Q. About support - After I make changes to my RHEL 4 system and call RH?

[Ed Wilts]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2005 at 08:17:46AM -0700, Stephen Fitch wrote:
> I'm looking for advice - mainly about RH Support vs Open Source.
> 
> I'm considering which Linux Distro and Support Offering to purchase.
> 
> RHEL is on the list, but I want to know more...
> 
> If I purchase RHEL support, make some (open source) changes to my
> installed packages, then call RH for support what happens? 
> 
> Do the changes (in the spirt of open source) invalidate my service/support
> contract with RH? ...
> 
> I want to be able to make my changes and have RH support me if I get into
> deep trouble, etc.
> 
> Hope someone with experience in this area can answer my question.

Red Hat can afford to provide support at the stated prices by having a
known configuration to work with.  They do beta tests, certifications,
etc. to ensure that the end user gets a stable environment.  If a
security vulnerability is found, Red Hat has the ability to provide a
patch and make this available.

When you make changes to the source, you're going to be somewhat on your
own.  Red Hat may, and likely will, ask you to revert to their supplied
version and attempt to duplicate the bug.

Seriously, if Red Hat was to provide you with support for all of your
changes, what would stop you for simply upgrading to a bleeding-edge
Fedora release and asking Red Hat to support this?  

On the other hand, if you installed your own version of say mutt and you
had network driver issues, you'd probably not have any issues when
contacting Red Hat support.  Just don't patch ext3 and then complain
about disk corruption.

Note that these are my opinions.  You're welcome to contact Red Hat
Sales (sales at redhat.com) and get a formal answer.

-- 
Ed Wilts, RHCE
Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts at ewilts.org
Member #1, Red Hat Community Ambassador Program