Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: AZRedhawk44 on March 09, 2009, 11:35:04 AM
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Been awhile since I've worked with a linux box, but I'm willing to give it another go.
Toying with getting an ASUS eee 1000 series with solid state drive.
Things I need:
VPN capability, either Cisco or Microsoft VPN client. Preferably MS.
MSTSC/RDP connectivity
Toad for SQL work
Maybe VMWare or Xen... which would run off an external disk device if necessary.
Can anyone comment on the above and a linux distro that'll get the job done with an eee-1000 with either 1 or 2GB RAM?
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Probably not going to get an MS VPN client. You might be able to use one of the open source clients if the VPN you're connecting to is standards based.
No idea about MSTSC/RDP
No clue about Toad
VMWare worked well when I used it back in 1999. I had some users at work running Windows in VMWare on a Linux laptop in order to access MS Outlook. I ran WinNT4 under VMWare at home on my Linux desktop at the same time. This was 1999ish. I'm sure it's better now, but it worked well enough then.
Chris
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AZ,
Depending upon what you're planning on using the thing for, you may with to be cautious about the SSD; they're something of an overhyped technology. Though they use lower power than physical drives do when at idle, they actually use more power during read and write cycles, so if you plan on doing anything that uses the disk a lot, an SSD can actually shorten battery life.
SSDs also degrade over time. In your stated scenario, you should be fine, because you have to do the equivalent of writing the entire disk's contents a couple thousand times for the degradation to become dangerous, but it is there and it is a factor in drive longevity.
Also, something to be absolutely aware of and careful about with SSDs: Don't ever yank power out from underneath them. If they're in the middle of a write cycle when you do that, the block data and checksum will not agree, because generally the data is written and then the checksum updated. (all of this is internal to the drive, having to do with how the drive detects blocks that have degraded over time and need to be removed from service and replaced with spare blocks; none of this has anything to do with what OS or filesystem you're using).
Nutshell: When the drive restarts, it checks the block data and checksums, and if they disagree, the drive assumes that the block has failed and removes it from service, placing a spare block into service in its stead (even though in this case the block is fine and the write was just interrupted before the checksum could be updated). If there are no more spare blocks left to put into service, the drive declares itself dead well before its expected lifecycle ends.
Some higher-end SSDs have cleverness built in to mitigate this, but they're not in the consumer-grade market yet, AFAIK.
-BP
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I have found several asus eee-1000 series locally here on craigslist for ~$300-$350, with either the 160gb conventional drive or the 40gb ssd. I think I'll try out the SSD and save my work onto SD cards.
What's the best way to reload the Linux OS on these given that they are wi-fi, and lack optical drives? Get an external USB DVD drive?
Can you simulate a Ubuntu live CD on an SD card, and make it bootable?
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I think you can do that Az. I haven't tried it, but I read something about that not long ago.
Edit: Yes, it's possible. Google "ubuntu on a flash drive" and you'll find lots of hits.
Chris
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Easiest way is to do it with a USB thumb drive.
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Found a used one on Craigslist. It's white rather than black and has the 160gb HDD instead of the 40gb SSD, but it has 2GB of RAM. $320, in original box and very rarely used.
Best Buy is selling them new for $329 but w/ only 1GB RAM.
Has Windows XP Home on it now... I'll be removing that once I get it and loading up Ubuntu. I'll be getting it Wednesday after work.
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VPN capability, either Cisco or Microsoft VPN client. Preferably MS.
Both will work, but you may have to add the software depending on the distro you use.
MSTSC/RDP connectivity
There are RDP clients compatible with MS Terminal Services.
Toad for SQL work
I've never found a real good Toad replacement, there is probably something, but I haven't found it.
Maybe VMWare or Xen... which would run off an external disk device if necessary.
I would recommend Virtual Box, but VMWare works well, as does Parallels, I wouldn't mess with Xen on a netbook.
Can anyone comment on the above and a linux distro that'll get the job done with an eee-1000 with either 1 or 2GB RAM?
Haven't used a eee-1000, so I can't comment on a specific distro for it, but you definitely want 2GB if you want to do virtualization.
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K, I am equipped with the Ubuntu-EasyPeasy-1.0.iso file and I have a 2GB SD card. I've found a program called FUSBi, which appears to be a gui wrapper for an ISO to flash utility called unetbootin. Got a windows EXE version of it and it will let me "burn" the ISO file to the SD card.
