Notes on Calling Red Hat for Linux Support ========================================== You could start at http://www.redhat.com/apps/support or http://bugzilla.redhat.com My Customer Account # 611238 Red Hat login: rickjasper Or call 1-888-RedHat1 = 1-888-733-4281 Their hours are 6AM - 6PM PST Press 2 = Technical Support then either 1 = Red Hat Enterprise Linux or 2 = Red Hat Network If then 1 = RHEL AS then 1 = RHEL Premium Support or 2 = RHEL Standard Support 1 rhel 2 rhn 3 devel support 4 redHat prof ws 5 gss product 6 rhel evals 7 hr desktop 8 other rh products -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you scroll a page or so down their web page, you'll see four red boxes, Web Support = Allows you to review any past Support Calls you've made "Find a Solution" - Link is broken. It tries to open up http://kbase.redhat.com/faq in another browser window which never finishes loading, but you can get to either http://kbase.redhat.com/faq directly or even better, https://kbase.redhat.com/faq "Create Service Request" - Phone Support = Red Hat Network = Knowledgebase = -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 357316 The video card driver for vinu doesn't work correctly. It 2004/08/26 defaults to 640x480 resolution. Vinu is the new IBM eServer Gene Ordanza xSeries 365 machine, which has a Radeon 7000 graphics adapter. Closed grep Radeon /etc/sysconfig/hwconf shows driver: Card:ATI Radeon 7000 and desc: "ATI|Radeon RV100 QY [Radeon 7000/VE]" Gene had me fart around with /etc/X11/XF86Config, changing the "Driver" in the "Device" section from "radeon" to "ati", but that didn't change anything. An xrandr command from the console, returned SZ: Pixels Physical Refresh *0 1024 x 768 ( 302mm x 232mm ) *60 1 800 x 600 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 60 2 640 x 480 ( 302mm x 232mm ) 60 ... which says these 3 different resolutions ARE supposedly available to be used and the asterisk o the first one says that 1024x768 is the default, yet that's not what I get. Looking at the latest /var/log/XFree86.?.log file doesn't show anything obviously interesting in its 800 lines. The best Gene could do for me was to suggest I try a third-party driver from ATI found at the following web site, http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/linux/radeon-linux.html I started to go down this path, but it isn't a very clean install. At one point, I had three different references/sets of instructions I was following. Anyway, I gave up, but I should come back to this one day. I was not very happy with having to go get device drivers from some non-redhat web site and handle this messy install myself. I expected Red Hat to have the proper device drivers handy. What do we pay them for? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 357574 I wanted to use our old SSA drives, the kind that are housed 2004/08/27 in the 7133 drawers, on our Linux machines. An extensive Gene Ordanza web search turned up nothing but hopes and dreams to one day Closed write drivers, but apparently, nobody ever did. I tried contacting IBM about this, but they want to sell new hardware and aren't interested in getting old hardware to work on new platforms. Some IBM guys I talked to even said, "SSA? What's SSA?" (Sigh) Gene's response was This particular adapter is currently not supported by Red Hat. Please check out our hardware compatability list for a list of certified device for Red Hat, http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/ However, you might want to check out the following web site for more information on this particular devices, http://linux.math.tifr.res.in/sysadmin/High-Availability-HOWTO-7.html I hope this helps. Should you have other concerns, please feel free to call us back. Well, gee. Thanks, but no thanks. I DID check out they're stupid, hard to understand hardware compatability web page, and it sucks. It's difficult to just get a list of what's supported. And I also found that Indian web page, but it was written four or more years ago and only expressed a desire to write a driver. I don't think one was ever written. So again, I was a bit disappointed with Red Hat Support. Ok, they don't support 7133's, but they also didn't offer me anything I didn't already research and found out for myself. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 365748 I need to call in to see how I'm suppose to configure java 2004/09/30 on my RHEL AS 3.0 system. The IBMJava2 (both -JRE & -SDK) Wade Alan doesn't follow the /etc/alternatives convention for their Closed binaries. There were a few relavent RedHat's bugzilla bugs; 110936 complained about just this. Opened 11-25-2003. Status=closed, Resolution=Errata, which means there's a fix out, but I don't see the fix via up2date. 124492 & 125664 say there's a newer java out there that obsoletes the IBMJava2 packages, called java-1.4.1-ibm-1.4.1.2-1jpp_2rh (what's this?) and java-1.4.1-ibm-devel-1.4.1.2-1jpp_2rh. So where/how do I get these packages? Turns out that these 2 fixes are under a different "channel" called "Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (v. 3 for x86) Extras". I had to go into RHN and subscribe each system to this channel. Then when I ran up2date, it saw this new channel and offered me the option of downloading any new packages. Warning: It appears this option to "subscribe" to these new packages is a one-time shot. And actually, there were new 1.4.2 versions to get. java-1.4.2-ibm-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh:0 java-1.4.2-ibm-devel-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh:0 There were also a few other interesting-sounding packages in this "extras" channel. -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 9164682 Aug 26 05:48 acroread-5.09-1.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 57633 Aug 26 05:48 acroread-plugin-5.09-1.