Re: [ccp4bb] Linux flavour and hard disks

[Roger Rowlett]

I've used both Fedora (RH 9 through Fedora 8) and Ubuntu 9.04 for crystallogrpahy. Both are fine distros. Ubuntu was a little better working out of the box with all the hardware, and maintenance of the restricted Nvidia drivers is simpler. For some reason, Wine compatibility was better, too. Those are the principal reasons I switched from Fedora to Ubuntu. On the other hand, I had fewer problems with managing NFS shares with my Fedora boxes, but that may just be familiarity with the required commands. Both Fedora and Ubuntu seem to be supported by the major crystallographic software folks. Personally, I put the OS on a smaller HD, and the home directories for the lab on a larger HD. Data resides on a separate Linux server with a large HD. Currently, I'm running the OS on the master and client workstations on 200-300 Gbyte HDs (overkill--they are only using 4-30 Gbyte, you could go smaller), and the home directory is on a 400 Gbyte HD (about 30% full). The data server has a 500 Gbyte HD (and should probably be upgraded to 1 Tbyte). The home directories, data, and crystallographic software directories are all backed up to a backup server (500 Gbyte) daily via rsync, with the currrent and last three versions available. Quite frankly, HDs are so cheap right now, it doesn't cost much to install big drives for data storage. I could use RAID, but my system is pretty simple and seems to provide sufficient protection. Cheers. Claudia Scotti wrote:   Dear List,   I'm planning to migrate soon from Red Hat Linux 7.0 on an HP xw6000 workstation with dual Xeon processor.   Please, any suggestion for the best Linux flavour to get the most out of today's crystallographic software? I've seen that both Ubuntu and Fedora are quite common.   Also I'm in doubt about the following: will it be safer to use two mirror hard disks (as I'm doing now) or to use one HD for the software and one for the data? And, finally, please, what HD size is today most reasonable (big, but still fast enough)?   Thanks a lot,   Claudia       Claudia Scotti Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale Sezione di Patologia Generale Universita' di Pavia Piazza Botta, 10 27100 Pavia Italia Tel. 0039 0382 986335/8/1 Facs 0039 0382 303673 check out the rest of the Windows Live™. More than mail–Windows Live™ goes way beyond your inbox. More than messages -- Roger S. Rowlett Professor Department of Chemistry Colgate University 13 Oak Drive Hamilton, NY 13346 tel: (315)-228-7245 ofc: (315)-228-7395 fax: (315)-228-7935 email: rrowl...@colgate.edu