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How One Small Business Switched to Ubuntu
firenurse writes to point out a story in The Inquirer about how one small business switched to Ubuntu. It describes a maddening comedy of errors, a series of circular screw-ups among Microsoft, HP, and a RAID vendor. From the article: "You never quite wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain. Guess what I did today?"
I imagine going the Linux route as a smaller business or individual is going to help a lot -- you have tons of free forums and enthusiasts to help you. In working at companies that used MS heavily, I can see a pattern--the bigger you are, the better service you get. For example, a huge computer chips manufacturer I worked at had several of their employees *on site* at Microsoft. A university I worked at - paying about $250,000/year for a site-wide software license - got less help, but still had inside contacts at Microsoft. And then you've got small/new businesses who may get an email a couple weeks later, if they're lucky.
Is that a secret code that gets you modded up on Slashdot?
Let me preface this by saying I ran almost every testing final release of Fedora. A couple of days ago I was trying to get Slash running on Core 6. A friend of mine said I should really try Ubuntu. We were on IRC, so i couldn't actually hear the tone of his voice, but it seemed to me be a pretty strong emphasis. Like "Try Ubuntu you idiot." :).. Well I did. I went and grabbed the 6.0.6 Dapper Server release. The install was painless. Once I was running there were several things I needed in order build stuff. Namely, build-essential, and things like that. Also Cpan was lets just say, interesting to get right, but it always is.
So anyway. It took 3 minutes to get an apache 3.x series server with mod_perl up. Mysql was a breeze. Once the server was up, I decided to build scoop, just to get better. This is the first thing I had ever tried to build as far as a fairly powerful weblog product. The result? It works! If you doubt me, just click on my url. Now, i was just building scoop to learn. Not really gonna use it I don't think.
The point is, Ubuntu rocks, and the longer term support from 6.0.6 is what I need if im gonna be doing some development. And the kernel aint half bad either. :P
That would have been disappointing even if you got it working.
I get paid by the hour, if you need me.
The latest Slashdot meme.
Big name vendor + non-supported hardware. Any system consultant with a few years of experience should be able to tell you "don't do that".
Actually the guy in the article didn't know what he was doing and tries to blame Microsoft and HP for the mess that his lack of knowledge created.
If he had done this for even once in the past, he would have known what would happen. Very nice of him to practice with his clients' systems.
I joined two users too late.
The difference here is that you were having LEGITIMATE TECHNICAL ISSUES, as opposed to issues created by pencil pushers. Every problem the guy ran into was caused by either a total lack of thought on the manufacturers end (exe and no drivers), or intentional/malicious limiation (F6 driver install disabled, Windows Key issues).
I'm sorry your attempt with Ubuntu didn't work (I had a similar problem with old hardware and the fix was to use LILO instead of GRUB, btw).
However what's interesting is the *differences* between your problems with Ubuntu and what TFA describes as problems with proprietary vendors. With the proprietary vendors, they basically said 'either you use our configuration or screw off'... The hardware, software, and so forth were all designed to work one single way, and if you want to deviate from that, you're on your own.
Your experience with Ubuntu was just the opposite: dozens of people (apparently) gave you lots of different suggestions for what might be wrong and how to fix it. It looks like in your case it didn't work out in the end, but it is certainly interesting how much free support you received for a product you didn't pay for.
We wouldn't have this problem if people could readily purchase machines with $LINUX_DISTRO preinstalled.
And the reason we don't see more of that is because of Microsoft's historic tendancy to punish (or at
least make life difficult for) vendors that try.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Microsoft lost this chain for sure on the server side. If it doesn't think their brain dead policies are costing them money, I am proof positive that they are
Unless he somehow wrangled a refund out of HP for the copy of XP he didn't use, then Microsoft still got paid, thus their "braindead policy" isn't costing them a nickel. They're just making money on a copy of Windows they don't need to support.
On the one hand this guy describes the branch office as "no big deal, done it a thousand times before", then proceeds to use a desktop machine with a 3rd party RAID as a server running XP and is surprised when it didn't work? That's what I don't really get about this article.
I like music
a) Rebooting and reinstalling will only fix it if you made a mistake or you are using a poorly designed flaky OS. If it doesn't work the first time, why would it work a second?
b) Last time I checked, Ubuntu doubled as a live CD. In fact, how are you installing Ubuntu if you can't boot the CD?
c) Official GNU projects have the same poor code quality as MS. Stallman's goal is to take over the world, not produce a workable system. Don't use GRUB if you can avoid it.
d) This is a MS / commercial vendor problem. If you don't like copy protection and people accusing you of being a "pirate" even when you perchased a legit version of their software, then don't use their products. Especially if you are always losing the origional CD.
e) This is what you should have done in the first place. Someone who doesn't understand how computers work should not try to install an OS.
Looks like the poster had a 'real' Windows CD, but the license key he was trying to use was for the brain dead OEM version. Been there, done that. The trick is to transform a real CD into what HP (and all the other hardware vendors) should be including - a Windows install CD that works with the key on the sticker.
So look at the 'pre-installed' media, find the c:\i386\setupp.ini file that should be on the HDD. Build yourself a Windows install CD using NLite (because you should also trim th fat as long as you are going to be in there, along with adding drivers, security patches, etc) from some other source. Replace the setupp.ini file and it will use the OEM key. This won't turn an OEM version into an activation free volume version, but you can go the other way.
Did I mention nlite lets you add drivers to the install media? (grin) A must for those who have SATA drives.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
First of all, its called using the right tool for the right job. When you buy an OEM desktop you get OEM windows, you *CAN* buy the CD for an extra 10-20 bucks with most places and if you register as a reseller you can get much more. (If you're a microsoft partner you can just sell another license through your partner advantage program and use your own cd's/media for install) (free to join program). Finding Media is probably the easiest job of any techie.
Secondly, don't use Windows XP to be a server. It really isn't much more and sometimes cheaper to get a system pre-installed with SBS 2003 R2 and you get Exchange and other features built in not to mention a true comparison against Linux resource/functionality wise.
Terribly inaccurate and to say the least a very inept technician and company at work here.
My biggest selling "managed service" for small/medium sized businesses isn't my linux solution but my sbs 2003 r2 solution because for most people it not only saves money but provides tons of features from easy to configure remote access to sharing in sharepoint to cenralized ad administration/logins/access restrictions to built in exchange and with the advanced version sql server access.
I would never sell someone a desktop as a server solution simply because your selling yourself short. If cost savings was an issue buy a refurb server system and put whatever linux you want on it.
I have been bitten by every single problem mentioned in that article. Bad OEM "revogery disks" and MS licensing restrictions that prevent one from using an alternative install disks are one of the biggest single problems facing those of us that support very small businesses professionally. Say what you want about Dell... at least they include real windows install disks.
However, I have to question the judgement of the author. First of all, what kind of consultant deploys branch offices "weekly" and didn't know about these problems in advance? Anyone with much experience would know about (a) how difficult it is to move windows from one storage subsystem to another, (b) that HP uses bad recovery disks, and (c) that RAID installs require a floppy.
In addition, I question the use of Linux in this situation... perhaps it was his only way out of a bad recommendation to a client, but the problem is that there are *very* few Linux-savv consultants servicing businesses this size. For this reason alone I don't deploy Linux solutions... I can't find subcontractors who can back me up when I'm on vacation or sick, and should I stop working with a client, I don't want to leave them high and dry. Most consultants I know replace Linux servers with windows because they simply can't support it.
Finally, there's a much better way to do what he's trying to do: a NAS appliance. If all you need is some shared storage, printer sharing and the occasional backup, one of the many small business NAS devices out there (Infrant, Snap / Adaptec, Buffalo, etc...) will do so with greater reliability and less complexity than a PC-based server.
-R
Why didn't you post a link to the thread on the ubuntu forums where this whole discussion took place, as you did last time you ranted about this? Is it because you've finally realised that you acted like a complete wanker there? Here's a link.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Thank goodness it's all so easy with Windows! Seriously, WTF? Is this sort of crap standard with Windows?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Not really. You've got two basic problems. The first is that grub didn't work the way it's supposed to. That's a technical problem. The second is that you weren't prepared for the first problem. That's either a failing on your part for not reading carefully, or Ubuntu for not recommending some basic precautions when doing something critical like a bootloader. I haven't read the install docs, so I can't point any fingers. The solution is fixable, either using a LiveCD or a 2K/XP boot disk.
Now if Ubuntu had automatically identified a Windows install, and intentionally excluded it from the Grub boot menu then you'd have a problem more like the ones the author experienced.
I had a same error trying to get Ubunutu running, as far as I could figure when you run the installer the IDE drive your installing to has to be the primary master drive, try install onto a slave, GRUB error 15. Try install with a SATA drive still plugged in? GRUB error 15. Try to install onto a SATA with IDE drives plugged in? GRUB error 15. As soon as the installation is completed you can switch it back.
The again with a debian installation I saw GRUB Error 15 & 18, on some old tired out machines which really did have knackered hard drives.
Microsoft may have an extremly awfull policy on windows disks but its the third party implementation which sucks not neccessarily Microsofts policy. Dell disks are like the HP ones described in the article, perhaps people should be demanding HP to make a better disk? My Medion MCE 2005 disk is a Windows MCE 2005 disk with Medion stamped on it instead of Microsoft (oh and they've modified it to load a Medion wall paper on completion) it installs the full range of XP vanilla drivers and I've seen Acer and Asus disks which act similary. Perhaps we should turn our attention to HP for creating for practical purposes a defunct windows disk rather than Microsoft for wanting the cheap copies of windows to be tied into the machine they were sold with. I don't necessarily agree with Microsofts policy but it seems that other companies don't decide to lock the disk in nearly as much and it was the lock in which made the disk useless.
The article says that you will not receive neither XP installation disk nor a valid XP Product Key. All HP hardware that I have been using have had a rescue CD set, vanilla XP installation CD (although, the CD has HP label) and a Product Key sticker glued to the machine. The Key works with the installation CD, but the activation process has to be done over the phone.
This is the situation in Finland. Does HP have different policies in other countries? I'm just curious to know if there just are different policies in different countries or is this some completely new policy that HP started using just recently?
How is it piracy to use a copy of the same version of the same OS on the same machine from a different CD? I understand that this is an antipiracy measure on Microsoft's part, but it got in the way of legitimate use here, as it not infrequently does.
God damn, stop trolling Ubuntu threads you tool!
Your claims are demonstratively false.
You were rude to everyone in the thread, and most likely had a pirated version of windows to begin with (no install CDs)
In your above steps you say that you downloaded a CD image and burnt it then a few steps later it turns out you don't have a burner. How the hell did you burn it in the first place
Here's a tip, it is very useful to know what version of windows you were running. The steps to fix the install are different if you had Windows 98 or Windows XP.
I swear every time Slashdot posts anything about Ubuntu you rock up and tell the same story. I'm sorry but the reason you didn't get any help was because you are a dick and you didn't provide anyone with any helpful information.
The title of this article suggests he switched all the computers over to Ubuntu when really he just installed it on the RAID server. This seems like it would be very common for small networks.
Personally, I have a UNIX box running file and printer sharing for a few windows computers. No one would ever know I didn't run windows on the server unless I told them. No one who works in the office is going to know he is using Linux or care, they will see XP on their desktops and life goes on. IMO the only way this "story" would come close to qualifying as a story is if his workstations all ran Ubuntu.
Could this be the year of Linux on the desktop?
It certainly was for me. Again.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
Wow. The boot sector of your disk was probably already borked, else you had a bad burn. Did you check the CD for defects (its in the menu on boot) before you installed? Did you run an integrity test on your disk before thinking about installing?
