New Desktop Computer - Part 3 (Setup)

[Lady Fitzgerald]

While I will probably be making a few more modifications to the hardware in my new computer, I'm going to make a separate thread for setting it up.

I couldn’t sleep Wednesday night (stupid little aches I normally can ignore during the day become elephants in the room at night) so I got back up and tried firing up the computer to see if I could get it to post. Nada. Zip.

I then moved the temporary HDMI cable from the graphics card to the onboard HDMI port on the computer’s rear I/O panel. Bingo, it posted.

Tried to post again from the graphics card. Still no joy.

I removed the case cover, then set the computer on its side on the bed. I couldn’t see anything jumping out at me so removed the graphics card support bracket. Then I was able to see the problem. The graphics card power cable has a plug that can have two of the ports split off from the rest. Those two ports had separated from the rest of the plug and weren’t connected. I replugged in the cable so all the ports were connected, replaced the card support bracket, moved the computer back to the nightstand, replaced the case cover, plugged in the cables, then fired ‘er up. It posted! What a relief!

I looked around a bit in the BIOS settings, saw nothing that needed changing (it’s a much simpler BIOS than the workstation MOBOs I’ve had in the past), then shut it down and plugged in my Ventoy USB flash drive. When I powered up the computer, the Ventoy disk automagically booted up (I never could get it to do that on my laptop; I had to hold down F7, then hit the start button, and keep holding until the boot menu came up 30-60 seconds later and I could select the Ventoy disk). I looked around a bit in Mint 21.1, then shut it down for the night.

It’s also so nice I don’t have to horse around getting past NVIDIA driver issues anymore!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

On Thursday afternoon, I installed Mint 21.1 Cinnamon onto the Sammy SSD and fooled around a bit with the set up (keep in mind that I’ve only installed Mint less than a handful of times a little over three years ago so this is somewhat new territory for me), then, once I was satisfied I hadn’t mucked up things irreparably, I shut down the computer and installed the three data drives. Since I now knew what I was doing (no thanks to System 76’s outdated documentation) and I wasn’t doing anymore case part modifications (yet although I did shim the top finger of the support bracket with a small piece of 1/4” solid oak and a lot of electrical tape; surprisingly, it actually looks more factory than redneck engineered), this went pretty quickly. They showed up on the computer in Disks, etc. (curiously, out of order even though I installed them in order) but I still need to change the UUIDs to the ones used in the laptop and make the fstab entries (hopefully, that will restore order).

I then worked off and on the rest of the day installing programs I use most frequently. Many of them will still need to be configured but Rome wasn’t built in a day. Some of my lesser used but still essential programs still need to be ferreted out and installed.

I spent late Thursday night to Friday morning trying to find a replacement program for my Sticky Notes program since it won’t work properly in Mint 21.1. Most of the ones I tried sucked like a Hoover on steroids but, so far, I have two contenders but nothing I like nearly as well as the old Sticky Notes. Sigh! I still need to transfer shortcuts, bookmarks, some configurations, etc. which will be time consuming.

I’m still using a temporary HDMI connected directly between the HDMI port on the graphics card of the new computer to the number three monitor. I still need to connect the new computer to the triple splitter/monitor/TV setup. Once that is working, I have tested the new USB “hub”, and I pretty much have the OS and programs on the new computer set up well enough to be functional, I’ll start transitioning from the laptop to the new desktop computer.

I’m a little burned out so I might take a day or few off. I also need to go grocery shopping, haul trash to the dumpster, pick up my snail mail from my mail service, and a bunch of other "fun" stuff I've been neglecting.

[MurphCID]

Amazing. Good work. Hope it works well. For me when I put Mint 21.1 the fans ran at 100% which was odd.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Amazing. Good work. Hope it works well. For me when I put Mint 21.1 the fans ran at 100% which was odd.

Thanks, Murph!

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Set up hit a bump (log sized) in the road today. I had just finished install all my applets and all but two of my programs (those are going to be stinkers so I'll get them later) when I decided to change the UUIDs of my data drives to match the ones in my laptop (simplifies syncing and allows sharing backup drives). Abeit tedious, it went well.

