• [gentoo-user] Ethernet card for puter

    From Dale@21:1/5 to All on Sat Nov 6 01:30:02 2021
    Howdy all,

    I saw the guys running fiber optic cable today, in front of MY house. 
    It wasn't supposed to be here until next year.  I almost fainted from
    the excitement.  I got a router a while back that is 1Gb ready.  They
    supply the modem.  I still have a old 100Mb network card in my puter
    tho.  So, it needs updating, after all these years of faithful service. 
    I found one and this is the model number and such for it, description
    too.  "Dell V5XVT-FH Intel I350-T2 DP 1GB PCIe Ethernet Network Card" 

    I don't really care about brand as long as it is a reliable product. 
    That one is Dell,  I'm fine with any brands as long as they aren't bad
    to blow smoke on the 2nd or 3rd power up.  :/  I'm almost certain I have
    PCIe ports available.  I think that's what the current card is in
    actually.  Thing is, this has two ports and so does about all I see,
    except for those with 4 ports.  Will having 2 ports cause any problems? 
    Most likely, one won't be connected at all.  I just want to be sure that
    it won't cause any issues or that using both is required for some reason
    I never heard of. 

    They think we should be connected in a few months.  Cables comes first
    then they set up the control boxes etc etc.  I'm going with a package
    that will be about 300 times faster and only cost about $10 a month more
    than my wimpy DSL.  Oh crap.  I need to expand my hard drive space
    again.  Glad I use LVM.  LOL  I thought I had another year to deal with
    that too.

    Thoughts on that card?  Work fine? 

    Dale

    :-)  :-) 

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dale@21:1/5 to Manuel McLure on Sat Nov 6 02:10:03 2021
    Manuel McLure wrote:
    I highly recommend getting an Intel card. Back in the day the e1000
    cards were the ones to get, nowadays https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033
    should be a good option for a single port card. Intel cards have been
    well supported in Linux for a long time.


    That card is a little cheaper too.  I did some research a while back and
    it seems the Intel i350 is well supported in Linux.  Intel makes them
    but so does Dell and others.  From my understanding, they all work the
    same since they have the same chipset tho.  But, the one you linked to
    is cheaper and I found one on ebay even cheaper.  Really nifty.  :-D

    I was looking at the mobo manual and noticed the built in network port
    is a 1Gb chip as well.  It is a Realtec and the last time I tried to use
    it, it was a bit flakey.  Sometimes it would work but sometimes I'd have
    to restart the network to get it going again.  That was about a decade
    ago.  I wonder, is the drivers better today than they were then?  I
    would have used it all this time if it worked well.  Anyone have
    experience with this in the last year or so that is showing it working
    really well and stable?  Keep in mind, I run 24/7 here.  If that works
    fine, I could just use it.  lspci shows this for the on board network:

    Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit
    Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

    I have 2 PCIex1 and one PCIex 4 slots open.  The small ones are close to
    my video card and I'm not sure I can use them.  Can I plug these types
    of cards into the larger slots?  I think I read once that can be done. 
    It's been ages tho. My old network card appears to be in a old PCI plain slot.  It's a really old card, works faithfully tho. 

    This may require some rearranging.  Or using the on board network one. 
    I'd really prefer the card tho.  They just tend to work better.

    Thoughts??

    Thanks.

    Dale

    :-)  :-) 

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Manuel McLure@21:1/5 to rdalek1967@gmail.com on Sat Nov 6 01:30:02 2021
    I highly recommend getting an Intel card. Back in the day the e1000 cards
    were the ones to get, nowadays https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033 should be a
    good option for a single port card. Intel cards have been well supported in Linux for a long time.

