Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Jason Dixon wrote: Why do these wackos come out of the woodwork every 6 months to help the project? I never said I was here to help. I wasn't even the one who had this idea, recall. However, I do not think that the idea advanced - by one Will H. Backman, remember? - of having something in a web store format to answer questions about what actual currently-available hardware operates best with OpenBSD is a bad idea. This may be grand and new to you, but mostly it's something that might actually help OpenBSD users figure out what hardware they _can_ and _should_ buy to use with their operating system, so they don't buy the wrong thing and get screwed. It also provides a sort of de-facto purchasing-coordination system and statistics-gathering mechanism for leverage with uncooperative vendors. I believe that at the VERY MINIMUM this idea merits an experiment. I gather you disagree? Actually, come to think of it, I don't care. I have a suggestion regarding where you can put your snotty little speech about good intentions. Sit down and shut up, you lippy little shit. To the rest of the world: The site is now in beta test, the CGI backend is largely done, and it's been populated with a few test values (mostly from Soekris, Inc.) I am about to begin trolling through the manpages for information on what stuff is supported. DEVELOPERS: I AM ASSUMING THAT THAT INFORMATION IS TRUE. If there are any blatant Fucking Lies in the manpages, please inform me of this at your earliest convenience. EVERYBODY ELSE: I need reports of things that you _personally know_ work under OpenBSD. I know the manpages don't cover it all. I also still need a place to host it permanently. I could also use some graphics help - who is it that does the banners with Puffy on the main site? I can do it myself if it entails GIMP or Inkscape/SVG, I'm going to have to ask someone else to do the graphics banner for this if it entails anything else. The Virtual Web Store is here: http://www.sdeath.net/obsdstore Knock yourselves out, and SEND INFORMATION! -- (c) 2005 Unscathed Haze via Central Plexus [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am Chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are Free. -Eris Big Brother is watching you. Learn to become Invisible. | Your message must be this wide to ride the Internet. |
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 04:04:16AM -0800, Szechuan Death wrote: ...The Virtual Web Store is here: I *really* like your disclaimer.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Theo de Raadt wrote: Wow, free advice as to how I can spend my time. Aren't you kind? Want some advice from me? Yes, I _am_ full of grandmotherly kindness, as well as invariably excellent advice. It is well that you realize this. In this instance, that advice was Do not spurn good ideas, Do not whine about your users not buying CDs if you're in the business of writing free software, because nobody wants to hear it, and This is what implementing this suggestion will buy you. Nowhere did I say You should spend your time doing this. You need to read a little more carefully. Speaking a little more carefully wouldn't hurt either. I note that you make a practice of spurning innocently-offered and occasionally good ideas in a much more brutal fashion than is actually called for. I chalk this up to you not being called on it often enough when you indulge this particular vice, but I could be wrong. I will note that while your sandpaper personality can occasionally serve you well in some instances, unmoderated, it _will_ cause you to miss opportunities in others. Hint: when you kill the messenger, in the long run, you just get less mail. That aside, why not? Challenge accepted. Web-store and HTML design are not my strong points, but I've been meaning to play with them a bit. Since no money is changing hands and no shopping carts are being created (there being nothing to pay money for on the site), since this is just a collection of links that is being monitored, straight HTML and a little tiny bit of CGI may be good enough for the task. Let me see what I can do. It may come to nothing, but I have some free time. My proposed beginning for this can be seen here: http://www.sdeath.net/obsdstore I am purposely maintaining the appearance of OpenBSD's site, it loads nice and snappy and looks clean. I'm working on the CGI script for this. Caveat: This is for TESTING PURPOSES ONLY, it is going to be hosted elsewhere very very soon as soon as I get the script done, and the database populated sufficiently to be useful, and as soon as somebody else provides a place for it. If that doesn't happen, I'll probably mothball it. [snip Rob Schneiderish repeated You can do it!s] You