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HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
Nov 5th
Measuring sequential disk performance with linux is easy – most distros (like ubuntu) come with a tool called hdparm , that is mainly used for tuning and optimizing hard disk parameters, but luckily it also includes simple benchmark functionality – for example the following command sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda gives me the following output: /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.01 seconds = 58.55 MB/sec Of course you need to substitute /dev/sda with the name of your raw disk device (for example, it might be /dev/hda for non-SATA disks) . Its impossible to get higher transfer rates that that from your disk. Hdparm reads at the very start of the disk for these tests (which is the fastest area of the whole harddisk) and using optimal access pattern
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HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
HowTo: formatting SD cards using linux
Nov 5th
Its nice to see that during the past year, the number of linux distributions custom tailored to fit the needs of netbooks has increased dramatically. While this is a great advancement, it cannot be denied that this is mainly the merit of one linux distribution – ubuntu linux, on which most of nowadays “netbook linux” are based (ubuntu in turn is debian-based, btw). While these custom netbook linux flavors usually come equipped with all the device drivers you’ll need for your netbook, there’s one thing that is missing (at least in Ubuntu 8.04 or “Ubuntu eee”): an easy possibility of formatting SD memory cards with the usual FAT16 (or the faster FAT32) file system with the card reader that is built into all eeePC models – but sometimes you just need an empty and freshly formatted SD card, for example to “burn” the newest ubuntu ISO image onto and install right from the SD card (which is quite handy if you don’t have a DVD/CD drive).
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HowTo: formatting SD cards using linux
HowTo: "Qualcomm 3G ICON 210" and Ubuntu
Nov 5th
Although generally speaking I’m all pro linux and use it whereever possible – and consider it the best OS for networking encountered by me so far – I was not able to make my internal 3G modem work properly with Ubuntu yet. Of course I managed to have it load the right device drivers and I’m able to establish connections and to surf the internet – but unlike windows, ubuntu refuses to crank up the speed to HSDPA, and despite my patching (and recompiling) of the “usbserial.ko” and “sierra.ko” driver modules I was only able to get a downlink speed of 800KBit/sec at most. The same modem with WindowsXP though achieved between 2.2 and 2.8 MBit/s at the same daytime, causing me quite some frustration (I had bought the modem card because it was claimed as being fully compatible with linux, even with linux drivers supplied by manufacturer, mind you) and I started using WinXP more frequently again due to this issue.
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HowTo: "Qualcomm 3G ICON 210" and Ubuntu
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