Hi
I followed the discussion and wanted something to say about the
"changed" topic,
which is now more "learning in a real enviroment or not".
First time I started with linux on my machine at home, I thought like
"hm, linux is
much better than windows as I was told so I can sweep away my windows
and take linux
for games and so on..."
Two hours later I was completely down; no one could help me and the
documentation
was hardly to understand that days (of course only for me).
Now, years later, I take ALWAYS a testing enviroment before setting up
"the thing"
in a "real" working surrounding.
It doesn't matter, if you are testing raid on only one disk or one some
thousands to understand raid - you won't test any redundancy by
disconnecting disks - it is
promised in the documentation - but you want to know, how to set it up
and so on.
At work I have the possibility to take a computer with a small scsi
array of three
or four disks and start testing - but some other haven't the ability and
so noone
should blame them for making "unreal" tests.
Greetings, Dietmar
Piete Brooks wrote:
>
> [ I've delayed reply to this one to try to work out how to express myself
> better, but have failed, so sorry -- it's not as clear as I'd hoped
> ]
>
> >> o Learning
> >> Granted, no speed improvements, but you can learn about it.
> >> Knowledge like that comes in handy in Interviews ;-)
> > But you are learning in an environment not conducive to learning
>
> I disagree.
>
> > -> ie: the system is not real-world, and in fact, may be far from a good
> > example of the real world.
>
> It's a learning curve.
>
> Such testing gets you a long way up that curve !!
>
> 1) have I correctly set all the kernel build options
> 2) do the startup scripts (etc) correctly start/stop the RAID
> 3) can I create syntactically correct raidtab files
> 4) can I invoke mkraid correctly
> 5) what are the procedures for fixing problems when a disk has failed
> 6) how can I add spare disks
> 7) how so I convert a raw disk to RAID1
> 8) What do I do when I just see "mkrai aborted"
>
> If all users had performed all the above tests on such dummy systems,
> I suspect 90% of the please for help on this list would go !
>
> > Again, testing in a environment not simulating real world.
>
> Again, I diagree !
>
> It *IS* using the same kernel, same scripts, same utilities, same procesures,
> etc, etc
>
> > I can get a chair, and an old record (steering wheel) and pretend
> > that I am driving a car.
>
> No -- a closer analogy is to get into a *REAL* car, and drive it round a
> deserted carparkl / runway / ...
>
> You learn how to start the engine, control the clutch, stop the car,
> control a skid, etc.
>
> Sure, you don't learn how to deal with other traffic, but you get used to
> driving a *REAL* car without the chance of doing damage to anyone else !
>
> [[ I learnt to drive a car aged 10.
> I made one mistake, and knocked down our garden wall.
> I also learnt how to build a dry stone wall :-))
> ]]
>
> > Sure, I can learn and 'test' things,
>
> ... in a real car -- yup !
>
> > but do they in any way represent a real world scenario?
>
> It's a pretty close approximation of the basics.
> Lets get people a good half way up the learning curve before letting them loose
> on real data !!
--
"For those about to rock - we salute you!"
Dietmar Stein, Systemadministrator UNIX/Linux
http://home.t-online.de/home/dstein2203
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
