My new build

So, I have decided to jump into the world of computers that I cannot afford. Thus far I have won an auction from eBay that gives me the power of the next top o' the line CPU - the Core i7 965 EE. Now all I need to do is buy a new motherboard, RAM, and possibly and SSD....

The Beauty of Gentoo

Having a Gentoo-based laptop was not enough for me. I needed to have something with more pizazz- so I set about building Gentoo on my desktop as well. This is going to be more of a test environment as I decide which packages I want to use and which I don't - the obvious big one to consider is what sort of GUI Desktop environment I am going to use.

I have several folks trying to pull me in different directions. There are of course the KDE fan boys, who keep telling me something along the lines of "But, it has all these cool apps!". Then there are those who say gnome is superior to KDE in every way, and while it may not have this or that, other stuff like that there and them *require* parts of gnome to be installed anyway. Others keep trying to point me in the direction of the latest and greatest things, but one particular one has stood out for me thus far, in the limited capacity that I have used it.

I am referring to XFCE. It is light weight, and completely configurable - too much so, apparently, for some people. Oh well. More on that later.

I finally have my Desktop successfully running Gentoo, compiled using the Jackass! project's implementation of the Stage 3 on 1 NPTL install method. I am thus far happy with what I have, but as I expand it (now is the time to start adding things like X, a GUI desktop, and real apps) I will know more whether I like it, don't like it, or want to restructure it to suit my needs.

WD Hard Drive Death?

So, I am not exactly new to blogging, but most of my blogging is performed at various forums around the net. Just to give you some background on myself, I am active in computer help forums as well as security related forums, being a member at some places, a moderator at some, and an admin at other places. I like to try out new software, and I have say that I probably re-do my Windows XP config 3-4 times a year to eliminate problems from orphaned registry entries and .DLLs.


That being said, I have recently begun foraying into the world of Linux, and I have quickly graduated from the mundane vanilla distros to Gentoo, a true DIY kinda distro. Not content, however, with building from scratch, I have taken it to a new level, assisting in limited Beta testing of the
Jackass! Project, a project which allows the end user to install and compile Gentoo via the Stage 1/3 Installation for Gentoo 2005.0 and GCC 3.4.4
method with pre-compiled tool chain, thus eliminating half of the work. Obviously, I like pain.


So, this being about my 10th or 11th install of Gentoo, and most of those predominantly being the Jackass! project installs, I am fairly confident that all will go well. In spite of my system being rather old [Pentium 4 2.0(A) GHz Northwood CPU with 512 KB L2 Cache and a 13 micron architecture, on a Tyan s2266 Trinity 510 mobo with Via North / South bridges, hosting 1 GB matched dual channel PC2100 DDR, a Seagate Barracuda 120 GB 7200 rpm hard drive with 8 MB Cache, a Western Digital 80 GB 7200 rpm hard drive with 2 MB Cache, a Western Digital 20 GB 7200 rpm hard drive with 2 MB Cache and a Memorex 52 MAXX 52X24X52X CD RW drive (all IDE), with the three HDs run at ATA 5 (aka Ultra DMA 5) because that is the highest the board will support] I am fully confident that everything will be smooth - I recently burned all my MP3s to CD and then blew away a 60 GB partition on the 120 GB drive, then moved all the data from the 20 and 80 GB drives to that 120 GB drive, leaving me with 2 pristine Western Digital drives to play with for an interesting install.


However, tragedy has struck me - on 2 different occasions, I have attempted to partition the 80 GB Drive - and it has crashed, with an error message that the drive cannot be accessed. Furthermore, one time I got everything partitioned, and then attempted to mount folders from the install CD so as to chroot into the new environment, and I received a message that the partition was busy.


This put me in dire straits - after all, I scoured eBay for the best possible deal, and bought the 80 GB drive along with a free 20 GB drive (which I gave to my Mother to put in her ancient eMachines 400 Celeron based computer) for under $40. Now I am beginning to wonder if the advertised "works perfectly fine" was in fact a lie.


Just for fun I downloaded the Western Digital Diagnostic ISO and burned it to a CD (all 2.4 MB of it) and ran diagnostics on the HD. Both the quick test (approx 5 min) and the extended tests (approx 30 min) found no errors on the drive, and various software I have, including Everest Home Edition found no SMART errors either, so I am worried *and* stumped....


just for fun I removed the Over clocking I had on my CPU (running at 110%) and if this does not work then it is tie to start seeing what else I might have enabled as an 'optimized' setting in the BIOS that might be throwing me off.... or else time to ditch the drive and put my old Maxtor 20 GB 7200 rpm drive in and use it and the WD 20 in a Linux Software RAID.....