[nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability

Tue Jun 10 19:29:15 EDT 2008

Duh...  I keep a calculator on my desk, but apparently it's just for looks.. :-)

On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 6:57 PM, David J. Andruczyk
<djandruczyk at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 2^32 = 4 GB
>
> on the X86 architecture the kernel can be configured for a 2GB/2GB split (user/kernel),  or a 3.5/0.5 split or on a PAE kernel processes can address the full 4GB address space (actually up to 64GB as PAE enables a full 36 bit address space (64GB))
>
> You'll find on many distros that if u have 4GB of ram,  it shows up as 3.3-3.6 GB of memory unless running a PAE kernel in which it'll show up as 4-4.1GB of memory.
>
>
>  -- David J. Andruczyk
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Dennis Ruzeski <denniruz at gmail.com>
> To: nflug at nflug.org
> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 6:36:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability
>
> Shouldn't it be 2GB ram if we're talking about a 32 bit limitation?
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 4:46 PM, David J. Andruczyk
> <djandruczyk at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> 64 bit  OS's are needed for only the few reasons:
>>  1. you have more than 4 GB of ram, AND you want your processes to be able to address all of it (Databases,  high performance virtualization,  VMware ESX, Xen, etc)
>>  2.  You need very large virtual address space (niche applications, large datasets, distributed dataset processing)
>>
>> if u don't run large DBs's with more than 4 GB of physical RAM, or have a hot virtualization setup where the VM's need more than 4 GB of ram,  then u really do NOT gain anything from using a 64 bit OS.   In many cases u loose out due to some apps not being stable or available in 64 bit iterations (typically only a problem for proprietary drivers (ATI/nvidia) and software, i.e. flash.)
>>
>>
>> Every new box we just installed into our new datacenter at work is 64 bit capable,  of the couple hundred I installed,  9 machines got 64 bit OS's (4 database servers, and 5 LDAP servers (as they have 32GB or RAM each)).
>>
>>
>> -- David J. Andruczyk
>>
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----
>> From: K O <wpos2 at roadrunner.com>
>> To: nflug at nflug.org
>> Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:40:04 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nflug] AMD64 Debian 'Etch' Stability
>>
>> To start, an opinion, or rather, a rhetorical question: how long has 64
>> bit hardware and software been around, and why is it as poorly supported
>> as it is?  Perhaps there is a good reason for this, thereby making my
>> question not rhetorical.  In any case, I'm all ears.
>>
>> Speaking of plugins, nspluginwrapper makes 32 bit plugins work in 64 bit
>> browsers (at least theoretically).  By virtue of that package, Flash has
>> been known to work for my 64 bit Firefox.  (You Tube videos are usually
>> without grief.)  It's marginally less fussy in my 32 bit Opera.  (What
>> do the Windows 64 users do for a Flash plugin?)
>>
>> I happen to share Mr. Smith's opinion about Flash.  I pound my fists
>> when I get to a home page and all I see is a place holder for a Flash
>> animation without a "non-Flash version" link.  (Come on now: doesn't
>> everyone have Vista with IE?)
>>
>> Ken Smith pisze:
>>> On Fri, 2008-05-23 at 08:26 -0400, Robert Wolfe wrote:
>>>> Good morning all!
>>>>
>>>> I was wondering what some folks' thoughts were on the stability of the
>>>> AMD64 version of Debian Etch are?  I have been wanting to push the use
>>>> of the 64-bit version on our higher-end servers here at work (have a
>>>> bunch of new AMD64-based servers that have dual quad-core Xeons in
>>>> them with 16GB of RAM that act as our VMWare Server servers).  I know
>>>> of at least one person that claims that the 64-bit version of Debian
>>>> is not stable enough to run as a server OS.
>>>>
>>>> Could someone confirm or not whether this is true?
>>>>
>>>
>>> As of FreeBSD 7.0 the majority of people should probably still stick to
>>> 32-bit on workstations but if you don't wander too far into "exotic
>>> stuff" (mostly the multimedia type stuff...) it's at least possible to
>>> use a 64-bit system on a workstation.  Both my office machine and home
>>> machine are running 64-bit and I don't run into too much stuff I
>>> desperately need that doesn't work.  The baseline windowing goop
>>> (Gnome/KDE) seem to work just fine.  I don't have Flash working yet but
>>> sometimes I consider that a benefit... :-)  Opera is just now working on
>>> a FreeBSD 64-bit version so I need to use their development downloads
>>> for that, it's not "production" quite yet.
>>>
>>> You're likely to see exactly the same sort of situation for Debian...
>>> Most of the Linux systems here in the Department are RedHat and I see
>>> the same trends there.  We've chosen to go mostly 64-bit but for example
>>> our firefox executable is 32-bit because of plug-in issues, etc...
>>>
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