Notes on setting up host alqualonde
This is a log of events building my first new desktop in 6 years. I'm
choosing to run Mint 20.1 Ulyssa LTS,
which is based on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa, Linux kernel 5.4 and Cinnamon 4.8.
Alqualondë, the name
Most of my machines are named after elf kingdoms in Middle Earth. In a sense,
host alqualonde deviates from this because elven Alqualondë is in Aman and not
properly in Middle Earth, however, this distinction is a bit academic and this
document is about computer hardware and software. Still...
When Fëanor the asshole, decided to leave Valinor, he needed ships to make his
flight easier (in order to avoid the passage or the dread Helcaraxë). The Noldor
possessed no ships, so they took them by force from the Falmari, the Teleri of Valinor.
Olwë and his people would not give them up since the flight of the Noldor was
against the will of the Valar. F&eum;anor and his sons began the violence; the Falmari
only defended themselves, but Fingon's people coming up and mistaking the Falmari's
intentions as attacking at the order of the Valar, joined the fight. Many Teleri were
slain and the ships taken.
The kinslaying led to the prophesy of the North, a curse pronounced at the Valar's
behest by Mandos whereby the Noldor were banned from Aman.
Host alqualonde replaces tol-eressea.
Tol-eressëa was the island east of Valinor also by Teleri.
Installation
Because of tol-eressea's age,
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Vendor Price Description
Amazon $ 150 Intel Core i5-12400F 4.40 GHz 6-Core Processor
Amazon $ 80 Corsair Vengeance LPX 32Gb (2×16Gb) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz C16
Amazon $ 110 Asus Prime H610M-A D4-CSM Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard
Amazon $ 70 Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Amazon $ 23 Asus 24x DVD-RW Serial-ATA Internal OEM Optical Drive DRW-24B1ST Black
Amazon $ 43 ARESGAME AGV Series 500W 80+ Bronze Non-modular ATX Power Supply
Amazon $ 53 Thermaltake Versa H21 SPCC ATX Mid Tower Computer Chassis CA-1B2-00M1NN-00,Black
$ 529 Total (before tax, shipping free)
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Everything's ordered, the memory promises to be up to a month away, but the
rest should arrive over the next two weeks.
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Component Projected arrival Vendor Arrived
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx y yyyyyyy Amazon
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Asus Prime H610M-A Motherboard
Building
- a fan (marked by yellow X)
- a power supply (marked by red X)
- a 4Tb spindle (marked by blue X)
- a DVD spindle (marked by green X)
Ultimately, we're looking for this to happen...
Now comes the motherboard...
M2 SSD
For the 1Tb M2 SSD, that I will be using as my boot (root) drive under Linux,
the mobo came with a cooling option and hardware to mount it with. Here it is
assembled:
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But, I wanted to draw your attention to the "rear" screw that holds (and
possibly acts as a ground). The spacer (to stand off from the mobo) and
screw came (2 copies) with the mobo. I didn't realize that this is what
those were for until I started looking for the mounting solution. I'm
pointing at this with my screwdriver before I cover the M2 with its
heatsink.
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I put the second spacer and screw together in the space for the second M2
should it ever be installed (for safe-keeping). See the yellow circle to
the left.
Also, I have reinstalled the heatsink; I removed a strip protecting the
self-stick padding underneath this heatsink because it looked like that's
what I was supposed to do. You can see the heatsink, as yet unmounted,
and that strip in the second image (light blue in color).
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Memory
I had originally order the memory from B & H Photo, but it was on long
back-order, so I cancelled it and got it from Amazon instead.
I found this utterance which seems very relevant. Without having stumbled upon
it, I would never have know.
DDR4 Ram is defaulted to 2133/2400Mhz. XMP/AMP must be manually enabled in the
BIOS essentially over-clocking the RAM to the advertised speed (3600Mhz).
Install Ubuntu Server headless
- Download
Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop, what I like to use.
Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu. I'm going to run the latest, 20.1 Ulyssa.
