[NTLUG:Discuss] Redhat9 - hostid doesn't work

[kbrannen@gte.net]

Iostream at comcast.net wrote:
> Posted this earlier, but form wrong email account.  Anyway, the problems with
> VMWare and Compaq DL380 is not Red Hat's fault.

Hmm, Suse works and RH doesn't; looks like RH's fault to me. :-)

 > It is a poor hardware
> implementation that Red Hat has been working around, at the expense of others
> functionality.  This has been changed in Red Hat 9, and I believe it will also
> be changed in the newest Suse. 

I used Suse 8.2 successfully on the DL380, so I guess you mean in the next one?

 > The work around it simple, when you boot from
> the CD, at the lilo prompt for the installer, type: linux noapic
> This will disable the incorrect hardware/bios apic implementation found in
> Compaq DL380 and VMWare's products.

I'm 99.99% certain I tried that, and a handful of other install options in 
various combinations too.  All with no success, for a "normal" install (see 
other thread).

>  I think the very latest VMWare versions of
> GSX and workstation fix this, but I am not sure, ESX still has the limitation.
> As for Red Hat and compatibility, there are some issues with Red Hat 9, but it
> seems to be for good reasons to me.  Starting with Red Hat 8, they began putting
> things into the system/kernel that were just beginning to appear in the 2.5
> series.  This helps get users out there using it, and helps to stabalize those
> features.  They have always done this, with the 0(1) scheduler,some VM patches,
> etc, but they kept it non intrusive until they seperated their enterprise
> product.  In the RH 8 beta, they released it with HZ=1000, almost 2 days before
> Linus released his first 2.5 kernel to have that feature.  The NPTL
> implementation is somewhat obtrusive, but it gets users out there, and gives
> vendors a good chance to test their code before 2.6 comes out.  All in all, I
> think the changes are good from a stabalize 2.6 point of view, but can be
> obtrusive to the person who wants to rebuild certain parts of the system without
> messing with everything.

You have an interesting point (that this helps the Linux world test out new 
code more, or at least that what I got out of it), but I just can't go there. 
  For those of us who need a distro that "just works", "doesn't get in the 
way", and "is stable", putting all that experimental code in their released 
product is just bad news.

> ...   Suse, Gentoo, and
> Mandrake all have good standard distributions, and Debian works well as long as
> you update.

I used to be pretty distro agnostic, sort of whatever works for you is good. 
And I really did like RH7.[23] (7.0 was a beast).  But after working with 9.0 
for awhile, I'm losing my objectivity and am ready to start a distro flamewar 
(just kidding! :-)  But seriously, I'm not so pro-RH anymore...I'm ready for 
them to give up and hand the Linux crown over to Suse, Debian, Mandrake, or 
even Slackware.  I've had excellent results with Suse and am not afraid to 
recommend it; and have fond memories of the early Slackware releases.  I 
haven't tried the others yet, but I'm not against them either.  I will not 
recommend RH9.0 to anyone--it's not ready for prime time (too unstable).

OK, I'll calm down now... :-)

Kevin