Anyone running VectorLinux?

[EdH]

Ubuntu no longer supports some of my aging machines, so I'm looking at other distributions. Does anyone have any comments regarding VectorLinux for a math environment able to be remotely run (local network only)?

[EdH]

Not sure anyone cares, but VectorLinux came "that close" to being my choice for an extended test. It failed only because I wasn't smart enough to be able to get zlib1g-dev or zlib-devel into the system so ggnfs would compile...

Edit: after trying several others, now I'm giving anti-X a shot...

[xilman]

A rather tangential reply but I've always had a soft spot for Gentoo (and no, it's not a peat bog in County Mayo despite my thinking the old ones are the best).

The beauty of Gentoo is that you get what you ask for, not what someone thinks you might find acceptable.

[EdH]

Well, I almost hate to post this (in fear of jinxing something), but after converting two machines from Ubuntu to antiX (32-bit, Pentium4, 764M), I must say things went well. I compiled and installed all of the packages I list for working on aliquot sequences and none of them gave me even a minor issue. The packages are gmp, gmp-ecm, ggnfs, msieve, YAFU and aliqueit. I still haven't installed gp/pari on either, but I ran an mprime torture test on one of them with good results.

I did have to learn some more about linux to get my remote vnc working so I could run them from my central machine, but after some study time and a little experimentation I was able to set both up with vnc over ssh.

So, at this point, I'd have to say that antiX has been a good choice based on my limited testing. It certainly gave me fewer troubles compiling and installing the math packages than any other distribution I tested.

[henryzz]

Any particular reason why you are using 32-bit not 64-bit? I can't find the 764M on wikipedia but most if not all pentium 4s seem to support 64-bit.

[EdH]

Originally Posted by henryzz

Any particular reason why you are using 32-bit not 64-bit? I can't find the 764M on wikipedia but most if not all pentium 4s seem to support 64-bit.

Sorry about the sloppy post. That was meant to be memory at 768 MB.

Most of the Pentium4 machines I have here claim to be only 32 bits wide:

math12:

     *-cpu
          description: CPU
          product: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.26GHz
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 400
          bus info: cpu@0
          version: 15.2.4
          slot: Microprocessor
          size: 2266MHz
          capacity: 3060MHz
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 533MHz
          capabilities: boot fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm up pebs bts
          configuration: id=0
        *-cache:0
             description: L1 cache
             physical id: 700
             size: 8KiB
             capacity: 8KiB
             capabilities: internal write-back data
        *-cache:1
             description: L2 cache
             physical id: 701
             size: 512KiB
             capacity: 512KiB
             capabilities: internal varies unified

math15:

     *-cpu
          description: CPU
          product: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1500MHz
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 4
          bus info: cpu@0
          version: 15.0.10
          slot: J4K2
          size: 1500MHz
          capacity: 1500MHz
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 100MHz
          capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm up pebs bts
          configuration: id=0
        *-cache:0
             description: L1 cache
             physical id: 5
             slot: None
             size: 8KiB
             capacity: 8KiB
             clock: 25MHz (40.0ns)
             capabilities: pipeline-burst synchronous internal write-back data
        *-cache:1
             description: L2 cache
             physical id: 6
             slot: None
             size: 256KiB
             capacity: 256KiB
             capabilities: synchronous internal write-back unified

[henryzz]

Turns out I had misread wikipedia. Neither of these are 64-bit before this I thought all were. Is there a particular reason that you are keeping these ancient systems running? I am pretty certain if you bought a pc capable of similar to these pcs you would have made a profit in a year if you include electricity. It would take >8 of these to match a cheap quad today and that is forgetting that they are 32-bit which can be a factor of 2 in some situations(nfs sieving on linux).

[EdH]

No real reason, other than that they were free. I have them "slowly" running various math programs, but they are falling behind in their usefulness as Ubuntu grinds them to a halt. Hence, the move to antiX.

[EdH]

Well, right up until I tried the 64-bit version of antiX, it was looking good. But,

[rant]
THERE'S ALWAYS SOME DAMN SINGLE ITEM THAT MAKES LINUX A PItA! I'm tired of all the searching for the one detail I don't intellectually possess whenever I try to use linux distros!!
[/rant]

I couldn't figure out how to get it to automatically boot all the way into the GUI. And, I'm not going to register with every linux distribution forum that exists. Or, maybe I should...

Anyway, I'm back to checking out VectorLinux for 64-bits.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by EdH

I couldn't figure out how to get it to automatically boot all the way into the GUI. And, I'm not going to register with every linux distribution forum that exists. Or, maybe I should...

I've no experience with that particular distro but the standard way is to ensure that /etc/inittab selects run level 5 by default. Here's my /etc/inittab from a Fedora distribution.

[root@anubis SRC]# cat /etc/inittab
# inittab is only used by upstart for the default runlevel.
#
# ADDING OTHER CONFIGURATION HERE WILL HAVE NO EFFECT ON YOUR SYSTEM.
#
# System initialization is started by /etc/init/rcS.conf
#
# Individual runlevels are started by /etc/init/rc.conf
#
# Ctrl-Alt-Delete is handled by /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf
#
# Terminal gettys are handled by /etc/init/tty.conf and /etc/init/serial.conf,
# with configuration in /etc/sysconfig/init.
#
# For information on how to write upstart event handlers, or how
# upstart works, see init(5), init(8), and initctl(8).
#
# Default runlevel. The runlevels used are:
#   0 - halt (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
#   1 - Single user mode
#   2 - Multiuser, without NFS (The same as 3, if you do not have networking)
#   3 - Full multiuser mode
#   4 - unused
#   5 - X11
#   6 - reboot (Do NOT set initdefault to this)
# 
id:5:initdefault:
[root@anubis SRC]#

Good luck.

Paul

[EdH]

Thanks Paul,

Yep, that's how my inittab looked (well, similar enough, anyway - the "id:5:initdefault:" was there). I had checked that and several other things, but no joy. I just tried an install on a different 64-bit machine and all went as it was supposed to. I guess it's a hardware issue. VL isn't treating me any better on this machine. x11vnc can't find a display. So, that's two distros with some form of video trouble. I'm going to give up for now and try a different video card later.

Thanks again for the note.

Ed