RE: Linux and firewire drives...

["K. C. Li" <li@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, 21 Mar 2005, Ian wrote:

> So, basically, you expended a stack of effort, but because what you
were
> doing was ever so slightly unusual, it just point blank didn't work.

It seems to me you have made a few assumptions and rather jumping to
conclusion there, Ian. Setting up an external 8-disk firewire software
RAID5 array with no-name IDE-to-firewire hardware is hardly slightly
unusual. Had it been a SCSI or IDE array, the problem wouldn't have
happened. Also, the firewire implementation on the version that Phil was
using is known to be buggy. The fault has been rectified in the subsequent
driver release (although firewire "hotplugging" is still broken).

The firewire problem is the only serious one Phil has encountered in
moving to Linux so far. No doubt there would be many more problems to come
but I suspect none would be as serious as the firewire one.

> calls of "you should use Linux" whenever you admit to using
windows, there
> was a large amount of head scratching until eventually, after
*ridiculous*
> amounts of time was spent, Someone cracks the ludicrously arcane
commands or
> combination of modules to compile in order to make it behave... It
works.
>
> Kinda.

If someone say "You should learn to drive", it doesn't
necessarily mean
the experience is going to be plain sailing all the way. There are simply
too many combination of hardware and software available to make the
outcome guaranteed to pleased with minimum of effort. Although with common
hardware and a good Linux distribution, you could have a server or desktop
system up and running in little time.

If my understanding is correct, Phil moved from a licensed Windows 2003
server edition because it couldn't handle the simplest of tasks without
regularly crashing. I suspect the Windows firewire driver is buggy too but
evidently it has been buggy for quite some time.

> The wonder now being, just how stable is it - are you now in the
situation
> that you can't update anything for fear of borking it again?
>
> Hey - that's the linux experience all right! :D

That may be your Linux experience but it is not everyone's.

Regards,

Kwong Li
li@xxxxxxx
Laser Business Systems Ltd.
http://www.laser.com
http://www.cbus-shop.com