Ok who else doesn't believe the line: "It started out quite simply, a client needed to set up a small branch office, something I do almost every week.", from the article?
I have been a consultant (my own business) working exclsuively with small bussiness for quite some time & before I ever started doign that I'd have told him he was a frickin' moron. HP doesn't support other hardware on their _restore_ CD's, well friggin' DUH! Hey moron how can you not know this if you 'a client needed to set up a small branch office, something I do almost every week'. If you had you'd know this already and wouldn't have screwed with the HP disks at all & would know you need a real OS disk.
After that you blame Promise's CD... Yet lots of vendors do that... Hell lots of motherboard vendors do that! It's why I have a LS120 drive I use that is never installed in systems, but lets me get stuff loaded at that fun part of the install where I have to have a 'floppy type device' to load anything...
Really two things come to mind that sum up the solution to his whole problem: Either convince HP to customize a machine to your needs (and keep their support which you btw killed when modifying their box anyways and is the only real reason to buy from a OEM vendor anyways) or Build the darn box yourself so you can customize it as you want with a real OS CD! Problem solved.
It may be nice Linux 'solved' your problem, but your problem was caused by you for not already knowing what you were walking into.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
My claim is that there was a lack of thought. I was right. Ubuntu did not recommend precautions when using GRUB. The download site did not recommend downloading a Live CD as well. To "highly recommend" GRUB as the "safe" option constitutes a lack of though.
If I had been informed that GRUB's failure would brick my box, I would certainly have preferred booting the Linux partition by telling it to book from the Ubuntu CD at startup.
On the stuff I posted, I'm right. On the tangential issues you brought up, you have a point.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
No. How a business tried to run Linux on a Promise controller. The moment I see Promise and Linux in one sentence it is bad news. I have at least 3 servers with onboard Promises which cannot be used because they fail in a variety of wonderfull ways. 2 high end tyan boards and one Intel OEM board. For two of them I cannot use the binary shite Promise ships as I run Debian with custom kernels and Linux driver does not recognise the contoller at all or does not handle errors correctly. For the Intel board I cannot use any of the following - Promise binary drivers (tried under redhat), Linux built in drivers or the I2O mode and Intel in their infinite wisdom have made RAID mandatory (no way to switch the POS down to a "normal ide").
If I see Promise in the spec (and many small HP servers ship with it) my first reaction is to buy a 3ware or a HPT and chuck the POS out. I have had trouble with either of these, but much less compared to Promise.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Ok,
1) I see your point. Coming from your perspective you've been betrayed by GRUB and Ubuntu. I've had problems with GRUB in the past myself, and until recently have been a staunch supporter of LILO. Have you by chance tried picking that instead to see if it gives you better luck? Occasionally machines have firmware configurations or drive topology that GRUB still just doesn't seem to like. Its far more rare these days but still completely possible. Keep in mind you ARE using an operating system that was not pre-tested and pre-installed for the machine you're using. Unforseen complications can arise.
2) I'm only making a guess but it really *does* sound like you might have a bad harddrive. If the boot sector failed it really could have been working fine with windows for years until you tried to write something new to it, exposing the hardware failure by corrupting otherwise accessible data in the master boot record with a failed write. One way to check this would be to try re-installing windows of course, or any other distro/operating system.
3) I don't like Ubuntu either because its failed me the only two times I've tried it as well. Perhaps your machine is a "fringe case" like mine was. Issues and workarounds (or at least confirmation of non-working status) based on your motherboard's IDE/SCSI/SATA harddrive controller could exist online.
Anyway... Thats all the advice I have for you. I wish you luck.
The business didn't "switch to Ubuntu". That phrase implies that they suddenly stopped using any Windows systems. In fact, they made the much smaller step of converting their servers to Ubuntu. Linux has always been a much easier sell in serverland, because on servers you don't have all the application lock-in that makes it hard to get end users to give up Windows.
* -Never heard of this happening. I think he means HP restore CDs
I guess you've never been a reseller as I have. You get discounts, in exchange for following certain guidelines. One of the programs I participated in required the use of a restore CD in place of actual OEM disks. That was back in the 98/Me days though, I have no idea what the requirements are now for the volume resellers.
* -That's a driver issue. No drivers, no access to weird/different hardware.
True, but not making allowances for servicing the machine is a POOR design decision that directly affects the consumer. It's not like they failed to do something here, they intentionally disabled the ability to F6 and install additional support drivers. It's been going on for YEARS, and is a decision by the manufacturers to encourage replacement rather than repair.
* - Yes, that's called a OEM key. They also have VLKs and Retail keys. Don't pirate.
Brilliant, so as a tech I should have to purchase every one of the 7+ version of XP even though I don't even need the licenses? This ENCOURAGES piracy.
* -Nothing to do with FOSS/MS. I don't think he does this once a week. If so, this is new hardware and it's new to him. Not MS's problem.
It's promises problem, and a minor one. I run into it constantly. It's an easy fix, but WHY should a few KB worth of drivers be bundled in an EXE in the first place?
At one time, my boss was as wedded to Microsoft as they come, mainly because that was all he knew. Over time, that view changed mainly because of the hoops we had to jump through as a small IT business doing things for SMBs, and the unbelievable expense for pointless things with an all Microsoft approach.
;-).
;-).
The licensing bollocks in the article of being squeezed into buying a full copy of XP, or Windows Server, not to mention the excruciating amount of time you spend wading through the treacle, is just the tip of the iceberg, and is not something I see in very many TCO studies
The final straw was Terminal Services, which to this day, is the one thing that pisses me off just about the most with Windows and Windows Servers. You actually need to run a separate service, or even a separate Windows Server, just to track Client Access Licenses (which you pay for) so that users can get access to all their applications. Anything that goes wrong with TS is nearly always licensing related, and has nothing to do whatever with the software itself. The sole reason why this is as difficult as it is is because remote applications like this seriously threatens Microsoft's reliance and monopoly over fat clients, so they got in quick and closed what they saw as a loophole. Their approach is to then make the thin client approach just as expensive and more difficult. Well, f*** off. We wanted to spend our money on things that were going to make things better and actually get us ahead of the loser competition.
I know SBS is held up as this great white hope for IT in small businesses, but I find the whole thing so limiting that we can very rarely give a 'Yes' answer to a client without asking for several thousands of whatever currency you wish before we even start and disappearing for several weeks. I mention these problems we have had calmly to many Microsoft resellers and 'Gold Partner' IT companies and they get very visibly upset, because they just don't know what to say.
As a business, we then went off into a fantastic world of an Ubuntu server running separate VMware or Xen Virtual Machines, remote desktop applications using Nomachine's fantastic NX Server, and with no ridiculous CAL overhead where we could ditch Windows applications, SQL Ledger, Zimbra, Fedora Directory Server and many others. The whole set up we have internally does so much more than a Windows and Microsoft set up does, it just isn't believable.
No doubt I'll get some extremely witty and informative reply to this comment about how someone managed to bork their Grub and Ubuntu installation into not booting. Oh, I see we've already had one
Actually I bet he has many years of experience, but just hasn't done this recently. A few years ago, when you bought a new computer, you would get a real full version windows disk. If this were still true, he would have easily been able to do his job.
However, now because of the way that Microsoft makes its products, it is harder to do what he needs it to do. But this is what Microsoft does. Makes it easier for the masses that don't know anything, harder for the few that do. Windows restore disk, VB, Word, Managed C++. This is what Microsoft does.
If your users want to use Windows, then spend the extra money and do it right. Linux can be made to be easy for users, but Windows will always be a program that Microsoft will try to make money with. Therefore its use will always be geared for that.
1. Microsoft has had this policy in the past, at least for consumer systems. I think they might have dropped it but I know it existed. Even if they didn't- many manufacturers (by their own choice) provide a quick restore CD with few options. He has a valid point that the CD was possibly poorly built, however if it was this way that suggests he was trying to install a server on a desktop/workstation box rather on a box designed as a server. HP makes the (often correct but quite inflexible) assumption that people who buy a desktop won't use it as a server, and plan accordingly.
As for Promise, i dunno, i generally use 3ware/AMCC stuff myself. It's a bit pricier but all the controllers I've gotten from them have at least some dead-tree documentation, a CD (which DOES have a driver) and the windows install floppy.
I keep a USB floppy drive around for this purpose- when installing Windoze on odd hardware, often you NEED a floppy to give it the driver. And most BIOSes or win setup will figure out that a usb floppy drive is drive A: when there is no other floppy.
You're right about the OEM key but that doesn't stop it from being a royal PITA. I carry a windows OEM install cd around with me for exactly this purpose. Remember, piracy is when you steal something that isn't yours. One shouldn't have to do pirate-like cracking to get ones own software to work the way one wants it to.
So to sum it up, yes there are solutions to all this guy's problems and maybe if he was more experienced he coulda found them all. I could probably have made it work given a few hours.
**BUT**
the fact remains that many of these problems (crappy restore CDs, driver disks without drivers, OEM keys) exist because of poor choices by HP, MS and Promise. They all made the (incorrect) assumption that the system would be used only as shipped, in only that configuration, nothing more; and because of that assumption made it difficult or impossible for the user/customer to do so without extra expense.
(the important bit)
AS A RESULT, the customer decided that his life was being made unnecessarily difficult and went with a competing product (Ubuntu Linux) that solved his problems more easily.
To say that again- the customer decided that his problems, however fixable, were a waste of his time and he decided to use a competing product that had fewer problems. That is the essence of a free market, you know the whole build a better mouse trap bit?
If I had hired this guy I would pat him on the back and pay him- he decided that banging his head on the problem was counter-productive and he installed something else that he knew would work and I save money and time, because my solution is deployed faster and I don't have to pay for his time trying to make something work. As long as it doesn't miss some capability I will need later, I would be thrilled.
--IronHelix
I hope Charlie will now demand that HP refund him the pittance they actually give you back when you demand your "I'm not using Windows on this machine" refund, as permitted for in the Windows ToS.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There's nothing like frustration to help one get over the fear of jumping out of the M$ boat and swimming with penguins.
"Desktops are under evaluation, but Microsoft lost this chain for sure on the server side."
Linux desktop migration seems to be a more considered option these days. Vista problems and restrictions are likely to drive more small businesses as well as enterprise customers toward Linux desktop adoption.
I lost my sig...
Even if he did manage to get the HP XP installed with the Promise RAID drivers, he probably wasn't ready to enable 48-bit LBA to handle ATAPI drives larger than 137GB under XP.
I totally agree with you that there are other ways to skin this particular cat. However, the ability to use Microsoft's software to set up "impromptu" servers is part of the reason that Windows is so ubiquitous. A huge part of the Microsoft draw was that it took very little training or knowledge to set up simple file and print solutions for small businesses.
Ubuntu isn't such a bad solution either. It's probably less expensive (and more flexible) than a dedicated NAS. More reliable than trusting the bundled 40G hard drive and an external drive, and way less expensive than SBS.
I sense you're trying to troll.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
All the blame here lies on one company, HP. They didn't ship them a Windows CD which would have fixed it right up. But any good computer tech would have had a Windows XP Pro OEM CD that they could have used to install the OS (Microsoft sends an entire album of current OEM CDs to partners). Sure you would have to call up to activate the OS, but it would have gotten him up and running.
Your claims are demonstratively false.
... oh wait, I did that. I didn't tell them if I had verified the CD image ... oh, wait, I did that. I didn't tell them the results of trying their advice ... oh, wait, I did that. I didn't tell them the GRUB error message ... oh, wait, I did that.
You mean demonstrably false?
Btw, what in that thread contradicts me?
In your above steps you say that you downloaded a CD image and burnt it then a few steps later it turns out you don't have a burner. How the hell did you burn it in the first place
Why are people having such a hard time understanding this?
