– By Jeff Field –

When I reviewed the Seagate 10,000-RPM Cheetah 36XL SCSI drive last year, I was impressed. The drive was not very noisy, and performed well. More than six months later, I have another Seagate drive on my workbench, the “followup” to the 36XL, Seagate’s 15,000-RPM X15 36LP. Seagate claims it has the “fastest data access in the industry.”

The first thing I noticed when I powered up the X15 was the noise, or rather, lack of noise. The 10,000-RPM drives I tested from Seagate weren’t noisy either, but somehow, even when increasing the spin of the drive by 50%, noise seems to have been reduced with the new drive, which is amazing. Even sitting out in the open on my test drive, I can only hear a low hum coming from the drive, sounds that could easily be masked by a case. This is impressive because I have been on a quest to make the quietest fast PC I can, and with drives like the 36LP, my task is much easier.

The packaging
As usual, Seagate has not only upgraded the speed of the drive, but also the mechanics and casing of the drive. The 36LP represents Seagate’s latest design innovations in both of these areas. Seagate likes to have marketing names for all these technologies, some of which I have covered before, such as “SeaShell” and SAMS, although missing now is “SeaShield,” which was focused on preventing the electronics on the bottom of the drive from being damaged.

SeaShell is Seagate’s technology focused on reducing damage done to the drive from shocks. This is mostly to avoid damage in shipping and reduce the return rate. It was present on the Barracuda IV, which I have reviewed previously. The other technology is SAMS, also present on other drives I have reviewed, which compensates for the vibrations of multiple drives, so the drive “misses” less when reading. “Missing” forces the drive to make another entire rotation to read the data it was trying to get to. The drive also ships with Seagate’s JIT, just-in-time, technology, which “minimizes actuator impact on power, vibration and acoustics.” Judging by the lack of noise from this drive, I would say JIT is doing its job.

Performance
P4-2.0GHz Northwood CPU
256 Megs DDR RAM
Intel D845BG Motherboard
39160 SCSI Card
Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 TDH
WDC WD102BA IDE Boot/Swap Drive
Debian Unstable (3.0)
Linux Kernel 2.4.17
bonnie++ 1.02b, hdparm v4.5

Cheetah 36LP tested using a single empty 35-gigabyte ReiserFS partition.

bonnie++ results
Bonnie++ is a hard drive benchmark that tests the writing and reading
from both a single large file (such as that of a database) and many small files (like a proxy, or mail program). It is
useful for simulating the performance of such applications.

Bonnie++ results
Sequential Output
Drive	Per-Character	Block	Rewrite
Cheetah 36LP	14161 K/sec, 66% CPU	45389 K/sec, 21% CPU	23909 K/sec, 07% CPU
Cheetah 36LW	9089 K/sec, 66% CPU	28760 K/sec, 17% CPU	16759 K/sec, 07% CPU
Sequential Input			Random
Drive	Per-Character	Block	Random
Cheetah 36LP	17831 K/sec, 77% CPU	57701 K/sec, 07% CPU	480.3 Seeks/sec, 0% CPU
Cheetah 36LW	11208 K/sec, 79% CPU	35971 K/sec, 09% CPU	303.3 Seeks/sec, 0% CPU
Sequential Create
Drive	Create	Read	Delete
Cheetah 36LP	21312 /sec, 85% CPU	none	20106/sec, 85% CPU
Cheetah 36LW	13119 /sec, 84% CPU	none	14677/sec, 73% CPU
Random Create
Drive	Create	Read	Delete
Cheetah 36LP	20656 /sec, 85% CPU	none	18232/sec, 85% CPU
Cheetah 36LW	18503 /sec, 85% CPU	none	15673/sec, 86% CPU

Here we see the Cheetah X15 36LP performs very well on the bonnie++ tests, beating the 36LW by a large margin in many tests, with notably large differences in block input/output and seeks/second. With such a wide margin it is easy to see why Seagate is advertising the X15 and the industry’s fastest hard drive.

hdparm results
The hdparm tests give you the raw throughput of the device — essentially, the best you can possibly hope for. Uncached is the buffered speed of the disk, without the use of the operating system cache. Cached results test the perform of the RAM and CPU more than they test the drive itself.

hdparm -t (Uncached) Results
Cheetah 36LP	57.66 MB/sec
Cheetah 36LW	36.57 MB/sec
hdparm -T (Cached) Results
Cheetah 36LP	328.21 MB/sec
Cheetah 36LW	297.67 MB/sec

Here again, we see the 36LP shine; it’s getting very close to the advertised speed of “up to 69MB/second.” This is really excellent performance, not that the 36LW is a slow drive, but the 36LP speeds right past it, making it the clear choice in a performance sensitive environment.