    On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 5:20 PM Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:

    Howdy all,

    I saw the guys running fiber optic cable today, in front of MY house.
    It wasn't supposed to be here until next year. I almost fainted from
    the excitement. I got a router a while back that is 1Gb ready. They
    supply the modem. I still have a old 100Mb network card in my puter
    tho. So, it needs updating, after all these years of faithful service.
    I found one and this is the model number and such for it, description
    too. "Dell V5XVT-FH Intel I350-T2 DP 1GB PCIe Ethernet Network Card"

    I don't really care about brand as long as it is a reliable product.
    That one is Dell, I'm fine with any brands as long as they aren't bad
    to blow smoke on the 2nd or 3rd power up. :/ I'm almost certain I have
    PCIe ports available. I think that's what the current card is in
    actually. Thing is, this has two ports and so does about all I see,
    except for those with 4 ports. Will having 2 ports cause any problems?
    Most likely, one won't be connected at all. I just want to be sure that
    it won't cause any issues or that using both is required for some reason
    I never heard of.

    They think we should be connected in a few months. Cables comes first
    then they set up the control boxes etc etc. I'm going with a package
    that will be about 300 times faster and only cost about $10 a month more
    than my wimpy DSL. Oh crap. I need to expand my hard drive space
    again. Glad I use LVM. LOL I thought I had another year to deal with
    that too.

    Thoughts on that card? Work fine?

    Dale

    :-) :-)



    --
    Manuel A. McLure WW1FA <manuel@mclure.org> <http://www.mclure.org>
    ...for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law,
    no man may kill a cat. -- H.P. Lovecraft

    <div dir="ltr">I highly recommend getting an Intel card. Back in the day the e1000 cards were the ones to get, nowadays <a href="https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033">https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033</
    should be a good option for a single port card. Intel cards have been well supported in Linux for a long time.</div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 5:20 PM Dale &lt;<a href="mailto:rdalek1967@gmail.
    com">rdalek1967@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Howdy all,<br>

    I saw the guys running fiber optic cable today, in front of MY house. <br>
    It wasn&#39;t supposed to be here until next year.  I almost fainted from<br> the excitement.  I got a router a while back that is 1Gb ready.  They<br> supply the modem.  I still have a old 100Mb network card in my puter<br> tho.  So, it needs updating, after all these years of faithful service. <br> I found one and this is the model number and such for it, description<br> too.  &quot;Dell V5XVT-FH Intel I350-T2 DP 1GB PCIe Ethernet Network Card&quot; <br>

    I don&#39;t really care about brand as long as it is a reliable product. <br> That one is Dell,  I&#39;m fine with any brands as long as they aren&#39;t bad<br>
    to blow smoke on the 2nd or 3rd power up.  :/  I&#39;m almost certain I have<br>
    PCIe ports available.  I think that&#39;s what the current card is in<br> actually.  Thing is, this has two ports and so does about all I see,<br> except for those with 4 ports.  Will having 2 ports cause any problems? <br> Most likely, one won&#39;t be connected at all.  I just want to be sure that<br>
    it won&#39;t cause any issues or that using both is required for some reason<br>
    I never heard of. <br>

    They think we should be connected in a few months.  Cables comes first<br> then they set up the control boxes etc etc.  I&#39;m going with a package<br> that will be about 300 times faster and only cost about $10 a month more<br> than my wimpy DSL.  Oh crap.  I need to expand my hard drive space<br> again.  Glad I use LVM.  LOL  I thought I had another year to deal with<br> that too.<br>

    Thoughts on that card?  Work fine? <br>

    Dale<br>

    :-)  :-) <br>

    </blockquote></div><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature">Manuel A. McLure WW1FA &lt;<a href="mailto:manuel@mclure.org" target="_blank">manuel@mclure.org</a>&gt; &lt;<a href="http://www.mclure.org" target="_blank">
    http://www.mclure.org</a>&gt;<br>...for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law,<br>no man may kill a cat.                       -- H.P. Lovecraft</div>

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Frank Steinmetzger@21:1/5 to All on Sat Nov 6 09:20:01 2021
    Am Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 08:03:32PM -0500 schrieb Dale:
    Manuel McLure wrote:
    I highly recommend getting an Intel card. Back in the day the e1000
    cards were the ones to get, nowadays https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033 should be a good option for a single port card. Intel cards have been
    well supported in Linux for a long time.

