Valid, but not veracious
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Aladdin_Sane May 31, 2007 4:06 PM EDT |
Yet another journalist posts a blog-story without verifying facts. Someone please clean up this mess. Dell's Wal-mart system per http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2007/05/24/16131.aspx will be Dimension E521 (an AMD system) with variations. No Dimension AMD systems are validated with Ubuntu that I've heard. Certainly the above link does not mention such. If Dell does not say that Linux will be at Wal-mart, how can this author? What are his sources, where are the quotes from sources knowledgeable of what is going on? If none, this is non-news filler, and misleading at best. Quoting:Another interesting twist is Dell's plan to sell Linux systems from the shelves of Wal-Mart. Can anybody verify this? The plan that was released publicly was to sell AMD systems at Wal-mart, not Linux systems. If it cannot be verified will Gaskin disclaim it and withdraw it? |
| dcparris May 31, 2007 4:41 PM EDT |
I posted a comment to his blog. We'll see how he responds. |
| jdixon May 31, 2007 4:42 PM EDT |
> Dell's Wal-mart system ... will be Dimension E521 (an AMD system)... That's my understanding also. > No Dimension AMD systems are validated with Ubuntu that I've heard. Well, they're not selling any yet, at any rate. Which is a shame, as that's the system I wanted. I've ordered a new barebone system from MWave instead. :( |
| Aladdin_Sane Jun 01, 2007 12:51 PM EDT |
>I posted a comment to his blog. We'll see how he responds. Welp, that was totally ignored. So much for fact. >I've ordered a new barebone system from MWave instead. I'm glad you found what you wanted. |
| jdixon Jun 01, 2007 5:11 PM EDT |
> I'm glad you found what you wanted. We've been custom building our systems for several years now. We've been using MWave for most of that time. Though Newegg seems to have slightly better prices, they don't seem to have a systems builder frontend like MWave. That makes it a lot harder to ensure that you components are fully compatible. I really hoped they'ed offer the E521 with Ubuntu (though I'd immediately have reloaded it with Slackware, of course), as I wanted to support their Linux program. :( |
| Aladdin_Sane Jun 01, 2007 8:26 PM EDT |
I know little about Dell's Dimension line, but was appalled when I discovered the E52x's have no serial port. The optional Floppy Drive is not an option if you get the Smart Card Reader, apparently. How can you dump a kernel panic without a serial port? (There are ways but using the serial port is standard, normal, predictable and available.) Amazingly RAID1 is supported (wondering how a 2nd HDD fits in such a small chassis). Beyond that, amazing that RAID0 is not. (Remember this is "firmware" RAID not supported in Linux at all by fiat. See http://linux-ata.org/faq-sata-raid.html for the real story on "firmware" ATA RAID from the kernel maintainer himself.) From the mailing list archives, E521 had a really rocky start, but is down to just a few overheats and PowerNow glitches with USB. Browse the subjects by thread at http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-desktops/ scanning for E520 and E521 each month. Definite decrease in 521 traffic. All-in-all, my (very cursory) review says E52x may be a good 2nd system, better 3rd system (for the younger children or whatever) but I wouldn't use it as a primary system. Do keep in mind that E52x is Dell's lowest-end system, so none of this is a surprise. |
| jdixon Jun 01, 2007 9:30 PM EDT |
> ...know little about Dell's Dimension line, but was appalled when I discovered the E52x's have no serial port. Not a problem for me. > The optional Floppy Drive is not an option if you get the Smart Card Reader, apparently. Again, not a problem. > Amazingly RAID1 is supported (wondering how a 2nd HDD fits in such a small chassis). Beyond that, amazing that RAID0 is not. If I ran raid, I'd be using software raid anyway, because, as you note: > Remember this is "firmware" RAID not supported in Linux at all... > From the mailing list archives, E521 had a really rocky start, but is down to just a few overheats and PowerNow glitches with USB. The USB problems were a minor concern, I admit. > Do keep in mind that E52x is Dell's lowest-end system, so none of this is a surprise. Low end systems are what I use. I don't really have the money for anything else. My old system was an Athlon 1.5 GHz machine. The new one is a Sempron 3400, very comparable to the Dell E521. |
| dcparris Jun 02, 2007 5:10 AM EDT |
I've never dumped a kernel panic. Maybe the kernel's I've used just know how to handle the pressure. ;-) |
| Aladdin_Sane Jun 02, 2007 10:34 AM EDT |
> Maybe the kernel's I've used just know how to handle the pressure. ;-) LOL, thanks. It is a hassle, even if the lab is set up for it. Basically, really all you need a crossover serial cable and another computer. But the labs have "concentrator"-based serial networks that distribute access to the feature. On the software side, minicom handles this just fine, and is found in most if not all Linux dists. The Developers (and The Architects and The Titans) are the only ones who want this. For the rest of us, "It's broke" will do. |
| dcparris Jun 02, 2007 2:27 PM EDT |
