Fedora vs. Ubuntu (hijacked: can I dual boot FC and Kubuntu?)

[Claude Jones]

On Friday September 22 2006 11:56 pm, Joel Rees wrote:
> On 2006/09/23, at 11:30, Claude Jones wrote:
> > What are you talking about?
>
> Good question. Like I said in my earlier post, the advice my be
> outdated. For all I know it may not apply to Linux kernel and drivers
> written after a certain year, probably before 1999 if that's the
> case. I've never seen it myself that I know of, but then I've mostly
> avoided MSWindows compatible hardware. And the companies I've worked
> for have tended to not fully populate a channel.
>
> You could plug something like "master slave ata corruption" in a
> search at Google and get some interesting reading, though.
>
> The sales guy at Pasokon Kobo over in Mikage a couple of years back
> warned me against trying to use both master and slave at the same
> time, but they admitted to not having much experience with Linux. In
> the MSWindows universe they were familiar with, there were enough
> reports of silent corruption they figured it was best to stay with
> one channel, one drive, particularly when building RAID on ATA
> controllers.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but master and slave on a single channel
> can't handle commands concurrently? What I recall reading was that it
> was known that some companies' drivers for MSWindows were known to
> fail to keep state straight between calls, but I remember reading
> some guy who said that even the hardware would lose state in certain
> situations. And the corruption would tend to be silent, no warnings
> until it was too late.
>

So, some salesman told you something once, you bought into it, found a couple 
of references on the net that seemed to buttress your hypothesis, and you're 
suggesting that _I_ google something to corroborate your salesman-informant's 
theory. I have no doubt that there  could have been problems at times with 
Master/Slave configurations. Witness the current mess that is the USB 
protocol. It doesn't seem to me, however, that you have a lot to offer to 
back up what was a pretty strong assertion on your part.

> > I have been building my own machines since 1989,.....
>
> MSWindows or Linux? BSD? Mac? Controllers limited to certain
> manufacturers? Did the usage patterns tend to be such that only one
> drive was used at a time, as in boot and run this drive or that, only
> use the other drive for backups performed during break? Can you
> guarantee there was no silent corruption? (regular diffs between
> backups or such?)
>

Again, you seem to want me to buttress your salesman's theory. And that 
question about "silent corruption" is pure moxy... 

> > Yet, in all that time, with all those machines, I've never encountered
> > problems with drive conflicts, except ones I've caused myself due
> > to improper
> > jumpering. For the second time in a month on this list, someone has
> > alluded
> > to such problems but with no details. What sorts of problems have
> > you had? I
> > would like to know in case I encounter such in the future.
>
> Like I say, I have not seen drive failures I can pin on this
> particular issue. What I know is second hand, from the web......

So, you haven't seen this problem you declared to exist so forcefully, and 
you've only read about it "second hand, from the web" - My suggestion - first 
activate brain, then once it's spun up to speed, engage fingers...

As some one said the other day .net stands for 'not entire true'...
-- 
Claude Jones
Brunswick, MD, USA