I am currently using a cheap ($70 AUD) asus am2+ motherboard along with a phenom x3 CPU and 2 gigs of RAM.
Here is a description of my problems. In short IDE dvd burners dont work in linux but do in windows xp.
And so I've given up on linux because of SCSI errors on IDE dvd drives.
But if I go to try FreeBSD first I need to know if it can handle power-loss without errors.
Right now it is running Archlinux. I use this machine inside a wooden box with alfoil lining and stuff as a portable dj music console. It has a monitor with stand removed tied into a wooden lid on hinges and a keyboard + mouse are on a lid under that (that when is opened as well lets you have access to the internals).
Recently I got 2 pioneer IDE dvd burners for disc-to-disc copy burning, thinking that SATA dvd burners are still dodgy with support like they were last time I looked into it.
Well archlinux sees the devices (hda and hdb now that I've made it use ide module instead of pata module), and gives an error message whenever no media is present as expected, but when media is present, gives input/output errors. It has all sorts of SCSI command errors in wodim. I try using gui apps in gnome in a console-kit session, and as root using command line tools, tried pata and ide kernel modules, tried this tried that.
Everyone in the linux world says that the drives must be broken to give such errors, but hey guess what? Plug a windows hdd into the box and after it realises its in a new pc and does its hardware detection thing, I use imgburn to burn those discs. Works perfectly, windows xp (without any special drivers installed) works, the "bleeding edge" fully up-to-date linux distro doesn't work at all, no matter what. I thought it might be that the cable is dodgy, linux is using some advanced DMA stuff, but windows is only doing some basic bios access or something, I don't know for sure about such things.
I installed nvidia chipset drivers in windows, so ethernet is now detected (along with full hardware acceleration for everything else), and I set the dvds to max speed, still work fine in windows. I go into the bios and disable some UDMA stuff, still can't read any data off them in linux.
I thought maybe the burners won't even let you read a disc unless the region code is set, so I did that in windows, tried again in linux, nothing but scsi errors trying to read from the discs. I tried wodim with ATA ATAPI all sorts, nothing but errors.
It's an unacknowledged, non-cared about software problem on archlinux / linux kernels side I'm sure of it, but what can I do?
The problem is, is that sometimes someone trips over the power cord, or the power to the building goes off, and it isn't shut down "nicely".
I like archlinux because of all the different filesystems used.
I use JFS for everything, except for the huge .flac collection which is on an XFS fs. These are meta-data journaling filesystems, as long as you're not writing file contents when the power cuts (which I'm not, not updating tags of files or updating filesystem at a gig), then no prob not shutting-down cleanly.
But dvd-drives don't work. I could just use windows, and tell it not to have write-ahead caching on the drives, and be happy. But I don't want to. I want to use arch linux with optical drive support, but arch linux won't let me.
The system has integrated nvidia graphics. I want to run it in AMD64 mode.
I thought about solaris (it has amd64 support, had nvidia driver support before linux, and can use OSS4 which will support the soundcard), but solaris is slow to start up, and I wouldn't be surprised if FS gets corrupted on power-loss, or needs to spend 10 minutes scanning when rebooting, or booting into single user mode first, or some other bs.
Is freebsd likely to be as robust as arch has been?
IDE DVD burners will surely work in freebsd no?
If you have other suggestions, then suggest away. But as far as I can see there is linux (archlinux), bsd (Freebsd), and solaris (opensolaris).
I could try other Linux distros but it's probably kernel trouble on this motherboard, plus I don't want to waste my time downloading and installing more of the same before I try different things. But you tell me if Freebsd has no problems with likely power-loss so long as I'm not writing to anything, because to be honest I won't automatically assume that it will. I've found being booted into single user mode and having to restart again with freebsd in the past, and having other boot-up problems (admittedly that was when upgrading from 7.1 to 7.2, but it didn't seem to have very high constitution for such tasks, makes me wonder about what with other things).
What sort of filesystems does Freebsd support? Just the one right, and then dodgy ZFS support in a separate module?
Also the system has 2 1tb hdds from different vendors (samsung and seagate), and uses linux mdadm to mirror them so that if one fails its still good. But I've read that I can use geom to boot off a similar mirror, so that's good.
