services on ASUS 1005HA

With the required driver atl1c in the kernel, my toy Horace had no trouble
logging in to my ISP & actually downloaded a file for an emerge.

Can anyone who uses one of these machine advise me
how far the usual services are relevant for a netbook ?
--  hald (+dbus)  vixie-cron  slocate  run on my desktop machine,
but don't seem necessary for a netbook which I wb using only occasionally;
I have installed  sysklogd , which seems useful in case of problems.

Also, what do people use to monitor the battery ?
And what's best for the webcam ?

Thanks again for the advice so far: I hope my reports are helpful to others.

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

[Florian Philipp-4]

Philip Webb schrieb:

> With the required driver atl1c in the kernel, my toy Horace had no trouble
> logging in to my ISP & actually downloaded a file for an emerge.
>
> Can anyone who uses one of these machine advise me
> how far the usual services are relevant for a netbook ?
> --  hald (+dbus)  vixie-cron  slocate  run on my desktop machine,
> but don't seem necessary for a netbook which I wb using only occasionally;
> I have installed  sysklogd , which seems useful in case of problems.
>
> Also, what do people use to monitor the battery ?
> And what's best for the webcam ?
>
> Thanks again for the advice so far: I hope my reports are helpful to others.
>

Better replace vixie-cron with fcron. fcron is more suitable for PCs
that don't run 24/7. Alternatively use anacron with vixie-cron.

I'd trash slocate completely. Especially when your toy has a cheap SSD.
If it doesn't, well, it all depends on whether you use locate regularly.
If not, trash it. If you use it, replace it with mlocate which should be
a bit faster on updating its DB.

I wouldn't run any kind of syslog unless you are currently debugging
your system. It will only spin up the disk/wear out the SSD.

Have a look at app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools and sys-power/powertop if
you haven't already.

hald might be useful/necessary for plug'n'play. It might also help with
external displays. dbus will most certainly be used by some desktop
application/environment.

Hope this helps

Florian Philipp

091106 Florian Philipp wrote:

> Philip Webb schrieb:
>> Can anyone who uses one of these machine advise me
>> how far the usual services are relevant for a netbook ?
>> --  hald (+dbus)  vixie-cron  slocate  run on my desktop machine,
>> but don't seem necessary for a netbook which I wb using only occasionally;
>> I have installed  sysklogd , which seems useful in case of problems.
>> Also, what do people use to monitor the battery ?
>> And what's best for the webcam ?
> Better replace vixie-cron with fcron.  fcron is more suitable for PCs
> that don't run 24/7.  Alternatively use anacron with vixie-cron.

I'll look into them.

> I'd trash slocate completely.  Especially when your toy has a cheap SSD.

No, 'H' stands for 'hard drive', as in a  160 GB  HDD.

> If not, it all depends on whether you use locate regularly.
> If not, trash it.  If you use it, replace it with mlocate
> which should be a bit faster on updating its DB.

I'll look into these.

> I wouldn't run any kind of syslog unless you are currently debugging
> your system. It will only spin up the disk/wear out the SSD.

It's not an SSD.  I've been using the X log to get X working.

> Have a look at app-laptop/laptop-mode-tools
> and sys-power/powertop if you haven't already.

No, I haven't, but will.

> hald might be useful/necessary for plug'n'play.
> It might also help with external displays.
> dbus will most certainly be used by some desktop application/environment.

Both are required for X , which I found out after sending in my msg.

> Hope this helps

Yes, it's very useful: thanks as usual.

BTW I'm surprised how fast the little machine is compiling stuff:
it's faster than my 2003 machine & approaches my 2007 Core 2 Duo.

Also, there's a reference in a Gentoo Wiki article to hyperthreading,
which advises to configure multiple processing into the kernel.
Is this correct ?  Is it safe ?

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca

[Alan McKinnon-2]

On Saturday 07 November 2009 19:51:10 Philip Webb wrote:
> Yes, it's very useful: thanks as usual.
>
> BTW I'm surprised how fast the little machine is compiling stuff:
> it's faster than my 2003 machine & approaches my 2007 Core 2 Duo.
>
> Also, there's a reference in a Gentoo Wiki article to hyperthreading,
> which advises to configure multiple processing into the kernel.
> Is this correct ?  Is it safe ?
>

Be very careful with hyperthreading. It's one of those things that looked like
a good idea at the time and didn't really work out in practice.

There's a reason why so many CPUs these days are multi-core.

I always advise to disable hyper-threading first unless it's proven to be
beneficial. And the signal-to-noise ratio is gentoo-wiki is nowhere near as
high as some folks think

--
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

091108 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Saturday 07 November 2009 19:51:10 Philip Webb wrote:
>> Also, there's a reference in a Gentoo Wiki article to hyperthreading,
>> which advises to configure multiple processing into the kernel.
>> Is this correct ?  Is it safe ?
> Be very careful with hyperthreading. It looked like a good idea at the time
> and didn't really work out in practice.
> There's a reason why so many CPUs these days are multi-core.

Yes, it doesn't seem correct to enable SMP on a 1-core CPU.

> The signal-to-noise ratio is gentoo-wiki
> is nowhere near as high as some folks think.

It can't be as bad as the Forum (grin).

--
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,   Philip Webb
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|   Cities Centre, University of Toronto
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'   purslowatchassdotutorontodotca