    I have no idea how you came across that one first. Network cards are a commodity and start in the single-Euro (so probably also dollar) range these days. Intel cards start in the 20–30 range: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nwpcie&sort=p&xf=14063_Intel%7E14065_LAN-Adapter%7E14066_PCIe-Karte

    I was looking at the mobo manual and noticed the built in network port
    is a 1Gb chip as well.  It is a Realtec and the last time I tried to use
    it, it was a bit flakey.  Sometimes it would work but sometimes I'd have
    to restart the network to get it going again.  That was about a decade
    ago.

    My PC is over 7 years old now and I’ve always been unsing its internal ethernet port. Most consumer boards use Realtek chips, and so does mine, because they are a little cheaper than Intel’s counterparts. Enthusiasts and power users like Intel more because it does more in hardware and offers more features, whereas the realtek driver puts some load on the CPU, AFAIK. But
    in my view, that is counting crumbs, as we say in Germany. I’ve never had bandwidth problems and always had the full 1 Gb to my NAS. For us normal
    home user folk, it won’t make a difference, IMHO. (Except if you are a
    purist and care about code quality; I think there were niggles with
    Realtek’s code a longer while back.)

    I wonder, is the drivers better today than they were then?  I would have used it all this time if it worked well.  Anyone have experience with this in the last year or so that is showing it working really well and stable?  Keep in mind, I run 24/7 here.  If that works fine, I could just use it.  lspci shows this for the on board network:

    Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 06)

    That’s the one veryone uses. I actually have two of those installed; one one-board, the other one as a PCIe card that I got from my old employer.

    I have 2 PCIex1 and one PCIex 4 slots open.  The small ones are close to
    my video card and I'm not sure I can use them.

    Sure you can. Are you a hardcore gamer? Does your card consume 100s of W all the time? Usually the GPU is the top-most card except for cases that hold
    the board upside-down (meaning hot air rises away).

    Can I plug these types of cards into the larger slots?

    Yes. Speeds are downward-compatible. One PCIe 2.0 lane is fast enough for 1
    Gb.

    I think I read once that can be done.  It's been ages tho. My old network card appears to be in a old PCI plain slot.  It's a really old card, works faithfully tho. 

    If you change the filter in the link I gave you at the top, you can also
    look for PCI-based cards (unselect PCIe first). It’s possible that PCIe, though a faster interface, may be more frugal these days. When PCI was invented, power saving was not an issue.

    This may require some rearranging.  Or using the on board network one. 
    I'd really prefer the card tho.  They just tend to work better.

    Why should they? A hunch? The only real benefit is you can easliy swap them
    in case of failure. But as long as you have it and it works – why not give
    it a try with what you have before you spend more for something you may not even need?

    --
    Grüße | Greetings | Qapla’
    Please do not share anything from, with or about me on any social network.

    Veni, vermini, vomui.
    I came, I got ratted, I threw up.

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  • From William Kenworthy@21:1/5 to Frank Steinmetzger on Sat Nov 6 10:50:01 2021
    In reality, today there seems to be little to choose from between
    ethernet cards for the average user - wasn't always the case though.  I
    have a number of usb-<->ethernet plugins and pcicards.  Some are bonded
    (mix of usb and pci) and are mostly realtek though there is an intel or
    two.  I am using a usb2->ethernet to the fibre based internet (1Gb AU
    NBN) without any speed problems.  Note there is a linux kernel driver
    bug in an odd combination of realtek and usb2 for some versions which
    cuts throughput by ~1/3 unless patched - the dongles themselves are
    fine.  Currently, with the covid supply chain issues its more a problem
    just getting "something" :)

    BillK

    1000/50 over usb2 realtek

    ~17.44pm - at other times its usually a little better.

    moriah ~ # speedtest
    Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
    Testing from iiNet Limited (nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn)...
    Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
    Selecting best server based on ping...
    Hosted by Internode (Perth) [1.07 km]: 2.796 ms
    Testing download speed................................................................................
    Download: 929.99 Mbit/s
    Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
    Upload: 45.82 Mbit/s
    moriah ~ #

