[sf-lug] Seeking a convert...part 2

[Rick Moen]

Quoting vincent polite (vpolitewebsiteguy at yahoo.com):

> I gave the wrong address for Mark. It is mbiggi at cooley.com. My faux
> pas...Or whatever you are supposed to say...

Not a problem, but the best way for this to proceed would be for Mark to
join this mailing list.  Otherwise, either everyone has to manually Cc
him on all postings, or someone has to forward the traffic -- and any
postings Mark tries to send to the mailing list will get held for
moderator approval by Jim (as being from a non-subscribed address).

> I'm working at this law firm, temp job. And the Senior IT Specialist
> is looking to convert some of the server duties to Linux. I don't
> pretend to understand all the details. When he tries to install RH
> 9, Fedora 3, on the DNS server, he gets a message asking install the
> a file from a floppy. Mark Biggi is the victim of this inquiry. Make
> sense? It has something to do with the RAID. Love to learn something
> new.

Clear as mud to _me_, at least, I'm afraid.

I know DNS, and I know Red Hattish systems (albeit I'm a little rusty), 
and I know most varieties of Linux RAID (there are many, some hardware
based, some software done entirely with the Linux "md" = multi device
driver, and some BIOS-assisted "fakeraid") -- but I have no idea what
the "a" file is, in this context.

By the way, I would heavily discourage RH9, and lightly discourage
Fedora Core 3, for this purpose.  There are much better choices of the
RH-ish persuasion, if one leans that way:

o  RH9:  Support/updates ceased on 2004-04-30.  In theory, you can still
         get some updates from the Fedora Legacy project, but their
         coverage has been spotty and unreliable.
o  FC3:  Released 2004-11-08, and scheduled to be transferred to 
         Fedora Legacy project in mid-January.  (See comments above.)
         Also, FC3 had significant SELinux problems that were fixed 
         only with the FC4 redesign.

Mark could certainly use FC4 -- which is functional if a bit aggressive
in pushing technological progress (beta-ish), bearing in mind that it's
a test platform and has a rapid end-of-life schedule.  (FC5 is planned
to out in March.)

I would urge Mark to also consider CentOS, which is Red Hat Enterprise 
Linux in all but name, community-recompiled and supported.  There are
both RHEL 3.0 and 4.0 variants.  http://www.centos.org/

-- 
Cheers,
Rick Moen                      "vi is my shepherd; I shall not font."
rick at linuxmafia.com                               -- Psalm 0.1 beta