Fedora Sparc in Production

[A E [Gmail]]

Greetings,

I'm new to Fedora and new to Fedora on Sparc, though well versed with
various other distros of Linux incl. RHEL/CentOS, Debian, SUSE etc. but have
been "blessed" with a bunch of SunFire Sparc servers, on which I want to try
running Linux, after Oracle's decision to kill the OpenSolaris project and
make Solaris too expensive for mere mortals to afford/support.

I wanted to know if there is anyone running Fedora and very specifically
Fedora on Sparc in production and how stable is it to run it. I have been
running Debian on Sparc for a little while and although it was quite easy to
install and manage, there's a bunch of software that I have really struggled
to compile, build and run on it incl. several drivers etc. the binaries for
which are only available in rpm form and I've been unsuccessful in using
tools like alien to install them on Debian.

Any suggestions, advice and insights will be GREATLY appreciated.

Thanks in advance
\A

[Rafal Maszkowski]

On Wed, May 04, 2011 at 08:12:30PM -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  I wanted to know if there is anyone running Fedora and very
> specifically
>  Fedora on Sparc in production and how stable is it to run it. I have been
>  running Debian on Sparc for a little while and although it was quite easy to
>  install and manage, there's a bunch of software that I have really struggled
>  to compile, build and run on it incl. several drivers etc. the binaries for
>  which are only available in rpm form and I've been unsuccessful in using
>  tools like alien to install them on Debian. 
I run Aurora and Fedora on E250 since several years and it works. It is
a typical server with mailman and some WWWs. Currently I have Fedora 12
there and I hope to upgrade to F15 easily. I only worry about the
updates. In fedora-secondary the most recent releases/12 and
development/12 package is from 2010-05-07, updates/12 - from 2010-09-12.

The mainline F12 does not have updates since December anyway so I have
to upgrade to next available version - F15.

I wonder if I could help a little in porting updates when F15 is finally
released. I have quite limited amount of time I can use for this server
so running my own koji (or how it is called) and trying to find which
updates are already in the official secondary repository and which are
not would drain my time resources quickly. I would prefer just working
on some specific packages and possibly sharing them with others. Is it
possible with the current Fedora/Sparc infrastructure to allow an alien
developer to pick up sometimes some waiting packages polishing work?

R.
-- 
Tą bronią zabójczą są media, które robią ludziom wodę z mózgu. I tą bronią
   macie walczyć i zwyciężać. (kpt. Z. Sulatycki do uczniów WSKSiM)

[A E [Gmail]]

2011/5/5 Rafal Maszkowski <rzm(a)icm.edu.pl&gt;

>  I run Aurora and Fedora on E250 since several years and it works. It
> is
>  a typical server with mailman and some WWWs. Currently I have Fedora 12
>  there and I hope to upgrade to F15 easily. I only worry about the
>  updates. In fedora-secondary the most recent releases/12 and
>  development/12 package is from 2010-05-07, updates/12 - from 2010-09-12.
>
>  The mainline F12 does not have updates since December anyway so I have
>  to upgrade to next available version - F15.
>
>  
Hi Rafal,

Thanks for the note. Ok, so how serious is it the environment that you run
it in? Are these Fedora/Aurora machines you have running in production and
serving clients/customers as opposed to an inhouse project? You clearly seem
to be a veteran of fedora and fedora on sparc in particular. I have not
touched fedora since v1 or something a long time ago but as I understand
fedora is a "non production" Distro in general and always in Flux?  Would
that be fair to state? If so, should one dare to run it in production esp.
with the Sparc port, given the issues with the updates as you mentioned?

Anyone else wants to chime in also, please feel free as clearly this is a
big decision to try and use it in production running a high-traffic
application, in particular a VoIP switch.

[Lamar Owen]

On Thursday, May 05, 2011 11:45:39 AM A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  Anyone else wants to chime in also, please feel free as clearly this
> is a
>  big decision to try and use it in production running a high-traffic
>  application, in particular a VoIP switch. 
As much as I love Fedora, and on SPARC, and use it myself, if you're looking for
something that is more 'supported' I would suggest Debian.  I'm not sure how
much longer that will be the case, however.  If it being a Linux distribution is not a
hard requirement, then NetBSD and OpenBSD are both available for SPARC and SPARC64 and are
both solid performers.  

I have used Aurora of several versions in production, as well as using SuSE 7.3 SPARC
several years back, and I am using the F12 beta for SPARC on a couple of boxes now, but if
you need a degree of support, well, SPARC is a secondary arch for Fedora, and even though
Dennis is giving it a good run it is still a Secondary and not primary supported
architecture.

But for a production box with high visibility (as a VoIP server would be) you may be
better served by Debian or OpenBSD; it depends on how stuck on using Fedora or a
fedora-ish Linux you are.  Or how stuck on using SPARC you are: your call.

