RedHat/Other Support?

[Sharpe, Richard]

Bill
 
    Yes I have heard this but have not experienced it myself, For the
most part it seems that Novell SUSE Enterprise Linux support is a bit
better than Red Hat's support, but there are stories there too. I think
the Linux companies that are into Enterprise class OS's are feeling some
of the pain of supporting larger organizations, hopefully they will
learn and provide better support.
 
Rich
 
Richard A Sharpe
(DBA) Sqlserver/DB2
Amherst Technologies
40 Continental Blvd
Merrimack, NH 03054
PHONE .......(603) 579-6180 / (800) 431-8031
Cell phone ..(603) 320-7785
FAX ...........(603) 578-1072
EMAIL .......rsharpe at amherst1.com 
"Tenemos que tener fe" ("We must have faith")

 


________________________________

	From: gnhlug-discuss-admin at mail.gnhlug.org
[mailto:gnhlug-discuss-admin at mail.gnhlug.org] On Behalf Of Bill
McGonigle
	Sent: Friday, September 17, 2004 2:29 AM
	To: GNHLUG Discussion
	Subject: RedHat/Other Support?
	
	
	I'm wondering if anybody has had good luck with Redhat's support
department. 

	I've run a RedHat box for ten years but have never needed to
call support. Since I've been buying RedHat Enterprise for my clients I
figured when I had an up2date problem I'd call the support department,
after all I paid for it. 

	They told me they don't support anything but a clean install of
RedHat Enterprise on a machine. Despite this being an upgrade-specific
problem they were nice enough to offer that if I wiped my disk and
reinstalled they'd be happy to help me. I know that all my customers
coming to RHEL are coming for the updates, as an upgrade, so this seems
pretty unwise. 

	[In case anyone else runs into up2date trying to register the
pre-upgrade version's channel, it turns out the installer is very bad
about erasing old versions of packages. 'rpm --query redhat-release' and
get rid of the old release tag then reregister. You can then run up2date
and 'rpm --erase' any old versions of the packages it complains about in
its dependency check.] 

	Anyway I complained that there's no documentation that upgrades
aren't supported before buying and they write back, "I have been told
that a warning will be posted in the Migration FAQ by the end of the
week." 

	So, I finally get up2date working without their help and then I
find out that they've dropped support for 1394 devices, which this
customer uses for backup. You have to load the kernel-unsupported
package to get the 1394 module and at that point Redhat won't talk to
you about it either. 

	So, I've been selling RedHat on the basis that you're getting
updates and support for the license fee, and customers have been
willing, but it seems like I've been wasting their money. At this point
I'm not sure why you'd want to use RedHat over Whitebox or a stable
version of Fedora Core. It's not that my customers or I aren't willing
to pay for good support, it just seems RedHat doesn't offer that. 

	Is anybody shocked by this story? Have you had better luck with
other distros' vendors? 

	-Bill 
	---- 
	Bill McGonigle, Owner Work: 603.448.4440 
	BFC Computing, LLC Home: 603.448.1668 
	bill at bfccomputing.com Cell: 603.252.2606 
	http://www.bfccomputing.com/ Text: bill+text at bfccomputing.com

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