theme: Emacs 
Icon theme: Mac4Lin_Icons_v1.0
Window Theme: Mac4Lin_GTK_Aqua_v1.0

Disable or change more settings see /etc/xdg/autostart

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/10/things-to-tweak-after-installing-ubuntu.html

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/gnome3
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

Install Java 7 from Oracle and remove openjdk

sudo apt-get remove openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jre-headless openjdk-6-jre-lib

If using Gnome 3, How to get the buttons back in the title bar.

Drive configuration

See also SSD optimizations

RevoDrive is at /dev/sda and /dev/sdb

/dev/md0 is the / partition for Ubuntu 11.10 Server; I used the Server edition and then added the desktop software, it was the easiest way to get it to install on a software RAID 0 configuration.

/dev/sdc (Velociraptor 300GB)
1 Windows 7 boot
2 Windows 7
3 /boot (cant boot directly to revodrive)
4 ext
5 swap
6 Ubuntu 11.10 Desktop edition

/dev/sdc1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc2          206848   515123199   257458176    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdc3       515124225   516168449      522112+  83  Linux
/dev/sdc4       516168511   586067264    34949377    5  Extended
/dev/sdc5       516168513   532956374     8393931   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6       532956438   586067264    26555413+  83  Linux

/dev/sdd (Caviar Black)
1 spare /boot
2 spare /
3 ext
5 swap
6 /home

  Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1            2048      417688      207820+  83  Linux
/dev/sdd2          417689    67521193    33551752+  83  Linux
/dev/sdd3        67523240  3907029167  1919752964    5  Extended
/dev/sdd5        67523242   101097043    16786901   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd6       101099092  3907029167  1902965038   83  Linux

root@raven:~# fdisk -l -u -c
Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders, total 117231408 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xee864337

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1            2048   117226304    58612128+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders, total 117231408 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x53634d5c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        2048   117226304    58612128+  fd  Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/sdc: 300.1 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders, total 586072368 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00017b2c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdc1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc2          206848   515123199   257458176    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdc3       515124225   516168449      522112+  83  Linux
/dev/sdc4       516168511   586067264    34949377    5  Extended
/dev/sdc5       516168513   532956374     8393931   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc6       532956438   586067264    26555413+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/sdd: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00074249

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdd1            2048      417688      207820+  83  Linux
/dev/sdd2          417689    67521193    33551752+  83  Linux
/dev/sdd3        67521194  3907029167  1919753987    5  Extended
/dev/sdd5        67523242   101097043    16786901   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd6       101099092  3907029167  1902965038   83  Linux

Disk /dev/md0: 120.0 GB, 120037441536 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 29306016 cylinders, total 234448128 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 65536 bytes / 131072 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

The wild dance of Windows 7

It took 3 or 4 tries to get both Windows 7 and Ubuntu living happily on the same system. It was a wild dance.

Okay. So I have to install Windows 7 natively because performance of ESRI ArcGIS 10 under VirtualBox sucks. To work under Windows the RevoDrive would have to be configured in a fake raid (BIOS) configuration making it unusable in Linux and defeating TRIM. So I can't (won't) use the RevoDrive in Windows.

Linux will be given the entire RevoDrive.

At some point the system stopped booting from my Linux USB stick. It keeps stopping with an error and leaving me at the initramfs prompt. It turned out I had to type 'exit' (twice) and then it would boot just fine.

At another turn, someone (Windows 7 installer I think) overwrote the partition table on the 2.0 TB drive, effectively wiping my home partition. I was unhappy with this! When the operating systems were sorted out, I was VERY glad that I documented the partitions above, I was able to recreate the partition table and recover everything that I thought I had lost.

I tried using VirtualBox under Windows 7 to access raw partitions with limited success. Of note, I must run the command shell (cygwin bash) as Administrator to get access to the drives.

VBoxManage.exe internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk '\\.\PhysicalDrive0'

gives appropriate results (no sharing errors.)

$ /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files/Oracle/VirtualBox/VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename RawDisk0.vmdk -rawdisk '\\.\PhysicalDrive0'
Oracle VM VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.2.10 (C) 2005-2010 Oracle Corporation
All rights reserved.

RAW host disk access VMDK file RawDisk0.vmdk created successfully.

Note also you have to run VirtualBox as Administrator too to use raw partitions.

It also took me many long hours of booting and adjusting settings in the Linux grub configuration trying to get the RevoDrive to work as / partition until I gave up and installed Ubuntu Server and it worked on first try.

Once again all is well in Linuxtown, for now...