can do all the above. I am too busy. I hope appreciate my advice; look at all the good ideas I just gave you for things you can do! You're too busy to try and save yourself some labor, and to get the things you claim you need to do better work? Huh, okay. Different strokes, I suppose. If I were that busy, I'd jump at the chance to spend a few minutes now to save hours later. YMMV, though. OpenBSD users: send me lists of things that are KNOWN TO WORK and are SUPPORTED in OpenBSD. Requirements: model numbers, revision numbers if applicable, OpenBSD revision, platform. Descriptions of the item not strictly necessary but useful. Restrict this to things that are currently available for purchase as new, please. Don't worry about checking it thoroughly; if you bought it new in the last three years, that's good enough, I'm more concerned about getting messages involving things like S/Bus framebuffers and Multia mainboards. Bonus points if you track down good places to buy this stuff, too. I know a lot of them, but I know that I don't know all of them. OpenBSD development team: start thinking about where you want me to put this when it is complete. (I can think of a couple of places that are likely to be suggested by certain individuals, but do try to restrain yourselves.) If I can, I'll write it; as I have time, I'll maintain it; I will not, however, host it, since my pipe isn't big enough. Anybody else is welcome to host it, too, but it would probably be a much better idea to actually put it on openbsd.org. Also, please give me a list of vendors that have cooperated with you to the extent that you have required to write software for their products; this will be used in the creation of supercategories of OpenBSD-friendly hardware manufacturers and their products. Everybody: Suggest categories. The ones up now are only suggestions. Also, can anybody give me the raw vector or whatever file that was used to make the picture of Puffy for the 3.7 banner on the main site? I ginned up a crappy OpenBSD store graphic that sucks, but this needs something better. I'm thinking Puffy wearing a green banker's visor behind a cash register. Anybody that's actually _good_ at graphic design, feel free to come up with something better; I'm okay, but I'm not great at it. -- (c) 2005 Unscathed Haze via Central Plexus [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am Chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are Free. -Eris Big Brother is watching you. Learn to become Invisible. | Your message must be this wide to ride the Internet. |
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On 9/26/05, Bryan Irvine [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? Good luck with Promise. I went through this a while back, and the guys at Promise are clueless. I called them up and asked, I even had the cipset numbers and they still couldn't tell me what they used on their cards. Look in the archives for my interesting experiences with them. I ended up getting an Adaptec 1210sa. I didn't need RAID though, my understanding is the RAID support is really sketchy on these. --Bryan Try to avoid buying Adaptec since they do not want your business, google for openbsd +adaptec and you'll get a hint, it's also mentioned on i386.html -- // Johan
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Sep 27, 2005, at 2:01 AM, Szechuan Death wrote: Yes, I _am_ full of grandmotherly kindness, as well as invariably excellent advice. It is well that you realize this. In this instance, that advice was Do not spurn good ideas, Do not whine about your users not buying CDs if you're in the business of writing free software, because nobody wants to hear it, and This is what implementing this suggestion will buy you. Nowhere did I say You should spend your time doing this. You need to read a little more carefully. Speaking a little more carefully wouldn't hurt either. Why do these wackos come out of the woodwork every 6 months to help the project? Theo doesn't want or need your talk. The project needs users of their code to help out by purchasing a CD, shirt, maybe even a poster. Nag your buddy who you usually lend your CD to, or that downloads via FTP, to skip this month's copy of Gamer's L33t Monthly and buy a CD. No amount of DHTML or AJAX is going to affect the number of orders placed. Good intentions are not enough. Almost one year ago to date, I announced the OpenBSD Enterprise Bundle [0]. Received with great fanfare and excitement, can you guess how many good-intentioned users and corporate entities stepped up with their cold, hard cash? ZERO. So the next time you think your grand new idea is going to change the world, think again. Besides, the OpenBSD project isn't here for World Domination [1]. That's someone else. [0] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-miscm=109648786731451w=2 [1] http://www.openbsd.org/goals.html -- Jason Dixon DixonGroup Consulting http://www.dixongroup.net