Actually, I think I did get a kernel panic once. It was definitely interesting. If I "dumped" it, it was for a new, freshly-installed kernel. I don't really remember what I did in that case, to be honest. If rebooting didn't fix it, I probably FFR'd the box. I can imagine a hacker would need the dump info a lot more than I would. I imagine most hackers would want something a bit beefier than the Dell boxes for development purposes. Could be wrong though. |
| jdixon Jun 02, 2007 3:24 PM EDT |
> I imagine most hackers would want something a bit beefier than the Dell boxes for development purposes. The E521 can be ordered with an Athlon 64 dual core 5600+, 4GB Dual Channel DDR2 667 MHz SDRAM, and a 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive. That's pretty beefy. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 02, 2007 4:57 PM EDT |
Quoting:I imagine most hackers would want something a bit beefier than the Dell boxes for development purposes. Why? Unless you're developing high-end games or some massively big enterprise system I can't image what you'd need it for. The most useful thing for a developer would be an extra video card to hook up a second monitor so you can code and look at specs at the same time. |
| Aladdin_Sane Jun 03, 2007 6:35 AM EDT |
While all true, I was thinking of the testers who actually had to test the E52x prior to release. DC, any time a hardware driver has a bug, you generally get a panic. A BSOD is very much the same thing. One OS (Amiga, I think) called it a "Guru meditation." It will say "kernel panic" on the screen, and, historically, freeze the system (newer 2.6 64-bit kernels don't freeze arbitrarily, but this is a very new feature). What happened prior is relevant to fixing the bug. That's where the serial output comes in: You can get the screen output via serial console when the normal console won't fork over the info you need to fix the problem. Oddly, USB, The Universal *Serial* Bus, cannot do this, it is a brain-dead chip in this respect. These things are pretty common in hardware, kernel, or driver pre-release test environments. Anyone seen a serial port add-in card recently? |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 03, 2007 7:23 AM EDT |
Aladdin_Sane: Any idea how I would go about getting such serial console output on a regular laptop? I have issues with my laptop that sometimes it hangs during bootup. When I hard-reboot it boots normally, but there are no logfiles of the failed boot. The boot failure happens about 1 in 10-15 boots. To make matters stranger, it doesn't really hang when the failure happens. It still continues but about 100 times as slow. I once waited half an hour in the hopes that the boot would progress far enough to save some logfiles but alas, no cookie. |
| Aladdin_Sane Jun 03, 2007 8:18 AM EDT |
While it does not seem hard to me, I've done it several times, so I am biased. Serial ports can be cantankerous. 1) Hardware needed: A sick system to diagnose with a reproducible problem and a serial port, a crossover serial cable (must verify that it is not straight-through), a 2nd computer with serial port. 2) Software needed: Any "normal" Linux install on the sick system and a way to edit the kernel command line (this is built in to GRUB), the 2nd system should have Linux and minicom OR Linux and another program that talks serial-port-ese OR any other OS and a competent serial port program (No, I don't trust Hyperterminal). A system booted to KNOPPIX can be used as the 2nd system, I'm pretty sure. 3) Get any system with the kernel source code installed and read Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt under the source main directory. The parameter "console=" is what you are looking for. Or google for Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt at http://www.google.com/linux 4) On the 2nd system launch minicom, make it do capture input and log mode (minicom has fairly easy to follow help screens). 4) Edit the sick system's kernel command line. In GRUB, hit e to edit, e again on kernel, do the edit, hit enter, then b to boot. 5) The edited kernel command line from #4 should look something like this: "kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.21-1-k7 root=/dev/md1 ro console=ttyS0,9600n8r console=tty0" all one line, of course. Values for "console=ttySx,bbbbpnf" can vary wildly depending on the capabilities of both serial ports, and the software that drives both ports, the kernel and minicom in my example. 6) The output from the serial dump may contain clues to the problem. The big advantages: You get a record of what happened early on and you can easily save the record, compare it to future records vs. symptoms, share it, copy it, print it, and maybe have a priest to do an exorcism using the data collected. 7) To your specific symptom: The cause is wildly dependent on hardware manufacturer and BIOS revision for Portables. For example, as related to the kernel, both ACPI and APIC are areas commonly implicated, and they are not the same thing. --- You may certainly have more help from me anytime. |
| Sander_Marechal Jun 03, 2007 12:35 PM EDT |
Thanks. My laptop has a serial port and so does my desktop. Time to find a crossover serial. I think I have one somewhere back from the 8086 XT days. I used it to copy files from PC to PC. |
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