Laysan

From Wildsong
Revision as of 20:00, 19 January 2016 by Brian Wilson (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Laysan is my current desktop computer.

I originally intended to build a server, then it got turned into my desktop instead. The server ended up being built later. See Dart.

Virtual machines are now how I do things. It's EASIER, whether it's Vagrant for testing and development (here on Laysan and on Plover) or just day-to-day work on VirtualBox on Linux or Parallels.

On Laysan, I run Debian (Jessie) + Cinnamon on a big SSD. Then in virtual machines I install whatever I need to get the job done - Ubuntu or Windows or whatever. The "hypervisor" stays relatively untouched, just the basics of a desktop are installed in the host operating system. All the real work on Laysan now takes place in VMs.

With Linux I set up machines as needed with Vagrant and then throw them away when I am done with them. With Windows I keep the configuration in VirtualBox because it stays around permanently.

I still have Windows 8.1 installed on a separate hard drive; at one point I intended to have ArcGIS installed there and during the big move back to California ended up using my Mac Plover as my ArcGIS workstation. That worked so well that it continues to stick that way. Windows 8.1 is useless to me. I should just bite the bullet and reuse that SSD. I wonder if I can suck THAT into a virtual machine.

Hardware

Motherboard: ASUS P8B-M LGA 1155 Intel C204 Micro ATX Server Motherboard

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 Sandy Bridge 3.2GHz LGA 1155 80W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31230

RAM: 8GB x 2 Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G

Drives:

  • /dev/sda Samsung 840 Evo 750GB ended up here when Stellar died on me. Life is too short to keep VMs on spinning media.
  • /dev/sdb Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
  • /dev/sdb Data storage on a 2 TB WDC Caviar Black (SATA 2) WD2001FASS-0 SerialNo=WD-WMAY00310595

DVD burner: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-222BB

Video: PNY VCQ2000D-PB Quadro 2000D 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 Workstation Video Card I wanted a workstation video card, as I want to do some OpenGL programming, and I work with ArcGIS software. This is the only component in this build that I would change; I would get a high end gaming board instead of a low end workstation board.

Monitor: Acer 23" and Starlogic 15"

Keyboard: IBM PS/2 Model M SpaceSaver (built in 1987) and Apple Bluetooth Keyboard Yes, 2 keyboards... one keyboard for BIOS and one for every day.

Audio: This motherboard has no integrated audio so I use a NuForce UDAC 2 and a pair of Yamaha powered speakers.

Other: bT878 video capture card, an Osprey 210, see Digital Video.

Case: Fractal Design Define Mini Black Micro ATX Silent PC Computer Case w/ USB 3.0 support and 2 x 120mm Fractal Design Silent Fans

Power supply: SeaSonic S12II 620 Bronze 620W ATX12V V2.3 / EPS 12V V2.91 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Software

Operating system

2016-Jan-19 Installed Debian 8.2 on the 750GB SSD, all in one partition. Cinnamon is now an initial installer option! To boot from this drive I had to change the controller from IDE to AHCI mode.

I also had to repartition the SSD to remove the Macintosh GPT partitioning. I booted in rescue mode then used "mktable" command in parted. I wrote an msdos mode table to the drive, rebooted and reinstalled. (grrr!) GPT has been a pain. Might be "better" on a Mac but does not work for me as a Linux boot drive. I think it's because I have not changed to using UEFI yet on Laysan.

Partitioning: 

sda1 40GB /
sda2 32GB swap
sda3 about 678GB (the rest) /home

2015-Mar-14 Upgraded from Ubuntu 13.04 to Xubuntu 14.10, then added Cinnamon. I keep trying it but I still hate Unity.

2014-Apr-26 Installed Windows 8.1 on Samsung drive. Hmmm, if I run Linux I can use a linux fs on the Black drive but if I boot into Windows, I can't.

2013-Sep-10 Installed Ubuntu Raring 13.04 MY OH MY UNITY IS STILL AWFUL

up to Sept 9, it was Linux Mint 15, an excellent choice

Operating system is split between a 256GB SSD and a 2TB HD. I had a RAID 0 setup with 2 SSD's but the (considerable) speed bump was not worth the pain to configure and maintain it.

Changes for SSD

The SSDs I have been buying lately seem to be pretty solid. I trust them more and am no longer afraid they will wear out before I upgrade them as prices continue to plummet.

I still do a few tweaks that are not automatically done at install time to optimize the fact that I have the operating system installed on an SSD and that I have a lot of RAM.

On RAM fs are /tmp, /var/tmp, /var/run, /var/lock

Since the system has 16GB of RAM I am not worried about swap space. I left it on the SSD in a 32 GB swap partition. I don't anticipate it will get used much (thus wearing out the SSD) but when/if it does kick in I want it to be as FAST possible. (I used to put a swapfile on the spinning hard drive. That was a bad idea.) 

echo vm.swappiness = 0 > /etc/sysctl.d/swappiness.conf

At the end of /etc/fstab 

# Move things to RAM DISK for speed
tmpfs /tmp     tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0 
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

Drivers

The Nvidia driver has always a problem for me. Choices are: repositories or Nvidia web site.

For Debian Jessie --

For previous Ubuntu install --

NVidia driver: This time around I successfully installed the driver directly from the Ubuntu Software Center. Much easier than downloading it from NVidia and installing manually.

Unfortunately it does not work in Makerbot Desktop. Updating drivers DID NOT HELP.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO INSTALL DRIVER FROM Nvidia site. Instead follow instructions found here to get a version that is newer.

http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/12/install-nvidia-340-65-ubuntu-1504/ 

add-apt-repository -y ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install nvidia-349

As of 2015 April 09 Version 349 is a beta driver! More exciting. Oh go for it! I did 'apt-cache search nvidia' to find it.

I don't want to talk about what happened with the NVIDIA version (from nvidia.com). Well. Cinnamon crashed. The monitor resolution for the 15" was forced to 640x480. I could not force in the correct resolution.

Packages

Here is what happened after I got Debian Jessie installed. Debian installs most of the good stuff for me, a clear sign Debian is a better match for me than Ubuntu. 

apt-get install -y emacs git subversion \
 qgis gpsbabel-gui \
 vagrant \
 openscad

Enable other repositories. I need Firefox. I need Nvidia driver. 

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install -y nvidia-current

Did not find these in 14.10 

 google-talkplugin google-chrome-stable \

I had to adjust the Cinnamon theme settings to get it to look right, and I had to type in the command cinnamon-settings to get at the control panel for Cinnamon. I added a theme by unzipping it in ~/.themes. I am using Elune. I selected the Humanity (Ubuntu) icons.

Extras

These can't be installed from the Debian packages.

Retrieved from "https://wiki.wildsong.biz//index.php?title=Laysan&oldid=9495"