Two Options: which to choose?

[Maciej Wierzbicki]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 05:07:59PM -0400, Matt Juszczak wrote:

> Removing IPF for 5.4-STABLE seems to have made the boxes stable.  I 
> switched all the firewalls to PF and they haven't crashed since, its been 
> about 3 days now... (before they were crashing every 12 hours).

The similar situation: two boxes with SMP (two physical processors each box).
GENERIC kernel works. GENERIC kernel with IPF module or IPF compiled into
GENERIC works. After adding SMP either to box with GENERIC with IPF module
loaded or to box with IPF compiled into the kernel, boxes crashes regularly.

After changing to PF I did not notice single crash for month (production
servers with, sometimes, heavy load).

My conclusion: I do not know what was wrong, but I could not get non-crashing
5.4 box with IPF.

> 1)  If I were to put this machine into production, it could crash at any 
> time for another reason... or maybe the switch to PF hasn't actually 
> stabalized it, and its just playing games with me.
> 
> 2)  If it crashes again, I might lose some responsibilities at work due to 
> trust and/or "inabilities".

I would try FreeBSD with PF anyway. Works perfectly.

-- 
*   Maciej Wierzbicki * At paranoia's poison door  *
*   VOO1-RIPE   VOO1-6BONE   *