Conclusions
The X15 36LP is an excellent drive: quiet, and yet the fastest drive I have ever tested. The only thing that makes it hard to recommend is the price — $470 on Pricewatch for the 36-gig version I tested and $270 for the 18-gig version. If you are in the market for a fast SCSI drive, I recommend the 36LP highly; it is a great drive. However, if you are the average user, or even most high-end users, you’ll probably find a better deal in a less expensive IDE drive, even if the performance is less than the Cheetah. This drive is meant for the big leagues, and is priced accordingly. For those of you who do purchase one, however, I can safely say you will not regret it.

Seattletimes: “Public comments on the Microsoft antitrust case
settlement disclosed Friday by the U.S.
Department of Justice read like a who’s who of
Microsoft competitors.

While many said the same things a dozen different ways – that they believe the
settlement is full of loopholes and won’t rein in the colossus of Redmond – they
also shed light on the jousting under way between leading companies developing
tomorrow’s technology.”

NewsFactor Network writes: “All the press that Microsoft has garnered around its .NET initiative has companies like IBM and Novell shifting their own publicity campaigns into overdrive, trying to impress upon businesses that their competing products will serve companies’ needs more effectively. IBM seems to have the best chance to convince its customers to go with its product, called WebSphere, analysts told NewsFactor, because its Global Services division has the capacity to offer nearly everything its customers need to work effectively.”

Sascha Endlicher writes: “When a non profit open source community meets an open source company…”
PostNuke, a popular non-profit open source and open development content management system (CMS) with over 120 developers worldwide, and OSI Codes, a New York based Open Source development company, announce a partnership with a great influx on the way support for open source projects and websites in general will be given in the future.

The partnership will allow easy integration of OSI Codes’ PHP Live! software with the PostNuke CMS. In turn, PostNuke will begin using the PHP Live! system on the site http://www.postnuke.com/. Additionally, the partnership will allow PostNuke users to simply plug-in PHP Live! directly to their PostNuke system and use the software free of charge through a web service residing on http://www.LivePeople.info/ . Free usage of PHP Live! is limited to users of PostNuke only.

PHP Live! is a web-based live customer support chat system which allows to provide support from any computer, anywhere. Usability of a website using PHP Live! and support structures will benefit and lead to reduced support efforts in the long run (since support will be optimized as so-called canned messages and actions are created, support staff will have much less typing to do and website visitors will find the information they need much faster). [See a list of PHP Live! features as an attachment]

Due to the popularity of the feature-rich CMS PostNuke and the live support software of OSI Codes a win-win situation not only for both partners, but also for the users of open source software and visitors of websites using the software comes into being. While PHP Live! is not distributed with PostNuke, only the module for easy integration with PHP Live! is shipped with PostNuke. The actual service will be provided by http://www.LivePeople.info/. PostNuke users will get a service for free that starts at $300 monthly at comparable competitors.

John Cox John.Cox@postnuke.com

Sascha Endlicher Sascha.Endlicher@livepeople.info

[Attachment: List of PHP Live! Features]

Text Chat – Web site visitors simply click a button to instantly join a text chat with the website staff. No Java or additional software needed. Support staff can handle multiple requests. Support staff may also be assigned to multiple departments which could reflect possible overlap of positions / activities.

Push Pages – Instantly send visitors directly to the pages they’re looking for.

Real Time Traffic Monitoring – Operators have the ability to see visitors from where they enter the chat, track what pages they visit, which time zone they are in and further information of the client side software.

Custom Buttons – Websites may have customized buttons that match their corporate identity. Online/Offline icons are available too, so if no staff members are present, an appropriate icon will appear and users will be prompted to leave a message.

Pull – Proactively offer users help with the click of a button.

Departments – Divide staff into departments allowing calls to be routed to the most appropriate person.

Advanced Call Routing / Load Balancing – Calls are intelligently routed based on department, status and call volume allowing staff to be used as efficiently as possible. Also, request polling from operator to operator is available: if one operator does not pickup, it will poll to the next automatically.

Canned Text Messages – Save time and ensure consistency by storing common responses for fast access.

Transfer – Operators can transfer a customer to any other operator logged onto the system.

