On Tuesday 08 July 2003 10:16, Paul Trevethan wrote:

...

Seeking some general advice on the "right" procedure to follow in swapping some hardware in my Linux box.

I run KDE3.1 on SuSE8.2 Pro and it looks like my cd burner has died. (That's the general consensus of advice anyway) I am planning on simply replacing it with a new one. As I have never had to replace hardware under SuSE before I thought I would just check if there is a proper procedure to follow, or does the new hotplug detection stuff just work.

I know how to change bios details but is there anything special that needs doing at the software level?

Currently the config is: 1st IDE master - hard drive 1st IDE slave - empty 2nd IDE master - dvd/cdrom player 2nd IDE slave - cd burner <-- this is being replaced.

BTW, the machine I am looking at is a Plextor 52/24/52 PX-W5224TA. I am getting it from a dealer who only sells Linux software and hardware so I am ok that it should be compatible, even though the precise model is a bit new for the hardware database. Any comments on the burner?

Since you're replacing with a direct equivalent, you souln't even notice the difference (apart from the fact that it'll work!) CD-RW's use a standard interface so are, generally, interchangable.

HTH

Dylan

...

Paul.

Dylan wrote: the only commnet I will add to the above is that the DVD should be installed as the Primary SLAVE and not as the Secondary Master. Reason: the nature of IDE/ATAPI protocol is such that you cannot read and write at the same time on the same IDE cable/connector. So, by having the above setup, with the DVD as master and the CDRW as the slave on the same cable the RW from anything on the DVD is not as fast as it could be. Of course, by moving the DVD to the slave position on the primary cable the information in the /etc/fstab file will need to be amended -- and you do this BEFORE powering down to install the new RW and re-position the DVD. Or you can do it later, but it's more fiddly. Oh, you would also install the new CDRW as the master on the secondary cable (unless you want to avoid this by installing a new, second, HD on the 2nd cable as Master :-) ). -- I was very heavily into pornography. Then my pornograph broke.

On Tuesday 08 July 2003 17:46, Paul Trevethan wrote:

On Wed, 09 Jul 2003 00:57:39 +1000

Basil Chupin wrote:

...

Dylan wrote:

...

On Tuesday 08 July 2003 10:16, Paul Trevethan wrote:

...

Seeking some general advice on the "right" procedure to follow in

swapping>some hardware in my Linux box.

...

I run KDE3.1 on SuSE8.2 Pro and it looks like my cd burner has died. (That's the general consensus of advice anyway) I am planning on

simply>replacing it with a new one. As I have never had to replace hardware under>SuSE before I thought I would just check if there is a proper procedure to>follow, or does the new hotplug detection stuff just work.>

...

I know how to change bios details but is there anything special that

needs>doing at the software level?

...

Currently the config is: 1st IDE master - hard drive 1st IDE slave - empty 2nd IDE master - dvd/cdrom player 2nd IDE slave - cd burner <-- this is being replaced.

BTW, the machine I am looking at is a Plextor 52/24/52 PX-W5224TA. I

am>getting it from a dealer who only sells Linux software and hardware so I am>ok that it should be compatible, even though the precise model is a bit new>for the hardware database. Any comments on the burner?>

the only commnet I will add to the above is that the DVD should be installed as the Primary SLAVE and not as the Secondary Master.

Reason: the nature of IDE/ATAPI protocol is such that you cannot read and write at the same time on the same IDE cable/connector. So, by having the above setup, with the DVD as master and the CDRW as the slave on the same cable the RW from anything on the DVD is not as fast as it could be.

Of course, by moving the DVD to the slave position on the primary cable the information in the /etc/fstab file will need to be amended -- and you do this BEFORE powering down to install the new RW and re-position the DVD. Or you can do it later, but it's more fiddly. Oh, you would also install the new CDRW as the master on the secondary cable (unless you want to avoid this by installing a new, second, HD on the 2nd cable as Master :-) ).

Thanks Dylan.

It may be an urban myth, but I was always under the impression that it was unwise to mix hard drives and cdroms on the ame IDE cable?

It was Basil who said that. It generally just slows access a bit (sometimes considerably) if you're copying from the CD/DVD to the hard drive on the same channel. For burning, I wouldn't use a hard drive on the same channel as the cdr to copy from.

The only "price" I pay for the current setup is that I rip to hard drive and burn from there to cdr/rw. I believe that is better anyway to avoid potential 'coasters'.

Actually, with the speed of modern drives you *probably* wouldn't have a problem - especially with DMA properly set up and maybe ramping down the write speed.

