herrold wrote:
> The Adaptec's also work _well_. I installed one this week, and one
> last week, and have installed nothing _bought NEW_ except Adaptec in
> Linux installs this year, with no issues. It is easy to criticize
> with google at hand. Heck, I do it myself <smile>, but usually over
> on the -politics list.
Er, I'm not criticizing based on Google searches or anything else.
All those posts are *MINE* (or colleagues of mine in the same
thread) on different LUG lists. This is not a "politics" deal, it's
about _actively_ supporting Linux which Adaptec didn't start doing
until a few years ago. I shouldn't be criticized for
_supporting_vendors_who_have_always_supported_Linux_!
There have been significant aic7xxx changes over the years, and some
just break things hard. I also remember when Adaptec first started
supporting Linux and they broke the current drivers hard. I also
remember various RedHat (among other vendor releases) that tried to
use different aic7xxx patches only to see them break even more.
Again, most of my issues were with Ultra+ speeds. I have several
2940UW/3940UW cards that work with some driver releases, and not
others. I spent a good 7 days trying to get a 2940UW to work on a
production server with various patches after a kernel upgrade. I
finally said "screw it" and went and got an Advansys card at my
local CompUSA. Worked flawlessly and ended up giving me a 5MBps
performance boost.
> ... I speak as a person who worked with Linux' SCSI drivers since
> the 1.2.13 days, and spent the entire RH 7.1 non-public beta test
> cycle testing older Adaptec cards up to the 160MHz bus transfer
> latest and greatest. Two main trees of aic-7xxx drivers exist in
> Linux. It remains an area of the kernel with ongoing -AC 'commits'
> on a regular basis, fixing the 'corner cases.'
Maybe RedHat 7.x has most of them patched. All I know is that in
the RedHat (among other distros) 4.x, 5.x and 6.x days, it was hell
for me. I usually had to manually patch and go through various
hooplas to get cards working (especially Ultra+).
> There is a full-time staffer at RH ( dledford@redhat.com ), and two
> at Adaptec (one the FreeBSD driver maintainer), specifically working
> through compatability issues.
If you are trying to make a point, you're making mine. There are a
long list of compatibility issues with Adaptec cards, and it is well
documented!
> As I recall there are 19 major variants among their entire product
> line; I test heavily on the HP and Dell OEM lines with a line
> ranging from old Netserver LM 4/66 (yes - 486-66MHz) on ... I run a
> standing query category specifically on open Bugzilla items on this
> driver; I have 34 open showing at the moment on over 200 filed; 15
> that I specifically was in the resolution of. Extreme load, and
> multiple controllers in a single chassis are about all that have
> open issues just now.
And that's great today! What about last version? And the version
before that?
> Don't see ANY bugs filed from the poster quoted. Only see an RFE
> and a bug fixed in Rawhide, on other areas.
I gave up and moved away from Adaptec almost 2 years ago dude. I
was hacking the 2842 driver back in 1995 and finally gave up and
moved to FreeBSD at the time (because Adaptec didn't play licensing
politics there).
> Adaptec hardware works fine in Linux; it is actively maintained and
> supported by the kernel maintainers, Adaptec, and Red Hat.
I never said it wasn't supported by Adaptec and RedHat. I'm just
saying I've had a crapload of compatibility errors. I've gone
through Advansys and Symbios Logic controllers more than Adaptec
ones. I've _never_ had a compatibility error with the former, not
one!
-- TheBS
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org chat:thebs413 Engineer AbsoluteValue Systems, Inc. http://www.linux-wlan.org President SmithConcepts, Inc. http://www.SmithConcepts.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Those living in the US who consider the American flag to be a sym- bol of oppression obviously fail to understand what the word means
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