Computer #1 has CD burner. I burned the install CD with this. Computer #1 is my primary computer.
Computer #2 is from work. This is what I had to use to access the internet and get help. Computer #2 did not have a CD burner.
Having burned a CD from Computer #1 before it was bricked does not imply I can burn one from Computer #2 after Computer #1 was bricked.
Here's a tip, it is very useful to know what version of windows you were running. The steps to fix the install are different if you had Windows 98 or Windows XP.
Really? GRUB's errors depend on what Windows version you're using?
I swear every time Slashdot posts anything about Ubuntu you rock up and tell the same story. I'm sorry but the reason you didn't get any help was because you are a dick and you didn't provide anyone with any helpful information.
Good point, I didn't tell them if I had tried reinstall
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The best strategy for a business is to start your small business with an IT department that can handle your IT infrastructure, and then expand it to what you need. Consultants have to hill-climb; they have to say, "There's a problem here, we'll fix it. If you find another problem (possibly exposed by this fix), call us again." Your own IT department should have documentation and experience with your network, so they know if they do X it will break Y but they can do Z to get Y working properly and move ahead safely.
When you do open source, you have a more interesting plan of motion. It's still a matter of keeping your own IT department trim yet functional to avoid the nightmare of consultant attempts to address narrow problems from a narrow viewpoint; but you can do something interesting with that IT department. Set aside a budget to keep a small number of programmer-software-engineers on hand, and have them focus on "Market Softening in the Business Interests." Simply put, have them work with your upstream maintainer, write code, devise plans, and create applications and features in applications that are good for your business.
Anything such a team would produce has to be public by nature of their work, so they should never be handed any kind of business-critical confidential information; they could safely work with not only the community, but with other such groups in other businesses in some form of "alliance" like everyone likes to form these days. This means that you've not only got a good hand in controlling the market to favor your business; but you've also got both good PR and good business relations with other potential business partners and even with your rivals (rivals can become partners). It creates a less hostile atmosphere for businesses; it's still competitive, but you've only got your competition against you instead of the whole software market.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Yes, it does.
My God! You're so obsessed with this that you created a handle based on the problem. Whatever the difficulty was, get over it and get a life!
According to TFA - the business only installed Ubuntu on the server box. It looks like the rest of the machines are still on XP. Yeah, they are employing a linux distro where vendor/MS licensing failed them, but it's not like they completely went FOSS in the whole organization or anything. This summary is overblowing Linux usage for this particular organization.
I'm sorry to hear about your problems; I hope you give it another shot.
However, to be fair, if everyone had to install Windows themselves, also, I think the majority of the population just would never use a computer AT ALL.
Booting from the CD would load the installation screen, not the OS.
I know because the first thing I did after getting the error was to try to boot from the CD.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
No offense, but you either skipped, or left out, the most important step of the entire procedure, which would be "Read the installation instructions.", and should go right before "Download install CD".
It's hardly fair to blame the software when you didn't read the directions.
Maybe not
I just gave it a shot a few days ago. All I can say is WOW.
If you have not tried Ubuntu, please do. I can't say enough good things about it.
This sounds familiar. I remember a post like this before and I checked the actual mailing lists and I remember you being a complete asshole as people tried to help you. You kept hurtling insults at people who were trying their best to help you and eventually they gave up figuring that you were merely trolling them and didn't really have a problem.
evil is as evil does
Er, yes, yes I did. The install instructions:
1) did not recommend downloading a LiveCD.
2) STRONGLY RECOMMENDED using GRUB as the "safe" option.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have read them.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Also according to TFA, this happened at a small branch office, the parent company is putting Linux on all of its servers, and "desktops are under evaluation" -- IOW, every single computer in the whole company, not just the one server in the branch office, may be switched over to Linux. It didn't mention what company this is or how big it is, but the extent of this may be more than you're thinking.
-Mike
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
This guy is a well known troll. Look at the ubuntu forums (other people have provided links) and see what an asshole this guy was to the people trying to help him.
Chances are the guy didn't really have a problem and he is just trolling either for fun or profit.
evil is as evil does
b) Last time I checked, Ubuntu doubled as a live CD.
So, like every wise guy that offered help, you failed to read the part where I said I did this at a time before they combined them.
You don't understand. Every Linux install CD is a live CD. Not all of them have pretty GUI desktops, but every single one of them is a Live CD. What Ubuntu recently did was put a pretty GUI desktop on their installer CD, but previous versions were a Live CD as well.
When the installer CDs first boot, you're given the option of typing something that will give you a prompt instead of the installer. From there it's possible to troubleshoot the GRUB problem.
It seems no one explained this to you in such explicit terms, which is unfortunate, because I imagine your GRUB problem could have been fixed--sometimes installers screw up on multiple hard-drive systems which, again, is unfortunate. I can see why you had trouble getting help, though--getting mad at volunteers who are trying to help you is quite counter-productive.
Penny - plain text accounting
Dude, you can't slipstream in IDE drivers. Think about it. If you could get the machine to boot then you wouldn't need the extra IDE drivers in the first place, now would you? I reminds me of the episode of Cheers when Woodie bought the VCR (new technology at the time) and Sam asked him how he planned to hook it up. Woodie responded, "No problem Sam, it came with a VCR tape that explains the whole setup."
I suppose he could have built is own OEM bootable windows CD from the OEM HP CD and put in the drivers, but it shouldn't be that difficult. The point of the TFA is that doing something simple, like RAID-ing a Windows Server with the tools provided by vendors is near impossible in a reasonable amount of time.
This kind of talk will win you a mod up on Slashdot.
To the small businessman it defines you as an adolescent nincompoop still writing his missives on the men's room wall.
I can't believe they marked this poast as a troll. It's just a statement of facts (except for the end bit). Welcome to Slashdot where calling people on mindless MS bashing is trolling. Also, anyone that takes The Inquirer seriously needs to go out and by one of those bovine sized salt licks.
If you booted from the CD though you wouldn't be booting your installed Ubuntu. You'd be booting Live. GRUB should have a "press ESC to Edit" thing and you can edit /etc/grub/menu.lst from there. My guess is it's similar to what my computer does. For some reason my hard drive names (hd0 and hd1 to GRUB) are reversed between the part where GRUB defines them and the bootloader. Once I changed the names from hd1 to hd0 and vice versa, it worked fine, and that can be done from the GRUB edit menu found by hitting Esc. Unfortunately, kernel updates overwrite my changes to GRUB (well, it makes sense otherwise how do you boot the new kernel?) so after each one of those I have to re-edit GRUB.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
FYI, the Error 15 (File Not Found) is probably caused because GRUB (when running from inside Linux) has no way to work out which drive will be presented as 'drive 0' when GRUB is run during the boot process. The only real fix for this is to switch to an architecture with a decent pre-boot environment like Sparc, PowerPC, etc. The work-around is to correct the contents of /boot/grub/device.map and /boot/grub/menu.lst and then re-install GRUB.
Anyone who confuses "support" with proprietary software is not working in their client's best interests. Proprietors drop software maintenance to get users on the upgrade treadmill. Proprietors ostensibly act motivated by profit, but users can find computers that do their job well after the hardware is no longer profitable. Consultants ought to promote the use of free software drivers and firmware (or, preferably, no firmware needed at all) so that their clients can leverage the talents of a free market of developers to improve and maintain the software needed to make all hardware work with any system. Separating users from their freedom is not fiscally sound for users.
Digital Citizen
What part of "this was before the two CDs were combined into one" don't you understand?
Considering that he was trying to run XP as a server OS, something only the truly moronic would consider doing (incredibly, he blames Microsoft for HP's shitty restore CD and Promise's shitty driver CD), I very much doubt this sort of thing will be a shining beacon of hope to anyone.
Not that this has anything to do with Vista or Microsoft, and everything to do with one very silly man doing some very silly things indeed.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
One thing: its patsies, HP In this case, HP is not just being MS' patsy, they are serving their own interest. MS didn't request them cripple their customization, they crippled it themselves to encourage any upgrades to be HP supplied, not third party.
The key sentence where everything went to crap: Out came the anaemic 40GB drive from one HP, and in when the Promise controller and two WD 200GB SATA drives. In the first part, he drank the vendor kool-aid and got their customized XP install. That's a valid choice in and of itself. Then he grabbed a third-party controller card and expected the stuff HP provided to play nice with it. HP didn't want him to do that, they wanted him to buy a presumably much more expensive HP branded controller to do the same thing. HP's install CD not accomodating that is hardly a surprise, and hardly a MS decision. The different keys for retail and OEM reflect the different pricing tiers. .
If they are a particularly small business, not going with one vendor is a valid choice, but you best put it together via all-third-party parts and get a generic OEM windows disk. If you can get a no-windows discount on the HP system, and use that discount for a different license, you can go with a non-restricted install media set. You do, however, in this way accept a higher degree of risk (problem determination falls squarely on your shoulders, and your vendors may disagree with your conclusion and blame other parts..). If you run on thin margins and time is not uber-critical for systems, this may be the appropriate path
If you drink the vendor kool-aid and get their hardware and software, you've drunk the kool-aid and as a consequence, you ought buy from HP your upgrades. You can't expect something put together by them to work for hardware configurations they would explicitly not support. This is more expensive if you buy any significant number of upgrades, but that's the course you signed up for by implicitly restricting yourself to their install media. By mixing and matching, you get the negatives of above with respect to support (HP can blame the generic Promise chipped card, and vice-versa), but you pay more for the privilege of support that is compromised by the choice.
I'm a professional linux guy working for a hardware vendor. We invest a lot of time and money in making sure all our hardware works well for given linux distributions. I occasionally have to work with a customer who ultimately admits to third party options in the systems that usually end up the cause of their problem for reasons more purely technical than artificial CD key barriers. I'm a little defensive of this circumstance because even without artificial key measures introduced, this strategy can screw you over regardless of your software platform.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You buy an OEM copy of the OS but then find you can't use it. So you then have to go out and buy a full copy.
How many Windows licences are there out there compared to PCs? must be nearly two CDs for every PC running Windows. Many corporations buy PCs with XP Home and wipe that and install XP Professional.
Your computer wasn't bricked. It could boot, and work fine, just not from the source you were using. A bricked device is one that will not boot at all, or boots only to then fail in some spectacular way. Your use of the term in such a consistently erroneous fashion only marks you as a fool.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
I read through your entire thread on the Ubuntu Forums regarding this problem, and your main problem is that you jumped into the process of installing another totally different OS before taking the correct precautions.
The logical thing to do before installing ANY OS that you aren't familiar with is to read the main parts of the admin guides (or try a LiveCD if one exists), and check the hard drives and installation media your using PRIOR to installing the OS. That's just common sense. You wouldn't drink water out of a pond before you knew it was safe to do so, would you?
You should've also had a backup image of your hard drive prior to the installation, so that you could simply restore it if things went south. Don't whine about being unable to access your data if you didn't care enough about it to create a backup image prior to doing a potentially destructive process as installing an OS. Symantec Ghost is incredibly easy to use, and so are many other free OSS imaging utilities (dd is easy enough for a chimp) available as well. You have no excuse besides your own ignorance, which is commonly typical of users such as yourself.
This all goes down to the phrase, "Check yourself before you wreck yourself."
PS - the reason Windows "worked" on this drive even though it was bad was probably because Windows wasn't installed on that disk, and was being used as just a slave addition. I guarantee you if Windows was running off of that drive (or even it's pagefile), you would've run into some serious issues. Windows (NTFS) is commonly less graceful when it encounters bad sectors/blocks than most Linux filesystems like Ext3 or ReiserFS.
