Category: Linux

As some of you know, one of my little complaints about modern software, and in this case operating systems, is the amount of memory they need. We used to run Ultrix (A Unix variant) with X Windows in only 32MB. I remember in those days we had a machine with 128MB and it was our pride and joy. (For those interested it was a MIPS R3000 box again with Ultrix and we used it for a lot of testing for the X.500 directory product we were working on).

Now of course I am not saying that operating systems (Linux included) should limit themselves to just a few MBs. No. As the user interface gets more complicated then more memory is needed. However some pieces of software need to go on a diet.

Anyway, I got a bit of trivia from a friend of mine (Hi, M) about memory usage in Windows 2000, XP and Vista. He reckons that a freshly booted Windows 2000 system uses about 194MB memory. Where as XP could be as high as 300MB and Windows Vista Beta 2 using between 440MB and 560MB with nothing running except task manager. Explorer was 30MB and MSSearch 60MB+.

Of course, he and I would like to point out that these tests are not exhaustive and that the Windows Vista figures are for a beta, and it may be a debug build.

However... 560MB without any applications running... Once you start Word, Outlook and IE what will you need? 2GB?

THP

Category: Linux

This is something I had to look up for someone... For all partitions, other than the root partition / and the boot partition /boot, you need to unmount the partition, run the tunefs command to create the journal file and then change the fstab file to reflect that the partitions is now ext3.

The commands might be something like this:

umount /dev/hdaXX
tune2fs -j /dev/hdaXX

Note: If you are converting the /usr partition you need to remount it in read-only mode (e.g mount -o remount,ro /usr) before running tunefs as the tunefs binary is on that partition and obviously needs to remain available to run it.

You should now edit the /etc/fstab file and change ext2 to ext3 for hdaXX. After that you need to remount the partition.

mount /dev/hdaXX

Note: hdaXX should be replaced with the partition you are working on, e.g. /dev/hda5.

Then reboot and check that the new partition is mounted using as ext3.

I hope that is a useful tip!

THP

Category: Linux

Hi,

Just a quick note. The other day I need to start a friends Linux machine
in single user mode so I could do a low level fsck. I didn't know how to
do it and I thought I would share the information with you!

At the boot prompt (Grub or Lilo) type: linux single

Linux is the name of the boot option defined in the boot loader and most
of the time it is just "linux" and "single" is the command to force boot
up in single user mode.

Thanks and happy linuxing,

THP

Category: News

Category: News

Category: Linux

The recently launch of OpenOffice.org V2 brings the new Base program to free software users. This stand-alone database compliments the OpenOffice suite by adding the long-missing and important database power to users. With it you can create stand-alone databases, associated forms, reports and queries, much as with Microsoft's extremely popular and widely used Access database. If you haven't used Access before try the Access Forums for more information. Also here is a good review of OpenOffice.org Base.

Power to the Penguin!

THP.