[DRBD-user] Re: heartbeat 2.0.8: lockups kerneloops

Ross S. W. Walker rwalker at medallion.com
Sun Feb 25 19:24:33 CET 2007

Note: "permalinks" may not be as permanent as we would like,
direct links of old sources may well be a few messages off.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gerry Reno [mailto:greno at verizon.net] 
> Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2007 12:46 PM
> To: Ross S. W. Walker
> Cc: drbd-user at lists.linbit.com
> Subject: Re: [DRBD-user] Re: heartbeat 2.0.8: lockups kerneloops
> 
> Ross S. W. Walker wrote:
> > What driver problems did you experience with it? I'm interested in
> > knowing possible problem areas before I hit them. One thing 
> I did notice
> > is for drivers that use dkms to compile I had to do a 
> couple of tweaks
> > to get them to recognize the CentOS kernel version as 
> RHEL4, but they
> > were simple sed macro changes.
> >
> > I tried FC5 for a while, but I couldn't keep up with all 
> the kernel and
> > libc updates, so decided for my SAN server to use something 
> more stable.
> >
> > -Ross
> >
> >
> >   
> For us having good hardware support is paramount. We are a small 
> business that cannot afford to have a stockpile of hardware lying 
> around. When something breaks we need to be able to run down to the 
> local computer store and buy some replacement hardware, plug 
> it in, and 
> have it work. For an example, we needed to install gigabit nic cards 
> because our nightly network backups were beginning to exceed 
> our backup 
> window and we determined that it was the network that was the 
> bottleneck. So we went and purchased some gigabit nic cards and 
> installed them and no matter what driver we told CentOS to load in 
> /etc/modprobe.conf it just refused to recognize the cards. Now after 
> about two weeks of posting on the forums we finally found a 
> recommendation for gigabit nic card to we could go buy that 
> had a driver 
> that would work with CentOS. But by that time we had already 
> loaded FC6 
> on the boxes and had everything running with no problem. And 
> this wasn't 
> the only problem we had had. We had video driver problems and had to 
> switch the video cards as well as usb problems. It seemed like CentOS 
> could not work with any of the newer hardware. You had to 
> hunt around in 
> flea markets and eBay to find hardware that it would support. Nothing 
> you could buy at the local computer store would work with it. This is 
> somewhat of a problem with Linux in general though. There 
> needs to be an 
> effort to add support for newer hardware into existing kernels on an 
> ongoing basis. Anyway, it just became too much of a headache so we 
> decided we didn't want to wait for some other similar hardware/driver 
> problems to appear so we moved over to FC6. Yes, there are a lot of 
> updates that come down the pipe with FC6 but you don't have to take 
> them. I wait about a month and then on a test machine I'll accept all 
> the new updates and test them out on that machine before I update the 
> production machines. I also check all the forums to see if anyone is 
> reporting any new problems with recent updates. All in all I 
> would say 
> that our experience with FC6 has been very good.

Yes, well 2.6.9 doesn't have the well honed plug-and-pray hal system
that the later distros have. It means you will have to manually kick off
kudzu or some other older plug-and-pray method to get new hardware
recognized, or know what driver it is that needs to be installed.

I personally use the manufacturer's latest linux drivers, I don't care
about kernel GPL taint just want the best performance from my hardware,
so normally I replace the kernel versions with the manufacturer's
latest. CentOS helps because most manufacturers directly support RHEL4
which means their drivers will just work as-is 90% of the time.

I try to avoid CompUSA or Staples hardware as it is mostly designed for
consumer use and doesn't have the enterprise level performance
characteristics that I like to deploy on my servers.

Of course if it were a desktop deployment then Fedora or Ubuntu would
work out fine, that is where all the fancy bells and whistles help.

-Ross

______________________________________________________________________
This e-mail, and any attachments thereto, is intended only for use by
the addressee(s) named herein and may contain legally privileged
and/or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient
of this e-mail, you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution or copying of this e-mail, and any attachments thereto,
is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail in error,
please immediately notify the sender and permanently delete the
original and any copy or printout thereof.




More information about the drbd-user mailing list