Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0?

Post #195,457 by gdaustin 2/18/05 10:09:53 PM 2/18/05 10:15:25 PM Reply	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0? Any thoughts? We're running Red Hat Advanced Server 2.1 with the kswapd 100% system issue described in another thread below. Now, we're being told we have to upgrade the kernel for Sarb-Ox compliance, and our IT group is proposing RH EL 3.0. I would rather have the 2.6 kernel as RH EL 3.0 is still the 2.4 kernel. Our IT group says that 2.6 kernel is Red Hat 4.0 that just went GA, so they won't approve it until it has an SP1. I can respect that, but I hear the 2.6 kernel has much better enterprise capabilities, but do I really need to wait for SP1? This is for a pretty hefty EDI system we need to be rock-solid reliable. The RH AS 2.1 was supposed to be "that" kernel, but it has proven sadly unreliable and I'm not happy at all with memory management. It seems that a lot of memory goes to the cache in backups and high load. On a 4 gig machine, we see as much as 2.2 gig go into the cache after backup. We played with the page cache settings, with default at 2 50 90. We tried 2 50 25, 2 50 50, but neither seemed to help the lockups. The IT group is proposing 8 gig of memory and go back to 2 50 25. We'll probably go ahead with RH EL 3.0 and hope this kswapd gets fixed without having to go all the way to the 2.6 kernel. Glen Edited by gdaustin Feb. 18, 2005, 10:13:19 PM EST Edited by gdaustin Feb. 18, 2005, 10:15:25 PM EST Expand All History
Post #195,477 by Another Scott 2/18/05 11:38:43 PM Reply	No personal experience. If it's important, you probably shouldn't have all of your eggs in the Red Hat. That's just a truism that you should always have options. The other obvious vendor to consider is Novell/SuSE, but it sounds like the distribution choice is out of your hands. Novell's [link\|http://www.novell.com/products/linuxenterpriseserver/\|SuSE Enterprise Server 9] is on the 2.6 kernel and a SP1 is out. [link\|http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reviews/5745/1/\|LinuxPlanet] has a story on RHEL 4.0, but there's not a lot of meat there. Was your EDI system written in-house? If not, does the vendor have problems with using a different distribution? Luck! Cheers, Scott.
Post #195,478 by gdaustin 2/18/05 11:41:08 PM 2/18/05 11:42:15 PM Reply	EDI system It's a Java-based vendor product, so the JDK matters more than the Operating System. Currently, it runs on the JDK 1.3.1, but they're considering a JDK 1.4.1 upgrade soon. Glen Edited by gdaustin Feb. 18, 2005, 11:42:15 PM EST Expand All History
Post #195,483 by broomberg 2/19/05 12:17:10 AM Reply	I do I wanted XFS filesystem, and RH AS 3.0 is only 2.4, which means only EXT3 unless externally patched, so I bought multiple copies of Suse 8. MISTAKE!!! The support was non-existent. We ended up going to RH AS 3.0. Note: ES is NOT Enterprise server. It MAY have been called that, but the "level" is less than AS, ie: Advanced server. I've seen people refer to ES as "Entry level Server".
Post #195,607 by gdaustin 2/20/05 11:32:18 AM Reply	RH EL 3.0 Update 4 It appears to fix the problem, but it also appears I'll need to go to RH EL 3.0 update 4. RH pulled in some of the 2.6 Linux kernel features into RH EL 3.0, but not the whole kernel. Virtual memory management is mentioned as a significant improvement, so I can only hope and try it. I would like to get the kswapd CPU loop issue taken care of. The bugzilla notes and RedHat notes say that 2.4.17 is much better, but it appears the real fix is in 2.4.21-27, (update 4), according to the notes. I know how this is, though, you fix one thing, you break another. Welcome to O/S kernel development. Glen Austin

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