[geeks] IBM RAID Controller and Linux

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 10:56:44AM +0100, Mark Benson wrote:
>I ran across an issue when looking at IBM servers. The x3500 M2 we are
>looking at uses a PCI-e RAID controller for the SAS bay at the front
>and I'm getting cold feet as to whether the RAID controller is
>supported in Ubuntu Server.

Personally, I suggest that you look for another distribution to run.

I have had problems with Ubuntu, since upgrading my server from a much 
enhanced RedHat 7.2 system. I also made the mistake of upgrading a fedora
system to Ubuntu.

My problems started with 8.04 lts. LTS is a relative term, I had a security
issue that had been addressed in 8.04, but it never made it to LTS. So I
upgraded to 8.10. I had lots of remote X windows and gnome problems and
things just never quite working, most importantly CUPS and my USB laser 
printer.

So I went to 9.04 and have two problems. These exist on both a work station
and a server. The first is that my IDE optical drives won't read any disks.
Not a CD  or a DVD, in any format. I can get it to write a CD or DVD, but
I can't read even the disks I write to verify them.

The second issue is that after about 3 days, it stops making outgoing TCP
connections. Considering one system is used to connect to my email server in
the US (via ssh) and the other runs bit torrent, this is a real problem.

A debian system on the same network has no trouble with either, so it is not
my router or a network setup issue. The moment I reboot either system, they
start making connections again.

I found an 95% work around to the optical disk problem, I went back to
the last generic 386 kernel from 8.10. Now they work, but occasionaly a
disk fails to verify. If I copy the disk using readom to a file, the MD5 sum
does not match the original, but if I do a find/md5sum of each file on it, they
all are clean. I can live with that.

The second issue is now the TCP/IP problem occurs exactly 37 hours after boot.
I can set a watch by it, it is so close. I've stopped waiting and when I have 
a spare moment and no one is using the computers, I reboot them. Compare that
to the RH 7.2 system which stayed up until there was a hardware change, 
or the power went out. 

My older debian system, running KnoppMyth, just keeps running. I use it as
a file server and media player. Because the other system keeps crapping out,
I recently made it a backup DHCP server and probably should make it a backup
DNS server too.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM