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operating systems without systemd

Off-Topic discussions about science, technology, and non Debian specific topics.
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dzz
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#121 Post by dzz »

Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.
? Machines in use here with 512 ram and single-core cpu, running squeeze, wheezy, jessie, sid with xfce4, TDE, openbox.

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Linadian
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#122 Post by Linadian »

twoflowers wrote:@linadian: For PCLinnuxOS there's a TDE build, too: https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/LiveCDs
Thanks, I did check it out quite some time ago, it was still fairly beta-ish back then. My only issue is, will it jive with PCLinuxOS repos? My goal is to find something long-term supported too, I just want my f#%king computer to work, without any proprietary choke-ware (virusd). Downloading it anyway, gunna give it a spin, for schizz n giggles, who knows, it may work.
thenewguy wrote:If you're installing PC-BSD then there is no UFS option, they are ZFS only since several PC-BSD utilities assume ZFS is present. You could install FreeBSD with UFS and then install all the PC-BSD packages if you wanted.

However, there really isn't any reason to do that, ZFS is not a resource hog. I've been running it for years on machines with less than 2GB of RAM. In fact, I run a bunch of old used-to-be-desktops-now-file-servers with 1GB of RAM or less and they all are running with ZFS. Based on my experience you can run PC-BSD with Lumina and ZFS then the operating system will run smoothly on machines with 2GB of RAM.
That's good to know, what I said about ZFS was not my opinion/experience, it was what I read. But since you endorse it, I will give it a cold steel bricks and mortar install try anyway when PC-BSD 10.1 is released (with ALL other drives disconnected, lol), who knows, PC-BSD Lumina could be the answer to my (our?) problem (virusd). But why not just use PC-BSD Xfce (if anybody is already a fan of Xfce)? Will Xfce be caving to virusd too? In all honesty, anything BSD based would probably be the last to cave to virusd, this is also something to consider.
fruitofloom wrote:Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.
I would say Salix Xfce fits this bill, it's still a very close second place in my Debhat replacement choices because it's lean (and rolling as a bonus), but at this stage of the game, both my old and new machines could handle any bloated distro, but that doesn't mean I like or will tolerate bloat, I actually don't like it (hence my disgust of KDE now), I hate being 'smothered'. PC-BSD remains a distant 3rd choice because I'm not sure I'm ready to make the jump to BSD yet, binary availability and a whole new tweaking learning curve (and I'm still a little miffed its installer wiped an old storage drive). FreeBSD 10.1 is really cool...if you have the time and patience to set it up and trouble-shoot it, which I don't, but I'm not throwing away the DVD just yet.
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fruitofloom
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#123 Post by fruitofloom »

dzz wrote:
Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.
? Machines in use here with 512 ram and single-core cpu, running squeeze, wheezy, jessie, sid with xfce4, TDE, openbox.
Well: I got machines with more ram too.
Thing is: none of them uses more than +/- 300 (with claws, firefox, pidgin and tilda running). Most of that being used by firefox, of course.
Not that sure what would be the point to get more ram .... so that more sits idle?
Give me convenience or give me death.

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golinux
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#124 Post by golinux »

fruitofloom wrote:Not that sure what would be the point to get more ram .... so that more sits idle?
That's easy. Maybe size does matter! As in mine is bigger (therefore better) than yours. A geek's compensation for lack of self-esteem.
May the FORK be with you!

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saulgoode
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#125 Post by saulgoode »

fruitofloom wrote:Well: I got machines with more ram too.
Thing is: none of them uses more than +/- 300 (with claws, firefox, pidgin and tilda running). Most of that being used by firefox, of course.
Not that sure what would be the point to get more ram .... so that more sits idle?
Linux will use any available spare RAM for caching disk blocks. This can greatly speed reloading of programs, libraries, and data files.

