CentOS - Sep 2005 - 4.1 x86_64 and stability

Dear All,

I have previous posted on here before about some of the problems I have been
have with various services in 4.1 particularly, PCMCIA, XFS, and Netowrk.  I
have a nf4x mobo with an amd semprom 3000+.  The video card is an Asus
radeon x500 (uses the x300 drivers).  I have also tried fedora core 4 as
well which the same repeatable results.  Basically the problem is the
services freeze when they start up, but if I removed them from init.d the
computer starts fine and they start fine manually.  Yet, when I get going I
have several various ata errors, and lets not even think about running gnome
which just locks up and hangs.  My question is:  is the hardware support for
x86_64 as good as i386.  I just installed i386 4.1 without a hang or any
problems. 

thanks

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 19:40 -0500, Ryan Lum wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> I have previous posted on here before about some of the problems I have
been
> have with various services in 4.1 particularly, PCMCIA, XFS, and Netowrk. 
I
> have a nf4x mobo with an amd semprom 3000+.  The video card is an Asus
> radeon x500 (uses the x300 drivers).  I have also tried fedora core 4 as
> well which the same repeatable results.  Basically the problem is the
> services freeze when they start up, but if I removed them from init.d the
> computer starts fine and they start fine manually.  Yet, when I get going I
> have several various ata errors, and lets not even think about running
gnome
> which just locks up and hangs.  My question is:  is the hardware support
for
> x86_64 as good as i386.  I just installed i386 4.1 without a hang or any
> problems. 
Personally, if I was going to run a server, I would use the x86_64
distro ... but if I was going to run a workstation, I would use the i386
distro.

The x86_64 distro has the same packages, just compiled a different way.
Not all packages are x86_64, and some items are only available via i386.
These i386 packages have been included in the x86_64 distro. (see
openoffice.org as an example).

One thing you can try to make the x86_64 more stable:

1.  It is very important that you have the latest BIOS from the
motherboard manufacturer.  This is especially true with boards that
support SATA.

To be perfectly honest, if i386 is stable for you and x86_64 is not, I
would recommend you use the i386 distro ... in my experience, the
difference between the two is not really that noticeable when using the
system. 
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Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 19:40 -0500, Ryan Lum wrote:
<snipped>
> My question is:  is the hardware support for
>>x86_64 as good as i386.  I just installed i386 4.1 without a hang or any
>>problems. 
> 
> 
> Personally, if I was going to run a server, I would use the x86_64
> distro ... but if I was going to run a workstation, I would use the i386
> distro.
> To be perfectly honest, if i386 is stable for you and x86_64 is not, I
> would recommend you use the i386 distro ... in my experience, the
> difference between the two is not really that noticeable when using the
> system. 
<snipped>

So then, can anyone point me to documentation or experience that 
would lead one to choose x86_64 over i386 on a workstation or 
desktop? Perceived or otherwise performance gains would be nice, 
I'm just looking for some "why" type stuff if anyone would like 
to share their experience and or decision making scenarios with 
me. This can be done off list or on maybe it would benefit some 
others?

Sincerely,

Alex White