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Theo's reply was good :-) and you're just doing blah-blah here. The blah-blah about the integrated d/b was waste of time too. Why don't you shut up and implement your ideas yourself? On 9/27/05, Szechuan Death [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Theo de Raadt wrote: Wow, free advice as to how I can spend my time. Aren't you kind? Want some advice from me? Yes, I _am_ full of grandmotherly kindness, as well as invariably excellent advice. It is well that you realize this. In this instance, that advice was Do not spurn good ideas, Do not whine about your users not buying CDs if you're in the business of writing free software, because nobody wants to hear it, and This is what implementing this suggestion will buy you. Nowhere did I say You should spend your time doing this. You need to read a little more carefully. Speaking a little more carefully wouldn't hurt either. I note that you make a practice of spurning innocently-offered and
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Monday 26 September 2005 20:10, you wrote: Try this one out for size, I can vouch that it's super http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html Brandon Is there an LSI SATA card that doesn't have RAID and works with OpenBSD? I don't want RAID support, so buying an expensive ($216 on newegg.com) card doesn't sound like a good deal. Dan Ramaley Network Programmer/Analyst (515) 271-4540 Dial Center 118, Drake University
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: On Monday 26 September 2005 20:10, you wrote: Try this one out for size, I can vouch that it's super http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html Brandon Is there an LSI SATA card that doesn't have RAID and works with OpenBSD? I don't want RAID support, so buying an expensive ($216 on newegg.com) card doesn't sound like a good deal. lsilogic.com I've helped as much as I can, now it's up to you. Brandon
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 08:42:47AM -0500, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: On Monday 26 September 2005 20:10, you wrote: Try this one out for size, I can vouch that it's super http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html Brandon Is there an LSI SATA card that doesn't have RAID and works with OpenBSD? I don't want RAID support, so buying an expensive ($216 on newegg.com) card doesn't sound like a good deal. Most of the cheap SATA controllers you can buy should just work now (possible exception being newer promise based ones?). If you get something that isn't supported you can always donate it so we can try add support for them.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 10:01:29PM -0800, Szechuan Death wrote: Do not whine about your users not buying CDs if you're in the business of writing free software, because nobody wants to hear it Free from restrictions, not monetary cost. Just because this makes it easy for you to download and install it for free doesn't mean you aren't being a cheap bastard and it sure as hell doesn't give you the right to tell the main developer not to whine about it. -- HOW YOU CAN TELL THAT IT'S GOING TO BE A ROTTEN DAY: #1040 Your income tax refund cheque bounces.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Tue, 27 Sep 2005 06:28:14 -0400 Jason Dixon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Theo doesn't want or need your talk. The project needs users of their code to help out by purchasing a CD, shirt, maybe even a poster. Nag your buddy who you usually lend your CD to, or that downloads via FTP, to skip this month's copy of Gamer's L33t Monthly and buy a CD. No amount of DHTML or AJAX is going to affect the number of orders placed. I've been in the OpenBSD users scene for a year or two now. I took the following route, 1) bought a cd+book off ebay (legitimate copy of each). I did this as it was cheap, I wanted the book, but the cd was the great 3.5 with fantastic inlay. 2) later bought Jacek Artymiaks's book. However, CD sales can't be that good, I want a hard copy of material, it would be better business sense to have Jacek publish for OpenBSD, then sell the book with the CD with each release. That surely is better sense than buying a new tshirt every six months. Or, why not publish the FAQ on paper, the pf section would certainly be of great interest to firewall design/admins. Way to go KD85, I've been waiting flipping ages for my 3.5 t-shirt. The songs are great. -- A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse, of course, Unless, of course, the horse, of course, Is the famous Mr. Ed! http://www.usenix.org.uk - http://irc.is-cool.net
