[rescue] New acquisition... (AIX)

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Thursday 01 April 2004 14:26, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> > And, the only POWER machine that'll run Linux.  AIX is 'fun', but
> > gets in the way of doing 'useful' stuff with it.
>
> Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... *bus
> reset*
>
> Qui?

I didn't say you can't do useful things with AIX, just I can't do what I 
want to do with AIX.

On Thursday 01 April 2004 14:30, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> > 1) Can't use it for Lustre
>
> That's why you have concurrent-available VGs.

Still, I don't have kernel source.  "Me wants kernel source."
And, I don't want to be locked into RS/6000 hardware.  I'd like to have 
a heterogenous mix of RS/6000s and "high quality"[0] PC hardware, 
running this Lustre thing.

> > 2) Have to use RS/6000 hardware instead of any-old PCI adaptors
>
> You can use any-old PCI adapter you have a device driver for.  I have
> Sun SCSI cards in some of my RS/6000s.

Sun != PC hardware..

> > 3) Licensing
>
> Well, there is that.  I don't suspect big blue will be knocking down
> your door anytime soon because you have AIX on a personal system and
> aren't paying for IBM support.  It's quite possible that those
> machines already have an AIX license attached.

They're probably not going to be used for a "personal" thing.  According 
to an IBM guy, all SP hardware "was sold with AIX licenses", so I do 
have licenses.  Still, that doesn't mean that I find proprietary 
software licenses acceptable for anything I "care about."

I'm not as skewed left as RMS, but I'm not using software for my 
business that isn't "OpenSource," unless there's absolutely no 
alternative, like trying to read VMS disks or something.

> > The only advantage to running AIX on it for me is the use of the SP
> > switch cards, which I can live without.
>
> Well, that, and the OS is AIX, which gives you better support for
> that hardware than you'll ever find in a non-IBM OS.

Sure, but what's the fun in that?  Hey I've got an idea... I could use 
the hardware to help with supporting Linux on this stuff.

[0] High quality hardware *does* exist, I've used it.  Walmart and Best 
Buy don't sell it, but it is out there, and not just from people like 
Dell.

Pat
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