    On 6/11/21 4:13 pm, Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
    Am Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 08:03:32PM -0500 schrieb Dale:
    Manuel McLure wrote:
    I highly recommend getting an Intel card. Back in the day the e1000
    cards were the ones to get,
    nowadays https://www.newegg.com/intel-expi9301ctblk/p/N82E16833106033
    should be a good option for a single port card. Intel cards have been
    well supported in Linux for a long time.
    I have no idea how you came across that one first. Network cards are a commodity and start in the single-Euro (so probably also dollar) range these days. Intel cards start in the 20–30 range: https://geizhals.eu/?cat=nwpcie&sort=p&xf=14063_Intel%7E14065_LAN-Adapter%7E14066_PCIe-Karte

    I was looking at the mobo manual and noticed the built in network port
    is a 1Gb chip as well.  It is a Realtec and the last time I tried to use
    it, it was a bit flakey.  Sometimes it would work but sometimes I'd have
    to restart the network to get it going again.  That was about a decade
    ago.
    My PC is over 7 years old now and I’ve always been unsing its internal ethernet port. Most consumer boards use Realtek chips, and so does mine, because they are a little cheaper than Intel’s counterparts. Enthusiasts and
    power users like Intel more because it does more in hardware and offers more features, whereas the realtek driver puts some load on the CPU, AFAIK. But
    in my view, that is counting crumbs, as we say in Germany. I’ve never had bandwidth problems and always had the full 1 Gb to my NAS. For us normal
    home user folk, it won’t make a difference, IMHO. (Except if you are a purist and care about code quality; I think there were niggles with Realtek’s code a longer while back.)

    I wonder, is the drivers better today than they were then?  I would have
    used it all this time if it worked well.  Anyone have experience with this >> in the last year or so that is showing it working really well and stable?  >> Keep in mind, I run 24/7 here.  If that works fine, I could just use it.  >> lspci shows this for the on board network:

    Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit
    Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
    That’s the one veryone uses. I actually have two of those installed; one one-board, the other one as a PCIe card that I got from my old employer.

    I have 2 PCIex1 and one PCIex 4 slots open.  The small ones are close to
    my video card and I'm not sure I can use them.
    Sure you can. Are you a hardcore gamer? Does your card consume 100s of W all the time? Usually the GPU is the top-most card except for cases that hold
    the board upside-down (meaning hot air rises away).

    Can I plug these types of cards into the larger slots?
    Yes. Speeds are downward-compatible. One PCIe 2.0 lane is fast enough for 1 Gb.

    I think I read once that can be done.  It's been ages tho. My old network >> card appears to be in a old PCI plain slot.  It's a really old card, works >> faithfully tho. 
    If you change the filter in the link I gave you at the top, you can also
    look for PCI-based cards (unselect PCIe first). It’s possible that PCIe, though a faster interface, may be more frugal these days. When PCI was invented, power saving was not an issue.

    This may require some rearranging.  Or using the on board network one. 
    I'd really prefer the card tho.  They just tend to work better.
    Why should they? A hunch? The only real benefit is you can easliy swap them in case of failure. But as long as you have it and it works – why not give it a try with what you have before you spend more for something you may not even need?


    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dale@21:1/5 to Frank Steinmetzger on Sun Nov 7 03:10:02 2021
    Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
    Am Fri, Nov 05, 2021 at 08:03:32PM -0500 schrieb Dale:

    I was looking at the mobo manual and noticed the built in network port
    is a 1Gb chip as well.  It is a Realtec and the last time I tried to use
    it, it was a bit flakey.  Sometimes it would work but sometimes I'd have
    to restart the network to get it going again.  That was about a decade
    ago.
    My PC is over 7 years old now and I’ve always been unsing its internal ethernet port. Most consumer boards use Realtek chips, and so does mine, because they are a little cheaper than Intel’s counterparts. Enthusiasts and
    power users like Intel more because it does more in hardware and offers more features, whereas the realtek driver puts some load on the CPU, AFAIK. But
    in my view, that is counting crumbs, as we say in Germany. I’ve never had bandwidth problems and always had the full 1 Gb to my NAS. For us normal
    home user folk, it won’t make a difference, IMHO. (Except if you are a purist and care about code quality; I think there were niggles with Realtek’s code a longer while back.)