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Tue, Sep 27, 2005 at 08:42:47AM -0500, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: On Monday 26 September 2005 20:10, you wrote: Try this one out for size, I can vouch that it's super http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html Brandon Is there an LSI SATA card that doesn't have RAID and works with OpenBSD? I don't want RAID support, so buying an expensive ($216 on newegg.com) card doesn't sound like a good deal. You could try to find an LSI MegaRAID 150-2. They're usually priced somewhere between $50-70. The only trick is that they're really hard to find now (discontinued by LSI, I think). I had 2 orders cancelled and lost a bid on ebay before I finally found 3 that were already on order at pc-pitstop.com. The guy who ordered them changed his mind, so I got lucky and was able to grab one. That was this morning; presumably they still have two left. bc -- Benjamin A. Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED] [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Which SATA controller to purchase
I have an i386 file server running OpenBSD 3.7-release. I want to add an SATA drive to the system. Since the motherboard does not have SATA built-in, i need to purchase a controller card. I notice on http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html that a number of SATA chips are supported, though many will require an upgrade to -current or 3.8 when it is released (either of which i would be willing to do if necessary). My question is, given a chip number listed on i386.html, how do i find out what products the chip is used in? For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? Dan Ramaley Network Programmer/Analyst (515) 271-4540 Dial Center 118, Drake University
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: I have an i386 file server running OpenBSD 3.7-release. I want to add an SATA drive to the system. Since the motherboard does not have SATA built-in, i need to purchase a controller card. I notice on http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html that a number of SATA chips are supported, though many will require an upgrade to -current or 3.8 when it is released (either of which i would be willing to do if necessary). My question is, given a chip number listed on i386.html, how do i find out what products the chip is used in? For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? LSI Logic. Find one... they're cheap, fast, work great and you can even do raid!! Brandon
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? Good luck with Promise. I went through this a while back, and the guys at Promise are clueless. I called them up and asked, I even had the cipset numbers and they still couldn't tell me what they used on their cards. Look in the archives for my interesting experiences with them. I ended up getting an Adaptec 1210sa. I didn't need RAID though, my understanding is the RAID support is really sketchy on these. --Bryan
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brandon Mercer Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 2:41 PM To: misc@openbsd.org Subject: Re: Which SATA controller to purchase Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: I have an i386 file server running OpenBSD 3.7-release. I want to add an SATA drive to the system. Since the motherboard does not have SATA built-in, i need to purchase a controller card. I notice on http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html that a number of SATA chips are supported, though many will require an upgrade to -current or 3.8 when it is released (either of which i would be willing to do if necessary). My question is, given a chip number listed on i386.html, how do i find out what products the chip is used in? For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? LSI Logic. Find one... they're cheap, fast, work great and you can even do raid!! Brandon OpenBSD should have a web store that is really only a referral store to other sellers. For example (not advocating using it), Amazon has an Associates program that pays referral fees. There could be a virtual store that lists things that are known to be well supported by OpenBSD, and then referral income goes to OpenBSD. It would make buying parts easy, although there could be arguments over what level of functionality would qualify.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
--On 26 September 2005 15:07 -0400, Will H. Backman wrote: There could be a virtual store that lists things that are known to be well supported by OpenBSD ...and when some idiot vendor changes chips without changing product code, what then?
