[K12OSN] Installing a server this week

["Terrell Prudé Jr."]

Nils Breunese wrote:
> Peter Scheie wrote:
>
>> The 32-bit version will handle up to 4GB of RAM just fine.  It's only
>> if you go higher than 4GB that you would need 64-bit.
>
> We might want to upgrade the RAM some time in the future, so then it
> might be smart to go with the 64-bit version now? What extra 'hassle'
> is involved with respect to stuff that is not available in 64-bit? Is
> the unavailability of 64-bit Flash generally the only problem or
> should I watch out for other problems?
>
> Nils Breunese.

Be advised that you won't actually see all 4GB, if you run in 32-bit
mode.  You might see 3.5GB or 3.25GB.  This is because of PCI-bus
addressing; some of the memory space at the very top has to be used to
give addresses to the devices in your computer.  AMD, unlike Intel,
actually tells you about this limitation; my K12LTSP server, which
originally had 4x1GB, could indeed only use 3.5GB.  So, what I did was
install 3.5GB, and that's worked out nicely.

I'm playing around with CentOS 5 now, and the only issue that I've run
into is when I log into GNOME as root at the console.  I get a "some
pieces of NetworkManager aren't present, can't run it, sorry" kind of
message.  Since that happens only for root, and since NetworkManager is
something that I never use, I don't really care about that.

There are some reported issues with 64-bit browser plug-ins, as others
have noted.  Even so, it's probably better for you to run it in 64-bit. 
I've never played with CentOS-64, but I do run a RHEL 4 server on a
quad-core Opteron box with 8GB DRAM.  It has been one *solid* box.  So,
BTW, has Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 64-bit on my Core 2 Duo laptop, so stability
shouldn't be a problem.

--TP