[WBEL-users] Whitebox and kernel 2.6.x

Luis Hernán Otegui Luis Hernán Otegui
Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:56:55 -0300


OK, then. Thanks everybody for your insight, it is proving to be very
helpful here. I'm planning to deploy a high-uptime high-load server as
I said before, a dual-Pentium IV system, with SATA discs and a DVD
recorder for backups, so the next level of questioning is this: will
WBEL detect the SATA drives? I know 2.6  kernel will do it, since I've
done a bunch of Debian installations on SATA-drived machines, but
since I'm new to the RedHat world, I was wondering if the installation
will detect them.
I've heard some rumors about 2.6 kernel not being stable enough for
DVD recording, or that you have to become root to actually be able to
record anything, but nothing of this has happened to me on Debian, all
I need is to make the recording user member of the "burning" group, so
I guess it would be the same on WBEL...
As it's easy to see from what I say, I will be needing SMP support. No
future porblems here, since I've seen the SMP kernel RPMs on the WBEL
mirrors. But what I'm still concerned about is the SATA support. Does
WBEL support SATA from install? If not, how should I proceed?
Leonard, your comments went straight to my printer, and have been
archived within the "Important Install Hints" category ;)

Thanks everybody,

Luis


On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 11:45:18 +0800, Leonard Ye <leonardye@myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Luis,
> 
> It has always been recommended in this list that WBEL should stick to
> the original kernel.  People use WBEL mainly for its stability and long
> -term security support.  Since RH only provides guarantee of running 2.4
> kernel on it, I guess no one could do more testing than them to
> guarantee the 2.6 kernel.
> 
> However, due to the project I am working on, kernel 2.6 on WBEL is used.
>   Here is my experience:
> -       the network subsystem of kernel 2.6 seems to be working fine on WBEL.
> -       modprobe.conf is used by default rather than modules.conf in kernel
> 2.4.  Thus, you need to migrate the configurations in modules.conf to
> modprobe.conf.
> -       properly you want to disable kudzu.  It seems that the order NICs are
> detected is reversed.  So kudzu will complain and try to reconfigure the
> modules.conf which is no longer used by kernel 2.6.
> -       The configuration of USB system has been changed.  I don't bother to
> fix it as USB is not used.  But I don't think it is difficult.
> -       It is a bad idea of switching between 2.6 and 2.4 after all the
> customization work you've done to make 2.6 working.  Conflicting changes
> could be made to the system configuration.  An example is the kudzu I
> mentioned above.
> -       you will not be able to startx after the new kernel, mainly due to an
> error message from gpm complaining about missing /dev/psaux.  Upgrade
> the gpm module to FC2.  You will still see the error message, but startx
> should work
> -       kernel 2.6 + WBEL is used on the network server we are developing.
> More load testing is on the way.  So far so good.  I will update this
> list if any problem encountered.  But I guess not many people will care.
>   They will say "you should not use 2.6 in the first place. you deserve
> it." ;)
> -       Such combination is also used as my workstation.  Except some rigid
> mouse response (it could be my old mouse rather than the kernel), I
> encounter no problem.  However, I used it just as a workstation, no
> latest devices like DVD burner, no tape drive, no sound.  Just a pure
> station with PIII CPU + old motherboard + old monitor + old display card
> + 1 IDE harddisk + old PS2 mouse + old PS2 keyboard + 2 rtl8139 NICs,
> used only for programming under vim.
> 
> Regards,
> Leonard Ye
> 
> 
> 
> Luis Hernán Otegui wrote:
> 
> > Hi, people, this is my first mail to the list. I'm going to install
> > WBEL on a brand new server, and I was wandering about the stability of
> > the 2.6.x series of kernels. Has anyone put something like this in
> > production? I've been reading about the major improvements 2.6 has to
> > offer, and personally I have been running the 2.6.6 over Debian on a
> > OpenMosix cluster (via ClusterKnoppix), but I need to know how to
> > upgrade a RedHat-style installation to some 2.6.x-smp kernel, so I
> > could install WBEL and do the upgrade
> > I've been browsing throug the mailing list archives, and found an old
> > thread, but it died before someone confirmed theye successfully
> > installed the 2.6 kernel, and proved it stable enough for a production
> > environment.
> > I guess WBEL doesn't support XFS from scratch, so I will need to
> > install the system on EXT3 and then have the partitions converted to
> > SGI's FS.
> > Thanks in advance, any feedback will be very well received.
> >
> > Luis
> 
> 



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