I don't go anywhere to do any work without the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows! As long as the system can support XP (older machines can't, so I have to use the older Boot CD which is DOS-based), I can boot XP anywhere and have numerous utilities available. In fact, my UBCDW has so many antivirus and antispyware utilities on it that I'm thinking of making a couple more CDs with different sets of utilities on it to do other things. I'd do a DVD version, but a lot of people still don't have DVD drives in their machines.
I'm going to add some utilities to several 2GB flash drives and eventually convert one of my older 60GB hard drives into an external USB inclosure and load it up with EVERYTHING - along with a boot CD to access it.
Then - bring it on! I've got over 1600 utilities that can pretty much handle any issue I'm likely to encounter (knock wood, tomorrow I'll run into one I can't...)
Gotta admit, though, the guy was screwed when there were no drivers on the Promise disk. And it is a pain that you can't use a vanilla XP install CD to replace system files in a Systems File Check (although I understand the security reasons for it) or do much of anything else except run a Restore Console.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Slipstreaming is definately the way to go. I did that with my Sister-in-laws OEM copy (dell) and then gave her both discs- the 'old' Dell restore CD and the 'new' dell restore CD. Both worked just fine, just that the new version would install SP2 and all patches up to the date we slipstreamed it.
Yes, it took about 4 hours preparation time, but in the end it was quite worth it.
I don't think MS is to blame for this fiasco.... what do they say? Adjust the nut behind the lense?
Let me quickly relate a recent experience. I installed Slackware on this machine a little while back. It took me two days, including one day to figure out how to set up Apache with a load of modules and Twiki. Kernel compiled, Apache compiled, ready to go.
More recently I had to install Windows XP Pro from an SP1 disk. It took me two days to set up Windows XP Pro with administrator and user accounts and get all my apps updated and working properly (or close enough with some apps running escalated privileges) in user mode.
My conclusion: Both Slackware and Windows are very difficult systems to build from scratch. If people had to install Windows themselves they would be as smart as Linux geeks.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
Ok dude, I read through your posts at the ubuntu forums, all of it. And I agree, most the people there regurgitated the same info over and over, and even asked the same questions that you all ready did answer. BUT the answer to your problem was given, just because it wasn't the answer you wanted, doesn't mean it wasn't correct. Look, you needed some sort of bootable disk to go in and make corrections. It could have been a floppy disk or a cd, it doesn't fucking matter, anything to fix the mbr would have worked. You can go to a god damn library and download it if you have no friends or family's computer to use. You kept saying "if they make something that has the ability to lock you out they need a backup to fix it" (paraphrased) or some such. Well, Windows has similar issues; if you get a stop error, try to boot up into safe mode and still receive the stop error, what do you do? OMFG you get a Windows disc to boot off of!!!! WHO KNEW!!??? Also, you were an extreme dick on the forums, sure, the help wasn't top notch, but neither was your, emo angst filled, responses.
When the installer CDs first boot, you're given the option of typing something that will give you a prompt instead of the installer. From there it's possible to troubleshoot the GRUB problem.
Oh, okay, so this is a more subtle failure to read my post than I had previously though. See this part:
That was me using it as a Live CD, but without using the magic words. It failed too, as you can see.
Inform the others.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
The small businessman I just signed a contract with told me he'd switch to Linux in a heartbeat if it ran the Adobe software he needs to convert media - he explicitly said "Windows is not reliable." He has a software background, so he's a bit smarter than your average clueless CEO, I'll grant you.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What's wrong with an old box as a server?
A server is something that... serves. It doesn't necessarily imply a 4U monster with 4 CPUs, 16GB RAM, and 8 drives in RAID. There are plenty tasks for which using any old box works perfectly fine. A print server usually doesn't need anything very fancy.
Yep. Right up to the point where the "small businessman" has to face the realities of dealing with Microsoft's current licensing policy.
The problems described in the original article are, mostly, caused by Microsoft's attempts to artificially segment a market so that Microsoft can extract the most revenue from those segments.
Which is why the Ubuntu installation went so easily. It wasn't designed to segment the market. It doesn't matter who is installing it or on what hardware (as long as it's recognized) or what version and there is no unlocking code.
So, yes, being blunt about Microsoft's practices does make you sound like "an adolescent nincompoop" to anyone who is not aware of the facts. To anyone who does understand (and has experienced them first hand), it is nothing more than bluntness.
Read it again. I was able to navigate the drive and execute commands. I followed their instructions to do so early on and told them the results. My question about what to do after that command failed, was ignored.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Really? GRUB's errors depend on what Windows version you're using?
Well, yes, they might. If you are trying to integrate the products. You see, when you integrate products, you need to know what product you are trying to work with. If you were just formating your drive, then you would have a right to complain. Since you were not working with Ubuntu clean, your outrage seems misplaced.
Lastly, it is unwise to try doing any kind of OS install without having the tools to restore the system to it's original state if something goes wrong. Perhaps you did not know this, but it is sound advice for any OS changes you may do in the future. That includes Windows upgrades. Of course, if you loose your Ubuntu install disks, you can either download them again, or have a new one sent to you at no charge. If you loose your Windows install disks, you are out of luck as you found out.
Is this situation improved on EFI machines?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If he needed a print server he would not have installed a RAID array with DVD backup solution. A server needs to be reliable and cheap hardware is NOT reliable.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
In that case, I apologize. Your post seemed to be fairly detailed, and it didn't mention reading the instructions.
I don't use Ubuntu, but in their defense, GRUB is usually the best approach, except when it doesn't work ;-)
Maybe not
And there IS NO free version of Acronis. The Acronis 7.0 offer was only if you got a certain European PC magazine and could access the Acronis site for a free serial number.
See here: http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/11/acronis-true-i
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Your computer is not "bricked" anymore than a car with a flat tire is bricked. You can either recover your windows MBR with a windows install disk, hell, borrow one, Or you can fix the grub install with a live CD/Flash drive. You are just being stubborn about this, no one listens to you because you have it set in your head that Linux is bad, and you need to tell everyone how bad it is.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Promise's driver for Linux worked great for me under Slackware 10. Then I upgraded to 10.1 and on up as each version came out. Only way I found to get my Promise card to work was forcing the kernel to load a really old binary driver for an old kernel. It refused to work with the open source drivers, and Promise's refused to link in with a newer kernel.
I think next time I'll just get a lobotomy and an Adaptec SCSI based storage solution.
Sometimes when I'm working on projects things disappear, I suspect gremlins.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
I do technical support for windows systems and I have come accross simular problems with windows machines. Sometimes they are hal.dll missing or corrupt the odd time the drive looks like its failing when its not. What this looks like if your comparing windows to linux(wtf am i doing)is that a sector on the drive could have become corrupt and that when you re-installed windows it could have fixed that sector. I have ran diags on drives and after doing a debug on the drive and re-installing the error went away. This is after it looks like the drive has failed. Just because windows worked on the drive after fixing the computer, doesn't mean that the error is not there. I have also came accross drives that were failing but would let you install windows/copy files to it for months before it died. Assuming from the error that you got in the thread that it couldn't read the problem might have something to do with either of those issues. If you had the same problem with windows I would have got you to boot to the windows OS CD so that I could run a chkdsk on the drive to fix it up. But when someone said that you should do this for linux you freaked out that there was a problem.
The fact is, is that there were solutions out there but when people were asking you NORMAL trouble shooting questions you freaked out because you wanted it to work right then. This isn't normal. I have worked with alot of people and only a handfull of them have ever had an episode like you did, and most were able to calm down and work on the issue. Most of the people you were saying ubuntu is crap to were not techs they were people who installed the OS who enjoyed it and wanted you to have a some joy with it as well. They arn't robots and may not have read that you did not have a burner in the other computer. But on that note did you not have any friends that could not burn the disk for you? Or no computer at work? Also most public libraries have computers with burners. Your lack of trying in this area(or at least you didn't convay it) was one of the reasons why people were no longer helping you.
As for why they wanted to know what OS your were running I don't know why they wanted to know, maybe to see if it was one that ran on an NTFS or FAT system as you could make a boot disk for fat32(which might have been able to help with options) but making one for NTFS isn't as easy.
The reason people are modding you down isn't because you had a problem with ubuntu its because you say this happens to everyone and the few people who helped you were the exceptions. You also state that they were mean or crule to you but most of your ranting has to do with them asking you something more than once or the fact that they wanted to know what OS you were running. So you went to bash the whole ubuntu comunity based on a group of people who were unpaid who did not help you in the way that you did not find acceptable(but was if you have ever been on a forum).
http://www.driverpacks.net/
Does your incredibly snide and degrading tone get you far in life? Because it doesn't work on the internet. Maybe you think you're being witty or something but you just come across as an angry jerk.
in a decade of using linux I've never come across a more helpful and patient community than Ubuntu. If you ask questions politely and provide the information that's requested, instead of acting like you are smarter than everyone else and you don't think their question is relevant, you might find you get a little bit more useful information. Just a tip.
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
It's sort of a toss-up. Some people care if it has Windows and all the applications. Others just care that it does email and book reports and porn.
This article was obviously written by an absolute amateur. There are almost no facts at all in the steaming pile of rhetoric.
Does this man ever shutup with his whinging and moaning?
FFS. Yes it's stupid. But all you needed to do was just use the original drive or any ATA drive for that matter thats not attached to some proprietary RAID controller for a boot drive, install the promise drivers via their stupid tool and it all just would have worked.
He needs to be hit with a clue-by-four.
What I don't understand about this story:
"noticed the second problem, the #($ing Promise CD doesn't have drivers on it! No, I am not kidding, they ship the card with a CD, but that CD has no drivers on it! Honestly."
The guy is mad because he doesn't have the drivers on a CD (so much so he writes up an article on-line about this fact) but he never bothers to hit up Promise's website to download the drivers.
I'm all for people using whatever OS they need to get the job done, but this article seems a bit dodgy. If the client wanted XP for a file server, then buy him a copy of the OS and invoice him for it (or call HP and tell them your needs and see if they have a different install disk). I'm sure the extra XP license would cost less then paying this guy to fart around for a couple hours attempting to install XP from a restore disk.
If Ubuntu will work for him, fine, use that.
But why install Ubuntu and write up a mini-rant just because you don't have the basic skills to download some drivers on-line.
My studio - www.graylands.ca
And if you're the consultant/contractor, you can do things like having the Linux server email its logs to you, every day.
Or even write a short script so that it checks in with your site every day or hour or minute or whatever. Of course, since your site is running Linux, you've already scripted it so it will page/call/email you when any machine misses its scheduled checks. So you can call the client and ask if there's something wrong at that site. Did they lose power? Is it on fire?
In case of a real server problem, you already have all the text-based configuration files and a list of the installed apps so you can get their box up and running quickly and then recover their data from their backup tape (which was also emailing you every day letting you know that it was happy).
Where this breaks down is the Windows servers running software that is only available for Windows and that does not support such automated reporting or configuration archiving. I hate the registry.
Actually I don't think it's entirely a piracy issue as also a security issue. If you allow someone to install system components from a CD that isn't the same as the one you installed originally, how do you know what's being installed? Granted, that doesn't solve the issue of streamed CDs, but again that's more of a piracy issue. Also granted, the system that's running a System File Check could equally check the components being installed from a vanilla CD, so there's really no good reason for not allowing another licensed XP CD from being used in that situation. That's where I really get pissed off - you can't run a System File Check if the client doesn't have the original CD.
