What is your oldest Gentoo production system

LOR · n00b Joined: 25 Aug 2015 Posts: 19

Hi!

I'm really lazy at updating my gentoo servers and I often need help from the gentoo gurus. I would like to know what other people are running, just to know that I'm not the only lazy guy. :roll:

My oldest System still online:

Production Date: 2006
Maintenance: changed one fan and the harddisks once

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Apr 23, 2022 9:11 pm Post subject:

All my P3's, P4's, Athlon, Celerons have been pretty much decommissioned. However I do still run and update my Pentium M laptop (32 bit) that I've been running Gentoo since early mid 2000s. Hard drive I've swapped and memory upgraded, at 1.5GB it's usable and yes, latest Firefox and its dependencies are built on it. This is my second oldest Gentoo install however, the oldest one has hardware changes up and including move to a virtual machine.

-- edited: Dang, reworded above. Think it was 2004-ish that I installed it and rereading my post, I worded it really badly implying I installed it at the dawn of Gentoo and possibly before the computer even existed. This was clearly not the case...
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figueroa · Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 4:26 am Post subject:

Depends on what you mean by old.

LOR · n00b Joined: 25 Aug 2015 Posts: 19

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 6:46 pm Post subject:

Surprisingly my Pentium-M isn't the slowest machine, though it is second slowest computationally.

The slowest machine in my arsenal is my dual thread Atom-1.6GHz machine, but it has 2GB RAM and an SSD.

Both of these machines take a greater part of a week to complete their updates, usually I end up doing them every 6 months or so. The Atom I track/use more often because it's the (physically smallest) machine. It was taking over a day to build rust but it has gotten a little better due to rust itself and a little better distcc'ing. Last mass update took the Atom about 5 days to complete (and it did get a bit of distcc help, though network speeds limit it). The Pentium-M isn't that far behind.

Neither machine are pleasant to web browse with, hence they do not get updated way too often...but they will continue to be updated until Gentoo stops supporting them.

(I was about to write that as long as a machine has significantly more than 1GB of RAM I'd consider to use Gentoo on it, but realized I still have a 1.5GB Celeron 1.2GHz machine, alas it's in the decommissioned pile.)

---

So the ProLiant is a dual core Pentium-D 3GHz? How much RAM? Can't say it's way too far behind though probably around double the speed of my Pentium-M 1.6GHz and maybe triple the speed of my Atom 1.6GHz, as long as it has 4GB RAM or more...
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figueroa · Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2022 8:40 pm Post subject:

Actually, this Gateway ec1803 is my slowest in-production system. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Gateway-EC1803h.26716.0.html I upgraded to 4 GB RAM a about 10 years ago.

I try to run updates on it at least once a month. At that interval, updates take many hours, maybe a full day. But, it's very usable with OpenBox as the GUI.
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Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558

Those who run gentoo linux on slow machines are masochists. You should run arch-based linux distribution or gnu guix system on slow systems with little RAM.

I can't imagine running gentoo linux on anything slower than my main desktop computer.

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21635

Building packages on small systems can be painful, but Gentoo is one of the better choices for what to run there. The ability to trim down packages by excluding from compilation any unnecessary features can make Gentoo fit comfortably in small systems. Careful use of binpkg hosts can allow the administrator to avoid building on a small machine, while still creating Gentoo binaries to run there.

figueroa · Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2022 3:30 pm Post subject:

It's not the RUNNING that's slow, but the updating and rebuilding of large packages. But, I set it to emerging and leave it alone. The secret it not to watch it. Doesn't hurt at all.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

crocket · Guru Joined: 29 Apr 2017 Posts: 558

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 1:25 pm Post subject:

Sometimes there's no choice - as in there are few distributions out there that support 32-bit Linux these days.

Having more than one machine (and being able to use any machine) helps - just use another machine for interactive stuff while the other is building.
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
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figueroa · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:07 pm Post subject:

croket
Let the rebuilding of large package go overnight when sleeping. There are strategies, including niceness.
_________________
Andy Figueroa
hp pavilion hpe h8-1260t/2AB5; spinning rust x3
i7-2600 @ 3.40GHz; 16 gb; Radeon HD 7570
amd64/23.0/split-usr/desktop (stable), OpenRC, -systemd -pulseaudio -uefi

fredbear5150 · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 11 Oct 2003 Posts: 113

GreenNeonWhale · n00b Joined: 30 Mar 2016 Posts: 56

I don't know if using a machine as a router counts as production, but I'm running a PowerMac B&W G3 350Mhz PowerPC as my home router. I'm building an updated install on a second B&W at 450Mhz with 1GB of RAM. Just because you all might a chuckle out of it: I compiled gcc natively on the 450Mhz Box -- Compile Time: 44 Hours 13 Minutes.
For most of the rest of the compilation work on that box, I use distcc. Gentoo's documentation and the crossdev packaging have made this substantially easier for me to setup and use. Thus, a big Thank You to all the developers that make it possible.