What if I wanted to add a 2nd hard drive later?

I have: hda - hard drive (/) hdb - hard drive (/home and swap) hdc - CDRW hdd - DVD+RW and it all runs fine. Having swap on hdc or hdd might improve performance marginally, but no so as you'd notice most likely. Dylan

In your scenario, it sounds like /etc/fstab is the only change + redo the k3b setup (re-detect) after coming back up I presume?

Paul.

-- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg

On Wednesday 09 July 2003 07:47, Basil Chupin wrote:

Dylan wrote:

...

On Tuesday 08 July 2003 17:46, Paul Trevethan wrote: <SNIP>

...

It may be an urban myth, but I was always under the impression that it was unwise to mix hard drives and cdroms on the ame IDE cable?

It was Basil who said that. It generally just slows access a bit (sometimes considerably) if you're copying from the CD/DVD to the hard drive on the same channel. For burning, I wouldn't use a hard drive on the same channel as the cdr to copy from.

...

The only "price" I pay for the current setup is that I rip to hard drive and burn from there to cdr/rw. I believe that is better anyway to avoid potential 'coasters'.

Actually, with the speed of modern drives you *probably* wouldn't have a problem - especially with DMA properly set up and maybe ramping down the write speed.

...

What if I wanted to add a 2nd hard drive later?

I have:

hda - hard drive (/) hdb - hard drive (/home and swap) hdc - CDRW hdd - DVD+RW

and it all runs fine. Having swap on hdc or hdd might improve performance marginally, but no so as you'd notice most likely.

Dylan

...

In your scenario, it sounds like /etc/fstab is the only change + redo the k3b setup (re-detect) after coming back up I presume?

Paul.

I quote from a Linux reference book I have:

QUOTE

If you have two IDE drives in use under Linux, place them on separate controllers if possible. It is a limitation of the IDE/ATAPI protocol that simultaneous read/writes cannot be done to two different drives on the same controller.

I don't dispute that, my point is that in practical circumstances it isn't an issue.

UNQUOTE

Following this, I have-

Primary Master 80Gb HD (hda) Secondary Slave DVD (hdb) Secondary Master 80Gb HD (hdc) Secondary Slave CDRW (hdd)

I spend a lot of time copying from CD or DVD to HD, or vice versa, hence they are on separate channel to the HD's - I never copy from DVD to CD so the issue simply doesn't arise. YMMV, of course.

(The speed of read/writes is dependent on the DMA of the Master on the connector so one always puts the bit of h/ware with the fastest DMA as Master. (Now, if you are using Cable Select on your drives then this means that the Master goes on the end of the cable (usually coloured black) while the slave goes on the middle, grey, connector [the blue one goes into the mobo];

Assuming your drives cooperate, of course.

however, if you are using jumpers to specify whether a drive is master or slave then you it doesn't matter where on the cable you put the Master.))

Unless of course you take the slave of the end connector leaving it dangling, with master on the middle connection... I've had 'issues' ranging from undetected h/w to wide scale drive corruption in that instance. (with old h/w, admittedly.)

On the SM I have a partition formatted in reiserfs which I use for keeping backups of files used by the OS (and applications, eg Mozilla) which is installed on PM.

-- I was very heavily into pornography. Then my pornograph broke.

Hmmm, painful ;>( Dylan -- Sweet moderation Heart of this nation Desert us not We are between the wars - Billy Bragg

On Tue, 2003-07-08 at 18:46, Paul Trevethan wrote:

It may be an urban myth, but I was always under the impression that it was unwise to mix hard drives and cdroms on the ame IDE cable?

The only "price" I pay for the current setup is that I rip to hard drive and burn from there to cdr/rw. I believe that is better anyway to avoid potential 'coasters'. What if I wanted to add a 2nd hard drive later?

In your scenario, it sounds like /etc/fstab is the only change + redo the k3b setup (re-detect) after coming back up I presume?

Paul

Some (mostly older) hard drives and cd drives don't mix well, expecially not if you put them on a ATA-100 cable. The newer drives should work fine, although I haven't had the courage to try it yet... About fstab ect. If your fstab lists the symlinks to your devices (i.e. /dev/cdrecorder instead /dev/hdd), you only need to change the symlink before you switch off to replace the drive. Remember to check your IDE-DMA afterwards in Yast2. Yast2 still don't pick up my ide-scsi devices - I had to put hdparm statements in /etc/init.d/boot.local for that Hans Hans