Re: [cobalt-developers] RaQ XTR Reliability

["William L. Thomson Jr." <wlt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kamry,
	We waited several months to get one of the first ones released of the 
second batch. Ours arrived at the beginning of this year, and we 
immediately put it into production to replace our Raq4r.

So far so good. No major problems. Little quirks here and there. The 
biggest one is that I have yet to get a browser for Linux/Unix/Posix to 
work perfectly with the GUI. I end up using both Netscape/Mozilla and 
Opera. Some times I must go to a windows machine and use either IE or 
Netscape. The problems do not exist on Windows, just *nix?

Other than that, the only thing that has bothered me was sendmail. I 
have had a hell of a time getting it to accept email from certain 
computers. I would blame it on those machines, but there set up is 
identical to machines that work fine.

Also on day one we had some problems with the auto responders. We got 
some strange error that we still get to this day. Something along the 
lines of can't build has when we try to update auto responder settings.

Some accounts have this problem, and some do not.

Otherwise the server is fine. I am aware of the problems that existed in 
the first batch, but none of mine are major. Most could be fixed with 
upgrades/patches.

It does seem that upgrades and patches for the XTR are not as readily 
available as other platforms. Only a week or two ago a pkg came out to 
upgrade Apache to 1.3.20, even thought the current is 1.3.24. I imagine 
it is based on the apache upgrade for the other Raq and Cube, thus not 
using the latest version.

Not sure if it's is because not to many people are buy XTR's or what.

Also I am not a big fan of the nic's on the XTR. It is definitely one of 
our network bottle necks. Not sure if it has to do with the RAID 
configuration or what, but transferring large amounts of data on and off 
the rack seems to take a while.

Even some smaller things end up in chunks when it should be a solid stream?

The XTR's are very picky on the type of memory they use. They will only 
accept high quality server memory, or maxes out at 1gig. They also come 
with a Dual processor motherboard, but I do not think the modified 
kernel has support for smp.

Not sure if there will be an upgrade in this area or not.

Personally I would love a 2.4 or 2.5 kernel with smp support, so a 
second processor could be added.

Anyone from Sun/Cobalt care to comment on future plans, if not under NDA.

I am aware of a 2.4 kernel upgrade that others have used successfully, 
but the warnings scared me off. Maybe if there was a way to recover 
without cracking the box open and whipping out the sottering iron I 
would  less reluctant to attempt the upgrade.

Not to mention that the upgrade is not said to be for production level 
applications, mostly for experimental or a non critical app or a spare XTR?

Anyway out of all the Cobalt's the Raq XTR is definitely our favorite 
and works for our needs.

Only major draw back is forget about collocating them. There is no way 
to lock the hard drives into the server. So the hot swapping is very 
nice, but someone could easily walk buy and take a drive.

I am suprised know one thought of that and they did not include a lock 
or something for the front door. I do not think it's even an option.

Thankfully ours is in house so that is not something we have to worry 
about.

KAMRY wrote:

> Can anyone comment on the new XTRs that were fixed - Anyone experienced a
> dead-end with those Raqs at a certain point?! I don't want to rely on them
> if they are still not fixed properly, so I appreciate any comments.
>
> Kal
>
> _______________________________________________
> cobalt-developers mailing list
> cobalt-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://list.cobalt.com/mailman/listinfo/cobalt-developers


--
Sincerely,
William L. Thomson Jr.
Obsidian-Studios, Inc.
439 Amber Way
Petaluma, Ca. 94952
Phone  707.766.9509
Fax    707.766.8989
http://www.obsidian-studios.com