Chat Transcripts – Review the transcripts of any chat that takes place on site online 24 hours a day to check for consistency and quality. Transcripts may also be searched. Further on, there are daily request and chat reports.

Stats – View advanced statistics information about both customers and operators.

Hyperlinks – Include click-able links to more information in text chats.

Images – Use images in text chats to show users screen shots.

Canned actions – Include HTML elements (i.e. hyperlinks and images) and formatting in text chats.

Sound Request Alert: Support staff may hear a sound alert when a user requests help.

E-Mail Signature – Allow visitor fast access to staff by adding buttons to html-email signatures”

Underlinux.com.br
has an interview with Harald Welte, member of
netfilter/iptables core team. Harald told about the
future of iptables2 with new kernel family
(2.5.x/2.6.x) and other things like libiptables that
will be a common interface to deal with iptables
firewall rules. To read the complete interview visit
UnderLinux.Com.Br.

Anonymous Reader writes: “KernelTrap takes a look at a recent discussion on the Linux kernel mailing list, a continuing debate as to whether or not CML2 should be included in the 2.5 kernel.

“A recent thread on the Linux kernel mailing list (lkml) started off by generally bashing Eric S Raymond (ESR). Sifting through the many insults and round trip name calling, though, there was some constructive debating.

“The thread was initiated by Jeff Garzik, in response to a message on the kbuild developer’s list. The message, from ESR, is a four-point list of suggestions, asking members of the kbuild developer’s list to speak with Dirk Hohndel about CML2 and kbuild-2.5, who in turn was to speak with Linus. That thread continues constructively, discussing the pro’s and con’s of both new systems.

“With Jeff’s email, the thread was essentially moved to the lkml, an often less-than-friendly environment. Involved in the ensuing debates were many kernel hacker notables, including Alan Cox, Dave Jones, Robert Love , Alexander Viro, Rob Landley, and of course Jeff Garzik and Eric S Raymond. Many of the arguments on both sides seemed a bit ridiculous and melodramatic, in my humble opinion (more personality conflicts than anything), but the ultimate issue is interesting and worth talking about: CML2 is a complete re-write of CML1, so different that it doesn’t even attempt to be backward compatible. In the end, is CML1 broken enough and is CML2 superior enough to justify the effort required to make the upgrade?””

Anonymous Reader writes: “ReactiveLinux.com: Yeah I’m a Linux nut, but it’s also no surprise that I’m a huge fan of Mac OS X, it’s what I use on a daily basis and is what I’m using right now to write this. Well I was recently tasked with the duty of moving our servers at work over to OS X Server two of which are Linux servers. This was the first time I’d ever used OS X Server so I thought it would be a good idea to share my experiences, some good, some bad.”
Read more“

Marco Fioretti – RULE project leader writes: “The RULE project (Run Up2date Linux Everywhere) is trying to build another install option of
Standard Red Hat that will fit in computers with very old hardware
and less than 32 MB of RAM.There are already a lot of special purpose distributions doing this
of course. However, many of them offer osolete software, and/or are reserved for servers or experienced users.

The novelty of RULE is try to put on an obsolete machine something
modern that a newbie desktop user can then upgrade very easily, using the
same huge base of packaged binaries and documentation today (de facto)
restricted to people with enough money to afford newer computers.

The LJ article introducing RULE
The RULE project home page
RULE on Slahsdot

The FAQ on the web site already answers to “RAM is so cheap, why bother”, “Why should you care regardless of which distro you use”, and other interesting things.

Enjoy

“

Shawn Wilson writes “iMacLinux have a review of the iMac G4 here. The review takes a look at the iMac G4, comparing it to the iMac G3 and Athlons, it also comments on the performance of MacOS X, and makes some comments about the mouse.”

NewsFactor Network writes “According to published reports, Ernest Prabhakar of Apple Computer informed attendees at the USENIX BSD Conference earlier this week that BSD is now three times more popular than Linux on the desktop. BSD’s rapid rise in share is obviously due to Mac OS X’s UNIX heritage, which incorporates Free BSD’s kernel in the underlying core of the company’s new OS. And OS X is targeted directly at desktop consumers. Because Linux’ primary strengths are on the server (rather than the desktop) though bragging about BSD’s desktop share over Linux’ might be likened to an individual bragging that he is the fastest downhill skier in all of Egypt. While it may be true, one must ask if such an achievement is worth boasting about.”