[SLL] Cent OS 5 Update - Fails to boot

[Glenn Stone]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 05:40:39PM -0400, Jesse Keating wrote:
>On Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:34:01 -0700
>Glenn Stone <technoshaman at liawol.org> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 16, 2007 at 02:20:33PM -0700, Eric wrote:
>> [compile, install, mkinitrd, reboot, pray]
>> >
>> >So each time Cent OS or any distro without my specific driver
>> >support has a kernel upgrade that doesn't include my 3ware card
>> >drivers natively, I'll have to run through this exercise again?
>> 
>> Yep.

>Now go yell at your sales person and any AMCC/3ware person you can get
>a hold of to tell them how completely unacceptable it is for them to
>introduce new cards that aren't supported by existing drivers and
>forcing you into this state.  Until they hear lots of voices they just
>won't care.

Now, hold on a minute.  Linus has made the argument that innovation in the
kernel occurs precisely because you can break API's, etc.  What I hear you
saying is that 3Ware can't introduce a new whiz-bang card that *needs* a new
driver, that they're stuck with the API from 3w-xxxx (or at best 3w-9xxx)
forever and ever amen.

The *real* way to do it is to write the driver for the new card and submit
it to the tree, and keep submitting it (and take patches for it and
otherwise be responsible for maintaining it) and generally participate in
the community.  Of course, the driver *must* be GPL, which requires a
certain amount of corporate foresight, and you're going to need a kernel
hacker either in residence or on retainer... 

I suppose what you could do as an alternative is provide samples and docs as
part of your beta process to folks like Red Hat and Canonical, and let them
get do things for you.... but really really it works better if the guy
writing the code can go down the hall and thwap the engineer doing the ASIC
and say, "hey, dude, whisky tango?"  See also, e100 vs. eepro100.  

It's not so much "don't change nuthin'" as it is "get your code in the tree
alreddie."  3Ware should know better; if they haven't figured out which side
their bread is buttered on by now, it's only going to take one hotshot
little company with the guts to fab a million decent ASICS to take their
business right out from under them.  

And frankly?  I'm not sure how I feel about that.  On the one hand, go
little guy... but on the other, it's sad that a company who's been in the
biz this long has failed to Get It... 

Ah, well.  Lookit Novell.  

-- Glenn, a little bit cynical