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
...and when some idiot vendor changes chips without changing product code, what then? The virtual store is a half-baked idea, I know. I'm just looking for additional ways to support OpenBSD. In the above case, I return the product and inform the virtual store that the referral isn't good any more. I'm not any worse off. This assumes that the virtual store only points to vendors with good return policies. I guess I could always set up a referral store myself, and just post that I am not in any way affiliated with OpenBSD and promise to give my referral fees to them.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
...and when some idiot vendor changes chips without changing product code, what then? The virtual store is a half-baked idea, I know. I'm just looking for additional ways to support OpenBSD. In the above case, I return the product and inform the virtual store that the referral isn't good any more. I'm not any worse off. This assumes that the virtual store only points to vendors with good return policies. I guess I could always set up a referral store myself, and just post that I am not in any way affiliated with OpenBSD and promise to give my referral fees to them. i have thought about a store like this for about a year, but i suspect a virtual store wouldn't quite cut it due to the aforementioned chipset changing garbage. it would be interesting to open such a store from both to make it easier to get supported hardware and as a possible revenue stream for the project. i'd imagine a store like this would certainly incur additional costs (inventory management, careful chipset control, meager employee payroll, etc.), but i would certainly be willing to pay a premium for the ease of finding the right hardware. maybe all proceeds beyond reinvestment in inventory and other necessary expenses could go to the project? cheers, jake
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Don't the OpenBSD developers already work hard enough, that now we are supposed to do even more boring business oriented things for you all? Every release, more people download OpenBSD and fewer people buy OpenBSD. But the solution is not to make OpenBSD developers web businessmen. That is a road to slower development. So please stop it with these suggestions. They are so damn boring. ...and when some idiot vendor changes chips without changing product code, what then? The virtual store is a half-baked idea, I know. I'm just looking for additional ways to support OpenBSD. In the above case, I return the product and inform the virtual store that the referral isn't good any more. I'm not any worse off. This assumes that the virtual store only points to vendors with good return policies. I guess I could always set up a referral store myself, and just post that I am not in any way affiliated with OpenBSD and promise to give my referral fees to them. i have thought about a store like this for about a year, but i suspect a virtual store wouldn't quite cut it due to the aforementioned chipset changing garbage. it would be interesting to open such a store from both to make it easier to get supported hardware and as a possible revenue stream for the project. i'd imagine a store like this would certainly incur additional costs (inventory management, careful chipset control, meager employee payroll, etc.), but i would certainly be willing to pay a premium for the ease of finding the right hardware. maybe all proceeds beyond reinvestment in inventory and other necessary expenses could go to the project? cheers, jake
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
--On 26 September 2005 15:21 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i have thought about a store like this for about a year,but i suspect a virtual store wouldn't quite cut it due to the aforementioned chipset changing garbage. it would be interesting to open such a store from both to make it easier to get supported hardware and as a possible revenue stream for the project. For some subset of hardware, you could always move to Europe and buy from Wim :)
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Theo de Raadt wrote: Don't the OpenBSD developers already work hard enough, that now we are supposed to do even more boring business oriented things for you all? Every release, more people download OpenBSD and fewer people buy OpenBSD. But the solution is not to make OpenBSD developers web businessmen. That is a road to slower development. The solution is not to complain about users not buying something which ostensibly takes pride in being available for free; it is to take advantage of good ideas when they are offered. This is such an idea. Using it to make money, well, that's kind of dumb. (Though it could work, much later.) The chief utility of a virtual store of products fully supported in OpenBSD is that it provides the OpenBSD team a convenient way to do three things: a) Demonstrate concretely to vendors the number of OpenBSD users who are interested in and who purchase their products, by giving them a hard number of how many times each product is being examined by a potential purchaser, and maybe even how many times each product is actually being purchased. The vendors whose products are sort-of- supported due to the vendor's reluctance to provide decent documentation will then have a good metric for exactly how unwilling they should be to continue their asinine behavior. b) Obtain new toys and docs