[wplug] SLES 9.0 questions

[Vanco, Don]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: wplug-bounces+don.vanco=agilysys.com at wplug.org 
>[mailto:wplug-bounces+don.vanco=agilysys.com at wplug.org] On 
>Behalf Of Pecoraro, Chris
>Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 11:53 AM
>To: wplug at wplug.org
>Subject: [wplug] SLES 9.0 questions
>
>
>Hello all,
>
>I'm a linux newbie, so forgive my silly questions.  We have 
>SLES 9.0 on opteron dual 246 (SMP) (750 gig ATA, 8 gig ram) 
>without the maintenance, and it's becoming almost impossible 
>to keep up with the latest rpms.  Can I really maintain this 
>server without a YAST or subscription, or am I kidding myself. 	
	You're kidding yourself.  The OS was designed around a single
repository.

	I don't have to read any more of this thread to feel certain
that there will be someone there that will mention RPMs "dependency
hell" - even though they don't use RPM.  _every_ OS has dependencies,
and every decent one has a means for resolution.  RPM had a lot of power
if you simply learn how to use it - and where it's limitations exist.
	If you want to run a non-standard package on your Enterprise
installation you'll have to deal with the unsatisfied dependencies.
It's not that big of a deal if you know what you're doing (well, within
reason).  Ferinstance - I run blackbox and tree on all my RHEL installs
- I can't for the life of me see why these 2 tiny packages got nixed (as
they were supported at one time) - but they did, and I happen to use
them a lot, so I deal with the minor squawking of RPM on these machines.
	If you've an unlicensed/unsupported copy of Enterprise Distro X
and want to keep up with the current updates (and SuSE is, by far and
away, _the_ most patched distro I've ever run) you'll have to deal with
compiling / installing from source - which are (under the GPL) freely
available if you can find the ftp server that houses them.  If 'Distro X
= SuSE' be prepared for a second full-time job.
	In the case of RHEL 3 you can actually run RH9 and FC1 RPMs
without too much guff - SLES9 _may_ be able to run the binaries that the
desktop release (9.1??) uses.  Have you tried installing Red Carpet?  No
idea what it can do for SLES (if anything), but it's a much better tool
than YAST on the desktop releases.......

	Odds are very, very high that there's a good reason that package
"foo" is not supported on Enterprise distro X.  If you're using SLES9 as
a desktop OS you're doing it wrong.  Servers don't need Firefox - all
they need is VNC :)

	I'm sure there's also the touting of Debian (all hail God APT!)
and FreeBSD - and I would love to support those options, as soon as
Oracle, Veritas, H-P, IBM, and "name your Enterprise computing company
here" support them..... but it's not even on the radar.  Gentoo is the
same - sure, it doesn't scream at you about unsatisfied dependencies -
it just downloads the 25 additional packages to satisfy them so I can
play Mahjong.  Yeah - I know, apt and yum work on RPM distros, but I've
broken more installs (of FC1 and 2) with those tools than I have with
RPM alone - and once they're broken backing out can be a PITA (something
RPM does quite well, right down to the config file level).  I would love
for RH or SuSE to grab onto those tools and make them a bit more stable
- but it's not possible to do so  without total control of the
repositories - that's why YAST and RHN are tied to them in the first
place.

My $.02
Don