Tim wrote:
On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 16:40 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
I'm trying to find the best location for a repository to do FC8
installs. My first two trials were direct from DVD and NFS mounted.
The NFS mount showed that the max data rate to the new machine was
only about 12MB/s, so transfer rate isn't an issue, it's Gbit
connection. Therefore, I suspect that seek time may be an issue, I'm
wondering if people have compared putting the repository on a USB
stick instead of network.
Don't forget to take into account some speed gauges give you results in
bits per second, other in bytes per second...
I can't speak for USB sticks, but just about anything should be faster
than optical drives. Well, USB 1.0 hosts or drives might be a bit slow.
As you say, seek time, spin up and down time, reading difficulties,
etc., all make optical drives slower to install from.
As a comparison, I found an install from RPM files on a hard drive
(local, or network), did a complete basic install in a bit over 15
minutes. But, the process often took over an hour if I used optical
media.
Either you did a minimal install or something else is happening, I
typically see double that, although my typical install has a LOT of
optional stuff in it. But this is all network install on a virtually
unloaded server with Gbit switched connection.
Installs from optical media only ran quicker on some drives and
computers. I'm guessing the install routines can't access every DVD or
CD drive at full speed (variations in UDMA modes for drives and hosts,
etc.).
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@xxxxxxx>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot
