[K12OSN] Woe is me: Onboard SCSI/RAID Controller
Petre Scheie
petre at maltzen.net
Tue Oct 12 13:22:36 UTC 2004
One idea to consider: if, as Les recommended, you try to install K12LTSP and it
does not work with the on-board SCSI controller, you might just buy another SCSI
controller card and use that instead. You *should* be able to disable the
on-board SCSI. That way you can still use the system; it's only the SCSI
controller that's apt to give you problems, so just replace that part,
effectively. I think you can get a good SCSI RAID controller for about $150,
perhaps less.
Petre
Debbie Schiel wrote:
> 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
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