Then I tried to make the necessary fstab entries and things went horribly wrong. When I attempted to reboot, nothing happened; the computer just sat there and laughed at me. I had a couple of Rescuezilla images, the last one being only a day and a half old but I had done a lot in that day and a half and didn't want to go back to square one and reinvent the wheel...er... repeat what I had done.

First, I tore down the computer and removed the data drives. I had more recent Timeshift snapshots so I tried doing a basic install on Mint 2.1, tried tried to restore a snapshot. That did not end well so I restored my latest image and redid the work I lost, mostly installing programs and applets. That went faster than the first time since I already knew what to substitute for programs and applets that wouldn't work in Mint 21.1. I'm now just a tad past where I was when I changed the UUIDs of my data drives.

I have no idea what went wrong when I tried to set up the data drives to mount automagically at boot. I never had trouble before. I'll try again tomorrow, right after I make a fresh Rescuezilla image!

[AZgl1800]

I helped a friend with her new PC, a BeeLink super tiny thing, 4 inches square and 1 inch thick.
4 USB ports, 2 HDMI ports and stuff.

super fast thing, it is great.
Documentation? uh, none

the advert says it is "Linux Ready"
After mUCKING it up badly, and Win11 won't boot anymore....

I realized that what they meant is there is an empty 2nd slot for a SSD to slide into.
the NVME main drive has the boot partition as READ ONLY,

yup, Grub is not allowed. Dual Boot is not allowed.
you must hold down the F7 key and then select which drive you want

a neat PC, but you have to stumble around trying to figure out what it is allowed to do.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I helped a friend with her new PC, a BeeLink super tiny thing, 4 inches square and 1 inch thick.
4 USB ports, 2 HDMI ports and stuff.

super fast thing, it is great.
Documentation? uh, none

the advert says it is "Linux Ready"
After mUCKING it up badly, and Win11 won't boot anymore....

I realized that what they meant is there is an empty 2nd slot for a SSD to slide into.
the NVME main drive has the boot partition as READ ONLY,

yup, Grub is not allowed. Dual Boot is not allowed.
you must hold down the F7 key and then select which drive you want

a neat PC, but you have to stumble around trying to figure out what it is allowed to do.

Well, you got further on that than I would have. What is it with so many computer related manufacturers, etc. thinking people don't need instructions and when they do provide them, more often than not, they are inaccurate and/or incomplete. I'd be dead in the water without the good people of these forums!

[MurphCID]

Great news, more information on how things are going. Also have you discovered that you need a 6-6.1 kernel to make it work? The documentation here shows for those 6000 series chips you need the OEM kernel.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Great news, more information on how things are going. Also have you discovered that you need a 6-6.1 kernel to make it work? The documentation here shows for those 6000 series chips you need the OEM kernel.

The only time I horse around with kernels is when the update manager tells me to upload a new one. And, being the coward I am, I make a Timeshift snapshot before down loading and installing one when it comes down the pipeline.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Yesterday, I successfully set up the computer to automagically mount the five data drives/partitions: one 8TB drive with one 8TB partition and two 8TB drives split into two 4TB partitions each. The reason for using the 4TB partitions is so I can use my herd of retired 4TB 2.5" SSDs for external backup drives for two of the data drives instead of shelling out $3k for their backup drives (I already have 8TB backup drives for onr of the DATA drives).

Obviously, I did something wrong the first time I attempted it but I don't know what it was (I have sneaking suspicion what it was but I believe in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it) and, since it "ain't broke" now, I'm not going to fix it (i.e. try to figure out what I did wrong). The first time around (which did not end well), I tried to do all five partitions at once. After fixing my system (and backing it up with Rescuezilla as well as Timeshift; once burned, twice shy and all that), I did the Data1 partition, restarted, and was ecstatic to see it worked. It was rinse and repeat, one at a time, until I had all five partitions auto magically mounting when booting the computer. Color me .