For example:

Code: Select all

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428        406         22          0        215        129
-/+ buffers/cache:         60        368
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428         35        393          0          0          9
-/+ buffers/cache:         26        402
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=hundredmb bs=1M count=100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0.766156 s, 137 MB/s

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428        137        291          0          0        109
-/+ buffers/cache:         27        400
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# time cat hundredmb >/dev/null # with file cached in spare RAM
real    0m0.192s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.176s

root@thevenin:~# echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

root@thevenin:~# time cat hundredmb >/dev/null # file must be reloaded from the disk
real    0m1.927s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m0.226s
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian Kernighan

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RU55EL
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#126 Post by RU55EL »

fruitofloom wrote:
RU55EL wrote:
fruitofloom wrote:Tell me as soon you find an OS which can run with 512 MB RAM, or less.
Puppy Linux - but you were probably expecting this answer.
Humor doesn't seem to work well ...
My point was that 2 Gigs is anything but low. Obviously that opinion is slightly old-fashioned.
I wouldn't hesitate to run any OS out there on a machine with 1 Gig of Ram.
Well: to say it more clear, to me a Gig sounds like quite comfortable.

But thanks for your answer, my fault not being clear. Puppy is fine too, of course.
OK, sorry, I didn't realize that you were being humorus.

Ironically, I'm posting this from an old "obsolete" WinXP computer with 2 Gigs of ram. Funny, it seems to perform just fine running Debian.

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Re: operating systems without systemd

#127 Post by fruitofloom »

saulgoode wrote:
fruitofloom wrote:Well: I got machines with more ram too.
Thing is: none of them uses more than +/- 300 (with claws, firefox, pidgin and tilda running). Most of that being used by firefox, of course.
Not that sure what would be the point to get more ram .... so that more sits idle?
Linux will use any available spare RAM for caching disk blocks. This can greatly speed reloading of programs, libraries, and data files.

For example:

Code: Select all

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428        406         22          0        215        129
-/+ buffers/cache:         60        368
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428         35        393          0          0          9
-/+ buffers/cache:         26        402
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=hundredmb bs=1M count=100
100+0 records in
100+0 records out
104857600 bytes (105 MB) copied, 0.766156 s, 137 MB/s

root@thevenin:~# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           428        137        291          0          0        109
-/+ buffers/cache:         27        400
Swap:          534          0        534

root@thevenin:~# time cat hundredmb >/dev/null # with file cached in spare RAM
real    0m0.192s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.176s

root@thevenin:~# echo 3 >/proc/sys/vm/drop_caches

root@thevenin:~# time cat hundredmb >/dev/null # file must be reloaded from the disk
real    0m1.927s
user    0m0.003s
sys     0m0.226s
Thanks for the answer and an elaborate one too.
I heard something simlar before, but didn't understand the short version of it.
700 mb of ram are not enough to cache data?
Or, for the ones who consider a 2 Gig machine low-resources, 1700 mb ?
I got all kind of machines, from 64 up to 4 Gigs. Between 512 and 4 Gigs i don't see much of a difference (but then: i usually do one thing, finish it, and then do the next thing. I seldom open a file, close it, open another file, close that and open the first one again ... same for programs. I usually just start the 4 i use and let them run).

Last question: Is t here a point where it doesn't make any sense anymore? Is 16 Gig enough, or 32? 64 ? Or is it always better to have more ram?
(My actual ram is as big as the harddisk of one of my elder laptops .... ).

I am really fine with my "speed", hence i won't get more ram anyway.


I am asking seriously for your opinion.
Give me convenience or give me death.

fruitofloom
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#128 Post by fruitofloom »

More short:
You, saulgoode, think too that 2 Gigs is not enough?
Even though 5+ years ago 512 was pretty common and most were very happy with it.
(We already had modern browsers and modern DE's back then).
Give me convenience or give me death.

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NkfzGx3ok
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#129 Post by NkfzGx3ok »

fruitofloom wrote:More short:
You, saulgoode, think too that 2 Gigs is not enough?
Even though 5+ years ago 512 was pretty common and most were very happy with it.
(We already had modern browsers and modern DE's back then).
You have to keep in mind this is your use case and not everyone can survive on that.
I use my home machine for work related tasks (I guess this is where the survive comes in) and when setting the build roots going I can start gobbling 70% of my 64GiB RAM easy, if I do some modelling work as well as having a whole bunch of related things open (blender, 3dsmax, CAD, several VM's) I can do the same. I may be an extreme case here but many people I know have a whole bunch of applications open for media, a fckload of tabs open in several browsers and need at least 4GiB to work use it all comfortably.

