On Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 1:32 PM, Brian Long <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-06-29 at 13:10 +0300, Ahmed Kamal wrote:
>> PS: Why doesn't redhat have an HCL of "components" i.e. cards that
>> work with rhel, instead of just complete systems that are rhel
>> certified !
>
> I'm fairly certain the hardware vendors submit certified results for Red
> Hat to rubber stamp and place in the HCL.  I don't believe Red Hat
> actually tests each certified configuration in-house.
>

Red Hat used to do so.. but it was rather costly so I think they came
up with a test suite that could be sent to the vendors for a lower
cost. I do not know if they still do that.

The reason for a lack of a Hardware Compatibility List was that it is
almost impossible to get right with modern hardware. With so many
things coming with reprogrammable BIOS and FPGA's on them.. you can
have 2 cards which on the outside look exactly alike and work
completely differently. Having had to deal with this on video, scsi,
modem, and pretty much every other card it is impossible to state what
hardware really works (especially when the only way to find out that
the video card has different FPGA code in it is by using an
oscilloscope or something similar.) When I was getting out of the
support business in 2001.. it took 2 full-time people to just certify
the various systems from the main vendors because HP, Dell, Gateway
might each have 20+ different combinations of the same serial-code
system. And this hardware would change every 3-4 months as new boards
were integrated in and others out.

People I know have to do the same thing with a whitebox vendor where
as far as you could tell, the motherboards and daughter boards all
looked exactly the same.. however no 20 would act the same as each
other until every board had been flashed with the same BIOS (and then
you would find a whole set that couldn't be flashed with the rest.).

> Also, when I was dealing with HP certified workstations and servers in
> the past, they (HP) had to certify every part they made available for
> that machine.  For example, they had a new server at the time (DL380 G5)
> that would not work properly with RHEL 4 using a 10Gig Ethernet card.
> They had to caveat the HCL entry stating that fact.
>
> When you see an entry for a workstation or server, it usually includes
> certification of each component the vendor sells specifically for that
> machine.
>
> /Brian/
>
> --
>       Brian Long                             |       |
>                                          . | | | . | | | .
>                                              '       '
>                                              C I S C O
>
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-- 
Stephen J Smoogen. -- BSD/GNU/Linux
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"

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