On October 17, 2006 12:59:26 PM -0700 Richard Elling - PAE
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Frank Cusack wrote:
On October 17, 2006 10:59:51 AM -0700 Richard Elling - PAE
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The realities of the hardware world strike again.
Sun does use the Siig SATA chips in some products, Marvell in others,
and NVidia MCPs in others. The difference is in who writes the drivers.
NVidia, for example, has a history of developing their own drivers and
keeping them closed-source. This is their decision and, I speculate,
largely based on their desire to keep the hardware implementation
details from their competitors. If you want NVidia drivers for
Solaris, then please let NVidia know.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous. Sun sells a hardware product which
their software does not support. The worst part is it is advertised as
working. <http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/specs.xml>
What is your definition of "work"?
The same as Sun's. Quoting from the URL mentioned above:
"Up to two hot-pluggable 3.5 inch SATA or SATA II, 250 GB
or 500 GB 7200 RPM disks supported."
There are no caveats or notes attached to that claim. BTW, there is
still the IMPI vs IPMI typo on that page, if anyone is listening.
I think we can all agree that more hardware, drivers, and features would
be a good thing.
yup. No argument, there will always be some new hardware that your
favorite OS does not support or does not support completely, or that
has bugs (either hardware or software) which frustrate you even when
said hardware does "work".
But the reality is that everything changes continuously.
The merry-go-round never stops, so sometimes you have to jump on.
Of course. But I'm not talking about the latest and greatest barely
off the production line hardware. For example, I've had a devil of
a time trying to get the LSI 3442-E working on Solaris SPARC (works
on x86 with LSI driver). Sun's driver supports the controller, but
not completely (mostly because IMHO SAS support is immature, not
because of hardware issues). Even though Sun has this exact same
hardware as on onboard controller, I am not upset at Sun for not
supporting the plugin PCI card version as well as they should.
I am talking about hardware that is in its second generation that Sun
does not support correctly, and which it advertises support for. I
made a buying decision based on Sun's advertisement of support (as did
others). I am talking about hardware which Sun should, by all rights,
support.
Incidentally, contrary to your assertions, (Dell|HP|Lenovo) doesn't write
NVidia drivers for MS-Windows either.
Contrary to which assertions? I never claimed anything about how NVidia
hardware is or is not supported. My only claim is that *Sun* needs to
put support for the SATA controller in Solaris, and *I* shouldn't have
to beg the OEM vendor (which Sun doesn't even tell you who it is) to
write a driver. I don't really care if that support comes from NVidia
(like it does for the gfx cards) or directly from Sun, as long as it
is Sun that does the arm twisting.
Similarly, for Linux on the X2100,
you can download the NVidia drivers directly from NVidia or via
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/downloads.jsp
Which, I think, makes my point about Solaris and poor hardware support.
-frank
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