Topic: Does 5.6 need better hardware?

[John]

Hi

Just responding to a few observations I have made and a comment somebody on here made recently. I was just wondered if there was a minimum requirement spec for 5.6 with regards to hardware as I am wondering if my P166 with 32mb of RAM is just not up to the job of running 5.6. I have noticed a considerable slow down in performance since I upgraded and am having some stability issues.

I have only 4 systems on my network and always thought that a computer like this was more than adequate for the job.

The reason why I ask is I have a PII with more RAM that could be reassigned a new role if it will improve things.

Has anybody else got thoughts on this?

John

[DREi]

One of the good things about the linux kernal is that the hardware requirements are very low to run the OS. My recommendation would be first to upgrade that 32Megs of Ram to 128Megs. I just did a search on Google for Ram prices and a 64MB chip of PC100 is going around $14.00. Memory usage is a major factor of performance for any OS so I would start there first. Another practice that I always use is to never upgrade an OS always do a fresh install. If an admin has done proper back ups of his systems a fresh install should be easy.

[Geoff]

I'd go with the PII. Your P166 will most likely use SIMM memory, so it'd be more expensive to upgrade the ram. I used to use a pentium 200, but found all the web-based administration so painfully slow so I moved to a celeron 400.

[Trbonja]

SME is one of the best (if not the best) gpl server software. But when comes to the protecting network it's isn't the best choice.
Why. First, it doesn't have a easy grafical interface to manage firewall (there is an ad on, but it's basic).
Second, it does needs a better hardware to runs smootly.....And so on.
Your p166 should be more than enough to server as a gateway for your samall network, therefore I would suggest to use some other software, unless you're serving a web page off of your sme machine. If you need web server functiionallity, you should go with p2 with at least 128 meg of ram.
If you needs just basic mashine to share internet and have easy to manage interface for firewalling, use p166 (more than enough) and get other distro.

I would recomend Ipcop - easy to use & p166 would be more than enough. This distro is designed to be used only as firewall and nothing else (you do have an proxy server, intrusion detection system...) and as sme ist's free and have free support web site - with a lot of friendly people (as sme forums here )
you can get the iso image at http://ipcop.hopto.org

second one that i woul recomend is coyotelinux (flopy version) doesn't have as many features as ipcop but it will run on 386 never mind p166

There is als9 Clarkconnect, but it's also using 2.4 kernel and  it does need better hardwrae than p166 in order to use all of the features.

Good luck,
Trbonja

[DREi]

Geez dude why are you in an SME forum bashing SME. It's for small to medium sized business guy! None of my clients have ever had a need to adjust firewall setting period, that's what I get paid for. Also SME has never been hacked.
SME is a great product bar none so why all the hate for it?

[Duncan]

I have found that the low-end machines I was using for 5.1.2 don’t perform very well running 5.6. These are Pentium 100 machines with around 80 Meg of ram in them.

The problems I have found are

- Using the server interface is a mind numbingly slow process
- The systems will go along and disconnect from the network for long periods of time when they are working hard.

I have tested 5.6 on a PII and a Celeron and it runs quite happily. So I would go with the PII as well.

I agree with Trbonja - if you are going to have a low end machine hanging around, run ipcop on it and use it as your gateway device. It has a good port forwarding interface and intrusion detection to boot.

Regards Duncan

[Bobby]

Just for reference, my home SME box is a 486/100 with 64mb RAM running 5.5. When it was running 5.12 it was a 486/66 with 16mb RAM. Yes, the user manager is slow, but I only use that once in a while, most of the time I'll ssh in. I host my website on it & it's fine for the static content, I don't use the webmail.  So I'd guess that if you're not in user manager all the time & don't use webmail much your 166 should be ok. I've only tested 5.6 on a Cyrix 500 & it was plenty fast.
Bobby