    With this mobo and the previous mobos, the built in network was always
    messing up.  On my first rig some 20 years ago, it was horrible. 
    Reminded me of a winmodem I've read about.  I think the position of Mars
    had more to do with when it would work or not.  It was mostly not on the
    first puter.  The one before current puter was better but I still never
    knew what to expect with it.  My current system would work for several
    days but then would start acting strange.  To be honest, it could be
    hardware, it could be the drivers.  Point is, I couldn't depend on
    either one.  So, I bought a well supported card, installed it, enabled
    it in the kernel and it has been rock solid ever since.  As a matter of
    fact, the card I'm currently using was in my previous puter and possibly
    the one before that.  When I built this puter, I moved the card over to
    this system.  That card is pretty old but I have never had problems with
    it at all. 

    I wonder, is the drivers better today than they were then?  I would have
    used it all this time if it worked well.  Anyone have experience with this >> in the last year or so that is showing it working really well and stable?  >> Keep in mind, I run 24/7 here.  If that works fine, I could just use it.  >> lspci shows this for the on board network:

    Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit
    Ethernet Controller (rev 06)
    That’s the one veryone uses. I actually have two of those installed; one one-board, the other one as a PCIe card that I got from my old employer.

    I have 2 PCIex1 and one PCIex 4 slots open.  The small ones are close to
    my video card and I'm not sure I can use them.
    Sure you can. Are you a hardcore gamer? Does your card consume 100s of W all the time? Usually the GPU is the top-most card except for cases that hold
    the board upside-down (meaning hot air rises away).


    I think the last time I was installing a SATA card, my video card was a
    little thick.  Between the card itself and the heat sink for the chips,
    it was to close for a card close to it, even if one ignores the heat
    problem which shouldn't be much given my case fans and the whimpy video
    card.  ;-)  I have a Cooler Master HAF-932 case with those large fans.

    Can I plug these types of cards into the larger slots?
    Yes. Speeds are downward-compatible. One PCIe 2.0 lane is fast enough for 1 Gb.

    I think I read once that can be done.  It's been ages tho. My old network >> card appears to be in a old PCI plain slot.  It's a really old card, works >> faithfully tho. 
    If you change the filter in the link I gave you at the top, you can also
    look for PCI-based cards (unselect PCIe first). It’s possible that PCIe, though a faster interface, may be more frugal these days. When PCI was invented, power saving was not an issue.

    This may require some rearranging.  Or using the on board network one. 
    I'd really prefer the card tho.  They just tend to work better.
    Why should they? A hunch? The only real benefit is you can easliy swap them in case of failure. But as long as you have it and it works – why not give it a try with what you have before you spend more for something you may not even need?



    I ordered the card but I'm going to test the built in network shortly. 
    All I have to do is unplug cable from current card and plug into built
    in port.  Once I start that network, good to go.  If it works, great. 
    I'll have the card as a back up.  If it doesn't, card it is. 

    BTW, I found a good deal on a 8TB hard drive and bought it.  The store
    had Unix in the name so obviously I had to buy from there.  ROFL  So,
    network card and hard drive on the way. 

    Thanks to all for the info.  When I test the built in, I'll post back
    how well it's working.  Just for confirmation.  :-D

    Dale

    :-)  :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Wol@21:1/5 to Dale on Sun Nov 7 09:30:01 2021
    On 06/11/2021 00:19, Dale wrote:
    Howdy all,




    They think we should be connected in a few months.  Cables comes first
    then they set up the control boxes etc etc.  I'm going with a package
    that will be about 300 times faster and only cost about $10 a month more
    than my wimpy DSL.  Oh crap.  I need to expand my hard drive space
    again.  Glad I use LVM.  LOL  I thought I had another year to deal with that too.