So long as I turn atime off on the fs, I'm okay right? Or am I?
Here is a description of my problems. In short IDE dvd burners dont work in linux but do in windows xp.
And so I've given up on linux because of SCSI errors on IDE dvd drives.
But if I go to try FreeBSD first I need to know if it can handle power-loss without errors.
Right now it is running Archlinux. I use this machine inside a wooden box with alfoil lining and stuff as a portable dj music console. It has a monitor with stand removed tied into a wooden lid on hinges and a keyboard + mouse are on a lid under that (that when is opened as well lets you have access to the internals).
Recently I got 2 pioneer IDE dvd burners for disc-to-disc copy burning, thinking that SATA dvd burners are still dodgy with support like they were last time I looked into it.
Well archlinux sees the devices (hda and hdb now that I've made it use ide module instead of pata module), and gives an error message whenever no media is present as expected, but when media is present, gives input/output errors. It has all sorts of SCSI command errors in wodim. I try using gui apps in gnome in a console-kit session, and as root using command line tools, tried pata and ide kernel modules, tried this tried that.
Everyone in the linux world says that the drives must be broken to give such errors, but hey guess what? Plug a windows hdd into the box and after it realises its in a new pc and does its hardware detection thing, I use imgburn to burn those discs. Works perfectly, windows xp (without any special drivers installed) works, the "bleeding edge" fully up-to-date linux distro doesn't work at all, no matter what. I thought it might be that the cable is dodgy, linux is using some advanced DMA stuff, but windows is only doing some basic bios access or something, I don't know for sure about such things.
I installed nvidia chipset drivers in windows, so ethernet is now detected (along with full hardware acceleration for everything else), and I set the dvds to max speed, still work fine in windows. I go into the bios and disable some UDMA stuff, still can't read any data off them in linux.
I thought maybe the burners won't even let you read a disc unless the region code is set, so I did that in windows, tried again in linux, nothing but scsi errors trying to read from the discs. I tried wodim with ATA ATAPI all sorts, nothing but errors.
It's an unacknowledged, non-cared about software problem on archlinux / linux kernels side I'm sure of it, but what can I do?
The problem is, is that sometimes someone trips over the power cord, or the power to the building goes off, and it isn't shut down "nicely".
I like archlinux because of all the different filesystems used.
I use JFS for everything, except for the huge .flac collection which is on an XFS fs. These are meta-data journaling filesystems, as long as you're not writing file contents when the power cuts (which I'm not, not updating tags of files or updating filesystem at a gig), then no prob not shutting-down cleanly.
But dvd-drives don't work. I could just use windows, and tell it not to have write-ahead caching on the drives, and be happy. But I don't want to. I want to use arch linux with optical drive support, but arch linux won't let me.
The system has integrated nvidia graphics. I want to run it in AMD64 mode.
I thought about solaris (it has amd64 support, had nvidia driver support before linux, and can use OSS4 which will support the soundcard), but solaris is slow to start up, and I wouldn't be surprised if FS gets corrupted on power-loss, or needs to spend 10 minutes scanning when rebooting, or booting into single user mode first, or some other bs.
Is freebsd likely to be as robust as arch has been?
IDE DVD burners will surely work in freebsd no?
If you have other suggestions, then suggest away. But as far as I can see there is linux (archlinux), bsd (Freebsd), and solaris (opensolaris).
I could try other Linux distros but it's probably kernel trouble on this motherboard, plus I don't want to waste my time downloading and installing more of the same before I try different things. But you tell me if Freebsd has no problems with likely power-loss so long as I'm not writing to anything, because to be honest I won't automatically assume that it will. I've found being booted into single user mode and having to restart again with freebsd in the past, and having other boot-up problems (admittedly that was when upgrading from 7.1 to 7.2, but it didn't seem to have very high constitution for such tasks, makes me wonder about what with other things).
What sort of filesystems does Freebsd support? Just the one right, and then dodgy ZFS support in a separate module?
Also the system has 2 1tb hdds from different vendors (samsung and seagate), and uses linux mdadm to mirror them so that if one fails its still good. But I've read that I can use geom to boot off a similar mirror, so that's good.
So long as I turn atime off on the fs, I'm okay right? Or am I?