for the OpenBSD project, using a). When Vendor B is contacted and told that their competitor Vendor A's latest, greatest Turbotron 2000 SATA controller is on the OpenBSD virtual store and has logged 100,000 clickthroughs to Vendor A's online store, Vendor B will want to get his DynaMaster II SATA controller up there to compete. Vendor B can then be told that the requirement for this is a full set of non-NDA documentation plus N samples for the developers. If Vendor B does not acquiesce, Vendor B can go pound sand and watch Vendor A's sales go through the roof. Perhaps Vendor B will be more cooperative next year when the OpenBSD team calls again. c) Help out your users. Help them figure out what they can actually use, help them stop fucking around looking for parts that they think will work. I know that frequently, the sole basis on which _I_ make _my_ purchases is Is this supported under OpenBSD? That requires a LOT of research beforehand to answer Yes or No, and many times doesn't have a satisfactorily clear answer. The vendors sure don't help. Windows drivers, click here. We support Linux, too. What about OpenBSD? Huh? Having a place where users can just go and find what they need makes their purchasing decisions a LOT easier. All other things being equal, when purchasing is easier, more purchases are made. When more purchases are made, the effect of a) and b) increases. Some vendors may even be willing to proactively contribute money or other hardware to the developers to accelerate development on the strength of a) alone. I don't think Linux users have such a thing. I do know many people who seek open-source compatible hardware; they try OpenBSD- supported stuff first, because OpenBSD tends only to support the most open, most ubiquitous, and least brain-damaged hardware around. YMMV. I think you discount the amount of clout the OpenBSD team has in its users' purchasing patterns, and the amount of clout with the vendors that that could become with a relatively small investment in coordinating those user purchases. A virtual store would provide the force multiplier to make the Give us documentation NOW, or SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES! thumbscrews really effective. If you want support from the vendors, then you'd better be prepared to make it worth their while. Creating Santa Theo's List of Good Vendors' Products Which Are Fully Supported in OpenBSD in a nice, easy-to-use Web-store interface is one step down that road. You have had some success with this, but only recently, and only because you did a metric shitload of work. Did you like dealing with those wireless-card yahoos, languishing in the Sisyphean hell of trying to get them to cooperate with you? No? Then let your users do your work for you. The only thing you have to do is make it the slightest bit easy, and they will. Oh yeah, and it will probably cut down on the number of times you see messages of the form Is X supported on OpenBSD blah? -- (c) 2005 Unscathed Haze via Central Plexus [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am Chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are Free. -Eris Big Brother is watching you. Learn to become Invisible. | Your message must be this wide to ride the Internet. |
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Don't the OpenBSD developers already work hard enough, that now we are supposed to do even more boring business oriented things for you all? Every release, more people download OpenBSD and fewer people buy OpenBSD. But the solution is not to make OpenBSD developers web businessmen. That is a road to slower development. The solution is not to complain about users not buying something which ostensibly takes pride in being available for free; it is to take advantage of good ideas when they are offered. This is such an idea. Wow, free advice as to how I can spend my time. Aren't you kind? Want some advice from me? a) Demonstrate concretely to vendors the number of OpenBSD users who are interested in and who purchase their products, by giving them a hard number of how many times each product is being examined by a potential purchaser, and maybe even how many times each product is actually being purchased. The vendors whose products are sort-of- supported due to the vendor's reluctance to provide decent documentation will then have a good metric for exactly how unwilling they should be to continue their asinine behavior. You can do this. b) Obtain new toys and docs for the OpenBSD project, using a). When Vendor B is contacted and told that their competitor Vendor A's latest, greatest Turbotron 2000 SATA controller is on the OpenBSD virtual store and has logged 100,000 clickthroughs to Vendor A's online store, Vendor B will want to get his DynaMaster II SATA controller up there to compete. Vendor B can then be told that the requirement for this is a full set of non-NDA documentation plus N samples for the developers. If Vendor B does not acquiesce, Vendor B can go pound sand and watch Vendor A's sales go through the roof. Perhaps Vendor B will be more cooperative next year when the OpenBSD team calls again. You can do this. c) Help out your users. Help them figure out what they can actually use, help them stop fucking around looking for parts that they think will work. I know that frequently, the sole basis on which _I_ make _my_ purchases is Is this supported under OpenBSD? That requires a LOT of research beforehand to answer Yes or No, and many times doesn't