While working on installing beaucoup programs and applets, including trying out a few replacements for one that wouldn't play well in Vera, I was sitting at my desk using my laptop and, to work with the new computer, I would twist my torso around to reach keyboard for the new computer sitting temporarily on a TV dinner table off to my right side. I managed to pull a muscle (or few) on the front of the left side of my torso just under the rib cage and it's now hurting me more than my back which is only half healed so far. This old age business "outsucks" a Hoover.

After a rough night, thanks to my newest injury, I got a late start this morning. I decided to blow off grocery shopping for a day and tired to hook up the new computer to the three monitors via the three HDMI splitters (I've been using one monitor directly connected to the graphics card lone HDMI slot). I got bupkis, nada, ziltch.

The three HDMI splitters are fed from the three DisplayPort (DP) ports on the graphics card using three DP to HDMI dongles connected to HDMI cables. I first removed one of the DP to HDMI dongles, connected it to the temporary HDMI cable I had been using, then plugged the combo into the left monitor and the first DP port on the card. It worked. While I still need to need to verify the other two dongles are good, it seems the three splitters are probably mung (they came from Monoprice). It's going to be a royal pain to replace those things and my carcass is not up to the task right now but I'm probably going to order a different brand from Amazon.

It's past my lunch time so at least I think I can fix lunch without hurting myself again.

[AZgl1800]

Whatever works, Jeannie

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Yesterday, I successfully set up the computer to automagically mount the five data drives/partitions...Obviously, I did something wrong the first time I attempted it but I don't know what it was (I have sneaking suspicion what it was but I believe in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it) and, since it "ain't broke" now, I'm not going to fix it (i.e. try to figure out what I did wrong). The first time around (which did not end well), I tried to do all five partitions at once....

While looking at my notes for making aliases, I found out how I screwed up the first time I tried to get the drives to automagically mount. It was both trying to do all five drives at once and hitting the Return key at the end of each line. Not only did I need to do one line at a time, save, then rinse and repeat for each additional line, I needed to NOT hit Enter at the end of a line. I'll have to amend my notes.

It's late and I feel brain fried so I'm going to wait until Thursday to create the aliases for TRIM operations (tomorrow, I need to go grocery shopping, pick up snail mail, hit ACE, etc.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I still don't feel up to snuff today and tomorrow, there is actually going to be something worth watching on TV so, since I have some parts coming in on Saturday, I'm going to wait until then to vennture out.

Yesterday, I think I finally got the last of my programs (Veracrypt) installed and working. Veracrypt got put off to last because I though I was going to have major problems with it; instead, it was one of the easiest ones of the bunch. I ran into a snag getting the printer to show up. I fiddled around for over half an hour trying to install drivers and getting them to work, restoring a Timeshift snapshot taken before tackling the printer issue every time my efforts failed. I even had the laptop connection to the printer (over Ethernet) start acting up. Then, after the last restore, the printer automagically showed up on the new computer and has been working fine. The laptop's printer connection also started behaving again. Weird.

Other than installing some additional USB ports on the back of the computer, all that needs to be done before I can start using the new computer is to get the monitor hardware fixed (parts are on order) and configured, install the USB "hub",and connect the cables from it, connect the DAC and it's cabels, connect the USB cables from the scanners and the remotely mounted Mouse dongle, and update the data in the data drives. I'll have to add/modify some profiles in FreeFileSync but that won't take long and shouldn't be a problem. So, for now, it's pretty much hurry up and wait for parts so I can wrap things up.

[MurphCID]

Waiting to get mine back from RMA. I am living vicariously through you and BWing right now.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...it's pretty much hurry up and wait for parts so I can wrap things up.

The parts I needed to work on adding more USB ports to the rear of the case were supposed to arrive today but miserable, misbegotten morons at Amazon dragged their feet filling the orders and one won't be delivered until Monday and two others won't be delivered until Tuesday. The splitters also have been delayed from Monday until Tuesday. Right now, I'm mad enough at incredibly idiotic Amazon to chew rebar and spit out sewing needles!