7.3, 9, then Fedora? (was Compiling kernel rpm)

[Blair Lowe]

On Tue, 2005-01-11 at 17:18, Ed Wilts wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 11, 2005 at 01:48:44PM -0700, Blair Lowe wrote:
> > Here is the patch that I want to apply to upgrade the 3ware drivers
> > (from code off of the 3ware website) in case someone at redhat wants to
> > upgrade the valhalla kernel with this stuff:
> 
> Why would Red Hat want to do this?  They haven't issued any errata for
> 7.3 in over a year, and they wouldn't release a new kernel without doing
> regression testing.  That's a lot of work for something that's been
> unsupported for over a year.  To be blunt, give it up and upgrade.
> 
> If you needed this added to a Fedora Core or RHEL kernel, that would be
> a different story...

I am aware of your freeze on 7.3, however it is the newest redhat distro
that does not require X to configure services (eg.
redhat-config-network). This is important for implementing a server that
does not provide workstation type X services which are usually very
insecure. We have found that the non-gui version of those configuration
tools are not very usefull and rarely work.

When upgrading to 9.0, we found that the redhat-config-network, could
not even deal with an odd network mask (example 255.255.255.248). What a
nightmare. And the newer "compiled" kickstart version was absolutely a
mess! I can't even install RedHat 9 out of the box on our older athalon
workstations. On disk 2 it says that my boxed set CD is not a valid
redhat CD!

Refunds would be nice for the three RedHat 9 boxes that I purchased
through Penguin computing, although that does not nearly cover the sweat
and tears spent trying to get a kickstart workstation going. Try adding
50 packages to your distribution, and then try to make some distro CDs
(within a few days). When I tried to get support from the support tab in
the new shrink-wrapped CD box it was denied!

Updates are another issue. Do you really expect people to run production
servers, and automatically update their software without knowing what
ogres are waiting for them in new rpms that don't work? Sounds a bit
like XP Home to me: updates kill the machine, then you have to pay to
get the latest fixes (in purchasing RedHat support). Sure is good
business for RedHat, though ;)

If you think that after RedHat 9 I have loads of confidence that Fedora
will fix everything, then you are very wrong. I am sure that Fedora
would be fine for a workstation, but I would not bet my business on a
server that must have insecure X services to be easily maintained.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get this off my chest. If you
have some good suggestions on how we can easily migrate to a working
server version of Fedora, and still add our own packages (like qmail) to
create a high availability in-house distribution, I would honestly love
to hear it, however in spite of being a huge Red Hat fan, my confidence
in Red Hat as a server based distribution is at an all time low.

TTYL,
Blair Lowe, RHCE
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