In other words, Microsoft has simply done what they aalways do - in the guise of being "user friendly", they've complicated their systems beyond anybody's ability to use or maintain. This is NOT "user friendly." Anybody who thinks Windows is "user friendly" hasn't a clue.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
...Biting back my fervent desire to throw this mess out of a window, get a gun, and go to Redmond... Man! I know that feeling. You have my deepest sympathies.The one thing I suppose one could criticize the guy for is not having a backup set of Promise drivers on him when he reported to the site. Nowadays, if I have advance warning of hardware needing installation or fixing, I go to the manufacturer site in advance and download documentation (if any), drivers, utilities, etc. I'm learning not to rely on stuff being on the client's site - if they haven't lost it, it may never have existed in the first place. The only time I don't do this is if I know there is a working Internet connection on site that I can use to get the stuff when I'm there (on the client's time rather than mine.)
Good call on the USB floppy, too - I should get one - AND a USB DVD drive (some people STILL don't have CD drives - or they don't work right!) Actually I'm fixing to take one of my old 60GB hard drives, put it in a USB enclosure and use it to hold everything I need, using a boot CD to get a working OS and access the drive.
HP has a history of treating their consumer PCs as disposable rather than maintenable items. I recall when Windows 2000 came out, HP decided to not support it AT ALL on their consumer PCs because they decided it wasn't a "consumer OS." So you couldn't install 2000 on an HP machine that originally ran Windows 98 - a lot of people tried and failed according to the HP forums. Hell, for one client, I couldn't even get a vanilla Windows 98 to reinstall on an HP machine that was originally running Windows 98! THAT was a pisser! I ended up installing Red Hat 7.3 which blew onto the machine with no problem. HP sucks in general for this sort of thing - I would never recommend any of their stuff to anyone for that reason alone.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
(This was before they combined them, geniuses.)
In other words, Ubuntu actually thinks about the user's needs in advance and fixes them, while Microsoft (as described in the article) does nothing of the sort.
which would make sense if he used it for something which
a) was critical (in the sense that a crash would kill/destroy/whatnot)
b) couldn't be done on, gee let's say, MacOS
c) oh doesn't crash on MS unless you do weird stuff to it
It's the same as arguing that your secretary would be better of on the latest ubuntu release over XP/Office. In a perfect world yep, but given that won't use any of the added security and stability isn't a big problem when just running one application (unless the application is the problem itself, which wouldn't improve on a different platform).
You didn't specify what type of media and which Adobe application we are talking about. And yes it does matter in the sense that alot of "media" can be converted by FOSS and one or two of the Adobe applications does run on Linux (according to various websites).
Sounds rather overkill and expensive to use Adobe's creative suite to just convert stuff...
The point of this post, is not to troll you or your employer, but to point to the fact that not everything improves just by a change of platform.
>*Microsoft has a policy where the vendors can't ship you a Windows CD so instead they have to send you a series of restore CDs.
> -Never heard of this happening. I think he means HP restore CDs
HP _is_ the vendor... I think you misunderstood.
>*The #*(&$ers at HP made it so the brain dead restore scripts would not see any hardware other than the parts they shipped, and it would not
>recognise the Promise controller.
> -That's a driver issue. No drivers, no access to weird/different hardware
Looks like you have some common ground:
>Fair enough, it isn't HP's duty to recognise everything, that would be well beyond anything I expected.
>*If you have a copy of XP to use, guess what? The key that comes with the HP box is restricted to the version of Windows on the restore CD.
> - Yes, that's called a OEM key. They also have VLKs and Retail keys. Don't pirate.
Uh huh; and I should add that obviously a pirate wouldn't care about using the key on the COA.
>*That is when I learned half of the problems with Promise, the CD it provides is not bootable and contains nothing resembling a tool.
> -Nothing to do with FOSS/MS. I don't think he does this once a week. If so, this is new hardware and it's new to him. Not MS's problem.
You're getting warmer.
>So this tech can't get Windows to work, installs Ubuntu, and tells the customer "Tada".
>Excuse me!!! We have unneeded licenses,
That's not an issue! Not using licenses bundled at no additional cost doesn't waste anything on the buyer's part.
>an incompetent tech
Why do you think the tech is incompetent? He got the job done. Maybe that was a bit of hyperbole and you really meant "non-expert"? In that case, I will have to agree, but I must warn you that expertise is hard to nail down in an immature industry that pays little attention to training. And I don't mean that just with respect to HR; even the core knowledge of the "expert" is up in the air. My idea of expertise here is knowing to skip using the bundled Windows license entirely. I'd guess that most of the Slashdot crowd agrees with me. But I can't be sure if that's what you had in mind.
>and hours of wasted install time due to the previous mentioned items.
I'm not sure how long it takes you to attempt to boot from a CD, swap a hard drive in and take a look around, and do an Ubuntu install on up-to-date hardware, but if you measure it in hours, well I hope you get paid by the hour. =)
>Fire this guy.
I'm not sure how you fire a contractor for a one time job that is complete...
>Decide if Ubuntu works,
Clearly it will.
>if so, great, get your money back from the licenses,
I urge you to enter the real world. ("Here's your $0, sir.")
>and if not then get a competent tech in there.
If you ask me, the only real mistake the tech made was not making sure to get proper drivers for the RAID controller in advance. They're all easily available online.
Yes, I know there is a way to use the bundled windows install with the RAID hardware: install the RAID driver on the previous Windows install and then image that partition onto the RAID array and swap the volume IDs. But I'm not going to knock the tech for not using it, because it's time consuming and not maintainable (e.g. no way to run the system restore tools from CD, etc.)
Let me get this straight, just so I know I'm not reading this wrong:
Customer asked for:
A new branch office (presumably they have others) with a handful of Windows workstations and a Windows file server
Contract IT guy gave them:
Some Windows workstations and a Linux file server because he couldn't get Windows working
Customer's head office presumably said:
"You're fired. We'll get someone who *can* give us what we asked for. If we want to use Linux will ask for it."
Instead of imaging the partition, he could have used Autostreamer to slipstream the XP install CD with the RAID drivers (once he got them), then burn a new CD (IF there was a burner available with burner software), then do the install. Probably would have been a bit faster than imaging. OTOH, maybe slipstreaming wouldn't work with the restore CDs? I haven't tried that yet for anybody.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I hate to break it to you but no one is obligated to provide you with free tech support. If you're such a genius and everyone else is a retard then fix it yourself.
Starting out a request for a favor with:
Before you make this even more frustrating for me:
Is a real dick move.
Snide remarks like:
But it's my fault, really. I should never have believed all that crap about "providing access to all".
Aren't making you any friends either.
Let me make this more clear for you:
The problem in this case is clearly between the keyboard and the chair.
Life is too short to proofread.
First, it had nothing to do with the vendor "seamlessly" supporting new hardware. It had to do with the vendor providing the basics for being able to maintain the system at all - i.e., an OEM install CD for the OS that wasn't crippled (no F6 driver install capability), and no drivers on the RAID cd (from the other vendor).
Second, you're correct - a NAS device would have been better - even an external USB hard drive. However, we don't actually know that the consultant bought the hardware - this could have been supplied by the client on their own initiative and he had to work with what he had. Small business clients do this all the time as any small business consultant knows.
Third, suggesting even SBS for a 4-workstation office is idiotic.
Fourth, the point of the Ubuntu install was to be a file server. They won't be running Windows apps on it, so your last point is irrelevant.
So, no, thank you for playing.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I was helping a friend get set up with a new computer. It's a sweet, sweet box from HP: Athlon 4200+ X2 processor, 1GB RAM, DVD burner. It's an HP Pavilion a1647c-b, and it cost US$900 (which included a nice widescreen LCD display with both analog and DVI inputs!). I upgraded it with a passively-cooled nVidia 7600GS graphics card, so it's now using the DVI input on the LCD display, and the display looks great.
I wanted to install Ubuntu on it, but I haven't done so yet. Here's why.
It turns out that the system doesn't come with an XP install CD. No surprise, Microsoft requires OEMs to provide "recovery disks". But it turns out that the system doesn't come with recovery disks either! It comes with a utility for burning a custom set of recovery disks. The manual says you are permitted to burn exactly one set of recovery disks.
It turns out that you need 18 blank CD-R disks, or 3 blank DVD+/-R disks, to burn your custom set of recovery disks! So I went home without installing Ubuntu.
The next day he bought a stack of DVD+R disks, and I went back. The recovery disk utility took a long time to burn the first disk, and then it said "verifying" and sat there, indicating 1% progress. So I left again without installing Ubuntu. He left it running and it never did finish.
So now he has a Windows system that he doesn't dare use, because if it gets messed up, there is no way to restore it. He told me he would call HP tech support but I haven't heard back from him.
By the way: it would have been easy to install Ubuntu before the first boot-up. I booted an Ubuntu CD and used it as a live CD, and looked over the hard disk without modifying it. Initially there was a 20GB partition and a whole bunch of empty space. On the first boot, the Windows system expanded the NTFS file system to fill the whole bunch of empty space. If I had just created a couple of partitions at the end of the empty space, I'm pretty sure that Windows would have left them alone, and then it would have been trivial to install Ubuntu. (Of course, if I had done that, I would have had a nagging worry that the recovery disk fiasco was somehow my fault. Because I didn't touch the machine before first boot, it's clear that the recovery meltdown has nothing to do with me.)
I was tempted to just grab a copy of XP and do a full re-install. But this particular system came with XP Media Center Edition, and I have no idea where I can get an install CD of XP MCE (or how much it would cost).
I'm half-tempted to buy one of these systems, though, because it was a good value for the money, and Ubuntu recognized all the hardware, right down to the flash card reader.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Of course he expected the new configuration to be supported seamlessly...
Ubuntu did.
Dunno. I would say "Linux on the desktop" happened some time ago already, it is just not that loud a thing for people to have noticed.
Basically, if 3 years ago I couldn't really recommend Linux desktops for people, now I am pretty confident that for 80% of what I think as typical office use it works very well.
As it is, at work I can run all the desktop stuff on Ubuntu Linux - I have Openoffice, use Exchange via web client, etc. At home I use Windows for the sole reason that some of the games I play aren't ported to Linux (World of Warcraft, anyone?).
The exceptions where developers/vendors haven't thought about Linux yet, are some specific programs which only have been developed for Windows -- a typical example would be accounting software. Such things probably could run under some emulation layer, but of course that is not optimal.
I'm sorry I didn't read all of the comments, but didn't microsoft make their money and run type of thing. At the end of the article the guy said Microsoft must be loosing money because of "brain-dead" policies.
But he has a valid Microsoft license, that came with the computer, and the system is already paid for. So Microsoft made their money, and now doesn't have to support their system. Even if the business won't go with Windows servers in the future, the way they seem to purchase hardware would seem that they will continue recieving pre-built computers with windows, then install linux on it. HP and Microsoft will continue making money without really loosing the business.
Just my thoughts on the subject anyways.
Ubuntu still uses syslinux for CDs?
... also Solaris 10 uses grub on their install CD...
I moved to grub for my live CDs
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
This guy gives all wannabe computer consultants a bad rep.
1.) NEVER EVER TEST ON A CLIENT'S SYSTEM
- You should test on your own equipment to see how hard the controller is to setup etc. CLient's systems are handsoff. Preferably you pre-setup the raid controller and initialize the raid controller ahead of time. Doesn't waste your time onsite, and if you want to make extra cash, you can bill client for it while you working on other projects.
2.) Whitebox OEM copies of XP are different than HP/Dell/IBM copies. They're the same OS, but the licensing is different.That's one of the reasons those systems are cheaper than a regular whitebox system - Microsoft gives them a special copy of Windows, without the media and the license that states you only get a recovery cd preloaded, not a full copy.
3.)
It actually has nothing to do with Microsoft sorry to say :(
User bought a proprietary hardware box, got a guy who thought he knew what he was doing.
