Hardware Compatibility

[Vulpes Velox]

On Wed, 23 Apr 2003 21:28:25 -0700
webmaster at hpcaz.com wrote:

> QUESTIONS:
> 1) Does FreeBSD support IDE RAID controllers?

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.8R/hardware.html

BTW check out vinum. That will handle raid.

> 2) Does it support AMD Athlons (natively)?

More or less. The kernel afaik has no special optimizations for it, but check out make.conf.

> 2) Where can I find information for configuring FreeBSD for use in these 
> situations? 
 
> SITUATION:
> I've been a RedHat user for years and currently support a large number of 
> RedHat servers--HTTP, SMTP, FTP, and VPN servers, to name a few. 

Check the portstree and use man.
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html

Never done VPN befor but there is stuff in the portstree for it. I've done http, smpt, ftp, and ect thought and have never had a problem with it befor.

> I was recently turned on to FreeBSD. I downloaded the ISOs and installed. So 
> far, I like it! 
> 
> All the software I need to run on it will work. However, the biggest problem 
> I'm having is hardware compatibility. 
> 
> The servers I produce are (mostly) turn-key--that is, they're not Dells or 
> Gateways. Most of my customers are looking for high performance at the 
> lowest possible cost. Thus, I offer a lot of IDE RAID and Athlon-based 
> servers to them. 
> 
> I've received a suprisingly good response with this and other "budget" 
> hardware configurations. All of the manufacturers I use provide Linux 
> drivers for their hardware or the support is provided in the Linux kernel. 
> 
> None of the vendors I use provide FreeBSD software (with the exception of 
> Adaptec for version 4.11). So, I'm guessing that the support for hardware on 
> the compatibility list is provide by the FreeBSD project but I can't seem to 
> locate the documentation for setting up these configurations. 

Use man and ask specific questions. If you are looking for a answers to a specific question, none of which were contained in ye's email, just ask and it will most likely be answered.

Here are some nice places to start for more reading...
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=asr&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+4.8-RELEASE
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/index.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/vinum-vinum.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/index.html