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Tels Created: 2003-06-30 Last modified: 2003-07-13 |
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The Shuttle is a very compact, cool-looking system and features a heat-pipe design to cool the CPU. The only two "problems" with these systems are the small, and hence (very) noisy fan on the PSU and the sometimes a bit exotic (read: Linux-unfriendly) hardware.
This is a very brief text. If you need more details, please email me.
I installed an Athlon XP 2400+ (2 Ghz), 512 MB DDR memory (1 DIMM, 333 FSB, although the mainboard only supports a FSB of 266), a Geforce TI200 grafic card and a 120 GB Hitachy harddisk. Also added was a NEC 1100+A DVD+RW writer.
Since on an identical Shuttle system Knoppix failed to boot entirely (would hang at the time the cute little penguin is displayed, no matter which Knoppix version I used), I opted for installing SuSE 8.2, since I know it could boot into it's rescue system. Odly enough, on my system a test-boot with Knoppix worked.
I installed SuSE 8.2 from DVD - this went without any major problems (except that the DVD #1 to install from was scratched beyond repair, and I had to get a different one).
My 120 Gig harddisk is partioned as follows:
After install, for added security, I moved a couple of directories from
/ to /home/ - this way they are also encrypted.
Examples are /var, /tmp/ and /opt.
After the install, pretty much everything worked, except the network card.
After trial and error and a lot hair pulling I found out that you need to do
acpi=off noapic when booting, or it won't work.
So, after getting the network up, it is critical that you do as the first thing an online update with YOU (Yast Online Update). This downloads critical secutiry patches, as well as other patches. For instance, privoxy does not work in the stock SuSE 8.2 installation, but the YOU fixes this.
I also installed a Geforce TI200 into the system to beef up the grafics. YOU
downloaded and installed the accelarated NVidia drivers for me.
glxgears now is very fast :)
A note: The Nvidia drivers also don't work in accelarated mode when either
apic or acpi is on. Since I need to turn these
off for the network, too, this is no real problem. (Although ACPI support
brings some good things, f.i. you can configure your computer so that by
pressing the power button at the front it shuts down clleanly and powers the
computer off. This is very handy and cool - especially if you have small
children around :)
One of the shuttle machines I have access to did not want to boot Knoppix,
however, my home machine does so just fine.
I couldn't solve this problem even after much head scratching and toggling
nearly every setting in the BIOS.
The symptons were easy to recognize: total hang at the boot, after
you hit enter on the input line of Knoppix. You just see a black screen and
then no more, the keyboard is dead.
When you boot Knoppix with vga=0, you actually see the
Uncompressing Linux... and that's it.
Some guy (to be named here :) send me an email and he figured it out:
You need to enable the USB mouse support, even if you don't have an USB mouse
attached to the system (and don't forget to enable USB support in general,
too!)
Yeah, whatever.
My main reason for getting the Shuttle was that my old PC (weighting 9 Kilo
over the 4 Kilo of the shuttle) was just too noisy. Apart from the many fans,
the broken CD burner, the two harddisk and the very bulky apparence, it also
had a slot DVD drive.
And these slot drives are much more noisier than normal drives, because the
noise can escape through the slot. I didn't know this when buying the old
system...
So I wanted to make this system especially quit. The first thing I did was to replace the standard fan that came with the system (running at about 3000 RPM) with a Papst fan (running just after power on at 1700 RPM). This makes the noise level drop quite a bit.
The first thing is to silence the HDD a bit, so issue as root:
hdparm -M 128 /dev/hdc
While this doesn't reduce the whirring noise from the rotating platter, it will reduces the noise the disk makes when writing data. It also makes it a tad slower, but this is pretty much marginal - the fast CPU coupled with the very fast ReiserFS and the already fast disk make working a pleasure, anyway.
You might want to use hdparm -K to make the HDD remember the
setting over the next reboot.
Next I downloaded, compiled and installed
athcool.
I also installed the sensors package (from SuSE), and run
sensors to install it. You also should activate the
lm_sensors service in the runlevel editor in Yast2 to have it load
automatically at boot.
Here is a very usefull HowTO written by Daniel Nofftz.
The first test showed a CPU temperature of 62°C. When using
athcool on, you see it drop quite a lot, until it reached finally
3°C. This not only sounds wrong, it is wrong. The bogus temperature
is because the shuttle uses the it87 chipset and the module uses a
parameter called temp_type=0x2a as default. The default means
using a thermistor, a diode and a thermistor for measuring temp1, temp2 and
temp3, respectively.
However, on my Shuttle, all three temp. are measured via thermistors.