I wonder how long the client was down/unable to use or access files because of this guys lack of knowledge and foreplanning?
I personally would have recommended a Linux machine from the start, BUT it could be done on a windows 98/2k/xp machine just as well if the person implementing it knew anything.
Please, i hope you dont call yourself a computer guy. You give a bad rep to everybody in the industry :(
move along, nothing to see here.
There are several different versions of Windows XP, with different capabilities, but I'm guessing his problem is not OEM vs. retail, it's XP-Home vs. XP-Professional.
I've reinstalled a few machines using a retail XP-home disk with the machine's OEM XP-home key, and never had a problem with it. Even WGA is happy.
OTOH trying to install XPpro (OEM or retail or vlk) using an XPhome key won't work. Neither will trying to install XPhome with a Win98 key. If you try to install more than you paid for, don't expect any help from MSFT...
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
It worked fine with Linux. He couldn't get the Promise controller to work with Windows. That was the problem.
Another question is, why didn't he leave the 40GB drive in there for the OS? Then he could have installed the RAID driver just fine. It doesn't matter so much if the OS drive fails; all the data's still there.
Again, HOW DO WE KNOW HE BOUGHT IT? Maybe the CLIENT bought it and stuck him with it.
Small business clients do this crap all the time. THEY'RE the ones that want everything for a dime.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Bullcrap. For the needs of FOUR workstations, one workstation outfitted with RAID disks is quite adequate and will be as reliable as any Microsoft server - as long as nobody futzes with the XP OS by installing anything else (the same applies to any Microsoft server OS).
The DVD burner is irrelevant - that was for simple backup purposes.
Personally I thought the RAID was overkill - he should have used a NAS box. But again, how do we know HE bought the hardware? The client might have decided all this and he was stuck with it.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What's wrong with taking the easy way out? It's easy, but it's also effective, gets the users better support, will be more reliable, and is cheaper to upgrade.
I'm not entirely certain that it was worthwhile to put the server's OS on the RAID, though, so the tech could easily have solved the problem by leaving the 40GB drive in the computer. Ah well.
upgrading an old box rather than buying a new one is that one knows what parts one is putting into the box... like putting a $45 (on sale) PSU into the upgrade instead of the $10 PSU that might come with the new machine. Which is why I just put $360 in parts into my 1999 ATX box instead of buying new. (motherboard, DDR2, virtualization-ready Athlon 64, new PSU)
But this is a strategy for a tech-savvy individual, not an organization.
The backup strategy I use is a mirror drive in a mobile rack (UNPLUGGED when not in use) imaged originally via dd (plus playing games with LVM) and updated via rsync every other day, and a monthly archival DVD backup. I think this gives one a better chance of getting everything back quickly than separating the data and OS. My last bare metal restore took 15 minutes... I just pulled out the dead drive, put in the backup, then went to Maxtor to file an RMA on the dead drive.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Post this crap as "Anonymous Coward" rather than have your potential customers know that you're a Micro$hill.
Assuming that your profession is technology rather than astroturfing, of course.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Guy tried to install Ubuntu using all the help already given via the website
I think you need to go read that thread again. It's pretty clear that this is not the case. There are screwups such as believing that a bit-for-bit compare of a downloaded file to another copy from the same download is the same thing as verifying an MD5 sum.
This guy was a arrogant dickhead from the get go.
I tried installing Ubuntu once to precisely these same problems.
Perhaps because you're the same guy Mr. Anonymous Coward.....
However, if you want people to USE your systems and BOOT your OS you damn well better provide fucking support and you'd better be damn cheery about it or you can expect your distro to die pretty quickly if NOBODY CAN INSTALL IT PROPERLY.
Boy doesn't this tone sound familiar....
Let's see:
Sarcasm and dickishness.... check
Crazy sense of entitlement.... check
"sky is falling" comments regarding linux... check
As I said, problem is between keyboard and chair. The vast majority of us are doing just fine.
If you'd like to join us, I suggest you read How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.
As someone else has already pointed out, it's simply amazing how many of these guidelines this guy violated in his post.
Life is too short to proofread.
with (a fast processor and enough memory and swap), I doubt that anyone is going to notice the difference between VMware Server running Quickbooks in a Windows VM and Quickbooks on a native XP box. . . except that the Linux box will be stabler.
So far, the only thing I haven't been able to run on VMware Server is Quake 1.
I've been running desktop Linux on the machine I do business with it for years. I'm pretty happy about it, except if I happen to be trying to plug in a new peripheral. (at that point, I suddenly start wishing I was running OSX... but I usually get over it)
Tech Public Policy stuff
Well that's just 'cause ubuntu kinda sucks. I've never managed to get it to install on my computer either. Installer won't even boot. Try Mandriva, that's a real nice one. Slackware ain't bad either if you're willing to do some more work on it.
while the subject is all I actually have to say, certain brain-dead software around here insists on text in the body of the post.
Tech Public Policy stuff
How do we know he didn't know it? Just because he wrote the article as a rant doesn't mean he wasn't previously aware of this situation.
Again, as I've said, the hardware could have been provided by the client. What he was ranting about was having to deal with the situation.
He could have slipstreamed in the RAID drivers, sure, but he would have have to do it on another PC.
Also, again, recommending ANY Windows Server OS for a FOUR-WORKSTATION office that just needed a central place to access files is just overkill.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
All you gotta do is ask the company to send you one. Dell does it. I'm sure that HP does, too.
And if he had a running windows install, the promise would have worked fine there too. The problem is that promise cards are generaly junk compared to other solutions availible. This isn't anything to bash promise either. I guess the situation arises when promise sell host process controler cards as hardware controller cards were you actualy need a driver to run them. In a true hardware controler card, you wouldn't need any drivers to "work", simply telling it the conection settings and any block device controler should be able to access it in at minimum 16bit mode but generaly 32bit also. (in other words the generic harddrive drivers present in windows or linux should be enough)
I knew he was in for a trip though, he could have got the windows to work if he had done something differnent,
First, instead of pulling the drive and starting from scratch, he should have used something like ghost or partition magic, installed the raid controler and formated the drive in the array he wanted, then copyied the working system over. On rare ocasions you will need to changed the hardware identifyer tag in the bios that gives the drive a persitant label or the setting that locks the registry string from being changed in before you log in. If they run across this problem the error code displayed will point them to the corect information to change.
After this, remove the old drive, leave the new drives in and boot. Find another drive with ample storage space and make an image using your favorite imagine tools. Now use this as the recovery cd in the future. Remeber to rerun the image after making hardware changes, installing service packs and such.
I have went through what the article described in the past but used a different linux distibution. Because of some obscure program the company ran, It had to be changed back to windows. And yes, they paid for a new *full* license for 2000 advanced server (ouch). But it was running fine for several weeks until someoen decided to move offices because it was closer and he needed the arcane program installed. The sad part is that they decided to upgrade that software about a year later and when the server that originaly housed the service died a few months after that, it was replaced with a linux desktop machine acting as a server and apears to be running faster then the other servers.
This probably belongs well up in the replies, but I can't scroll through any more discussions about Ubuntu (call me lazy :)
I ran into the problem of incompatible keys while working on two Dell desktops.
Neither machine would boot from Dell's own Windows XP Home Edition CD, and of course the key on the Dell COAs would not work with an OEM CD, which would boot.
So I downloaded the install floppies from Microsoft. The six floppies would not boot the Dell CD either, since the CD label differs from the OEM CD, and even though I eventually was able to get the system running from the Dell CD (do not ask me how, I do not remember, mostly due to the frustration of the whole situation and the time spent) the Dell key would not work, apparently due to the difference in the boot floppies.
Microsoft will not help because the CD is OEM (and Dell Special OEM at that,) and Dell will not help because the computers are out of warranty. So I had to tell the owner that the only way for me to get Windows installed on the computers was for him to buy the operating system he already owned. I told him just to buy the upgrade, and I fudged it with a Windows 98 OEM CD I have.
I really do not care that this technically violates the licensing agreement: he owns the operating system already and should not have had to purchase it again. Microsoft can kiss my ass for making my job so much more difficult. And for that matter, so can Dell.
AHMEN Brother, I've done a lot of editing from GRUB and most of that pain and suffering was caused by the change from DevFS to Udev at least for me, I keep a working version of memu.1st stashed as menu.1st.works to save time after kernel updates.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
If you read the article, the server software was setup to Linux, not the entre small office. It's not unusual for small or large offices to run Linux. My company has many Linux boxes even though this is a primarily Microsoft House. I have much love for each. The ease of use and the support structure of Microsoft, and the grass-root support and stability of the Linux systems.
:-)
As an aside, one of the funny things that we do is run Linux boxes with virtual Windows Servers on them. I don't think that Microsoft ever envisioned that.
These days, not many manufactureres include any kind of recovery disks, though there are a few. But what you WILL see, is that everyone who DOES include SOMETHING (except Toshiba, who uses a Ghost image) includes a disk with ONLY THE OS. As for your key not working, MS uses different a algorythm (i should hang for butchering that) for each XP Version. OEM XP Home, OEM XP Pro, OEM XP Media Center, Retail XP Home, Retail XP Pro, Corporate XP Pro, OEM XP Home Service Pack 1, OEM XP Pro Service Pack 1, etc. etc. etc. So no, that key on the side of your machine is not going to work with the "Disks you have lying around". I have to wonder, with you so eager to jump to Ubuntu as a "solution", why do you have so many XP disks laying about?
Anyway, the no floppy thing does suck. Setting up a RAID these days on OEM machines is a nightmare, but only because it's very much a pain in the ass (XP is 5 years old, OEM machines no longer have floppy drives, etc.), but is is definitely doable. What I'm wondering though, is what you were using XP as a server for, and where you aquired this machine. And why would you be using an OEM retail (kinda sounds like this is the case) machine as a "Server" anyway?
Interestingly enough this reminds me a lot of a sale that I was recently asked about. A gentleman wanted to set up a server for his office, with 3 clients. I talked to him for quite a while. Retail machines are cheap, and depending on the exact needs, they may work well. But for christ's sake, don't be an idiot setting it up. And don't blame the companies for your ignorance. Gawd that pisses me off.
I was discussing this with a friend and we found it kind of odd that he would remove the 40 gig drive from the 'server' designated desktop. Wouldn't it have been ideal (and easier) for him to use the default installation of windows on that drive and then raid his two serial drives and the promise controller? Then all the file server functionality is limited to the serial drives which are OS free - allowing the OS to act more independently and removing a possible failure condition.
It seems to me that this file server is nothing more than a couple of network drives with a low level raid anyhow. I guess this guy really wanted a 40 gig drive for another project. What is a 40 gig drive worth now, 20 bux?
Somehow it is funny: when we try to be nice and offer you a boot-loader, leaving your existing system fully intact, even adding your existing system to the menu, you don't say 'thank you !', but cry if it doesn't work one time or another. But when Microsoft blatently overwrites anything that was there before, does not even bother to ask about installing its boot-loader into the MBR; of course without adding your other operating system to the menu, you guys don't yell at Bill. You graciously accept as fate what the gods had in mind for you.
Don't you think, we could do a syslinux-thingy for you as well ? Not asking, just overwriting your MBR with a sure, direct boot into your new system ? Like Microsoft does ?
At least, please measure with the same yardstick.
And I don't suggest Live-CDs, nor even KNOPPIX for such cases. There is a much much smaller utility for all those grub-related problems; one that offers you almost any tool w.r.t. boot-loading, and that is Super Grub Disk. http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/ should get you going.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
*Microsoft has a policy where the vendors can't ship you a Windows CD so instead they have to send you a series of restore CDs.
