Bill Moseley <moseley@hank.org> [2002-11-17 14:29:15 -0800]: > > This is a rather non-specific question: Good, then you won't mind non-specific answers? :-) > Will CD writing quality be effected if the machine is doing other tasks? > Of course the answer is "it depends", but here's what I'm considering: I think Clemens said something to the effect that there is nothing more annoying than the presence of an example. Your best bet would be to load up this old box (actually pretty nice hardware!) you have and burn a CD while doing "other tasks" and watch the fifo while you are doing that. As long as the fifo does not drop below a comfortable margin for safety you should be fine. > A few of my Debian machines are old MS Windows hand-me-downs. I've been > offered another (they just bought a new machine because the old one was > crashing in Windows all the time). But, this time I want to give it back > with Debian installed. While we all like to complain about the lack of reliability in MS-Windows much of the hardware is the real problem as it is designed for MS and we call that Microsoft Quality Hardware. That is to say if you know you are only going to be running windows for software then the hardware needs to be no more reliable as no one using it will be able to notice and so shortcuts are taken. Therefore if there is rumor that the machine might be unreliable I would put it through a stress test before trusting it too much. It just might be unreliable in reality. At a first pass I would run a memory test over the ram. Memory tends to be an unreliable part of many systems. Best to find out if that might be an issue. I recommend memtest86 on a bootable floppy or cd and let it run overnight. The Debian package will facilitate booting this by lilo on your hard drive. Which should work fine but just seems to heavy weight for me. I find it much easier to boot it from a floppy. The web site has has an iso for a bootable CD that works great. Just let it boot and run. It is OS independent this way too. http://www.memtest86.com apt-cache show memtest86 Second I would work the disk drive system a little. I don't know of any programs specifically to test the disk drive. Perhaps other readers will have suggestions. But working it through normal usage should turn up any problems that might exist. I would use bonnie or bonnie++ to make sure there is some stress on the system. Debian has the bonnie++ version handy and I would run it a few times to try to shake out disk drive problems. If you are confident that the machine is good to go then proceed! > They are not ready for Linux on the desktop, but said that they would be > willing to have a linux machine they could use for burning CDs. This conjures up visions of MS-Windows people wanting to use a GUI to burn CDs. Fine. But it plays into for what purpose you are wanting to use for this machine. If you want to use this for a GUI desktop with X11 and all of the bells and whistles then fine. But if you want this for a server, especially a firewall, then to me those are incompatible uses for the machine. > I, on the other hand, would rather give them a NAT (masq) and firewall > machine and let them put their XP machine on the protected internal LAN > for all the obvious reasons. I'd rather do that than add a second NIC to > the XP machine. Linux is good for this, and frankly, I think this might be > a good way to get Linux into the homes of Windows users that would not > consider Linux otherwise. Linux makes and excellent firewall and router. Only install the OS components you need. You do not need nor want X11 or any desktop applications installed. Just have it do the task of being a firewall. It will do a great job in that role. Remember that if a user is set in their mind that they don't want to use something different than they are using then forcing a change won't help. Better to set up an alternative which they may use if they wish and making the alternative so attractive that they want to use it. The old more flies with honey than vinegar routine. > Anyway, the machine in question is only a few years old -- A PIII 450Mhz w/ > 256MB. The CD-R installed in that machine is a SCSI drive (8x burn speed). Sounds like a nice box. And much faster than many people's P90, P133, etc. machines of the previous vintage that are currently doing great service running GNU/Linux. > Now, they don't want the NAT machine because of the worry that if the > machine is doing other things (like fetching mail) that it will effect the > quality of CD writing. You asked for discussion so here is some. To me this is not a technical problem. I believe the box can burn CD's while doing this just fine. Best to try it yourself while loading the box and watching the fifo buffer to make sure it is not in danger of running low. I understand the concern of those questioning this capability. I myself still feel nervous about doing this because in the early years computers could not keep up with the CD write buffer and if the fifo ever ran empty then the CD burn failed, wasting a then expensive blank. The primacy of that personal experience causes me to feel their concern since they probably went through that too. But your PIII-450MHz/256MB-RAM with a modern CD writer should do fine. But doing all of the things you want along with being a piece of the security of the system by being a firewall is something that I personally would not do. I know a lot of people are hardware limited and so must combine functionality. But for the security system I personally only do dedicated machines for firewalls. Put the heavily double duty combination machines behind the firewall. > So my simple question is: See any reason this machine can't be both a > NAT/firewall/fetchmail machine and burn CDs without errors? My guess that > would not be a problem, especially since the drive is SCSI. Let me recommend something different. Buy a dedicated firewall from Linksys or D-link or Netgear or any of the other consumer products network firewalls that exist. They are all reliably in the $75 dollar range, sometimes as little as $30 with rebates and sales. Those are mostly carefree, unlike a computer system with a disk drive. They have no disk to crash or back up. They are quiet with no fan. Low power and small, the size of an external modem. They usually have a web interface and so are easy to setup and configure. This sounds like by far the better configuration for you. Then use your PIII-450 as your CD writer with a full X11 desktop installation. Load the box up with all of the fun toys that you can and let the reliable operation of it convince people that this was the right system to put in place there. As a 450 it won't be as speedy on the desktop as the newer machines four times faster. But it should work well enough within its limits. This machine could be your mail server running fetchmail and other aplications. This would provide the GUI for the cd writer that I am certain MS-Windows users won't be able to do without. And your security concerns can be minimized. A win-win. Even though I am thinking that MS-Windows users will want a GUI for random CD writing, perhaps you have a special purpose for CD writing and just need to push out CDs quickly and efficiently in batch mode. That would be easier. Don't let me talk you out of that. I burn all of my CDs from the command line using cdrecord. But I work with MS-Windows users and I am skeptical they would go for that. > They also have a new 48x (sure beats 8x) CD-R IDE on order. I wonder how > that will work, also. If you were going to have trouble burning CDs the higher speed CD writers are more likely to run the fifo empty than the slower ones. I have no experience beyond 12x write which works fine on a PII-400MHz. > I'm not looking for any hard answers. But I don't want to waste my time > building the NAT/firewall if all we end up with is a machine that sits > there ready to burn CDs. I guess am looking for people that have a similar > setup -- that will help convince my friend that this is a good way to set > up the machine. I recommend you use a dedicated firewall by buying a consumer network firewall product. Don't get me wrong, Linux makes an excellent firewall, I use one. They are best for tinkerers as they do take regular maintenance. They support very flexible network bubble configurations. For an office environment where you want to minimize downtime due to disk failure, avoid dealing with backups, avoid the politics of people bashing linux for those times when the network is unavailable it is better to place a dedicated appliance that is small, quiet, and capable. Use your computer system for the things that can only be done by a computer system. Install linux on that and let it show how well it can do the job. Bob
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