When I get the netbook tomorrow, XP will get sent to the land of zero bits and I'll shove this distro onboard.
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Found a used one on Craigslist. It's white rather than black and has the 160gb HDD instead of the 40gb SSD, but it has 2GB of RAM. $320, in original box and very rarely used.
Best Buy is selling them new for $329 but w/ only 1GB RAM.
Has Windows XP Home on it now... I'll be removing that once I get it and loading up Ubuntu. I'll be getting it Wednesday after work.
Are you insane?
You are going to go for used over new because you can save $9 and get an extra gig of ram?
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If you buy one with a Windows distro you don't want, can I buy the cd key (or product id or w/e they call it) for your XP? I have a box I need to put it on, and I don't want to buy a new one.
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Are you insane?
You are going to go for used over new because you can save $9 and get an extra gig of ram?
RAM is a $30 value or so... sales tax is another $25. This one is white, so it'll show marks on the keyboard and shell if it has been traveling a lot or typed on a lot. User says has less than 10 hours use on it. If it boots cleanly from the SD card, I'll take it.
Balog: My understanding is that those keys are not transferrable. I wish I could. You could not even use the key on the sticker without the OEM disk that matches the key series. Retail CD's won't work.
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Do these machines come with the oem cd? I've been planning on getting one, and if I could get XP on it that'd be a good value.
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Do these machines come with the oem cd? I've been planning on getting one, and if I could get XP on it that'd be a good value.
I don't know... I doubt it. Most laptops come with a recovery partition (dumb if your drive fails, but whatever) and a BIOS or boot sector option to recover the OS to factory defaults. Obtaining a CD is usually a phone call and an additional $20 service from the manufacturer.
Since this critter doesn't even have a CD/DVD drive, I'd be really shocked if it came with any CD's.
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Ahhhh, I forgot about the lack of a drive. <-----dumb. ;/
I hate the blasted drm that comes on these types of things. If I pay for a copy of XP, why can't I put it on any box I want?
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My acer came with a recovery cd. Suppose they think I have an external drive lying around.
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When I get the netbook tomorrow, XP will get sent to the land of zero bits and I'll shove this distro onboard.
When you do, be a forum pal and let me know what you think of the Easy Peasy. That then might end up being my weekend project. :)
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I am seriously liking xubuntu 8.10 on my eeePC 900A. I have all hardware working save the microphone in the monitor border.
Loads quick. Real linux, baybee!
So much so, that I went to Fry's and bought a 2GB SODIMM to bump RAM form 1-2GB. I have no swap (4GB SSD), so this should help. Note: no swap = no hibernate.
I am SO glad I did not blow $300-$500 on a 3G/computer phone.
Next stop: 16GB SD card.
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I am seriously liking xubuntu 8.10 on my eeePC 900A. I have all hardware working save the microphone in the monitor border.
Loads quick. Real linux, baybee!
So much so, that I went to Fry's and bought a 2GB SODIMM to bump RAM form 1-2GB. I have no swap (4GB SSD), so this should help. Note: no swap = no hibernate.
I am SO glad I did not blow $300-$500 on a 3G/computer phone.
Next stop: 16GB SD card.
I've been hearing that some of these eee netbooks have a mini-PCI slot in the bottom and that some of the flashdrive vendors are making 16-64gb drives that interface with this. Is that what you're talking about, or do you just mean a plain old SD card?
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I've been hearing that some of these eee netbooks have a mini-PCI slot in the bottom and that some of the flashdrive vendors are making 16-64gb drives that interface with this. Is that what you're talking about, or do you just mean a plain old SD card?
Plain old SD card.
I could go the 16+GB SSD to replace the 4GB SSD, but I think I'll run with the 16GB SD card, instead.
The OS & current apps take up about 2.1-2.3GB of the 4GB SSD. IF I begin to bump against the 4GB limit after use and installing apps as I go, I might consider a new, larger SSD.
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BTW, I've had it with SanDisk USB drives.
They partition their drives with a separate sub-filesystem that shows up as a CDRom, packaged with some utilities. The utils are neat, but the sub-filesystem makes the USB drive unsuitable for use as a USB boot media. I couldn't figure out how to de-partition the thing.
I had to buy a new generic thumbdrive in order to put together my boot disk. Grrr. Argh.