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 794255 Apr 22 15:47 flash-plugin-6.0.81-1.RHEL.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 jasper root 36848773 Sep 30 17:36 java-1.4.2-ibm-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 jasper root 272695296 Sep 30 18:16 java-1.4.2-ibm-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.src.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 3176106 Aug 2 18:28 java-1.4.2-ibm-demo-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 3143239 Aug 2 18:28 java-1.4.2-ibm-devel-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 24177 Aug 2 18:37 java-1.4.2-ibm-jdbc-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 apache apache 1496140 Aug 2 18:28 java-1.4.2-ibm-plugin-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5074228 Apr 22 15:55 realplayer-8.0-3.i386.rpm The first time I used up2date and saw this new channel, I could select the new packages I wanted to install (or at least download), but subsequent times, I couldn't find where I could change my mind and register for those packages I didn't get the first time. I had to go to the RHN web pages, select a system, then a channel, then the packages I wanted. They bundled them all up for me into a tar file that I was then able to download, unpack into ./rhn-packages/*rpm, and put in /afs/d/software/fixes/linux. Now which of these do I want to install on my systems? ... Everything but the java*src.rpm. And conviently, installing java-1.4.2-ibm-1.4.2.0-1jpp_8rh.i386.rpm, will uninstall the old IBMJava2 stuff. Great! Wade also suggested that I check out their documentation. Yeah, yeah. One day when I want to put myself to sleep. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 365756 I need help getting the IBM FAStT box working. See my 2004/09/30 FAStT notes file for details, but it seems that the Wade Alan Linux O.S. isn't seeing the drive. Wade wanted to check out dmesg to see how this hardware got recognized, but I find anything to do with the Fiber Channel when I quickly scanned through it. So Wade suggested I run sysreport, which takes a few minutes and scan the system to collect all the info it can on what hardware & software is installed and how it's configured. The end result was /tmp/rjasper.4931.tar.bz2 that I was to append to the problem ticket. He also wanted more details on exactly what I have. For the record, jacob - is an IBM eServer xSeries 345 machine with 2 processors and 2 147GB disks, - is running RHEL AS v3.0, - has a PCI Fiber Channel adapter, specifically a QLogic QLA22xx with "node"=2100 00e0 8b08 84ab - To get into QLogic's Fast!UTIL utility, hit Alt-Q quickly(!!) at BIOS boot-time. The FAStT is - aka IBM's 3542-1RU, Serial # 23Z3154 - has just one RAID Controller in the back, with "node"=2004 00a0 b80b e5de. - is connected to the Fiber Channel via a QBIC, a pair of fiber channel cables, and directly to jacob's fiber channel adapter. There is no hub. - is also connected to our 10/100 ethernet network with an IP name of fastt and IP address of 10.224.88.235 - has 500GB of disks attached, - configured with one disk volume named "verity", - and jacob has R/W access to that "verity" volume. By running Mozilla from jacob, I navigated to this bug, updated it with the above details, and attached that sysreport file, /tmp/rjasper.4931.tar.bz2. 2004/10/03 Collecting information regarding my current status. On the FAStT box, Firmware version = PkgInfo 05.30.09.00 NVSRAM version = M3542-1RUR830V04 On my PC, IBM FAStT Storage Manager 8, Version 08.33.G5.03 On jacob's Linux, I have the SMruntime-09.10.A5.03-1 package installed, which puts stuff in the /opt/IBM_FAStT directory. I found at http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=506&uid=psg1MIGR-52930&loc=en_US - README for the IBM FAStT MSJ Diagnostic and Configuration Utility for 32-bit Linux at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/pc_servers/26r0623.txt (20 Kb) - IBM FAStT MSJ Diagnostic and Configuration Utility for 32-bit Linux at ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/pc_servers/26r0623.tgz (42 Mb) Untar'ing the latter yielded -rwxr--r-- root root 58390007 Aug 26 07:07 FAStTMSJ2.0.29b39_install.bin -rw-r--r-- root root 20438 Aug 26 07:06 FAStTMSJ_LNX32_readme.txt The README says I need "HBA Miniport Driver: 7.00.62 or later". What's this? Running ./FAStTMSJ2.0.29b39_install.bin runs a GUI that installs the "IBM FAStT MSG Management Suite Jave V2.0.29" in /opt/IBM_FAStT_MSJ directory and a launch front-end at /usr/FAStT_MSJ -> /opt/IBM_FAStT_MSJ/FAStT. The README says to first launch qlremote, which lives in /usr/local/bin/qlremote (did this exist before running FAStTMSJ2.0.29b39_install.bin? I don't know.). But running qlremote fails with Error: SDOpenDevice(0, xx) failed (0x20000074) (Out of memory) Error: **NO** compatible HBAs found during scan - Terminating... again emphasizing my contention that Linux isn't seeing the HBA. See http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/eserver/articles/install_fibre/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # 611238 I got an e-mail from RHN saying that mark "recently stopped October 4, 2004 checking in with Red Hat Network." I wonder if it ever did. I don't know what's wrong with mark. I DID register it with RHN and I can run up2date just fine from it, so what is this process that nightly checks in with RHN, how do I test it, and how do I fix it? I decided to exercise submitting problems via the web, so I typed everything in and submitted the problem. It'll be interesting to see how long it takes for them to respond. Submitted at 1:45 pm. mark is also getting errors doing cron things, 1) /etc/cron.daily/logrotate gets the following error error: Ignoring up2date.rpmnew, because of .rpmnew ending 2) /etc/cron.weekly/makewhatis.cron gets zcat: stdout: Broken pipe -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # nnnnnn xxxxx xxxxxx xx, 2004 xxxxx who xxxxx xxxxx