Re: Dragonflybsd Presentation

[EM1897@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 2/22/2005 1:05:11 PM Eastern Standard Time, Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

>EM1897@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
>
>> 
>> Its interesting, because from my perspective you have it
>> exactly backwards. If your box is in your lab or on a high speed net AND you have someone competent enough around to figure it out if something fails, then the pain of doing it
>> "your way" is fine. But consider that the box is in romania
>> where they have a T1 line into the COUNTRY, manned by a marginal tech who probably doesn't know un*x at all. First of all,  it takes all day to download a dist, and an ISP isnt willing to take his machine down for an hour to rebuild all his binaries (and a machine running at 70% interrupt usage takes a LONG time to do a buildworld while losing packets like crazy, so leaving it up isnt really an option). Being able to just deliver a kernel is a big advantage. 
>>
>
>Romania, I haven't done.  Poland, East Germany, (before and after the 
>wall came down..) Hungary, Czech and Slovak Republics (before and after 
>the split..) and 40+ others, I have done.
>
>Military, Northrop-Page, Cable & Wireless, and my own firm since '94. 
>Telecoms IS/IT (switching, billing, calling card systems, security, etc.)
>
>Some of that, BTW was Interactive UNIX on 386, followed by a 60-country 
>rollout of new platforms with SlowLaris... Notice I didn't say 'upgrade' 
>   - LOL!
>
>Our way works well.  But there is more to it. Worst case, I point the 
>DNS (which we run and control for all our clients) at a back-up in 
>Zurich or Hong Kong.  Six seconds later it is homing traffic to the 
>backup box.  Then we ship a fresh server or HDD.
>
>Much more common to have a new HDD put in by a local contract tech - raw 
>- then ssh in, rebuild the RAID, and carry on.
>All boxen have RAID1.  SCSI on the for-fee dedicated and any box over 
>15-20 minutes away, ATACONTROL for internal use.
>
>Yez, we are sort of a 'boutique' - if it is NOT mission critical, get 
>someone cheaper.
>
>And we don't 'DO' Russia, Cuba, North Korea, Israel or any Muslim 
>country, or the USA.  Hostile environments, those.
>
>> the separation of kernel and binaries has significant
>> advantages.
>
>Well they largely *are* separate in either house. Linux has no 
>real-world advantage there.
>
>Even without compat, most BSD userland, and even a lot of /bin and /sbin 
>work across a range of kernels that spans several years.  Try it!

You're really not making any point at all. What you're
saying is similar to saying that you don't need air
conditioning in your car because when you open the 
windows its cool enough. Its not as simple or reliable
as flipping the kernel in linux; the fact that you can
do it without re-installing the entire dist doesn't make
it anywhere near as convenient as being able to just boot
a different kernel and have everything work.