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  • USB live distro with PTS

    Hello,

    I've decided to try and use your benchmark suite in order to benchmark some dell 1750/1850/1950 against Vmware ESX on ibm x3655 and Dell R900. However I don't want to install a distro everytime I do a test in order to get results. For vmware ESX tests, it's easy all I'll have to do is install ubuntu/rhel or something once, and migrate the machine and benchmark again.

    However for the physical boxes, Ideally I want a ubuntu live cd with PTS on it. What's the easiest way to go about doing this? Also I'd have to use the local disk for the benchmarks and not the USB stick....

  • #2
    ok I found a way of doing this with remastersys and syslinux. If anyone is interested give me a pm. I might make a release, I'm uing Mint Linux as the host platform but there is really little reason for that except that remastersys is supposed to work well with that distro and i've never used it before.

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    • #3
      Maybe you think too complicated. In order to use usb as install media you can do a straigt forward install with your favorite distro - when the installer does not support hd re-ordering (Kanotix does that for example) then just remove internal drives. After usb install you just have to use always the same kind of gfx cards - like always new nvidia or always new ati. Otherwise you would need some kind of autodetection here - I have done that for my test live iso for PTS (could be startet with grub too from usb).

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      • #4
        you don't quite understand, this is to benchmark rack servers in a server room, so i don't care about the graphics drivers (i think most the dell servers ship with ATI Rage XL gfx cards with 8mb ram)

        Also the servers are mostly going to have RHEL3 installed on there, so installing pts on there is going to be a pain hence why i need to reinstall something newer. (with php5 i dont want to go into unsuported repo's on rhel3)

        And i want this usb stick to install on the local drive (because it's going to be raid1/5/6/10 in order to do hdparm tests). Also I can't install to the usb drive because i'm going to be benchmarking very different servers, so the hardware is totally different.

        Anyways i've pretty much done it now, just need to download all the benchmarks i want and some of those servers are very slow.

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        • #5
          You never created live systems before it seems It is much more easy than you might think. Some systems like Ubuntu have got even fallback gdm entries which would start with X even with changed gfx card. I would not install binary drivers in that case but your ati rage could not handle those anyway. The rest of the hardware does not matter at all - basically the ethX and cdrom/dvd links are just counted up when you change em (stored in /etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-*) - you can ignore that or delete those files, these will be recreated on boot. All pci/udev hardware drivers are loaded via udev - no config files are needed/used to do that. So it IS possible to install onto usb... The problem you just have got is that usb storage devices are real slow. Therefore I would use a ramdrive for compile tests - this is standard for live cds however. Just have enough ram

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          • #6
            I don't think you understand what I'm trying to do. I want to install linux with PTS by inserting a usb stick into a server. Then i want to be able to boot and run pts. Simple as that. In order to cut down the time needed to do that in, I created a live distro based on linux Mint that is a little slimmed down so i can install ubuntu quikcly on local disk (i want to test local disk performance as well).

            I want to use the USB stick instead of a cd/dvd rom drive simply because some of our servers don't have any, I dont want to install onto the USB stick. I want to install on the local disk.

            My benchmarks will not involve any graphical work so i don't care if the display drivers don't properly!

            If i totally misunderstand you please forgive me.

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            • #7
              When you have got already your live cd then just copy it on your usb stick and boot it with grub. The options you need you get when you deeply look at isolinux.cfg or just bye

              cat /proc/cmdline

              Of course you should know how to write a menu.lst and to install grub.

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              • #8
                yeah I know how to make a live cd into a live usb stick that's not an issue.

                I'm still downloading all the benchmarks I want on the sticks the ftp mirrors are really slow....

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