Convert CentOS 5.6 to RHEL 5.6

[Chi Chan]

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 2:31 PM, Matty Sarro <msarro at gmail.com> wrote:
> You'd be surprised actually. Oracle itself has admitted to patching
> the kernel with certain performance tweaks dedicated exclusively for
> their products; however they haven't submitted the changes to the
> mainstream kernel development.

Not correct -- according to lwn.net, for the past few releases, Oracle
did contribute to the latest Linux kernels by sending patches to Linus
& the LKML.


> Not to mention they've only certified the tweaks for Oracle software.
> That means they could cause your other mission critical application to
> crash every 2 seconds, but so long as your database is running oracle
> will give it a stamp of approval.

Oracle ships 3 kernels with Oracle Linux:

1) 100% compatible RHEL kernel (ie. a rebuild from the same source)
2) RHEL compatible kernel with bug fixes done by Oracle
3) Oracle Unbreakable kernel

So if the application really crashes due to Oracle;s changes, use the
older but 100% compatible RHEL kernel.

There are over 7000 paying customers using Oracle Linux, and I don't
believe Oracle would put changes in that is designed to crash other
applications.

In fact, software products that are competing with Oracle are built on
Oracle Linux, for example the Open Grid Scheduler, and Univa Grid
Engine (another fork of Sun Grid Engine). I am sure others might use
Oracle Linux, but I am more of an HPC guy.

See the example on this page, even the low level hardware interaction
code does work on Oracle Linux:
http://gridscheduler.sourceforge.net/projects/hwloc/GridEnginehwloc.html


> Also, they have stripped out a number of open source solutions in
> order to include their own proprietary solutions (so yes, vendor
> lockin). They have removed GFS/GFS2 and replaced it with their
> proprietary competitor OCFS2. They have removed redhat cluster suite
> and replaced it with the closed source oracle clusterware.

OCFS2 is open source AFAIK:

http://oss.oracle.com/projects/ocfs2/


> If any these things break, who can help you? Oracle.
> If you're using RHEL, anyone who uses RHEL, Cent, or SL can probably help you.

In the end, in the user space, Oracle Linux, RHEL, CentOS, and SL are
mostly idential.

> I don't want to turn this into a distro war

Same here :-D

> - Oracle linux is made for running oracle databases. That's it, and it's very good at doing that.

Oracle software developers use Oracle Linux for software development -
and Oracle does not only has DB products, it also has middleware,
cloud computing software, embedded software (Berkeley DB for example),
and Java!

So, can one really writes a kernel that runs all of the software that
Oracle has, but only crashes or slows down one inhouse application?


> Also, Oracle/Sun support sucks. Compare experiences with Red Hat to
> experiences with Oracle, there is a pretty stark contrast. Red hat was
> first and foremost a company to provide support for otherwise free
> software. Oracle on the other hand is just a money making machine.

If only the first who enters the market can do business, then we will
have a very different world then we have today. :-D

And how is Redhat not a money making machine? RHT is close to making
$1B in the next FY (FY2012?). And Redhat charges more money than
Oracle for support.


> I don't care which one people use really, I use cent and SI for my own
> work, and RHEL for production boxes. I still have yet to see a good
> reason to use oracle.

I use Oracle Linux for my development & build machines, and the thing
that is good is that with Oracle Linux one can become a paying user
without reinstalling.

--Chi


>
> -Matty
>
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