While installing Ubuntu Server 8.04 beta on an HP DL-320, I discovered I had some trouble getting HP’s “Proliant value added software” (hpasm) package installed. This package contains their system health check and control software which, among other things, switches the fans from “full-time full speed” (which is quite noisy) to temperature controlled speed (eg: normal (read: quiet) fan speed when system temp is normal).
The problem with installing and runnning this software stems from the fact that Ubuntu, for some reason, links /bin/sh to dash instead of bash. Dash is another bourne shell clone, but doesn’t understand Bash (bourne-again shell) specific syntax.
Re-linking /bin/sh to bash instead of dash solved the problem and the server is now humming (quietly) along.
On the heels of my raving about Gentoo, I find that while from and administrative perspective I like it, from a user perspective? Not so much.
I have two workstations at work. One is a Celeron 1.7ish, 1.5GB of RAM, running Windows XP. The internal web sites we use tend toward lots of javascript, plus another application that sucks up resources. Thus Firefox, when viewing our ticket system, our order database system and our server locator / user database system was running very sluggish.
I managed to acquire a second desktop, a P4 1.8Ghz, 1GB RAM system, on which I intended to install Linux. When I got that far, I installed Gentoo, running Xfce4, as a learning exercise. Everything went beautifully. Once I got Firefox and Thunderbird installed, I moved all my work that that system, using the Windows box only for the non-web based application that only has a Windows client. And since the speakers are hooked up to that system, I left Pidgin there as well.
The performance of Firefox on the Linux box is barely a marginal improvement.
My personal laptop, however, a Centrino 1.6 with 512MB of RAM running Ubuntu 7.10 and Gnome, running all the same web sites is at least 3x more responsive.
I even made sure I had exactly the same addons installed on the two Linux systems. By all lights, the Gentoo box should be smoking the laptop.
It’s got a faster (model) processor.
It has a faster (clock rate) processor.
It has 2x the RAM.
It’s got an “optimized” OS installed.
It’s running the light-weight Xfce4 window manager, compared to Gnome’s (and all the other bells and whistles I’ve installed) bloat.
The only thing I can figure is there’s something about the default compile settings Gentoo uses when building Firefox.
I must remember to reboot the Gentoo box and check if Hyperthreading is turned off in the BIOS. I’m running an SMP kernel but only seeing one CPU. I also need to check if a P4 1.8 has HT support…