    Sounds a bit like me :-) A couple of months back my existing broadband
    deal expired, and they offered me a new deal - FTTP no less - for less
    than I was then paying! (Admittedly ADSL was giving me 17Mb realised ...)

    Only problem was a screw-up over the router - the fibre was terminated
    at an RJ45 in my house, but apparently needed a dedicated wan port on
    the router - you can't plug it into a standard port - so I was without
    internet until they sorted out a new router for me.

    Thoughts on that card?  Work fine?

    Do you really need 1Gbit? I know you've ordered a new card, but I would
    have stuck with the onboard 1Gb, or the old 100Mb card. Or do you just
    want the latest and greatest go-faster kit :-)

    Likewise your disk drive. What have you ordered? CMR? If you've got an
    SMR drive be VERY careful moving stuff across, it's quite likely to barf
    under the load. Dunno how easy it is to do, but your best bet is to
    heavily throttle the throughput to give the drive the chance to do its housekeeping. Or google for what sort of kernel timeouts you need to
    keep the system from thinking that the drive has failed.

    I'd probably boot a rescue disk and just dd the partitions across. At
    least then if it barfs, you haven't lost your original.

    Cheers,
    Wol

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Dale@21:1/5 to Wol on Sun Nov 7 10:50:01 2021
    Wol wrote:
    On 06/11/2021 00:19, Dale wrote:
    Howdy all,




    They think we should be connected in a few months.  Cables comes first
    then they set up the control boxes etc etc.  I'm going with a package
    that will be about 300 times faster and only cost about $10 a month more
    than my wimpy DSL.  Oh crap.  I need to expand my hard drive space
    again.  Glad I use LVM.  LOL  I thought I had another year to deal with >> that too.

    Sounds a bit like me :-) A couple of months back my existing broadband
    deal expired, and they offered me a new deal - FTTP no less - for less
    than I was then paying! (Admittedly ADSL was giving me 17Mb realised ...)

    Only problem was a screw-up over the router - the fibre was terminated
    at an RJ45 in my house, but apparently needed a dedicated wan port on
    the router - you can't plug it into a standard port - so I was without internet until they sorted out a new router for me.

    Thoughts on that card?  Work fine?

    Do you really need 1Gbit? I know you've ordered a new card, but I
    would have stuck with the onboard 1Gb, or the old 100Mb card. Or do
    you just want the latest and greatest go-faster kit :-)

    Likewise your disk drive. What have you ordered? CMR? If you've got an
    SMR drive be VERY careful moving stuff across, it's quite likely to
    barf under the load. Dunno how easy it is to do, but your best bet is
    to heavily throttle the throughput to give the drive the chance to do
    its housekeeping. Or google for what sort of kernel timeouts you need
    to keep the system from thinking that the drive has failed.

    I'd probably boot a rescue disk and just dd the partitions across. At
    least then if it barfs, you haven't lost your original.

    Cheers,
    Wol



    Well, the connection I'll be getting is either 200Mb/sec or 500Mb/sec. 
    It's blazingly fast.  They also offer 1Gb/sec as well but my hard drives
    need room to breath.  lol  So, if I leave the 100Mb/sec card in and use
    it, it will be the bottleneck for my network.  Right now, the connection
    to the puter is the last upgrade I'll need to be ready to surf like lightening. 

    I learned my lesson on SMR a while back.  I googled and made sure it was
    a CMR drive before I ordered it.  I had to pass by some SMRs to find a
    good deal that was CMR tho.  I don't plan to move data just add the
    drive as extra space.  Adding it to LVM should be easy enough.  Sort of thought about switching to BTFRS (sp?) but just not sure.  LVM is
    working well for me at the moment. 

    I'm excited about this new internet deal. 

    Dale

    :-)  :-) 

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  • From Wol@21:1/5 to Dale on Sun Nov 7 14:00:02 2021
    On 07/11/2021 09:47, Dale wrote:
    I learned my lesson on SMR a while back.  I googled and made sure it was
    a CMR drive before I ordered it.  I had to pass by some SMRs to find a
    good deal that was CMR tho.  I don't plan to move data just add the
    drive as extra space.  Adding it to LVM should be easy enough.  Sort of thought about switching to BTFRS (sp?) but just not sure.  LVM is
    working well for me at the moment.