have a satisfactorily clear answer. The vendors sure don't help. Windows drivers, click here. We support Linux, too. What about OpenBSD? Huh? Having a place where users can just go and find what they need makes their purchasing decisions a LOT easier. All other things being equal, when purchasing is easier, more purchases are made. When more purchases are made, the effect of a) and b) increases. Some vendors may even be willing to proactively contribute money or other hardware to the developers to accelerate development on the strength of a) alone. I don't think Linux users have such a thing. I do know many people who seek open-source compatible hardware; they try OpenBSD- supported stuff first, because OpenBSD tends only to support the most open, most ubiquitous, and least brain-damaged hardware around. YMMV. You can do this. I think you discount the amount of clout the OpenBSD team has in its users' purchasing patterns, and the amount of clout with the vendors that that could become with a relatively small investment in coordinating those user purchases. A virtual store would provide the force multiplier to make the Give us documentation NOW, or SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES! thumbscrews really effective. If you want support from the vendors, then you'd better be prepared to make it worth their while. Creating Santa Theo's List of Good Vendors' Products Which Are Fully Supported in OpenBSD in a nice, easy-to-use Web-store interface is one step down that road. You have had some success with this, but only recently, and only because you did a metric shitload of work. Did you like dealing with those wireless-card yahoos, languishing in the Sisyphean hell of trying to get them to cooperate with you? No? Then let your users do your work for you. The only thing you have to do is make it the slightest bit easy, and they will. Oh yeah, and it will probably cut down on the number of times you see messages of the form Is X supported on OpenBSD blah? You can do all the above. I am too busy. I hope appreciate my advice; look at all the good ideas I just gave you for things you can do!
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
From: Szechuan Death [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Theo de Raadt wrote: Don't the OpenBSD developers already work hard enough, that now we are supposed to do even more boring business oriented things for you all? Every release, more people download OpenBSD and fewer people buy OpenBSD. But the solution is not to make OpenBSD developers web businessmen. That is a road to slower development. The solution is not to complain about users not buying something which ostensibly takes pride in being available for free; it is to take advantage of good ideas when they are offered. This is such an idea. Using it to make money, well, that's kind of dumb. (Though it could work, much later.) The chief utility of a virtual store of products fully supported in OpenBSD is that it provides the OpenBSD team a convenient way to do three things: [snip] And in a perfect world, these three arguments would mean something. In reality, you lose time maintaining this thing for the end result that users will just end up complaining anyway because the vendor changed chipsets on them anyway and kept the same model number/revision number. And how much clout does it take before a hardheaded vendor actually cares about the market share that OpenBSD users make up out there? Yes, some do consider it, and these some vendors are not totally lost. They can be convinced, although a lot of the time they don't take convincing. They do the smart thing without having to be beat about with reasoning and proof. You actually think that a silly store is going to mean anything to a vendor who cares nothing about the Open Source movement and already has incentives from Microsoft to not produce specs for anyone else? That said, there could be some advantage for certain small groups of users to carrying out the idea, but listen when the developers say they don't have time or energy to put into maintaining your little web business. And before you say they wouldn't have to, think about it. The conclusive answer of is it supported will more often than not come directly from a project contributor. Why bother them when this garbage when they can spend their time working on truly valuable projects? DS
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Am Montag, 26. September 2005 20:41 CEST schrieb Brandon Mercer: Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: I have an i386 file server running OpenBSD 3.7-release. I want to add an SATA drive to the system. Since the motherboard does not have SATA built-in, i need to purchase a controller card. I notice on http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html that a number of SATA chips are supported, though many will require an upgrade to -current or 3.8 when it is released (either of which i would be willing to do if necessary). My question is, given a chip number listed on i386.html, how do i find out what products the chip is used in? For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? LSI Logic. Find one... Could you please add some numbers? Better numbers with a venoder combination? I never heard of cheap LSI SATA chipsets/controllers. Thanks in advance, -Harry they're cheap, fast, work great and you can even do raid!! Brandon [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Shrink wrap vendors are unsupportable.