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Re: operating systems without systemd

#130 Post by fruitofloom »

Wondering what they did 5 years ago. Not to speak of 10.
Or back in the days when Eric Raymond considered 64 MB to be "plenty of, where you barely need swap".
Perhaps people didn't work ... ?

To work one sure needs round the lines of 40 tabs open in a browser. Mainly facebook, twitter and other social media, i guess.
Give me convenience or give me death.

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Off-topic continued...

#131 Post by saulgoode »

fruitofloom wrote:700 mb of ram are not enough to cache data?
Or, for the ones who consider a 2 Gig machine low-resources, 1700 mb ?
Since I cleared my caches last night, I have built up nearly 3GB of cached blocks. This is largely owing to having done some large compiles and it means that repeating such compiles will result in disk accesses being an order of magnitude faster (I imagine the kernel devs optimized disk caching for just this use case, which is important for them). I've also used some larger programs such as GIMP and Libre Office, and running them again means they will load twice as fast (or faster).
fruitofloom wrote:Last question: Is t here a point where it doesn't make any sense anymore? Is 16 Gig enough, or 32? 64 ? Or is it always better to have more ram?
In general, more RAM is better. The only reasons not to want more RAM is 1) the cost or 2) there is sufficient RAM for the machine to perform its duties. As to the latter, the machine shown in my previous post ("thevenin") has only 400MB but since it is a print server, this is more than sufficient. It can even run a window manager and allow me to open the documents in my printer room. I see no need to add any more memory.

For my other workstations, I tend to cram as much RAM into them as I can, while doing so cheaply. This currently happens to be 4GB for the desktops and 1Gb for the laptops. At this point, while getting more RAM might be desirable, I think adding SSD drives would be more cost effective (ten times the storage for the same price). I would expect the speed benefits of SSD would virtually eliminate the benefit of disk caching; and would not be dependent upon the files having been previously accessed. I haven't yet decided to add any SSDs (I am very stingy when it comes to computers).
fruitofloom wrote:I am really fine with my "speed", hence i won't get more ram anyway.
I personally don't make purchasing RAM a high priority. Most of my machines are "discards" from friends or family and are more than five years' old. I generally upgrade the processor (for example, from a Celeron to a Core2duo) and try to get the RAM up to at least 2GB. With these two improvements, costing only about $10-20, I end up with some fairly decent machines. But that's just me. :)
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -- Brian Kernighan

ashindeed
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#132 Post by ashindeed »

Thanks for this thread, highly informative.

I recently installed Gentoo and was successful in my attempt, thanks to their handbook. From my perspective, Gentoo is more difficult to set-up compared to Debian. I will see how I can manage it in the long run, I have found the Gentoo forum to be helpful too.

fruitofloom
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#133 Post by fruitofloom »

thanks saulgoode for the elaborate answer.

In the end it looks as if our specs would be the same though .... :-) And even the expactations
(i still wouldn't call a 1 Gig low specs, but that is really just about giving a name)

I ain't got problems with the cost. Simply looks as if my machines would do anything (and as i have around 10 machines, it doesn't make sense to upgrade the really bad ones. I simply use the good ones, and of those i don't even use all).

I bought 2 machines, the rest is "discards" too (some of them having 2 Gigs of Ram, dual-core, etc).

The brutal truth: i understand crap of cached blocks.

Short version: thanks for your answer.
Give me convenience or give me death.

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Linadian
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#134 Post by Linadian »

The new PC-BSD 10.1 stable release is out, release announcement here. I've been waiting for this, dying to give it a test install on my old machine (single dedicated HDD install, bootloader on MBR of same drive, using BIOS F12 to switch between OSes/boots).

I asked in the PC-BSD forum about fakeraid, they said ZFS and fakeraid are not a good idea, susceptible to file system corruption.

On a more cheery note, Debian dev voters may see some sense after all, "General Resolution: init system coupling" vote details here.
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twoflowers

Re: operating systems without systemd

#135 Post by twoflowers »

I'm interested in your findings with ZFS, as I'm just evaluating it because of its ability to detect silent bit corruption.

