X-Message-Number-for-archive: 169630 Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2003 09:54:10 +0100 Message-Id: <200312010954.10417.mail@steve-ss.com> Subject: Re: [SLE] Speed of 9.0 vs. 8.2// 9.0 is too slow on our lan with PII 450 clients with 128 RAM. We have had to stick with 8.2. On fast boxes like our server, it's fine. Steve. (sorry david, forgot to post to list) --- Saw this and had a thought. I read about architectures in a gcc code production and optimization article a year or two ago -- I don't know if things have change or what options produce what effects, but at the time, most vendors were producing i486 binaries, not i586. The article said if you ran a Pentium-Pro (first generation of i686), P-II or P-III, you were better off with code optimized for a i486 than a i586. Turns out that the first Pentium was a bit weird in architecture and it wasn't until the Pentium Pro that the architectures were made compatible with earlier CPU's (like the i486). The essense was if you had a Pentium Pro or better, the best optimization was (in order (i686, i486, i386, i586). Seem the i586 code paths were the worst for the other processers. While I mentioned this to both Mandrake (they were they only one's producing a 586 compiled version back then) and have mentioned it to SuSE, I was ignored by Mandrake and Suse told me I'd have to pay support fees to have my support problem answered as the basic install support didn't cover problems with code generation or speed. I ran into other problems...silly me, got too used to MS world, where you install 1 vendor's "update product", and it checks not only previous versions of the same vendor, but checks for versions of alternate vendors and correctly upgrades your system whether you are upgrading from a same-vendor product or a different vendor product! While I bought the 8.2 pro upgrade, due to being limited in typing and mousing, I never had a chance to install it on my main server. When 9.0 came out I tried to go straight to 9.0 from 8.1. I found out, after having my attention drawn to the fine print, that this is not supported. This was after the 9.0 upgrade wiped my 8.1 RPM database but left the files telling it what version to look for for YAST Online Update -- so even I booted from DVD -- I told it to upgrade all versions of products it found and remove RPM's that were no longer supported. Instead, it updated some packages, then wiped out the RPM database but didn't uninstall the old versions of the 8.1 products. I was left to try to install the necessary 9.0 RPMs by re-running the install and choosing new install (update showed zero rpms left that needed updating, even though it only updated about 30 rpms and deleted about 20 (I had about 500 packages installed). I didn't want to reformat, so I copied my root files to a different partition (came in handy later), and added all of the needed RPMs -- base system and server type files to my selection by hand and let it overwrite the old files, in place. My intent was/still is to go through and index the old 8.1 files match them up with any remaining files on my system by MD5/size/DT and remove unchanged files and adding their 9.0 equiv rpms. It's been a very harry situation -- not the least of which is I still have the problem of getting YAST online to work -- not, (goddess knows why?!) it thinks I am at 8.2, though I installed no 8.2 files on the system. So I can bring up YOU and it tells me it has no updates for my system (of course not, the rpms are all 9.0. I wrote a _simple_ email to suse support, but they've hired microsoft help service folks to man the first line support -- Since the what version you have loaded (eitherr 8.2 or 9.0) is stored *somewhere*, it should be possible to edit that file and have YOU work properly with 9.0. Just a simple edit requiring the simplest of understandings of the YOU process. The answer I got was typical of someone with the intelligence and ability to only read a script. They didn't know what file needed to be corrected, so they told me that upgrading 2 versions at once wasn't covered by the "free install support" and that I could hire them to tell me the answer. Otherwise, I should reformat my OS disk and reinstall just like those cursed with Windows are usually told -- sorry we don't know the answer. There are too many bugs in our OS to track it down, and we don't really care about the bug or quality, so we really don't wish to spend the time or resources to isolate the real problem, so we want you to reformat the system and destroy all evidence of the problem and reload from scratch -- of course, since you only purchased an upgrade edition, installing from scratch may not be supported either...neither is it supported if you have more than 1 hard disk and more than 1 CDROM, and definitely not if you are disabled and have a laptop and are forced to use an external keyboard and screen...that's way unsupported -- even though you never use the laptop builtin keyboard and screen -- we only support the builtin screen which is always turned off in your setup. Oh...you have a SCSI adapter and an IDE adaptor? We don't support systems with SCSI in them with our free install support -- IDE drives only. I could likely go on...but I haven't been able to use support since they switched to the new support policy since none of my systems seem to be in the narrow band of systems they support. Even when I used the laptop builtin monitor, at the time, the chipset in the Dell I had was unsupported and I'd have to buy a 3rd party driver which they couldn't not support (and which would invalidate my support warrantee). Yeah...very much like MS they are getting. At least MS seems to build in kernel support for all the kernels (a reason they are so bloated on disk), and they load the kernel appropriate for your system -- oh yeah, another thing that disqualified me from support, I had a 2-P SMP (me: "how about if I remove a processor" : nope: it's a multi-p motherboard....not part of standard support). Bleh!!! Anyway, if you get everything working to your delight, you might try recompiling a kernel, at least, maybe the window system, but most of all, the kernel, specifically for your machine. Even going from an SMP compiled kernel to a UP kernel can get you 10-20% speedup in kernel ops (or used to on 2.4...dunno about 2.6). Athena