Mandriva (Mandrake 10.2) and IBM 6850 servers.

[Crouse]

I have 2 IBM 6850 dual processor machines. One a Z-Pro dual 1.7 ghz and the other an M-pro dual 1.7 ghz machine. I had looked at several versions of Linux to run on these and at first started with SuSe. SuSe worked fine, except I couldn't boot without making significant changes to grub which borked every time i would reboot.. (I WAS able to leave disk 1 in and it would default to boot from hard drive..and worked... sloppy, but quick) ... I then went to Fedora Core 4, which complained right from the start when trying to find my scsi drives.

Finally, after some more research, I've settled with Mandriva 2005 (Mandrake 10.2). This distro finds everything and doesn't complain with any of the hardware on either machine. Mandriva has filled the bill for me for the dual processing xeon machines.... and with Mandriva, it didn't require any extra effort to make use of the dual processors. I was impressed with the install and am happy to report both machines (and all four processors) now crunching FAD for team usalug ;)

The only additional command needed for running both processors with fad was to add the

-copies 2

to the ./fadsetup command at install. Works perfectly ;)

(sorry guys ..... just wanted to share WHICH linux i found to be the easiest install for this machine type)

[Plum Ugly]

Great Crouse!!!! I've been using redhat8 on mine with good results.
Is mandriva bloated with extra programs like mandrake 10 was?

[Crouse]

Yes..... bloated :) But you can install with much less if you select packages manually...... i install blackbox, so the WM is lightweight ...... even with all the bloat, if the services aren't running FAD gets all the processing power. I didn't have a version of redhat .... fedora core was the closest i had. It just HATED my scsi drives ... mandrake had no issues though.

[Crouse]

I am now also using Fedora Core 4 on my dual 1.7 Dell ...... seems to work fine on the Dell, but it didn't like my IBM machines :)

Below is a pic of the 3 dual processor systems.

1-dual 1.7gig Dell
1-dual 1.7 gig IBM Z pro
1-dual 1.7 gig IBM M pro

http://usalug.org/CROUSE/duallies.jpg

Picture was actually 3 images, i gimped into one so i could show them all in one image.

[Plum Ugly]

Crouse! Boy,I'm lovin xandros!! Got tightvnc server up an working right so I can moniter them from a windows system(Thanks BTW).Fad's runnin great on all the xandros systems. All the named systems in my fad stats are xandros systems so you can see the cpu size an the ratings.There's about 30-50 pionts difference between xandros an windows.Red hat an core 4 didn't do that much so I'm converting all headless systems.
Xandros has found scsi drives,usb drives,dvd drives.The only things I've found is wireless isn't supported well yet and I couldn't install with a DVD drive.