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<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>Some investigation -</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>1) Confirmed that Xubuntu on
a thumb boots and runs well. What I thought was a minor balk is Xubuntu
giving to much time to grunt work and not enough priority to human
interface.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>2) Confirmed that beta-1
takes a long time to boot from a thumb drive and then runs in a very balky
manor. Operations are eventually correct but system is not
usable.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>3) Installed a 7200 rpm
disk. Beta-1 install took about 20 minutes vs. three hours to SanDisk
thumb. Operation was very nice from the first start. Ksysguard
showed similar cpu and memory usage but about 10 fewer processes using disk
vs. thumb (137 vs. 147.) </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>Bottom line: I'll give up on
the thumb drive for PCBSD . . at least for now.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2> </DIV>
<DIV>
<HR>
</DIV></FONT>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=peter.brewster@comcast.net href="mailto:peter.brewster@comcast.net">Peter
Brewster</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=Testing@lists.pcbsd.org
href="mailto:Testing@lists.pcbsd.org">Testing@lists.pcbsd.org</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, September 07, 2008 6:26 PM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Beta 1 balky using 8GB Thumb, contention issue?</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>System is 2.8 MHz Celeron with .75
GB RAM, no hard drive, USB 2.0.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>1) System had been in use
with Xububtu on an 8 GB Ocz thumb. Very nice except an occasional one to
two second "balk" when launching a new application or scrolling in
Firefox.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>2) Removed Ocz and plugged in
a new SanDisk thumb, fresh from package. Tried to install from net.
DHCP was OK and target FTP was correct. File system went in OK.
Looks like install died on first file needed. Gave that
up.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>3) Burned a three-CD beta-1
set. Installed with Firefox, Office and Development selected on third
CD. Install took about three hours but went OK. However from the
first reboot some operations took several minutes, either to launch or to so
something simple such as pull down a menu. But the actions generally
seemed correct if I waited long enough. Now and then a launch would just
get lost - including that doggone bouncing thing. The thumb drive
had about 900 MB free. System was basically unusable.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>4) Removed the SanDisk thumb
and WinXP formatted it. (This left the U3 partition of 65 MB. That's
OK.) Reinstalled just the two CDs. Took about two-plus hours.
Now KDisk Free shows /dev/da0s1a as 76% used with 1.8 GB free.
/dev/md0 is 8% used with 700 MB free. This looks OK to me. However
there is no apparent change in the balky behavior. I notice that often,
while waiting seconds to minutes for some function to appear, clicking on
something else will cause the first item to happen. I've seen this
behavior when installing very fast disks on systems that worked well with slower
disks - usually resolved by paying attention to relative priorities. So
system is still not usable.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>Kris - KDisk also shows a
line entry "devfs ? 1 KB 100% used 0
free" and the thermometer is filled with red. No slashes around
devfs. I have no idea what that is about and don't know if it is a
concern.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2>Peter Brewster</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Lucida Sans Unicode" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
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