RedHat

[Buck]

I have been playing around with RedHat in an attempt to create a file server. The software is pretty nice, relatively intuitive for configuring basic things, but unfortunately neither 8.0 or 9.0 worked for me. With the hardware setup that I had, 8.0 would puke during the installation. 9.0 installed just fine, but it doesn't have any rpm'd drivers for the Promise SX6000 ATA RAID card, so my planned setup wouldn't work. What a shame too, I was starting to like the software. Oh well, so we went off and installed a copy of Windows 2003 Server.

 

[Mercutio]

RedHat 8 and 9 should both work with the slightly less-nice UltraTX and highpoint controllers.

RedHat *IS* a nice environment. There's a lot less cruft in a redhat install than in, say, a Mandrake set up.

 

[Buck]

I like how RedHat immediately picked up the IC on my NIC and used its pre-installed driver for it. The thing worked like a charm. I install Windows 2003 Server, and it doesn't understand the card, I had to feed it the appropriate Netgear driver. Too bad RedHat wasn't so inclinded with the fancy Promise card.

Anyway, I'll get around to another installation attempt down the line. It is certainly worth exploring and practicing with. I was really suprised at how easy it was to set up a Samba share on a Windows domain.

 

[Mercutio]

One word of advice: Use software RAID in Linux. Don't bother with anything that the "hardware" (actually largely driver functions) of Promise and Highpoint cards can supposedly do.

 

[Buck]

I'll keep that in mind. The Promise SX6000 RAID card is nice. I slapped 128MB of memory onboard, and it has been happily running for about two years now under Windows NT 4.0. The desktop system with RAID array was crammed into finally wore out its usefulness, as a new PSU, Enclosure, and Motherboard were in order. I figured since I was going this route, an attempt at RedHat would be good. When working with 6 or more ATA drives all on their own channels in a computer system, you really see the need for SATA cables and drives.

 

[Mercutio]

I've got a couple of 3ware 7500s now. I know the feeling, but I wouldn't give up the space, either.

 

[Buck]

I'll keep that in mind. The Promise SX6000 RAID card is nice. I slapped 128MB of memory onboard, and it has been happily running for about two years now under Windows NT 4.0. The desktop system with RAID array was crammed into finally wore out its usefulness, as a new PSU, Enclosure, and Motherboard were in order. I figured since I was going this route, an attempt at RedHat would be good. When working with 6 or more ATA drives all on their own channels in a computer system, you really see the need for SATA cables and drives.

Wow, you'd think English was my second language.

"The desktop system with the RAID array was cramped and finally wore out its usefulness; a new PSU, Enclosure, and Motherboard were in order."