Arch Linux stuff

Being a linux using iPad owner is a bit of pain. As there really isn’t good way to easily transfer files from computer to iPad. Or so I thought, until I again decided to do some googling. I don’t know why I hadn’t found this info earlier. But anyway, here goes.

There are only three steps to take

1. Start webserver

2. Open page with browser

3. Watch videos

First I found my way to this page. From there I found most of the info needed. I hadn’t realized that I could start basic webserver using Python.

python -c "import SimpleHTTPServer;SimpleHTTPServer.test()"

But alas, it didn’t work for me. I got following error:

ImportError: No module named SimpleHTTPServer

Back to google. Where I found this page. Things have changed when moving to Python3 and new command for the same effect is:

python3 -m http.server

For viewing the videos I used OPlayer as mentioned in the first article. There might be other options as well but OPlayer works for me. In OPlayer you just point built in browser to your computers ip-addres and click on file you want to watch. You have option of either downloading or streaming the selected file. I had better luck with downloading and that allows for offline use as well.

My new computer has one weird glitch. Even though it doesn’t run particularly hot it will still fail to boot if restarted, it requires some time to rest before powering it up again. At manufacturers site I learned that they have new update on BIOS that fixes issue with extreme edition cpus not booting. My cpu isn’t extreme edition but I decided to upgrade anyway, to see if it makes any difference.

Problem is, Shuttle provides flashing programs only for DOS and Windows. Luckily there exists project called FreeDOS which is open source implementation of MS-DOS.

Tools that I used were

• USB memory stick
• Unetbootin from AUR
• Gparted for partitioning memory stick.

I partitioned memory stick into two equal sized partitions and formatted them both to fat32. I am not really sure that this was needed, maybe I didn’t look hard enough but it seemed that I wasn’t able to copy third party files to FreeDOS partition. Thats why the second partition where I copied new ROM file for BIOS and required tools that I downloaded from Shuttle.

After preparing memory stick it was just matter of launching Unetbootin and selecting FreeDOS from distribution list and hitting OK.

When all that was done, reboot machine, select USB as boot medium, select FreeDOS LiveCD from boot menu and after a few seconds you got A:\_ blinking at the screen. Change to drive D: (second partition on disk) and enter command described by manufacturer. After a brief period flashing was done and all that was needed after that was reboot and loading default settings at BIOS settings.

And remember that if you follow this instructions and en up bricking your Motherboard I can’t be held responsible for it. So flash your BIOS at your own risk!

In a proper nerd fashion I recorded short video of my computer booting and starting OpenOffice Calc and Chromium.

According to bootchart my new machines boot time is now 10s. Proof of it can be found below. Ofcourse, my machine is quite powerful and this result would be more impressive with lesser specification. But this result without much of extra work is quite nice in my opinion.

AS I promised, here is bootchart for my new machine. This chart is without any optimization done, so after I get quick-init installed I will post new chart. Even without optimization boot time is already faster than on my old machine with quick-init installed.

Arch Linux forum user graysky posted a thread on forums about speed benchmarks for SSD’s. I bought same drive as he did, but decided to post my results anyway. I will post them here as well for further reference and I’ll also post results from benchmark for my HDD.

Intel X25-M (G2) 80Gb SSD

500GB Hitachi HDS721050CLA362

And my older Samsung drive using eSATA cable, but I assume it is just as good as internal SATA.
Samsung HD502IJ

Interestingly, a bit older Samsung drive seems a bit faster than Hitachi.

I have been thinking about buying new computer for a while now, maybe for a year or so. Now I had funds to do it so I went and ordered components for new box. My previous computer was built in Shuttle barebones case and I really liked it so up-to-date Shuttle case was my benchmark when I was planning which parts I should buy.

Biggest decision was actually the case, as performance was pretty much dictated by my budget. And in the end Shuttle case + rest wasn’t price wise that much different to some case + some motherboard + some power + rest so I went with Shuttle again. This time with state of the art model SX58J3.

When case was decided it was pretty straightforward after that. One component I really wanted in my new machine was SSD drive to hold my root partition (and /home and /boot, I pretty much followed recommendations in this wiki page). After some reading around the web I decided on 80GB Intel X25-M G2. For CPU I went with almost top of the line Intel i7 930, which is 2.80GHz quad-core model. For memory I got 4Gb of Mushkin Enhanced Silverline in 2x2Gb setup. And for GPU I went with Nvidia GTS250 chip on card built by ASUS. And on lesser note, as main harddrive to act as actual storage I got 500Gb Hitachi drive and for optical drive LG DVD writer (I accindentally first ordered one with IDE connections but my new case has only SATA connections, so back to the store on that one

And when it comes to OS, ofcourse Arch Linux. Which is now installed and running well. I am writing this on my new machine so it seems that I didn’t mess up anything while assembling it, it has been a while since I have built computer by myself.

I will post bootchart later, it will be nice to compare to my old results now that I have upgraded performance quite heavily, and especially how my shining SSD will behave.

One gripe I do have. Fans in this new case are a bit louder than they were in the old one. I allready replaced fan for CPU for supposedly quiter one, but I think it actually might be power fan that makes the noise. Have to see if I can replace that as well.

Arch Linux forum user itsbrad212 had link to scripts he has written. One of them was updatescript where I learned about pacman option -Qqdt which will print out list of orphaned packages.

Running that I found out that I had over 60 packages installed that my system didn’t need. I ended up using his script to clean them. First script does complete system upgrade and then loops around orphan removal function until there are no orphans left in system.

Offcourse you could this manually as well. Safety of removing orphans is discussed for example in this thread.

Reason for my previous post was that I wanted to try improving my boottime with quick-init, that one can find from AUR. Installation of this script was straightforward with Yaourt. Although at first I thought that installation had somehow messed up my system when boot went to console instead of KDE. But this was only case of me not editing my inittab AND qinittab files to boot to desktop enviroment.

#id:3:initdefault:
id:5:initdefault:#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/xdm -nodaemon

#x:5:respawn:/usr/sbin/gdm -nodaemon
x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/kdm -nodaemon
#x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null
#x:5:respawn:/bin/su YOURUSER -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c xinit >/dev/null 2>&1"

My boot time from Grub to desktop went from 23s to 15s just by installing quick-init. I have to see into further improvements suggested at quick-init home page. It is shame though that it takes a while for my machine to get from press of power button to grub, so there is limit to how low I can get my boottime.

Here is my current bootchart.

Bootchart with quick-init

Even though I don’t boot my computer everyday I still like it to boot relatively fast. To really know how long it takes for computer to boot you can either use stopwatch or purpose built tool – in this case program called Bootchart. I used info from Arch Linux Wiki article for finding way to make it launch from Grub boot menu.