-Never heard of this happening. I think he means HP restore CDs
HP uses restore cds but so do other OEMs, they do this because in an effort to fight piracy MS asks OEMs to create the restore or recovery cds.
*That is when I learned half of the problems with Promise, the CD it provides is not bootable and contains nothing resembling a tool.
-Nothing to do with FOSS/MS. I don't think he does this once a week. If so, this is new hardware and it's new to him. Not MS's problem.
He doesn't blame MS for this.
So this tech can't get Windows to work, installs Ubuntu, and tells the customer "Tada".
He doesn't say "Tada" to the client. He explains what he did, why, "and what the ramifications, mainly stability and security, were." He then says the owner "is a smart man" and Linux will be the OS of choice on all his servers. That's not even close to telling the client "Tada".
FalconShould there be a Law?
How many more of these posts do we have to read?
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Unless he somehow wrangled a refund out of HP for the copy of XP he didn't use, then Microsoft still got paid, thus their "braindead policy" isn't costing them a nickel. They're just making money on a copy of Windows they don't need to support.
Two problems with this, the first is that even if they were to get a refund it is HP that would pay for it not MS I'd imagine as I wouldn't be supprised if OEMs that have volume discounts for Windows has to pay for each PC sold. The second issue is once a client finds another supplier it's difficult to bring them back. So while MS still got paid for Windows, they lost future sales.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've been working on Windows boxes for quite a while, both in my own company, as a tech for a larger company, and now a network administrator. The problem this guy ran into was actually quite simple. There are several versions of Windows XP (OEM, VL, Retail, AP, etc). You can't use one disk with another, period. No big deal, tons of ways to get your hands on the various version discs.
I question what the heck this guy is doing and thinking. If he has the ability to set up an Ubuntu box, heck if he even knows how to set up a basic RAID 1 array, I'm baffled as to why he doesn't know the answer to his own question. Anyone who reads this article who themselves is tech saavy knows this guy is a bit of a dolt. How on earth he got his story published on anything other than his blog is beyond me.
And in response to a lot of peoples' jargon about an XP Pro box not being able to make a good server - why not?? I've worked as an independent contractor for small business IT needs for half a dozen years, and there's no reason why a simple XP pro box can't make a decent, cost effective server. Albiet, it all boils down to the clients' needs, but for a typical small business (and by small business I mean less than 30 employees), like the one mentioned here, all they typically need is something decent that will host files where their files are reasonable safe. An XP pro box set up properly can make for an appropriate server. RAID 1, backup scripts (or 3rd party programs), a UPS, a couple network shares is what half of the world runs on. Remember, 80% of business in North America is small business (sub 30 people).
All of this doesn't change the fact that quite clearly this guy doesn't know what he's doing. 2 minutes on google would have answered his question.
My last debian install failed to configure grub, installing it to the MBR but nothing more. I made the lazy mistake of installing the final release using an older testing release of the netinstall cd I had downloaded earlier, and there was a change in where it put grub-install. So the system wouldn't boot after the debian install was complete. My solution was to figure out how to boot using the grub command line, which basically involved typing in exactly what ought to have been in the config file. After I booted I was able to configure it properly, typing in the same thing again. But I had the luck of having a second system with a working grub config for reference. I was also surprised that grub had an auto-complete feature, so I didn't have to guess the kernel and initrd paths. And there was inline help. And I had two other systems at my desk I could use to search online. It wasn't fun (apart from being educational), but it wasn't a brick either.
....Is it because you've finally realised that you acted like a complete wanker there? Here's a link.You're right...what a WANKER!
* - Yes, that's called a OEM key. They also have VLKs and Retail keys. Don't pirate.
..or you can buy media kits for the versions you support. Every tech that seriously supports M$ software should have media kits for the OS's and Apps they support.
Brilliant, so as a tech I should have to purchase every one of the 7+ version of XP even though I don't even need the licenses? This ENCOURAGES piracy.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
No burner required.. only patience.
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
You wouldn't drink water out of a pond before you knew it was safe to do so, would you?
Yes, I would. Live a little.
After all, I am strangely colored.
in a decade of using linux I've never come across a more helpful and patient community than Ubuntu. If you ask questions politely and provide the information that's requested, instead of acting like you are smarter than everyone else and you don't think their question is relevant, you might find you get a little bit more useful information. Just a tip.
There's a certain class of people that always get pissed at anyone who makes them feel bad. "Ubuntu didn't work for me, WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" In school it's the teachers fault that they're getting bad grades (or the nerds breaking the curve, or their parents, or society or whatever). It's the boss' fault they get bad performance reviews. It's the girls' fault they're not getting any dates. They'll defend their own actions until hell freezes over before admitting to making any mistake, and if they did it was your fault they made that mistake anyway, like unclear instructions, poor training, lack of warning labels and so on even when they were repeatedly hit over the head with a clue-by-four. They also typically have 20-20 hindsight and love to point out other's mistakes (or in this case, bugs), and so get more and more afraid others will do the same to them. They end up shifting decisions to everyone else, and if they're forced to make their own, well they were forced and couldn't be expected to make the right choice, right? It's like life is a game of pointing out flaws, you vs world and you have to win, every time. It's not "acting like they're smarter", it's "notorious insecurity covered by attack being the best defense". I've met a few people like this, and if you do then run for the hills. People like that should be locked up in "special school" where noone will ever tell them they're doing anything wrong. They don't do anybody any good anyway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
which is why Ubuntu is ... dying? Coulda fooled me.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
I just type in :s/hd1/hd0/200 and it all gets fixed.
look! it's a bird, it's a plane, it's....a girl? yes, a girl browsing Slashdot on Linux
I've got a Cyrix something-ancient sitting at my mom's house with a 500 GB SATA drive and her printer hanging off it - does samba, squid, and firewalling. Also have a K6-III pumping out a Icecast stream for a local community radio station. I've set up a PII-233 running NT4 to handle a building access control system that we picked up on EBay (the upgraded ROMS that could handle the XP-capable control program were $400).
Plus, there are plenty of home and hobby sites hosted on all kinds of wierd stuff - for awhile, a number of people were hosting sites off their XBoxen...
Why can't I mod "-1 Idiot"?
There's the possibility that it's a small scale upgrade making use of existing hardware. If the workstation he's using only has space for two 3.5" drives then he probably had to remove the existing drive, just to give the 'server' some kind of reduncancy.
A business with 5 pc's isn't going to want to buy a new one as a dedicated server.
For the sake of argument:
I am a large consumer electronics store.
I can charge more for my Windows machines (adds to my top line) and get a nicer margin.
Why on earth would I sell Linux boxes?
29 mpg. YMMV.
If you act in an unpleasant manner you can expect to be ignored. People who may be able to help you are unlikely to do so. I've read your comments on the ubuntu forum (twice in fact) and I really think you behaved in a very poor way.
I've added you as a foe. I consider someone who behaves that way is unlikely to have anything to say that I would like to read.
meh
I am surprised that nobody here has stated the obvious about how the guy could have gone about getting the drivers for his raid controller.
He could have done the following:
1) Downloaded them off of the internet.
2) He could have used his laptop to make the floppy from the CD. I assume he must have had a laptop if he was doing this stuff once a week. At the very least he could have used another computer.
3) Attempted to extract the drivers from whatever compressed file they resided in on the CD.
He would not have had to re-install windows, all he had to do was install the raid controller, and install the drivers for it, and continue booting from XP on the old drive, thats of course assuming there was room for it.
10 reboots to figure out how to get into the raid controller bios pretty much sums it up. I wonder how many reboots it took to figure out how to get into the system bios.
Grub is trendy; but LILO Just Works (except, possibly, on a mixed 32/64 bit installation like the [broken] Fedora way). If anyone recommends Grub, ignore them. The proper procedure under Debian (and probably Ubuntu, if it is still using the same installer) is to crash out of the installer and back to the menu when it first warns you it's about to install GRUB, and go down to the next step (which says "install LILO").
/host and mount your root filesystem there (chances are it's the first partition on the drive, but you won't do much harm by just mounting and ls'ing). Look in /host/etc/fstab and manually mount all other filesystems that belong under / in the appropriate place under /host. This typically includes /home (as /host/home) and maybe /usr (as /host/usr). Now chroot /host. Your machine is now running normally enough for you to be able to install LILO using apt. (If you'd merely gone and munged an existing LILO-based system by installing a brand new kernel and not telling LILO, which everyone does at some stage or another, this is the point where you would run /sbin/lilo to fix that.) However, very important: don't shut down the machine YET! Your newly-fixed system is still running in a chroot and if you shut down from within the chroot, some of your changes may not get properly decached. You must exit that chroot by going to the terminal where you invoked it (ctrl+alt+F2), then repeatedly pressing ctrl+D until you get back to the "press enter to activate" message. Then press enter to activate the console; and this time, type poweroff to shut the machine down. Reboot, taking a detour via the BIOS setup screen to allow you to retrieve the CD. This time you should get the familiar "LILO loading Linux" message.
The box isn't "bricked", as long as you can get LILO installed. Every LILO user has had to do the first part of this sometime: Reboot with your installer CD. Switch to a console (ctrl+alt+F2). Make a directory called something like
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
There is no such thing as an "onboard RAID controller". They all use software RAID with a binary-only, and usually Windows-only, driver. In most cases, Linux's own "md" software RAID is faster and performs better than whatever binary driver they provide (and you get the Source Code; which for something as fundamental and important as a disk controller, should be the Law anyway.)
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
It's been my experience that people such as you described tend to end up in management.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
You clearly aren't an experienced Linux user yet. It's understandable you had these issues.
I remember 5 years ago or so when Redhat 9 was released, I tried linux for the first time. I had similar issues, problem is since I was unexperienced, I was on the same boat as you. My box was bricked. I went back to Windows 98 and didn't try Linux again for a year or two.
I was really looking forward to seeing how this person actually implemented a Linux server in their business.. I only read about the anti=MS spam.. which is fine and all, but people need to see why Linux works so well.. there were no steps regarding the installation process.. it was more like a big rant about 3rd party HD drivers.. i agree, HP should have thought much more about that.. those restore cd's are a big fuckin joke.. but i'd like to hear the specifics and technicalities one must go through when migrating to Linux.. unfortunately this article didn't not provide that.
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
So you could say it was "Edubuntu"
Hi UbuntuDope,
Your attitudes towards Ubuntu don't matter much. Either you are a success story or not. Some people love linux, some don't. When I first started using Linux (about a year after a failure like yours on RH 9) I had to switch from distribution to distribution until I found one that just worked. I started with Redhat 9, then tried Mandrake, then SuSE, then Debian (failed, wasn't experienced at the time), then about 15 other distributions. By the time I had tried all those, I had enough experience to use Debian. I tried it again, loved it, use it to this day.
Debian is what I use solely for desktop use at home and at work now. Despite my success, I still don't think it is meant for everyone. I surely don't think it's meant for mainstream use. Linux was, after all an operating system made by a hobbyist, and likewise other hobbyists gathered and made it what it is today. In order to learn the ins-and-outs of the system, you too, have to be a hobbyist. You have to have a yearning urge to learn the internals of a system.
This "yearning urge" is something you seem to lack (shown by your frustrations on just wanting it to work)
My hobbyist attitudes towards Linux has gained me the privilege of being able to use it as a complete desktop system. My experience has also afforded me a position at a web hosting company where I do installs of BSD, Linux (any distro), Windows and more. I do just about everything concerning support on any platform at this company now (I work overnights, alone, with ~1230 servers).
It is up to you if you want to dive back to Linux land. As in posts above I explained that I started out on Redhat and failed, bricking my system. I went back to Windows 98 promptly and didn't look at linux for another year or two. However, my perseverance paid off and now I can use Linux as well as any other sysadmin.
