On Fri, 22 May 2015 18:37:05 -0700 (PDT) Leslie Rhorer <lrhorer@mygrande.net> wrote: > On Monday, May 18, 2015 at 5:40:05 AM UTC-5, Petter Adsen wrote: > > On Sat, 16 May 2015 05:38:30 -0700 (PDT) > > I am sorry if this is a dumb question, > > Not at all. > > > but if this is a home system, > > why can you not go for more commodity hardware? While I do recognize > > there are differences between SAS and SATA, do you really need SAS > > in a home setting - for a media library? SATA may be the > > simplest/cheapest solution, to my way of thinking. > > Not so much beyond about 10 drives. That said, this system was > eSATA based for a long time, but it has been having issues. In my > efforts to troubleshoot the problems, I converted my 20 drive chassis > from eSATA Port Multipliers to multi-lane. It has solved some of the > issues, but not all. Wow, you certainly have a far bigger media library than me, unless you are using a ridiculous amount of tiny disks. :) > > Again, I agree. In this scenario, I would find a couple of > > controllers that would seem to suit my purpose, and contact the > > manufacturers directly with very specific questions. > > That is much easier said than done. Even companies who have > people manning the phones often have people in those positions who > are clueless beyong what is already on the web. Don't phone - email. Or, better, write an actual letter. The drones on phone support are so often useless, but they do have the ability to forward questions to people who can actually answer them. It is more likely that they will do this with a mail request than a phone call. If they are simply re-branding something that is actually made by another manufacturer, then contact _them_ directly. Go to the top, and make lots of noise. It's the only way to be heard by some of these people. Be sure to let them know that you *want* to be a paying customer, if they can only clarify what they are actually selling. > > One of these questions would be > > whether or not the controller is supported by the Linux kernel > > itself, > > The kernel is not so much the issue. Most cards are supported out > of the box by the kernel on Jessie. It is the management software > that is usually a problem. If they don't want to bother to support > all sorts of different distros, then they should provide open source > management software. I agree. And be sure to _tell_ them that. Make noise when they don't support Debian. If nobody does, then why should they support it? I assume it is not simply a matter of converting the package from RPM with alien, or manually extracting things and hack them together to get a working binary? No, it should not be necessary, but it is something to use against them when asking why they don't support one of the biggest distributions out there. If they already have code that runs on Linux it shouldn't be that big of a deal to run on multiple distributions. _Supporting_ all of them is another deal entirely. Another thing you could try, is to see if Canonical will back you. They may have some clout to get the manufacturer to provide a .deb, and this sounds like the sort of hardware they would want to see supported. Yes, they will probably ask for a package for Ubuntu, but it will get you a lot closer than where you are now. They might even be willing to ask for a package that also runs on pure Debian, as it shouldn't be too much effort to make sure it runs on both. I know that Canonical has worked with vendors in the past to get them to support their distribution, so it shouldn't be a new problem to them. Petter -- "I'm ionized" "Are you sure?" "I'm positive."
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