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
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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>
>
>
--
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
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