Dual-Core AMD Opteron 32 or 64 ??

This is not directly Maia related but I've been given a
Dual-Core AMD 
Opteron box to load CentOS 4.3 on. This CPU is listed as a
32 or 64 bit 
processor. I've never used the 64bit stuff yet and wondered
if anyone 
has a word of wisdom? I see CentOS has a 64bit version
available but 
will that just open a whole can of worms? Like, will Maia,
amavisd, 
spamassassin, and all the related pieces parts install and
compile fine? 
Is it just too soon to start using 64bit yet?

As a test, I loaded the standard i386 version of CentOS 4.3
and most 
things seem fine except for Xwindows. After a few minutes of
running X 
starts to act very strange and when you open a command
prompt, the 
keyboard will get progressively worse. Every key you type
will duplicate 
a zillion times. There is no way to type at a command
prompt. I turned 
off X and just log in at the text "login" prompt
and this does not 
happen so it's something with X. Then after leaving the box
run all 
night, the next morning all partitions where marked
Read-Only and I 
ended up pulling the plug to reboot the machine.


- Gary

-- 
Edison Information Technologies            
www.edisoninfo.com
PO BOX 554                                  garyedisoninfo.com
Milan, OH  44846-0554               800.874.7128  
419.499.7040

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On Wed, July 5, 2006 7:58 am, Gary MacKay wrote:
> This is not directly Maia related but I've been given
a Dual-Core AMD
>  Opteron box to load CentOS 4.3 on. This CPU is listed
as a 32 or 64
> bit processor. I've never used the 64bit stuff yet and
wondered if
> anyone has a word of wisdom? I see CentOS has a 64bit
version
> available but will that just open a whole can of worms?
Like, will
> Maia, amavisd,
> spamassassin, and all the related pieces parts install
and compile
> fine? Is it just too soon to start using 64bit yet?

If you plan on using more than 4 GB of RAM, then use the
64-bit version.
If you plan on using less than 4 GB of RAM, then use the
32-bit version.

That's about as simple as it can get.  

> As a test, I loaded the standard i386 version of CentOS
4.3 and most
> things seem fine except for Xwindows. After a few
minutes of running X
> starts to act very strange and when you open a command
prompt, the
> keyboard will get progressively worse. Every key you
type will
> duplicate a zillion times. There is no way to type at a
command
> prompt. I turned off X and just log in at the text
"login" prompt and
> this does not happen so it's something with X. Then
after leaving the
> box run all night, the next morning all partitions
where marked
> Read-Only and I ended up pulling the plug to reboot the
machine.

Get a better OS.    FreeBSD
and Debian Linux run perfectly on all
the 64-bit hardware we have (AMD and Intel), but our four
RedHat boxes
were a royal pain to get to work in 64-bit mode, and we've
actually
migrated two of them back to 32-bit.


----
Freddie Cash, LPCI-1 CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network
Support Tech.
School District 73                    (250) 377-HELP
[377-4357]
fcash-mlsd73.bc.ca

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Gary MacKay wrote:

> As a test, I loaded the standard i386 version of CentOS
4.3 and most 
> things seem fine except for Xwindows. After a few
minutes of running X 
> starts to act very strange and when you open a command
prompt, the 
> keyboard will get progressively worse. Every key you
type will duplicate 
> a zillion times. There is no way to type at a command
prompt. I turned 
> off X and just log in at the text "login"
prompt and this does not 
> happen so it's something with X. Then after leaving
the box run all 
> night, the next morning all partitions where marked
Read-Only and I 
> ended up pulling the plug to reboot the machine.

That sounds suspiciously like SELinux doing its thing on a
new install,
as it goes through every file on the filesystem creating its
fingerprint
database for security purposes.  I remember it being an
overnight
process on one FC4 workstation I enabled SELinux on.  Of
course, if you
don't want or need that level of security you can always
disable SELinux
at boot time, or in a config file.

-- 
Robert LeBlanc <rjlrenaissoft.com>
Renaissoft, Inc.
Maia Mailguard <http://www.maiamail
guard.com/>

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Quoting Gary MacKay <garyedisoninfo.com>:

> This is not directly Maia related but I've been given a
Dual-Core AMD
> Opteron box to load CentOS 4.3 on. This CPU is listed
as a 32 or 64 bit
> processor. I've never used the 64bit stuff yet and
wondered if anyone
> has a word of wisdom? I see CentOS has a 64bit version
available but
> will that just open a whole can of worms? Like, will
Maia, amavisd,
> spamassassin, and all the related pieces parts install
and compile fine?
> Is it just too soon to start using 64bit yet?

Since most of maia/amavisd/spamassassin are written in
PHP/Perl, they  
will work perfectly well on a 64bit machine, and indeed they
do run  
perfectly well for me on 64bit Gentoo.
You will also see a performance improvement as a result of
the extra  
registers present in 64bit mode, and an even bigger
improvement if  
your doing math calculations which benefit from being 64bit 

(encryption for instance).
If you have more than 896mb ram, there will also be a
performance  
improvement due to not using highmem, and a bigger
improvement if you  
have more than 4gig ram... see http://kerneltrap.org
/node/2450 for an  
explanation.

>
> As a test, I loaded the standard i386 version of CentOS
4.3 and most
> things seem fine except for Xwindows. After a few
minutes of running X
> starts to act very strange and when you open a command
prompt, the
> keyboard will get progressively worse. Every key you
type will duplicate
> a zillion times. There is no way to type at a command
prompt. I turned
> off X and just log in at the text "login"
prompt and this does not
> happen so it's something with X. Then after leaving the
box run all
> night, the next morning all partitions where marked
Read-Only and I
> ended up pulling the plug to reboot the machine.

Perhaps your machine has a videocard which is poorly
supported by  
centos 4.3? If your running a mailserver, there should be no
need for  
X anyway.

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