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2022 5:32 pm Post subject:

I semi-retired my Atom 1.6GHz laptop/netbook because its battery is now toast and only gets 15-30 mins or so of life from full charge. Ended up using my (ugh) android phone as its "replacement" though not having a physical keyboard is annoying.

Still much more pleasurable to use ssh with the netbook but not with the cost of a power cord.

I'm surprised a PPC is that bad in IPC? I recall my Atom is around 8-9 or so hours with GCC. It's 4x the clock speed, so that would make it 32-36 hours if it were running at 400MHz, and I thought the IPC of the Atom is pretty bad. Might be something else but this is a bit interesting...
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
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GreenNeonWhale · n00b Joined: 30 Mar 2016 Posts: 56

eccerr0r,

Thanks for your reply.
I'm no expert in these matters, but I suspect that its the 100Mhz system bus that the B&W PowerMacs have. My guess is your laptop has a substantially faster system bus. In my opinion, Apple stuck with 100Mhz -> 133Mhz system buses for too long. I think they could have done better.

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2022 8:56 pm Post subject:

Nah, would not affect it that much. At a faster cpu clock rate, it'd miss more often requiring the bus more often. Lower the clock rate, also lower bus speed as less data is needed - so it all scales.

This is perhaps dependent that you have a memory cache, though I suspect most machines higher than 25-33MHz have caches... An inefficient cache might be part of the problem.
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

GreenNeonWhale · n00b Joined: 30 Mar 2016 Posts: 56

eccerr0r,

Interesting ... Thanks!
I'm assuming you're referring to a CPU cache. I don't know much about them, except that they're super fast memory, way faster than system RAM, for the CPU to temporarily park data. Beyond the fact that larger and faster caches are generally better, I know little.
In case anyone is interested, here are the specs, pulled from apple-history.com:
CPU: PowerPC 750 "G3"
CPU Speed: 300/350/400/450 MHz
FPU: integrated
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Register Width: 32-bit
Data Bus Width: 64-bit
Address Bus Width: 32-bit
Level 1 Cache: 32 kB data, 32 kB instruction
Level 2 Cache: 1 MB backside, 1:2

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3267 Location: Canada

My oldest system humming in the background is from 2007 (intel Core 2 duo based with 4 Gb RAM - actually I remember when I was ordering parts for it the saleperson tried to convice me that 2GB is plenty enough, but I went for max).
But it has fully updated 64-bit Gentoo on it (*) Had power supply replacement and hard drive was replaced with SSD

(*) well, all my machines are frozen with 4.14 or 4.19 kernels, have not went yet for 5.x family

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3267 Location: Canada

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2022 3:17 am Post subject:

Been thinking about repairing an old S775 board, unsure if it's salvageable (fried VRM MOSFET or capacitor, I think...)
I only have spare 2GB RAM for it and a Celeron 430, P4, Core2 Duo, and a Core2Quad. I guess the obvious choice is to chuck the quad in it, but if it's forced to run singlethreaded due to running out of RAM, it seems like a waste.

Alas this would technically be a "new"-ly installed system...
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Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

minosi · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2011 Posts: 4

Courier6 · n00b Joined: 30 Jul 2021 Posts: 15

I would have to say my oldest machine running Gentoo is a dell inspiron from 2006 (I installed it recently), running with a celeron and 2 gigabytes of memory. I use distcc from my frankly more powerful desktop from 2017 to help it with upgrades and general packages. I do plan on giving it an upgrade of the ssd variety. It is 64 bit so that makes building for it a lot easier on my more powerful tower.

_will.420_ · n00b Joined: 23 Mar 2021 Posts: 9

I run gentoo on a 2008 macbook, one of the ram sticks nuked themselves so it has about 800mb of ram and a core 2 duo. It took multiple days to install with an external hdd as swap because it kept running out of ram lol. It's pure pain but it's fun and it goes fast.