Hey, RedHat! f*** YOU

Aldo Pignotti

It has always been that way, especially with problems that cut across support boundaries...

My very first ever experience of installing Unix failed. I had not te faintest idea why a fairly expensive comercial unix was not installing. I phoned the local UK support.

I got a thick Asian voice whose fianl satement was 'De bios is incompatible' This phrase became a standing joke between me, my techies and the PC supplier.

I then phoned the US company responsible for the port, direct. Their tech support was hopeless, except they finally put me through to someone who appeared to know what he was talking about.

We walked through the install up to the pijnt at which it barfed...he appeared to be reading the source code of the installation loader..

"Ah", he said "Do you have a maths co processor?"

"No...?" .."Well it looks like the software is testing it at that point.." "Why, if I haven't got one?" "MMM. Maybe there is a jumper on the board that needs changing?"

It is now 7pm so I try my PC supplier. He hasn't gone home. Good man. I dissect to the motherboard and he reads from a scratchy manual in "Chinglish".. "It's that large bank of pins to the right of the processor, 2 and 3 should have a jumper on to 'disable co processor'" .."They don't, but there is one hanging off" "Right. Stick it in and see what happens".

Bugger me if it didn't work.

I phoned the guy in the states, to thank him. "How come you know so much about the installation checks?" "Oh, I wrote them".

I've had the same result on occasion with Cisco and Sun. I actually got through to the guys who wrote the code. And, like as not, that's the only person in the world on new issues that actually can help you fix the problem, and chances are he didn't know the answer till you asked the question.

Now that is fine and dandy when it is an installation issue, but when its a question of "commercial package X on commercial Database engine Y on commercial OS Z blows up. Why? " you are inviting the runaround. Everybody blames the other guy.

Is RedHat responsible for understanding the load that a commercial database with thousands of users places on system resources? Is it te package developers who wrote the application? Is it the database writers themselves..guess why Admins like a 'one stop shop' - "you installed it, you get the F***er working, if YOU want to get paid".

You are on your own. Unix adnin is 99% of the time well paid excuse to do bugger all. 1% of the time you earn every penny. Just like airline pilots. ;-)

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