Where to find good/cheap tech support

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
>    You seem to be making assumptions and are looking into this
> to deeply
>    my friend. But thanks for the feedback anyway :)    -
>    The $150 was only an arbitrary number thats common in the field. I
>    could have chosen another number. It would not have mattered, the
>    question would have been the same.

That is baloney, when you titled the post good/CHEAP, quite obviously the
number matters greatly.

>    -
>    The SCSI adapter is an Adaptec Ultra320 built into a $3000+ 1U web
>    server and not a common inexpensive controller. Since it works fine
>    for both RedHat and Windows we are probably going to go with
>    another OS on this server other than FreeBSD.

Um, that would be Windows, right? That is, your going to drop an
additional
$1200 on Windows OS and licensing for it just because you don't want to
drop $150 into an hour of support?

If that isn't true then why are you even listing Windows here?  Windows
isn't
a UNIX OS, and has no relevance to anything.  Is it because your thinking
that if you tell us Windows runs on this server that we are all going to
be
real impressed?  Aren't you forgetting a lot of us already run 1U
webservers
fine with FreeBSD with no problems?

The fact RedHat runs on this is significant since the FreeBSD and RedHat
Adaptec driver have a common ancestor.

>    Why arm wrestle the
>    situation when no one seems to know the solution to our issue.    -

Simple, because the OS is free.  If you want to save the money on
licensing
fees then you spend your time arm wrestling problems when they come up.

If you own a car and you want to save a lot of money on mechanics fees
then
you learn how to fix it, buy a lot of tools, and do the work yourself.
Why
is this any different with operating systems?

>    And I am in a VERY small company that could barely pay for what we
>    just purchased. We where lucky to get what we did and the idea of
>    having a duplicate is wishful thinking and not realistic, so thats
>    a risk we will have to take until we can afford better solutions.

In short, you overreached yourself.  So let me ask you, why should
customers
use you when your competition has actually spent the money for backup
servers?

I work for a small company too, lots of people do that is no excuse.  But
when I have a problem, such a fielding a mailserver, that really ought to
have a backup server, if I have $3K to spend on it, I don't run out and
buy a new server.  I instead get creative and perhaps buy 2 used servers
at $1500, or roll my own clones, or get a leasing company involved, etc.

I don't shortchange my customers because I'm not willing to gamble with
their livelihoods.  Sure, I may not be out there saying to them that I
have a brand new P4 3Ghz server for them like you are, but I am telling
them
that for what they need, a P4 3Ghz server won't be any different than a
P3 1.5Ghz system, (which it isn't) and that I have redundancies in that
P3 1.5Ghz network that allow me to guarentee to them that if my server
blows
chunks that I will have them back online within 20 minutes.

>    Its not the perfect situation but its the best we can do with what
>    we have.

No, it isn't.

>    I would love a new house but the cold numbers dictate
>    what's    really possible right now. -

No, they don't.  You are simply making up justfications for yourself to
try to sleep better at night.  You don't have the moral leg to stand on
to
sell server services to your customers, because when your customers buy
services from you there is an implied understanding that they are buying
server services that are done in a professional manner, better than they
could do them.

And if you aren't selling server services to customers, but instead using
this server for your own business, the moral issues still remain because
your customers depend on your product, and if you go offline a week
because
your all-the-eggs-in-one-basket solution blew chunks, then your still
affecting your customers.

I'm sure you can probably go on making excuses, but I'm not interested
in them.  You said you couldn't afford to have the server down for
days at a time.  Well, either that was a baldfaced lie and you were
full of crap, or your abrogating your responsibility to provide solid
IT services and infrastructure.  Sites that cannot afford to have
a server down for days at a time MUST have backup servers, it is simple
as that, and no amount of whining and excuses justify anything different.

>    Now if your interested in the problem, here is the support
>    issue/question no one seems to have any clue about.....    -
>    I am attempting to install FreeBSD 5.3 onto a new server, but
>    during the initial bootup it fails / times out from what I think
> is it trying
>    to initialize the SCSI adapter. The server has an Adaptec AIC-7902
>    dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI controller which the i386 ahd(4)
> driver has
>    listed as a supported device.
>    -
>    I have been reading and searching this lists archives as well as
>    the bsdforums.org site for possible solutions, but so far what I
>    have found has not worked. I have tried disabling/enabling ACPI,
>    removing all but one SCSI drive and re-checking the adapter
>    settings comparing them to a different Adaptec controller on
>    another server running FreeBSD 5.3 which works fine. The servers
> BIOS and firmware
> is all up
>    to date and is mainly running on its default settings.    -

Have you looked at PR  kern/71778  it is still open, is applicable to
your problem.  You should post followup to it with the same output
as requested "pciconf -lv".  You should also check out FreeBSD release
4.11 on this system, as the original creator of that PR did.

Without feedback the developers do not know there is a problem.  The
Questions mailing list is NOT the place for submitting bugs to
FreeBSD.  It is rather where people who don't know better get their
paradigm adjusted to be realistic, or if their too emotionally envolved
in their
excus.. paradigm adjusted and cannot take the forced therapy, then they
get pissed off
and go away and run Windows or something and sooth their ruffled feathers
by telling themselves they were right all along.

The fact that someone else has a similar problem with this
chipset is a much better indicator it's a driver bug than the original
single post to the PR, and much more likely to get the driver author
to take a look at it.  If the driver author does not look at it I am
sorry about that, but I would bet that if you offered him half the amount
of money as what it would cost to run Windows on this server of yours
that
the bug would be fixed quickly.

But of course, you won't do that because you seem to have a moral
adversion
to spending money on software or support.  Hardware I guess is OK to
spend
money on, with a grudge, I guess.

I wonder how long you would stay in business if all your customers had
this
same money spending attitude to your product?

Ted