If it's in your will, you can do it too.
Because you don't have to give $200 of your profit to Microsoft.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The trick is to never buy their consumer machines. The business machines tend to give a lot more bang for the buck and tend to be much better supported. Just make sure to replace the crap memory they ship with something better.
You say this like it is a bad thing.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BF
One way or the other, you didn't get help because you were a jackass to everyone. Simple. Oh, and your name in no way helps your claim to not be a troll.
Why can you add more to the profit line? Your profit is a fixed percentage or something like that?
As to why sell linux...because your computers would be cheaper (-$100?) and thus you'd sell more in comparison to your competition? I'd sell without an OS if possible. People are going to replace the OS anyway, why bother installing one?
But then, I don't know the first thing about running a store and even less about the brick and mortar variety.
Have fun :)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
The irony of this whole thing is that I've had problems with Windows for years (and likely so have you) yet you seem to hold Ubuntu to a much higher standard than your vaunted Windows. Maybe you should get a Mac?
Indeed, most of these problems come from the vendors with support staff that are indifferent to such specific problems.
However, it's easy to integrate drivers into a Windows XP CD, be it OEM, retail, VLM, etc, if you've got the INFs (and supporting files). That way, you're able to use the OEM CD with the OEM key and still get it to recognize the newer hardware. I'm not sure if it's been mentioned in comments further down the page, but nLite is the tool I use for this sort of thing.
Of course, that's only one benefit of customizing a WinXP install CD. One of the other major things I find useful is the ability to integrate all current patches into the installer. That makes for a faster overall install, prevents many reboots, and there's no worry about being hit by unpatched vulnerabilities. The CDs I build are also nearly hands-off installers that only ask to select and/or format a hard disk prior to running. I do have an optional post-installer utility that allows selective software installs after Windows is all done, as well.
nLite is a much more powerful tool than what I've made it out to be in the examples above. If you're interested, give it a try. There's also many active forums at MSFN dedicated to making custom Windows installer images.
Anti-disclaimer: No, I'm not affiliated with nLite or MSFN in any way. I'm just a very happy user.
My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating. -- Ashleigh Brilliant
I'd mod you up higher if I could
+1 RealityCheck
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
The author sets up offices "all the time" but...
1) Bought an HP computer for an office (so you get those restore CDs and not the full OS as Dell sends)
2) "occasional" backups?
3) Not realizing how XP keys work
And that's just the first few paragraphs...
Also, Thanks for the new sig :)
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Animals are trained, people are educated. Your point is correct though: in this industry where todays standards might be obsolete tomorrow, sometimes a thorough education is considered luxury.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
I'm fairly confident that even the older non "live" cd's once you got to the inital boot screen you could boot into a shell.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
Sadly enough it is not his hard drive. I wish I could tell you the exact problem but I was going to install ubuntu on my brand new laptop clean install no current OS on the drive. I install it using GRUB as the loader. After install Cannot load an OS. Grub Error 1.5 I think it is an issue with the boot installer on that install cd. But instead after 3 more tries I went with the latest Mandrake. Anyhow besides relating with this guy, I would like to add that "understands why people don't switch to Linux" Look at the not so long ago XP SP2 patch, that patch locked people out of their machines and if you didn't know that you needed to replace your userinit file or fix the registry, you would probably resort to reformatting your windows pc. Windows is a crap shoot, the only thing I like about it is, all the games I play run natively on windows.
Some of the accusations made against HP and Microsoft in this blog are not accurate. OEM's are indeed allowed to distribute media from Microsoft, but many chose to distribute a drive image or a custumized install disk. The reason for this is 1) If they use a drive image, an installation can take as little at 10-15 minutes and 2) If they use a custom disk, they can slipstream updates, drivers, and the software that comes with the machine on the disk.
Also, the key that is on the computer does NOT only work with the disk. It is an OEM license and one can therefore use an XP OEM disk to install using this key. This is the same with Dell, Lenovo/IBM, Toshiba, Alienware...the list goes on and on. These manufacturers all get OEM licenses that work with a clean XP OEM disk.
binary drivers are bad, mkay. this is exactly why.
additionally, adaptec sucks donkey balls. go with ami, or lsi logic. you'll be much happier with a quality component.
I wouldn't necessarily say there's a bias. The thing is here this guy had a very very simple problem, and most people on this site know what the solution is. Most windows people probably wont have the first clue about Linux, but due to the hobbyist nature of Linux, most Linux people will know there way around Windows, so in this case a simple problem (the guy didn't have a clue what he's doing), will afford a lot of pro MS replies on /.
Quite frankly, the guy was an idiot and I question why someone is paying this guy for tech services. He's a "Windows" tech and he doesn't even know the difference between CD versions. Yikes.
I was speaking of would-be linux-installed computers. You might be right anyway, but give people 10EUR difference in price for no OS vs. no OS... and see what they pick up. I'd hazard people would save the 10 EUR... but as I said, I am not a store businessman at all.
All this has little or no relevance to the heart of the matter... should a store make linux an option and would it cut into his profits if it did?
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
All of which are intended to enforce the captive customer mentality that emanates from Redmond like a damned virus. Too bad we don't have a viable vaccine for it...
But the article was wrong on one point, he claims it cost M$, when in the case of that machine, its did not, he still had to buy all those licenses etc even if they were destined not to work, so M$ at least got paid for that wasted copy of XP.
AFAIK, no one has ever seen a damned dime from M$ for something that when bought, or were forced to buy because it doesn't come without it, then either wasn't used or didn't work. And in the case of didn't work, then I'd say there should be grounds for an action to recover the money, and paid for the time spent trying to make it work. But, knowing M$ just well enough to guess, my guess is that the EULA precludes that course of action. That and the lawyers will want 1000x the potential winnings for prosecuting a lose/lose case.
Where they lost money was probably on the other machines being contemplated. At the end of the day, some of those might also be running unbuntu, but 99.9999999% of them shipped with a paid for copy of windows on them so its no loss to M$ if its never run, he got his blood anyway. But thats only paper money, not the kind that will buy BG another 747 or whatever until you take it times the machines sold in a year.
And to think it will be till Jan 20 2009 before we can wake up justice & see if they'll dust off what they were doing in 2000 before doubleya shut them down.
--
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
I concur fully. It's become totally infested by pretend Open Source enthusiasts who can't get the browser working without compiling the kernel etc ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
Ah... Having read the other posts I now realise you are a troll. Let's keep you talking until the sun rises, so you turn into stone.
Don't get me wrong... there are a lot of Linux consultants, but most of them tend to do long-term contract-type consulting, rather than "Geek Patrol"-type small business work.
That sounds like an opportunity then, get a small group of Linux experts that can work on small and or short term jobs. The contracts would be shorter but there'd be more of them.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I have gotten into the habit of using DD to save off the MBR before tinkering with partitions see this post for a discussion on how: http://www.brunolinux.com/01-First_Things_To_Know/ Backing_Up_the_MBR.html/
...and I was suprised that he tried all of the steps that he listed, and never tried the one step that was virtually guaranteed to work. All he had to do was the following:
1. Install the Windows OS on the original hard drive.
2. Install the Promise TX2300 RAID card and hard disks onto that system and make sure that the OS recognizes it and loads drivers.
3. Set up his mirrored array.
4. Use Ghost, TrueImage, or some other imaging software (Acronis has a free 15-day trial) to clone the original OS drive onto the mirrored array, resizing the destination partitions in the process.
5. Remove the old disk and boot the system.
I have done this several times using various array controllers on various hardware, including he TX2300 on a pair of HP desktops. It's not only easy, it works every time.
You don't buy a Desktop from HP and expect it to work great as a backup server. You buy a backup server or you build one yourself with an OEM Windows License. Granted the RAID should have had a driver that loads from CD. That's their stupid fault, you can't go blaming Microsoft and HP for this problem.
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Perhaps, but that's not what he meant. Just like the other 500325 people who couldn't stop their knee jerking long enough to read what was written.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
They're undoubtedly against the EULA - and nobody cares, because the capability is just far too useful to give up. Any Windows tech worth his salt is using the thing and Microsoft undoubtedly know it. You can even put Bart's on a flash drive, although putting any OS on a USB disk is guaranteed to shorten the life of the disk, since they have a limited number of writes. But at $20 for 1GB flash disks these days, it's probably worth it.
Since I don't have any OEM XP CDs, I can't test the possibility. However, it's not much help anyway, since Bart's just allows you to boot a free-running XP separate from whatever is installed on the hard drive. So an OEM CD-based version of Bart's really doesn't get you much. Maybe System File Check could be put on and wouldn't complain about the source disk, but then if you ever had to run SFC from the OS on the hard drive, it probably would complain about the files replaced from the OEM CD. So I don't see the value of an OEM CD over just using the files from a regular XP install.
Bart's, by the way, is not a complete XP - it's merely a "Pre-Execution" environment Bart built that runs like the PE environment XP uses to install. It provides an XP kernel with native access to the NTFS file system and whatever utilities you can cram on the CD, but it's not full Windows XP - there's no desktop at all.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Change the disk in bios from LBA to Large or Normal, install OS and let grub be installed. After install, you can switch back to LBA. This only seems to affect debian-based OS's with grub. I think it has something to do with the bios incorrectly reporting the disk size.
Some settling may occur during posting.
I had a similar issue with one of my boxes. someone suggested i use the alternate iso like this one (ubuntu-6.06.1-alternate-i386.iso) and that solved my problem. give that a shot if you're still interested.
I basically had 2 points:
1) Microsoft has the partners and retail gravy train wrapped up very nicely. I don't think saving $10 is interesting for most people when they are terrified of installing anything to do with Windows and don't even know what an "Operating System" is.
2) Linux afficionados have traditionally mocked "marketing" but this has to change to appeal to Joe & Josie Blogs.
I say better to sell specialized Linux boxes for home/Media Center use, small business server use etc... or internet-centric ones via large telco ISPs. Of course it's the same stuff in different hardware boxes and GUI wrappers.
Community has no sales reps, no in-store trainers, no incentives programs. But - the community has a kick-ass support system. What if you could have free 24/7 online real human support for all apps built into your OS? There are a bunch of things Linux could do to compete on a completely different level.
29 mpg. YMMV.
That should be "AHMEN Sister". Didn't you read her .sig?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
??? This never happened to me with Lilo.... The only problems I've had seemed to be different OSes tagging the partitions using different CHS units, lilo dies with an error and the fix/ignore options seems to get around this.
I guess just proves my comments about the poor code quality of many offical GNU projects. Proves point a as well. Flaky programs require the same things done over and over until it magically works. That is really bad. You are relying more on luck than skill.
My point was that he was using the wrong OS for the Job. If the Right one is Linux, so be it, if it's Windows Server, fine. Either way, OEM XP pro is not it. I've raided windows servers before quickly and easily with vendor supplied tools.
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82 E16813131568
2 onboard raid controllers, one of which IIRC is a hardware (the SI chip) and one is software (the NV chip)
not that he said anything about having an onboard hardware raid chip anyway...
The Answer
I wouldn't judge a program flakey because of ambiguous problems on a 700MHz computer that should have been scrapped out, I suppose it would have been cheaper to get a new machine than to troubleshoot that dinosaur
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
can I ask you a question I know you might not answer but I need to know, were you using sata and ata drives together? because if you are grub will automaticly try to boot to the sata drive first and can cause the process to freeze at stage 1.5 like you are explaining if you use just the ata drives and no sata drives or vice versa you will not have the same problems. If you had the ata drive as the boot device you may have had grub trying to boot the sata drive first and it could have been fixed by temporarily disconnecting the sata drive and editing grub from within ubuntu.