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Am Dienstag, 27. September 2005 02:22 CEST schrieb pedro la peu: Shrink wrap vendors are unsupportable. ??? http://dict.leo.org/?lp=endelang=desearchLoc=0cmpType=relaxedrelink=onse ctHdr=onspellToler=stdsearch=Shrink+wrap This tells me you mean no-name elCheapo blister HardWare. It's no answer to my question, why do you reply to my message then? If my question was unclear I want to appologize, but it's hard to guess since your quote is unqualified. I never heard of LSI SATA so I asked and I'm not interested in opinions, I'd like to see vendor links. At least no untrackable answers ;) -Harry [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
Emanuel Strobl wrote: Am Montag, 26. September 2005 20:41 CEST schrieb Brandon Mercer: Daniel A. Ramaley wrote: I have an i386 file server running OpenBSD 3.7-release. I want to add an SATA drive to the system. Since the motherboard does not have SATA built-in, i need to purchase a controller card. I notice on http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html that a number of SATA chips are supported, though many will require an upgrade to -current or 3.8 when it is released (either of which i would be willing to do if necessary). My question is, given a chip number listed on i386.html, how do i find out what products the chip is used in? For example, i was looking at the Promise SATA 150TX4 and i have not yet been able to find what chip that controller uses. Any suggestions on what controller card i should get? LSI Logic. Find one... Could you please add some numbers? Better numbers with a venoder combination? I never heard of cheap LSI SATA chipsets/controllers. Thanks in advance, Harry, Try this one out for size, I can vouch that it's super http://www.lsilogic.com/products/megaraid/sata_150_4.html Brandon
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Sep 26, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote: Oh yeah, and it will probably cut down on the number of times you see messages of the form Is X supported on OpenBSD blah? You can do all the above. I am too busy. This is an excellent point. Kernel development is a fairly specialized skill, and we shouldn't ask those who can contribute in this way to divert their energy. Web development is a different skill. If OpenBSD is supposed to be community-sponsored operating system, then perhaps it's time that some of us step up to the plate and use some of our skills to contribute to the community. My schedule is booked for the next couple of months (I'm doing an enterprise migration away from Windows, a fairly large task). If nobody else steps up to the plate in that time, I'll put this onto my project list. I'm thinking a Slash-type environment could distribute the compatibility reporting among users and allow for click-throughs for purchasing. If there's a real web developer (I'm an SA) out there, I'm sure you could build something fancier and better suited. Anyone else feel the need to contribute? -- Don Ankney
Re: Which SATA controller to purchase
On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 16:21:21 -0700 Donald J. Ankney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sep 26, 2005, at 3:37 PM, Theo de Raadt wrote: Oh yeah, and it will probably cut down on the number of times you see messages of the form Is X supported on OpenBSD blah? You can do all the above. I am too busy. This is an excellent point. Kernel development is a fairly specialized skill, and we shouldn't ask those who can contribute in this way to divert their energy. Web development is a different skill. If OpenBSD is supposed to be community-sponsored operating system, then perhaps it's time that some of us step up to the plate and use some of our skills to contribute to the community. My schedule is booked for the next couple of months (I'm doing an enterprise migration away from Windows, a fairly large task). If nobody else steps up to the plate in that time, I'll put this onto my project list. I'm thinking a Slash-type environment could distribute the compatibility reporting among users and allow for click-throughs for purchasing. If there's a real web developer (I'm an SA) out there, I'm sure you could build something fancier and better suited. Anyone else feel the need to contribute? -- Don Ankney I am willing to contribute some resources to this within a few requirements. If anyone gets a project to do this going, contact me. -- Bill Chmura Director of Internet Technology Explosivo ITG Wolcott, CT