I spent a good part of yesterday at persuading the installer to use MBR partitiond scheme with ZFS 'cause I'd like to have wheezy on that system, too. Well, I failed, it's FreeBSD only now on that system. Anyway, not having a comfortable fallback is most likly the better way to go,

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Re: operating systems without systemd

#136 Post by Linadian »

twoflowers wrote:I'm interested in your findings with ZFS, as I'm just evaluating it because of its ability to detect silent bit corruption.

I spent a good part of yesterday at persuading the installer to use MBR partitiond scheme with ZFS 'cause I'd like to have wheezy on that system, too. Well, I failed, it's FreeBSD only now on that system. Anyway, not having a comfortable fallback is most likly the better way to go,
From what I've read, ZFS is supposed to be really great (fast, self healing, etc), just not good with fakeraid. But I am finding FreeBSD actually 'listens' when you 'tell' it a target drive for installation, PC-BSD, not so much, gotta be careful with that one.
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Linadian
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#137 Post by Linadian »

Kicking the tires of Salix, PCLinuxOS and PC-BSD update:

PC-BSD (Xfce) has good intentions but has some rough edges (like the default icon set is incomplete, fixed by installing other icon sets and picking one that is complete, MATE Faenza for example), there are constant reminders BSD lurks under the hood, ZFS, although fast and good, seems complicated, not much much support for that file system outside of PC-BSD, if let's say, you want to boot with a live Linux disk to make repairs to config files, etc. Mounting other drives is tedious and weird (compared to automatic mounting by just clicking on an icon in a Linux file manager for example). Some 'PBI' packages install but just don't work, like DeVeDe for example, "directory does not exist", huh? What? After updating the Nvidia driver got disabled, it was fixed by just re-installing it and running nvidia-xconfig as root. PC-BSD install note: although sde (ada4 in BSD land) is on a different controller and listed fifth in the BIOS boot order, the PC-BSD insisted it was ada0, the actual target drive, in reality was ada2, the installer had it listed as ada3, so be careful.

So that leaves pretty but hand-holding PCLinuxOS MATE (KDE just makes me grind my teeth now) or Salix Xfce 14.1, which is lean and mean, very similar to the Debian experience but not for n00bs, expect a little troubleshooting here and there. What it will most likely come down to is which distro my old faithful Brother HL-1435 laser printer works in the best, or if I can even get it to work properly at all like I did in Wheezy with the Brother driver. I found an rpm version of the Brother driver, which *should* work in PCLinuxOS.

PCLinuxOS install note: be sure you know exactly which drive it's being installed to, it still uses the ancient Drake installer from its Mandrake days, you only get to see the drive models as reported to the BIOS by the drives themselves, not their Linux labels (sda, sdb for example) until after the drive is chosen. Fortunately PCLinuxOS uses Synaptic still so people migrating from Debian should be comfortable with it.

Salix install note: Its default file system is XFS, not always compatible with other OSes, I may try an ext4 install (if it's an available option) just to keep headaches to a bare minimum, I'm more at home with ext4 (no pun intended).
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twoflowers

Re: operating systems without systemd

#138 Post by twoflowers »

Lots of learning ... but that's part of the fun :D

Let me add my impression:
OpenBSD: works good on my thinkpads. The reason I didn't choose it for debian replacement is the absence of binary packages and easy system upgrades.
DesktopBSD: would have been my favorite, 'cause it has KDE3.5 on board and it works really nice, but it's hoplessly outdated
PC-BSD: Well, nice, but too much GUI. And I do not like KDE4 nor XFCE.
FreeBSD: Comes with all I need, works for me and has a nice learning curve. I'll definitly stick with that.

After spending the last days with the installer (get to know your tools first) I have to say that the part I love most is the documentation. It's up to date and examples work - what a new feeling. As always, it helps to have at least a second working computer around. Today I managed to lock me out of my T60 FreeBSD installation with root on ZFS. ZFS is in deed a different beast, but hey, there's a handbook and a howto on zfs. Got it running again in notime.

After all ... well, I entered Unix world on the wings of Apollo before they were aquired by HP ...