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You couldn't delete the partition with Windows Disk Manager?
Chris
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Nope.
But... I'm posting this from my new eeePC, booted off Ubuntu EasyPeasy on a USB drive. Already blown away XP and getting ready to reboot right now. Figured I'd test the wireless driver. Yep. Connected to my home access point. Typing isn't too bad on this little keyboard, either. I can find the keys and I think I'm probably typing around 40-50wpm, only slightly slower than on a full sized keyboard.
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Congrats Red! Let us know how it works out for you.
Also, I agree about SanDisk. I mean really, now they're putting crapware on thumb drives?!?!
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K, it is running quite nicely. The audio volume is quite low, though, even when maxed. I have yet to try earphones, though. Which is probably the most likely use of the sound system on this.
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VPN capability, either Cisco or Microsoft VPN client. Preferably MS.
Glad you prefer the MS VPN. I have enough trouble making the Cisco IPSEC stuff work with Cisco clients. :)
PPTP is the protocol that MS uses in their VPN. Anything compliant with that'll work. PopTop is the name of the PPTP VPN server in Linux, pretty sure there's a good client out there but I don't know the name.
MSTSC/RDP connectivity
rdesktop is the application you'll want. I used to run it on Linux all the time and fired it up just last night to connect to Windows 2003 Server. Works like a champ.
Toad for SQL work
The app from Quest? Pretty sure that's Java based, should run fine on any Linux distribution once you get a JRE on it.
Maybe VMWare or Xen... which would run off an external disk device if necessary.
I ran VMWare on Linux for years. They offer a basic 'player' version now for free that you could try out. Xen recently announced it was going to be free in basic form too.
Can anyone comment on the above and a linux distro that'll get the job done with an eee-1000 with either 1 or 2GB RAM?
Half the stuff you're looking for (Toad, VMWare) is going to come outside the package management system, so I wouldn't worry about the distro too much. A JRE, rdesktop, and PPTP client are so basic that anybody should have them. Ubuntu is where I'd start.
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MikeB, thanks for the recommendation for VirtualBox. Wow, is that a neat product. Every bit as good as MS Virtual Server or VMWare, as far as I'm concerned. Nifty.
Gonna start playing with Wine now... haven't used it in eons. Hopefully it's come a ways since then.
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MikeB, thanks for the recommendation for VirtualBox. Wow, is that a neat product. Every bit as good as MS Virtual Server or VMWare, as far as I'm concerned. Nifty.
No problem. It quickly became my favorite of the Desktop type Virtual Hosts. With the one caveat, I do use VMWare Fusion and Parallels on one of my Macs - 3D Virtualization is still not perfect, but I do like games. For the netbook format though where you're unlikely to be trying to run modern 3D games, Virtual Box with it's small footprint is perfect. Open Source is always nice too, which although Virtual Box is not entirely Open Source in it's binary package, it's close.
Gonna start playing with Wine now... haven't used it in eons. Hopefully it's come a ways since then.
Wine and it's commercial variants like Crossover have been hit or miss for me. I can't get most things I try to work, but then I am usually trying some more obscure stuff like phone system interfaces. Virtual Machines are just better for that at this time. To run MS Office or things like that Wine has come a long ways.
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BTW, I've had it with SanDisk USB drives.
They partition their drives with a separate sub-filesystem that shows up as a CDRom, packaged with some utilities. The utils are neat, but the sub-filesystem makes the USB drive unsuitable for use as a USB boot media. I couldn't figure out how to de-partition the thing.
I had to buy a new generic thumbdrive in order to put together my boot disk. Grrr. Argh.
I believe it is not a partition, but a seperate device.
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Sandisk has a program on their website that will delete the partition for you. Actually, most manufacturers put the removal tool on the partition itself, so all you have to do is click the launcher and select "uninstall." I guess SanDisk doesn't.
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Sandisk has a program on their website that will delete the partition for you. Actually, most manufacturers put the removal tool on the partition itself, so all you have to do is click the launcher and select "uninstall." I guess SanDisk doesn't.
Ah, there it is! Hidden inside the "U3 Launchpad" goofy little start-menu-wannabe app. Oh, well. I bought a clean drive yesterday to get my system to boot.
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Okay, messing with VirtualBox. Try to start up a VirtualPC and I get an error:
Failed to open a session for the virtual machine.
Looking at my modules, apparently I need to have a mod called vboxdrv running.
