Centos 8.5 ISO boot issue.

[SailorJim]

That leaves me with doing a fresh install of Centos 8.5, or just installing Centos 7.9
At least the Centos 7.9 works ... but the EOL will occur in only 2 years .. and then it goes into yum limbo

[SailorJim]

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/relea ... inux-21-50

https://repo.radeon.com/amdgpu-install/ ... noarch.rpm

This appears to be a website providing Radeon Drivers for Centos 8.5.

I'll try a fresh install of Centos 8.5 .. and then install the radeon drivers in their RPM ... and see what that does in Centos 8.5

[TrevorH]

You keep talking about CentOS 8.5 but that is already EOL as of the end of 2021. What's left is CentOS Stream 8 or one of the other rebuilds. I've also seen you talk about "Rocky CentOS 8.5" and there is no such thing. It's Rocky Linux 8.5 and has nothing to do with the CentOS Project other than Rocky was set up to provide a new free rebuild of RHEL to replace CentOS.

CentOS is dead. Some parts of it are taking longer to die than others but both CentOS 7 and CentOS Stream 8 go EOL in 2024 within 6 weeks of each other.

[TrevorH]

Incidentally, I just looked at what an Opteron 6176 is and how fast and what power it draws. Your quad socket 6176 with its 48 cores is half the speed of a current generation 8 core AMD 5800x processor and pulls 140W per processor socket for a total of 560W vs the 5800x's 105W. So the AMD 5800x is twice as fast and probably more importantly in today's energy crisis world, uses less than 20% of the power.

[SailorJim]

Businesses exist to make a profit. I'll be glad to give more detail in an email.

[SailorJim]

An Operon has 12 cores at 2.4 GHz ... an AMD Rhyzen has 8 cores at 3.4 GHZ.
Do the math, 12 * 2.4 is about the same as 8 * 3.4.
In multi-threaded applications, having more cores is more important than having more speed, because you can run more computations in parallel.
There is more to performance than just computing speed.
An AMD Opteron with 12 cores running 2.4 Ghz Model 6176 costs $35 to $59 today.
An AMD Rhyzen with 8 cores running 3.4 GhZ cost $397 today.
.. and they both deliver about the same computing cycles

[jlehtone]

Given the radeon driver entanglement issues, is it possible to not use the radeon video controller, and let the installer simulate a classic VGA video driver ?

I'm confused. You seem to have an installed CentOS Linux 8 successfully (as in base OS is functional, GUI not) yet you ask about the installer?

The installer still ought to have text-mode. If not, it can be told to run VNC server so that VNC client from another machine -- machine with GUI -- can show the installer's GUI. Finally, automated non-interactive install with choices supplied via kickstart-file remains an option.

I just tried a virtual install of the Centos 9 development ISO ...
I found the installation tool is a work in progress and is not complete.

The official name for "Centos 9 development" is CentOS Stream 9. I've installed Stream 9 from image created last December with no issues (to machine that was just two years younger than your servers). Current image might have even better installation tool. In fact, at this point it ought to be at least as good as what is in RHEL 9 beta (and recently released AlmaLinux 9 beta). The installer ought to be very close to what RHEL 9 will have in near future. Most likely not "in progress and incomplete".

An Operon has 12 cores at 2.4 GHz ... an AMD Rhyzen has 8 cores at 3.4 GHZ.
Do the math, 12 * 2.4 is about the same as 8 * 3.4.
In multi-threaded applications, having more cores is more important than having more speed, because you can run more computations in parallel.

You forgot changes in IPC. The benchmarks seen by TrevorH -- which most likely are from parallel tests -- apparently say that:
IPC(5800x) * 8 * 3.4 > 2 * IPC(6176) * 48 * 2.4

Is IPC(5800x) > 8 * IPC(6176) plausible development in a decade? You are right, not for all workloads. Swapping 48 threads in 8 cores does have some overhead.


Nevertheless, you have not addressed the elephant in the room: Why do you insist on having GUI on server?

[SailorJim]

I use my HP DL585 G7 to develop and maintain a small website to provide a public service for boats on long voyages.
The website is a public service, and is NOT a business.
The website is not open to the public and does not advertise to the public.
The mission of the website is to track small boats on long voyages offshore in the Caribbean, the Atlantic, and the Pacific, and make sure that is all is well on their voyage.
We receive position reports via Sailmail Packet Radio, Ham Radio WInlink, the Iridium Satellite System, and a Garmin Iridium tracking system.
Website users have to be a member of the Seven Seas Cruising Association in order to use the website. The website is not open to the general public.
This is a small website with limited resources, and we are concerned about website security.
As a result, the website has no financial information on the website.
In order to be tracked by the website, a boat is required to download a float plan form from the USCG, submit it, and have it reviewed, before we agree to track them. All boats tracked by the website are required to be registered in their country's Coast Guard.
Last year, we tracked around 12 boats on voyages around the Caribbean, across the Atlantic, and across the Pacific.
Boats can send in position reports via a couple of different methods.
When a boat's position report is received, the boat is sent back an auto reply message letting them know their position report was received and successfully stored.
Boats offshore have no internet access, so it is critical that they know their position report was received and successfully stored, otherwise they would be clueless if their position reports were being received and stored.
A Google Map of each boats sail track is automatically updated when a position report is received, so friends and family can follow their progress in real time.
The HP DL585 G7 is highly redundant and highly reliable, and has absolutely no downtime, except for an occasional short term power outages.
The website has to be operational 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The website has almost no downtime.
I have 3 HP DL585 G7, so if something major did happen to one server, I could switch over to another server.
Automatic backups of the position data occur once every hour.
Fortunately we live in an area where we rarely have a power outage for more than a few minutes or an hour.
Twice in 12 years, we have had power outages that lasted for more than a day.
Maintaining the website and developing the website can not be done in bash, and requires a Graphical Interface.
This the reason that I need and use a Graphical Interface on my HP DL585 G7 servers.

[TrevorH]

An Operon has 12 cores at 2.4 GHz ... an AMD Rhyzen has 8 cores at 3.4 GHZ.
Do the math, 12 * 2.4 is about the same as 8 * 3.4.

I did do "the math" only I looked them both up on a benchmark site where your Opteron scores 3564 and a 5800x scores 28376. You have 4 Opterons so 4 x 3564 = 14256. That's just slightly more than 50% of the total processing power of a 5800x. You can see the scores yourself on https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AM ... 1568vs3869

You are comparing just clock speeds and newer processors get faster while still running at the same or even a lower clock speed. That's the benefit of running a 2021 processor vs a 2010 one.

This the reason that I need and use a Graphical Interface on my HP DL585 G7 servers.

Nothing in your reasoning says anything about needing a GUI.

[jlehtone]

This the reason that I need and use a Graphical Interface on my HP DL585 G7 servers.

Nothing in your reasoning says anything about needing a GUI.

Indeed. Only if you have no other machines capable of running a web browser, then you would need keyboard, mouse, monitor, and window manager on your server(s).