So, use the following to load the correct module:
rmmod it87 modprobe it87 temp_type=0x38
You also might add the following lines to the /etc/sensors.conf
file under the chip "it87-*" "it8705-*" "it8712-*" section:
set fan1_div 4 ignore fan2 ignore fan3
With these changes made, issue sensors -s. Now, the temperature
readings and the fan reading will be hopefully correct. Here is my sample
output:
eeprom-i2c-0-50 Adapter: SMBus Via Pro adapter at 5000 Algorithm: Non-I2C SMBus adapter Memory type: DDR SDRAM DIMM SPD Memory size (MB): 512 it87-isa-0290 Adapter: ISA adapter Algorithm: ISA algorithm VCore 1: +1.63 V (min = +1.42 V, max = +1.56 V) ALARM VCore 2: +1.44 V (min = +2.40 V, max = +2.60 V) ALARM +3.3V: +6.62 V (min = +3.12 V, max = +3.44 V) ALARM +5V: +5.12 V (min = +4.72 V, max = +5.24 V) +12V: +11.24 V (min = +11.36 V, max = +12.60 V) ALARM -12V: -21.15 V (min = -12.63 V, max = -11.41 V) ALARM -5V: -3.20 V (min = -5.28 V, max = -4.81 V) ALARM Stdby: +5.04 V (min = +4.72 V, max = +5.24 V) VBat: +3.24 V fan1: 2576 RPM (min = 0 RPM, div = 4) Temp1/MB: +49°C (min = +20°C, max = +40°C) Temp2/CPU: +54°C (min = +25°C, max = +45°C)
After using athcool on, the temperature drops quite a bit over the
nextminutes, and reaches after about 10 minutes:
eeprom-i2c-0-50 Adapter: SMBus Via Pro adapter at 5000 Algorithm: Non-I2C SMBus adapter Memory type: DDR SDRAM DIMM SPD Memory size (MB): 512 it87-isa-0290 Adapter: ISA adapter Algorithm: ISA algorithm VCore 1: +1.63 V (min = +1.42 V, max = +1.56 V) ALARM VCore 2: +1.44 V (min = +2.40 V, max = +2.60 V) ALARM +3.3V: +6.58 V (min = +3.12 V, max = +3.44 V) ALARM +5V: +5.12 V (min = +4.72 V, max = +5.24 V) +12V: +11.24 V (min = +11.36 V, max = +12.60 V) ALARM -12V: -20.76 V (min = -12.63 V, max = -11.41 V) ALARM -5V: -3.20 V (min = -5.28 V, max = -4.81 V) ALARM Stdby: +5.04 V (min = +4.72 V, max = +5.24 V) VBat: +3.24 V fan1: 2576 RPM (min = 0 RPM, div = 4) Temp1/MB: +43°C (min = +20°C, max = +40°C) Temp2/CPU: +44°C (min = +25°C, max = +45°C)
This seems like the maximum I can get, and to my dissapointment, the fan's
were as noisy as always.
The reason that it won't get any cooler are the HDD (it's surface is about
38°C), the PSU (it's outer surface at the fan is about 42°C), and the grafic
card (it's heat sink is about 32°C when the fan is on, and quickly rises
to about 48°C when the fan is off). So the systems temperature is well
over 30°C.
When you load the it87 module, the fan starts to make suddenly more noise. I
don't know if it also does this when you load the it87 module with the proper
parameter at boot, but it certainly does when you remoce and insert it87
at run time. This was also reported to me y some australian guy (to be named
here :)
Since I replaced the original with a Papst fan, this nouse step up
is not so dramatic (I also don't know if the fan get's slowero over time, that
is hard to tell). The original fan, however, is reportedly very loud, just
like the noiseit makes shortly after powering one, before the BIOS slows it
down. The words mentioned were 'Operation 'Dessert Storm"' and
'Vacuum cleaner'. Sou you probably should replace the original fan with
a more silent one.
Using athcool on poses one big problem, though: USB 2.0 stops
working properly. Copying 128 MB of data from my
Phototainer takes usually only a few seconds. However,
when the cool bits are on, the system copies about 15% of the data, then pauses
for a minute or two, then copies another 10% or so, then pauses, then
continues and then pauses again and so on. This makes it totally unsually.
The only solution is to turn athcool off, transfer the data, and
turn it on again after finishing the data transfer. Since athcool
can only be run by root, I lost the ability to transfer data via USB as a
normal user. Ugh!
Feedback of any kind is very welcome, although flames will be handled by Mr. Dave Null. Please use GnuPG with my key when emailing me.
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Tels Created: 2003-06-30 Last modified: 2003-07-13 |
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