So, I run the following:
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
I get the following error output:
No suitable module for running kernel found.
Does this mean kernel recompile, looking for this module and recompiling it as well? What do folks use for kernel compiles nowadays? Is xconfig still in vogue, does menuconfig still work, or what is the tool of the day now?
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I too have been playing with VirtualBox. I installed and ran OpenSolaris on an XP laptop with 1gig ram. I wouldn't suggest doing that, but it worked.
Going to try it at home where I can dedicate more resources to the virtual system...
Chris
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They partition their drives with a separate sub-filesystem that shows up as a CDRom, packaged with some utilities. The utils are neat, but the sub-filesystem makes the USB drive unsuitable for use as a USB boot media. I couldn't figure out how to de-partition the thing.
two words: dd
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two words: dd
Yeah, but I didn't have DD at my disposal since I was getting a flash drive setup using Windows as a base environment.
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Okay, messing with VirtualBox. Try to start up a VirtualPC and I get an error:
Failed to open a session for the virtual machine.
Looking at my modules, apparently I need to have a mod called vboxdrv running.
So, I run the following:
sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
I get the following error output:
No suitable module for running kernel found.
Does this mean kernel recompile, looking for this module and recompiling it as well? What do folks use for kernel compiles nowadays? Is xconfig still in vogue, does menuconfig still work, or what is the tool of the day now?
Aurgh, I just ran into this myself and I can't remember what the fix was, but it was stupid and simple.
Something about the driver is not updated automatically when you update the kernel through apt-get. You are on ubuntu, right?
PS. You never have to recompile the kernel for a module. That's why it's called a module.
two words: dd
Again: not a partition. The thumbdrive presents itselft as two separate external usb devices. One is a fake CD-ROM drive, which just happens to have a fake CD-ROM installed, which just happens to have an autorun.inf file that loads the godawful Sandisk app. The other device is the USB mass storage drive that you expect.
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Aurgh, I just ran into this myself and I can't remember what the fix was, but it was stupid and simple.
Something about the driver is not updated automatically when you update the kernel through apt-get. You are on ubuntu, right?
PS. You never have to recompile the kernel for a module. That's why it's called a module.
Nope, but you probably do have to compile the module for a particular kernel. I've run into similar problems with VMWare server before with certain distros.
AZRedhawk44, what linux distro are you using? Do you have the kernel header files installed? You may want to try reinstalling VBox, it should ask you to compile modules for the network/video etc for the Virtual Host.
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Nope, but you probably do have to compile the module for a particular kernel. I've run into similar problems with VMWare server before with certain distros.
AZRedhawk44, what linux distro are you using? Do you have the kernel header files installed? You may want to try reinstalling VBox, it should ask you to compile modules for the network/video etc for the Virtual Host.
Are you on ubuntu?
sudo apt-get install virtualbox will compile and install the module for you, but there is some special case that puts it into a funny state where you get the wrong module version. . .
Oh I know. If you have upgraded the kernel but not rebooted yet, you wind up with the wrong module version until you reboot. Also, the dependancies are not complete for the module package, so it doens't get re-compiled when you upgrade the kernel or something.
Something really dumb like that.
Virtualbox WILL install and work using just the package manager on ubuntu, it's just a little picky
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Are you on ubuntu?
sudo apt-get install virtualbox will compile and install the module for you, but there is some special case that puts it into a funny state where you get the wrong module version. . .
Virtualbox WILL install and work using just the package manager on ubuntu, it's just a little picky
DONT DO THAT!
Not if you want USB support anyway. The version in the Ubuntu repositories is Virtualbox's open source edition, which, among other things, is completely missing USB support. You want to go to their website and get the PUEL edition.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
They have links to the .debs at the top, or if you still want to manage it through Synaptic and update manager, you can add their key and repository by following the intstructions on the second half of the page. Also note the tip about dkms and modules at the very bottom.
Virtualbox has a few little quirks--stuff like audio and USB being disabled by default, and really quirky mouse behavior until you install the end user tools. Once you get it up and running though, it's a real champ.
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sudo apt-get install virtualbox
No. Because the open source edition of Vbox that is in the repos is crippled. Get the good one from the vbox website like Vodka says.
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Argh!
I cannot find the source for kernel 2.6.28-8-eeepc anywhere.
I need the source to compile the VirtualBox module.