Re: [Sheflug] BlueYonder

["Chris J/#6" <nospam [at] nccnet.co.uk>]

>
> <hatred-mode level="severe">
> AAAAAARGH! WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY THIS DEPENDENCY ON M$? It's all the
> tech's know, they say. THEY HAD TO LEARN WINDOWS AT SOME POINT! You aren't
> born with that knowledge (unless you mix Windoze and the human genome. No,
> don't even go there!) If I stick it on the end of my network card,
> configured for DHCP, and get something back from it, shouldn't that do?
> </hatred-mode>
> 

Simple. Try supporting Linux...you need someone that knows it pretty well. If 
they supported Linux, they'd probably only support, say, Redhat or suSE (ie, 
a single distribution). If they supported Linux, they *BSD crowd would then 
throuw up their hands and say "what about us??"

Then on top of that, the number of ways people have their box configured. 
dhclient could reside in a number of places.../usr/bin, /usr/sbin, 
/usr/local/bin ... etc. Then Redhat doesn't even *have* dhclient - it uses a 
client called 'pump'.

Then there's different versions of dhclient - could be some folk beta testing 
dhcp 3 from ISC...or using old versions (ie v1) of the ISC's dhcp package. 
Then there's the different versions of pump (of which I know nothing about 
bar its existance).

Then if it doesn't work ... does the person have a firewall up? If so, is it 
an ipfwadm, and ipchains, or an iptables firewall (ie, 2.0, 2.2 or 2.4 
kernel). And why isn't my DNS resolving? Am I running a DNS server...so I 
am...is that working? Hmm..how to check Bind 4, 8, 9 or djbdns...though this 
is easily got round by hacking /etc/resolv.conf to point to BY's servers, 
you've still got the firewall to check - and maybe even re-config now.

Someone that knows Linux wouldn't be doing household installations - they'd 
have a job in the world of system admin.

TBH, users of alternate systems that *don't* have windows partitions are 
still in the minority to the best part. I've got a basic Win95 setup sitting 
in /dev/hda1. Don't use it, but its there if I need it...which I will if I 
get Blueyonder.

There are just so many different variations in config and setup in people's 
Linux setups that trying to support them all would require someone that knows 
generic UNIX networking, then having some knowledge of each distribution, or 
skills good enough to find the setup if they don't know where it hides.

Why Windows? Its generic. It's the same on every machine. You can find it in 
the same place guarenteed each time. It allows an engineer to come round, and 
get everything wired up, installed, *AND TESTED* in the shortest timescale 
possible. Talk to the engineer when they turn up - as I said, reading 
uk.telecom.broadband, some folk have managed to get the engineer to sign the 
job off as complete without them testing the cable modem.

Which is another thing I've just thought of: I don't know how the 
installation works, but there could be some diagnostic software that runs 
under windows which the engineer can use to check the cable modem. Running 
Linux, if it wasn't working, he couldn't diagnose...and don't mention "well 
port it", 'cos then you've got all the non-MS non-linux users (FreeBSD, SCO, 
Solaris x86, BeOS or whatever) that are alienated. By supporting the pretty 
much de-facto home OS, BY are covering nearly all home users. From a business 
standpoint, its the right way to go *for now*. Most Linux users should be 
able to switch a network card onto DHCP by themselves...Redhat's Linuxconf 
and SuSE's Yast both can do this, from what I recall (personally, I hardly 
use them).

There are pages on the net that tell you how to use Linux with BY. And BY 
acknowledge Linux's existance with a blueyonder.comp.linux local newsgroup.

Chris...


-- 
Chris Johnson            \  "If not for me then, do it for yourself. If not
sixie@nccnet.co.uk        \  for then do it for the world." -- Stevie Nicks
www.nccnet.co.uk/~sixie/   ~---------------------------------------+
Redclaw chat - http://redclaw.org.uk - telnet redclaw.org.uk 2000   \______


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