Free RH ES 4.0 or equvelent

[Lunt, Nick]

> Both cases are rare so it's quite possible that you've not run into
> them.  At least one was related to one of the dhcp packages.  Red Hat
> discovered a compiler bug when building the package.  They fixed the
> compiler but didn't release the new compiler right away since 
> it hadn't
> gone through a full QA cycle (it's since been released).  Red Hat's
> released binary functioned perfectly but anybody who created their own
> binary from the released source rpm had issues.
> 
> I've seen some 3rd party packages from HP that check for the 
> contents of
> /etc/redhat-release.  That kind of check will break.  For 
> example, on my
> home system, this file reads:
> # cat /etc/redhat-release
> Tao Linux release 4 (Sponge Update 2)
> whereas on one of my work systems, it's:
> # cat /etc/redhat-release
> Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES release 4 (Nahant Update 2)
> 
> In earlier incarnations of the rebuilds (and this may be true 
> in some of
> the current ones too), the kernel version was renamed - ie, instead of
> something like 2.4.9-1.EL you'd see 2.4.9-1.TL (I made those versions
> up) and some 3rd party software installations would fail.
> 
> It's actually fairly easy for a 3rd party developer to make it really
> hard for their package to install on a rebuild.  Some developers are
> simply perverted.
> 
> I'm not going to say that the various rebuilds shouldn't be 
> used, since
> you can see in my note that I'm running one at home.  For users who
> don't need any Red Hat support, can afford to wait an extra 
> day (or 2 or
> more) for a package to be updated after Red Hat has released 
> the source
> rpm, and don't run too many weird and wonderful 3rd packages, 
> a rebuild
> may be good enough.
> 
> Personally, I run a rebuild at home but all of my work 
> systems are fully
> subscribed RHEL distributions.  Red Hat Professional Workstation was
> affordable for my home use but none of the RHEL choices today are and
> Fedora is too bleeding edge for my liking.
> 
>         .../Ed
> 

Thanks Ed,

I see what you mean now. We've come across the redhat-release issue with Oracle on both CentOS and RHEL when installing an as yet unsupported version of Oracle for Linux, but luckily that problem is easy enough to get around.

Fortunately at our place we only use CentOS for our very basic initial testing (we have 3 full blown separate dev environments) which is why we just use CentOS when we don't care if the box/OS dies ;)

Thanks again,
Nick .


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