Dell "software"

[Steve Phillips]

mark wrote:
> And if this is "accepted" as common, then I reiterate, it's amateur, in 
> the *worst* sense of the word. I wanted to save all the data, as I'd 
> doing an upgrade of a full release. As I said in my article in the July 
> SysAdmin magazine, it's always better to do a full install when going up 
> a full release, since nobody gives you a good way to do that, as they do 
> for a subrelease upgrade.

You will probably find that this is simply a driver issue with, not so 
much the CD ROM drive but the controller it is attached to.

You will probably find that the controller is newer than the linux 
distribution that you are using, I would almost put money on the fact 
that you could download the latest RHEL 5 cds and everything would work.

You will probably also find that you can download a driver disk from 
dell which will probably contain instructions on how to use the driver 
to get a bootable image up and running so you can do an install off 
standard media.

I've had very similar experiences with the compaq range of servers - tho 
not to the point of wiping everything, and yeah - its one of those 
things that will catch you out once and never again.

Take satisfaction that in a years time when someone else posts the same 
complaint about $company and their braindead 'restore cd process' you 
can chuckle away knowing that you've been in a similar situation.


-- 
Steve
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