    You know I push the raid wiki :-) Even if you're not into raid there's
    some good stuff there. I'm very ambivalent on btrfs. It has a lot of
    good features, but it's a trade-off. Do you want a jack-of-all-trades filesystem, or do you want separate layers doing separate things. My
    feeling is separate layers.

    I've got my hard drives, then dm-integrity (so corruption triggers a read-failure), then mirror-raid, then lvm, and finally ext4.

    I'm trying to get snapshotting to fire automatically on boot once a
    week, so when I emerge, I can always roll back easily :-) I'm not sure
    whether systemd will do it, but if I have a once-a-week timer which
    activates a fire-once-on-boot service, then that'll be perfect. The
    timer fires on Friday, the snapshot fires when I reboot Saturday morning
    ... and then I try not to break my system with a messed-up emerge :-)

    Cheers,
    Wol

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  • From Dale@21:1/5 to Dale on Mon Nov 15 02:30:01 2021
    Dale wrote:

    I ordered the card but I'm going to test the built in network shortly. 
    All I have to do is unplug cable from current card and plug into built
    in port.  Once I start that network, good to go.  If it works, great.  I'll have the card as a back up.  If it doesn't, card it is. 

    BTW, I found a good deal on a 8TB hard drive and bought it.  The store
    had Unix in the name so obviously I had to buy from there.  ROFL  So, network card and hard drive on the way. 

    Thanks to all for the info.  When I test the built in, I'll post back
    how well it's working.  Just for confirmation.  :-D

    Dale

    :-)  :-)



    I got the card in the other day but waited until the hard drive came in
    to install them both.  I got them both in and started my process.  The network card installed fairly easy.  I had to rebuild the kernel with
    the drivers but it wasn't to bad.  The new network card works fine but I
    have no way to really test its speed or anything.  The internet folks
    say the fast internet should be here next spring or so but they been
    ahead of schedule so far.  Still, my network should be ready and I can
    see if it goes beyond 100MB/sec at least.  Still not sure what package
    I'll get.  The small one is 200Mb, medium is 500Mb, large is 1Gb. 
    Pretty sure the b's are lower case but may be wrong.  It scales down a
    lot. 

    I ran the self test on the hard drive overnight.  It took several hours
    to complete on a 8TB drive.  Once it passed, I partitioned it, did the
    LVM thing and tried to resize the file system.  That was when puke got
    on my keyboard.  It was to big and I had to convert from 32 bit to 64
    bit.  Once I found that out and how to do it, things worked much
    better.  As of now, this is what things look like.


    root@fireball / # pvs
      PV         VG     Fmt  Attr PSize    PFree 
      /dev/sda7  OS     lvm2 a--  <124.46g <25.46g
      /dev/sdb1  Home2  lvm2 a--    <5.46t      0
      /dev/sdc1  Home2  lvm2 a--    <7.28t      0
      /dev/sdd1  Home2  lvm2 a--    <7.28t      0
      /dev/sde1  backup lvm2 a--   698.63g      0
    root@fireball / # vgs
      VG     #PV #LV #SN Attr   VSize    VFree 
      Home2    3   1   0 wz--n-   20.01t      0
      OS       1   3   0 wz--n- <124.46g <25.46g
      backup   1   1   0 wz--n-  698.63g      0
    root@fireball / # df -h | grep home
    /dev/mapper/Home2-Home2     20T  8.3T   12T  43% /home
    root@fireball / #


    Only bad news, I'm out of SATA ports.  I really need to pick up a SATA
    PCI* card that has 6 or 8 ports on it and is really speedy.  That's on
    my to do list for later on.  Hopefully that will last a while.  Next
    thing is re-figuring my external backup setup.  That 8TB external drive
    I back up to is getting a little full.  I'll have to split it up or something. 

    Thanks to all for the ideas and help. 

    Dale

    :-)  :-) 

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