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Re: operating systems without systemd

#139 Post by Linadian »

twoflowers wrote:PC-BSD: Well, nice, but too much GUI. And I do not like KDE4 nor XFCE.
I'm not plugging PC-BSD, actually the opposite, it's still a little shy of being ready for primetime, anyway, the installer offers a wide variety of DEs, even Lumina and MATE, etc. Just sayin. :mrgreen: As a matter of fact, just for schizz n giggles, I'm going to install all of the available DEs (meta PBIs) in the already existing HDD install, check them out before I wipe the drive, or maybe I won't, I'll leave it for rainy day learning. :mrgreen:
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Linadian
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Re: operating systems without systemd

#140 Post by Linadian »

I think I've figured out why I can get my old Brother HL-1435 working in 64-bit Wheezy, I have i386 multi-arch support enabled, just a stab in the dark but that printer was built back in the 32-bit days, hence the need for the 32-bit CUPS wrapper from Brother.

So with any luck, PCLinuxOS 32-bit MATE with the PAE kernel (PAE kernel requires a manual install after PCLOS is on the HDD) is my answer, polished, lots of apps and no virusd, and maybe even a working printer OOTB, possibly no proprietary driver needed.

On another bizarre note, 64-bit Wheezy struggles with AMD's IOMMU and the Via chip USB 3.0 controller (see this post for the fix), I live booted the PCLinuxOS 32-bit and everything is fine OOTB (USB mouse working, USB 3.0 working), go figure. Just one less headache to deal with and another bonus. Kind of sucks having to take a step backwards to 32-bit but at least I won't be one of Poett-hat's bitches. :shock: :mrgreen:

Before anybody asks, I love that printer and building the new computer cleaned out my wallet temporarily, I'm not in a position to run out and buy another printer right now. :oops:

Edit: And the 'winner' is...drum roll please...PCLinuxOS MATE amd64. I did a default install on my old machine (actually a re-install, I kind of borked the first attempt doing stupid $#1+), then did a default install of the printing system (CUPS, etc), added my printer, now here's the strange part, all along I've been trying the 'recommended' driver (something-gutenprint-blah-blah), anyway, it turns out the Brother HL-1430 Foomatic/hl1250 works perfectly (hidden half way down the list no less) for my HL-1435. On another note concerning AMD users with a Via USB 3.0 chip like my mobo (see sig), I confirmed in 3 live disks (Salix, Gentoo and PCLinuxOS) that simply adding...

Code: Select all

iommu=soft
...to the boot line makes everything work the way it's supposed to, no dead USB 2.0 mouse or KB, the USB 3.0 ports work and you can leave IOMMU disabled in the BIOS (default). So when I finally get around to installing PCLinuxOS on my new machine, I just add that to the kernel boot line which is really easy in PCLinuxOS Control Center->Boot->Set up boot system or during the install. Note: I have my BIOS in legacy mode, I'm not a big fan of UEFI, so I'm not sure if this works in UEFI mode. At least I found a substitute for Debhat, I can breath easy for a while again. The only negative was no fakeraid Raid 0 support, no biggy, a single SSD reads/writes at just over 500MB/s anyway, now I have a spare SSD for experimenting on my new machine.

Don't get me wrong, Salix Xfce is great, it only 'lost' because it wouldn't set up my printer properly. I love Xfce but I'll settle for MATE, I could probably install Xfce in PCLOS but I can't be bothered, besides, MATE has sounds and it's quickly made pretty by installing the elementary-icon-theme package, Clearlooks + BlackMATE window border, oh, and you may want to change the mouse cursor too, the default is 'win8' or some $#1+ like that, if you do, the cursor will be huge, simply close the theme window, go the actual mouse settings, adjust the speed a little, close that, then go back to mouse in themes, the size slider will no longer be greyed out (obviously this a minor bug but my discovered fix works).

I might put Stella (CentOS 6.6 based) on my old machine's 4 HDD fakeraid Raid 0, just so those drives aren't sitting around 'rusting', it's just a workstation backup machine now, any heavy multimedia will be done on my new machine.

Good luck with your non-virusd distro hopping folks, I found mine. :mrgreen:
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