- Verify the ISO download using
these instructions:
russ@gondolin ~/Downloads/ISO $ ll
total 1987164
drwxrwxr-x 2 russ russ 4096 Jan 19 07:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 27 russ russ 12288 Jan 19 07:03 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 russ russ 2034827264 Jan 19 07:02 linuxmint-20.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
-rw-rw-r-- 1 russ russ 397 Jan 19 07:03 sha256sum.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 russ russ 833 Jan 19 07:03 sha256sum.txt.gpg
russ@gondolin ~/Downloads/ISO $ sha256sum -b *.iso
14f73c93f75e873f4ac70b6cddc83703755c2421135a8fbbfd6ccfeed107e971 *linuxmint-20.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso
russ@gondolin ~/Downloads/ISO $ sha256sum --ignore-missing -c sha256sum.txt
linuxmint-20.1-cinnamon-64bit.iso: OK
russ@gondolin ~/Downloads/ISO $ gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-key "27DE B156 44C6 B3CF 3BD7 D291 300F 846B A25B AE09"
gpg: directory `/home/russ/.gnupg' created
gpg: new configuration file `/home/russ/.gnupg/gpg.conf' created
gpg: WARNING: options in `/home/russ/.gnupg/gpg.conf' are not yet active during this run
gpg: keyring `/home/russ/.gnupg/secring.gpg' created
gpg: keyring `/home/russ/.gnupg/pubring.gpg' created
gpg: requesting key A25BAE09 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: /home/russ/.gnupg/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created
gpg: key A25BAE09: public key "Linux Mint ISO Signing Key " imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)
russ@gondolin ~/Downloads/ISO $ gpg --verify sha256sum.txt.gpg sha256sum.txt
gpg: Signature made Wed 06 Jan 2021 09:10:08 AM MST using RSA key ID A25BAE09
gpg: Good signature from "Linux Mint ISO Signing Key <[email protected]>"
gpg: WARNING: This key is not certified with a trusted signature!
gpg: There is no indication that the signature belongs to the owner.
Primary key fingerprint: 27DE B156 44C6 B3CF 3BD7 D291 300F 846B A25B AE09
- From this verified ISO, make an installation DVD.
- Launch K3b.
- Choose Tools → Burn image.
- Navigate to select the ISO I downloaded above.
- Click OK.
- Eject and label the new DVD; this is what we'll boot alqualonde
from when we finish the build.
- Boot the new computer from this DVD...
- Well, not so fast. We have to configure the BIOS to boot from it. First,
as appears under Storage Information in the center, the BIOS
sees all three of my devices (the SSD, the Western Digital and the DVD).
But, it would not allow me to set the order:
- I was new to this rodeo. I dinged around a while studying the BIOS manager,
but ended up simply rebooting to it and magically they appeared. I ordered
them such that I could boot...
- DVD
- M.2 SSD
- WD hard drive
- While I was in the BIOS manager, knowing that my memory is much faster
than the BIOS said it was, I changed some settings. This is the first
time I have ever over-clocked any components of a computer. I probably
need to enable the ASUS Performance Enhancement, maybe do some other
stuff.
- Also, I can probably over-clock the CPU too. I just don't know if I want
to do that, if it will shorten the life of my CPU, etc. I'm not into
video, games, etc., but the model number of my Intel processor does end
with k, right?
- With this in place, I was able to boot and install Linux Mint (see story
above). That worked out very well. Concerned about the temperature, the
first thing I did was to install xsensors and run this monitor.
For now, very idle of course, the cores are 25° or colder.
Memory use
What does my new machine look like ordinarily? I have 32Gb!
root@alqualonde:/home/russ# free -m
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 31950 15733 4909 664 11308 15107
Swap: 2047 36 2011
root@alqualonde:/home/russ# dmesg | grep oom-killer # see about dmesg
(the out-of-memory process killer is not running)
...where:
- free memory is close to 0
- used memory is close to total
- available memory (free plus buff/cache is 20% or better of total
- Swap: used doesn't change much
(Warning signs of a low-memory situation would be...)
- available memory (free + buff/cache) close to zero
- Swap: used increases or fluctuates
- the out-of-memory process killer is running
