FS: Google Search Appliance (no software)

I'd take the front off and see if there are any hidden screws or anything ;-) heh. Nothing in the manual about add-on cards?

Why do you have to remove Google's software?

Sounds like you are under no obligation to do so.

 

You could install Windows on it - but XP/Vista can only access a max of 3.5GB of RAM (hard-limited to increase driver compatability). To use all 12GB you would need to install one of the Windows Server versions, see here. Windows Server 2003 SP2 is pretty good, though. Pretty much any version of linux will work with it.

When you set up the appliance you have to link it to a Google Enterprise account. What they're saying in your quote is that you can have unlimited physical appliances running from one account, as long as they continue to renew the account. If you don't have an account for yourself you can't set up the software: I've tried!

To get things rolling a bit, I'll amend the price to £1500, including UPS shipping to anywhere in the world, providing Paypal isn't used. (use Paypal, I'll go halves on shipping). Final pricedrop before it hits the 'bay.

Cheers

Stone

 

Vista 64 should be able to access more RAM as well, I know it sees all 5 gigs in my machine.

Price is pretty damn awesome though, quad xeons are beasts

 

Oh its tempting.....very tempting......hmm....

Shiggsy

 

Now SOLD (pending payment).

Thanks for all the interest

Stone

 

New toy for Shiggsy! Can't wait for it to arrive

Shiggsy

 

new server for Shiggsy's Place
(did you abandon that site, never see anything new)

 

Oh dear, has it really been over 4 years since the last update? Hrmm, well I have been busy, but time sure goes by quickly. Maybe I'll see if I can find the time to do an update this summer.

The server arrived earlier this week as described so many props to Stone! Now just need to decide where to run it from

Shiggsy

 

Feature to address only < 4G of memory is limitation of ANY 32bit OS but any 64bit ones can easily handle more, regardless of its name - XP, Vista or Linux ...

I saw such pizza box from Google already, nice one

 

Hmm? PAE support helps

 

It does, but not really. IF you have 4gigs of RAM AND a 1gb Videocard, your os is only addressing 3gigs of your system ram so that you use all of your 1gb videocard.

It's pretty much what I've gathered from the forums I peruse.

 

You're exactly right - PAE is needed to support the NXE (no execute) bit supplied by 64-bit processors, but MS deliberately didn't implement enough of it to extend the addressable memory space because it'd break every driver ever written ;-)

You'll always top out at 3.5GB under XP or Vista.

Stone

 

Depending on your mainboard (and BIOS) this might be the case, but its not what PAE was designed for.
Modern processors have more than 32 address lines, and PAE is, indeed, the only way of using them when running a 32-bit operating system. Not for a single process at a single time, though; these are still limited to 4GB total virtual address space (user+kernel), which means 2GB (virtual user address space) under Windows (3GB when using /3GB).

However, when using PAE, different processes may use more than 4GB physical memory at the same time; in total, that is.

There is a reason, though, that this doesn't work as expected on most boards (and your are correct for almost all practical purposes within the range of boards we are talking about ;-)): both the physical memory and the PCI address space lie within the first 4GB of the physical address space. PCI addresses overlap some of the higher RAM addresses (usually starting somewhere after 3GB/0xC0000000), so even when the OS can use more than 32 address lines, it won't be able to reach the additional memory. BIOSes, however, can configure the chipset to remap this part of the physical memory after the 4GB mark, so it could be accessed using PAE. Of course, if the BIOS doesn't support this or doesn't report the memory to the OS in the right way, it is still unusable.

You still wouldn't want to use PAE on a typical desktop system, though, even if your mainboard, BIOS and OS supported it: the device drivers need to cope with it, and there have always been some for commodity hardware that fail. For example, when programming their devices' DMA controllers, the drivers have to specify the target physical address; which is a 64-bit address when using PAE. Some drivers specify a (truncated) 32-bit address in this case (or the device simply doesn't support 64 bit addresses), so the transfer goes to the wrong location, happily trashing whatever happens to be there :evil:.

The exact location really depends on where the BIOS maps the PCI address space; its lower than 3.5GB for some systems.
If I remember correctly, MS has experimented with including PAE into their 32-bit desktop OS kernels, but they soon realized that it was a bad idea. Too many crappy drivers.

By the way, 32-bit Windows has ever specified 64-bit physical addresses when reporting a device's resource requirements; you can see it in the definition of the CM_PARTIAL_RESOURCES_DESCRIPTOR, which hasn't changed in this regard from the very beginning :fresh:. Its really about too many drivers (especially for commodity hardware) throwing away the top 32 bits when programming their devices.

 

PAE it is good point but if you have >4Gb of memory I would strongly recomend using of 64bits OS

PAE is good described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
and with other people posts here.