[K12OSN] Woe is me: Onboard SCSI/RAID Controller

[Debbie Schiel]

Les Bell wrote:
> Brian Chase <networkr0 at cfl.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> It sounds
> like you went off and bought a motherboard and now that you've found it
> doesn't support a particular version of Redhat, you're completely
> willing to change your original plan.  Not a good idea.
> <<
> 
> In all fairness to Debbie, she probably saw some Acer Altos blurb that said
> "supports Red Hat Linux, supports SuSE Linux", etc. I got caught the same
> way - bought a couple of Acer Altos G301 servers for a school, on the
> understanding that Red Hat 7.3 and 8.0 were supported (and 9 shouldn't be a
> problem, you'd think) - only to find out that the on-board RAID controller
> was a MegaIDE chipset that only has precompiled binary drivers and only
> supports the kernel supplied on the RH 7.3 and 8.0 CD-ROMs. If you want to
> download and use a later official RH kernel, as a bug fix or security
> patch, tough - you're out of luck. Acer tech support were less than helpful
> - they had shipped a driver and as far as they were concerned, that was
> Linux support and if I didn't like it, I knew what I could do. . .  .
> 

Thanks Les & Brian for your advice.

Unfortunately I was not the one responsible for buying the server. If I 
was I would've chosen something different. Some guys down in ACT (home 
of Samba) who were trialling K12ltsp gave me recommended hardware specs 
from their supplier specifically for K12ltsp. And my school got another 
quote from a different (non-linux) source. During the holidays in my 
absence they (the ones with the money & the final say) bought the Acer 
server from this other supplier. I am the IT co-ordinator/teacher by the 
way, but we're a small independant school and I don't feel like I can 
grumble about all the money spent on this server (even though I wish we 
could take the Acer back to the supplier this instant!)

So I'll follow your suggestions, and try an install of K12ltsp on the 
Acer this weekend. Hopefully I'll have some good news to report!

Debbie
-- 
http://www.redeemer.qld.edu.au/