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1- you arent going to find much at bestbuy or costco for $300 or less that isnt an older 'refurbished' system.
2- very hard to find a serial/RS-232 port these days. A PCI/PCIe serial port card might work, but I've never tested one with linux.
3- that is never really 'safe'.
4- should be fine, just avoid the really new stuff.
5- how power efficent?
6- are those your only options?
7- shouldnt be a problem with newer systems...but that will depend on what yuo call 'quick' and how big your MySQL database is.
8- 'using a laptop as the monitor/keyboard' As far as I know, that will be impossible in 95%+ of cases. Get a monitor and keyboard.
9- I havent seen any computer in the last 6-8 years without USB ports. Some slimline/nettop desktop computers dont have a DVD drive. unless you really want a nettop for size, power efficiency and cost reasons, they are probably best avoided.
have you considered some sort of plug device or something like a raspbery pi or beagleboard black? These are in the $50 price range (once power supply and storage are added), but you would probably have to run something other than centos, and would have to order online.
I picked up a refurbished Dell Optiplex 740 (AMD 5200+, 2GB RAM, 80GB HDD) from geeks.com for under $200 a while back that came with a serial (and a parallel) port. It's been running Fedora 18 without issues for the past six months
2- I would think a PCI card would work. Any things you would look out for?
3- PC would be on a shelf in the basement without anything on top of it.
4- Avoid the real new stuff? Were not yesterday's computers real new at the time?
5- how power efficent?
6- are those your only options?
7- The whole reason I am doing this is I previously used a 7 year old laptop which worked great, then upgraded CentOS 5.8 to 6.4, then MySQL ran like a dog.
Get something with an Athlon II. Recently made a post about finding lowest price hardware (while still having performance) for Linux and AMD seems to provide.
2- I would think a PCI card would work. Any things you would look out for?
Try to find one with linux support. While cards without suppotr might work, its more of a risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NotionCommotion
3- PC would be on a shelf in the basement without anything on top of it.
Ahh, so not really 'stored' (which is what I was worrign about) but being run from a garage.....thats not so bad (I dont trust garages for storage of computers due to issues I've seen over the eyars)
Quote:
Originally Posted by NotionCommotion
4- Avoid the real new stuff? Were not yesterday's computers real new at the time?
Yes, they were. The newer the hardware, the more likely you will need a newer kernel or other bits and pieces (eg alsa, xorg) to get new hardware running. Since you are you running CentOS, getting 'bleeding edge' hardware is more likely to give your problems as CentOS tend to be a bit behind some other more 'current' distros.
I wouldnt be getting a Intel LGA 1150 system, or AMD F2/FM2+ system for centOS.
Intel LGA 1155 should be fine, as should AMD AM3/AM3+ systems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NotionCommotion
7- The whole reason I am doing this is I previously used a 7 year old laptop which worked great, then upgraded CentOS 5.8 to 6.4, then MySQL ran like a dog.
Could be due to the 5.8 to 6.4 upgrade overall, or it might just be the newer version of MySQL in the newer CentOS.
I would say that is very reasonable. I'm only upgrading this because it's getting rather old. Original P/S failed recently so have to wonder if something else will go next. Feel like a change too. Discs are getting near end of life too.
This is mine. I run all sorts of things and do some heavy photo processing.
Code:
ohn@linux-pk0k:~> lscpu
Architecture: x86_64
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order: Little Endian
CPU(s): 2
On-line CPU(s) list: 0,1
Thread(s) per core: 1
Core(s) per socket: 2
CPU socket(s): 1
NUMA node(s): 1
Vendor ID: GenuineIntel
CPU family: 6
Model: 15
Stepping: 6
CPU MHz: 2671.063
BogoMIPS: 5341.49
Virtualization: VT-x
L1d cache: 32K
L1i cache: 32K
L2 cache: 4096K
NUMA node0 CPU(s): 0,1
john@linux-pk0k:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2671.063
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow
bogomips : 5342.12
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6700 @ 2.66GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 2671.063
cache size : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm dts tpr_shadow
bogomips : 5341.49
clflush size : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:
john@linux-pk0k:~>
More or less run 24hrs and day, 7 days a week for about 7+ years.
Yes, I noticed a difference, but MySQL is running so, so, so much slower on CentOS 6X than 5X, the improvements of the new hardware were irreverent. I've since found that if one removes barriers from the file system where MySQL stores data, speeds are greatly improved and getting closer to what I had on CentOS 5X. As such, I've asked a couple of new questions regarding file systems http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...es-4175468331/ which you might want to pipe in on
Ummm..are you running your install or MySQL database from a Kingston DataTraveler 2.0 USB flash drive?
There is your problem. USB flash drives are slow, slow, slow. They are slower than USB external HDDs, and USB external HDDs are slower than internal HDDs. Could be as much as 20 times slower writes, 8 times slower reads, and 1/60th of the number of seeks you would get with a current internal HDD.
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