[A E [Gmail]]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Lamar Owen <lowen(a)pari.edu&gt; wrote:

>  On Thursday, May 05, 2011 11:45:39 AM A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  > Anyone else wants to chime in also, please feel free as clearly this is a
>  > big decision to try and use it in production running a high-traffic
>  > application, in particular a VoIP switch.
>
>  As much as I love Fedora, and on SPARC, and use it myself, if you're
>  looking for something that is more 'supported' I would suggest Debian.  I'm
>  not sure how much longer that will be the case, however.  If it being a
>  Linux distribution is not a hard requirement, then NetBSD and OpenBSD are
>  both available for SPARC and SPARC64 and are both solid performers.
>
>  I have used Aurora of several versions in production, as well as using SuSE
>  7.3 SPARC several years back, and I am using the F12 beta for SPARC on a
>  couple of boxes now, but if you need a degree of support, well, SPARC is a
>  secondary arch for Fedora, and even though Dennis is giving it a good run it
>  is still a Secondary and not primary supported architecture.
>
>  But for a production box with high visibility (as a VoIP server would be)
>  you may be better served by Debian or OpenBSD; it depends on how stuck on
>  using Fedora or a fedora-ish Linux you are.  Or how stuck on using SPARC you
>  are: your call.
>
>  
Hello Lamar,

Thanks for the extremely helpful response. So the only thing I'm "stuck" on
is using SPARC, as my original message stated, I was "blessed" with those
servers and I have no way around them. But certainly not stuck on Fedora,
CentOS or Linux in general. I'd have just used Solaris if Oracle hadn't come
around and messed it all up.

Now I'm NEVER touched any flavour of BSD but have only heard good things
about it, and have widely heard that it is a better choice than Linux for
networking apps / servers in particular. However, as stated in the OP, I'm
currently already running Debian Squeeze on one development server right now
but obv. it is dev, so hasn't been given the beating but it will be once the
application is ready and we do some load tests on it. Hence, my motivation
to switch over to BSD will only be if I can get better support for drivers
and packages that I have struggled to compile on Debian for Sparc since like
I stated a few of them are mostly available in rpm form with no access to
the binaries or even the source. Your comment about the uncertainty of
support for Debian on Sparc however, does worry me a little.

[Hans Witvliet]

On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 14:20 -0400, Lamar Owen wrote:

>  
>  As much as I love Fedora, and on SPARC, and use it myself, if you're looking for
> something that is more 'supported' 
>  I would suggest Debian.  I'm not sure how much longer that will be the case, however.
>  
>  If it being a Linux distribution is not a hard requirement, then NetBSD and OpenBSD are
> both available for SPARC and SPARC64 
>  and are both solid performers.  
>  
>  I have used Aurora of several versions in production, as well as using SuSE 7.3 SPARC
> several years back, 
>  and I am using the F12 beta for SPARC on a couple of boxes now, but if you need a degree
> of support, well, 
>  SPARC is a secondary arch for Fedora, and even though Dennis is giving it a good run it
> is still a Secondary 
>  and not primary supported architecture.
>  
>  But for a production box with high visibility (as a VoIP server would be) you may be
> better served by Debian or OpenBSD; 
>  it depends on how stuck on using Fedora or a fedora-ish Linux you are.  Or how stuck on
> using SPARC you are: your call.
>  _______________________________________________ 
I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still recommend it

COTS intel stuff is very nice, but the seldom reach the age of five
years when running 24/7.

With Sparc stuff no problem: some of them are beyond 20 years!
Unfortunately they were too good for this world ;-(

hw

[A E [Gmail]]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt; wrote:

>  I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
>  As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still recommend it
>
>  COTS intel stuff is very nice, but the seldom reach the age of five
>  years when running 24/7.
>
>  With Sparc stuff no problem: some of them are beyond 20 years!
>  Unfortunately they were too good for this world ;-(
>
>  hw
>
>  I see, interesting. I'm starting to lean towards giving this a go, even 
though
most people have pointed out the issue with constant updates to the
Sparc port and them not being in sync with the updates available on the same
number x86 release.

I also have yet another question and this may be one of the other silly
questions, but are CentOS / RHEL rpms compatible with Fedora? As I
mentioned, one of the biggest reasons I want to try out Fedora or any Redhat
based Distro is primary because of the driver availability of some of the
hardware I need to use as well as the core application i.e. VoIP switch is
all developed and best supported on them. However, the driver argument will
fail if I'm unable to install the RPMs built for RHEL on Fedora. Is that
usually seamless or is there some package conversion, unpack, convert,
repack kinda voodoo magic involved?

Lastly, Hans, I am not really sure what "fancy" would be ....I'd think
it's
kinda relative as to what defines 'fancy'. If running a VoIP server on it,
along with a bunch of modules/plugins etc on it is fancy, well then I'm in
trouble I guess :( I know people are running that same software on Fedora on
COTS x86/x86_64 machines (possibly in production) but does that mean I can
successfully run it on the SPARC port?

[Hans Witvliet]

On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Hans Witvliet
> <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt;
>  wrote:
>          I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
>          As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still
>          recommend it
>          
>  I see, interesting. I'm starting to lean towards giving this a go,
>  even though most people have pointed out the issue with constant
>  updates to the Sparc port and them not being in sync with the updates
>  available on the same number x86 release. 
>  
>   
>   
>  Lastly, Hans, I am not really sure what "fancy" would be ....I'd think
>  it's kinda relative as to what defines 'fancy'. If running a VoIP
>  server on it, along with a bunch of modules/plugins etc on it is
>  fancy, well then I'm in trouble I guess :( I know people are running
>  that same software on Fedora on COTS x86/x86_64 machines (possibly in
>  production) but does that mean I can successfully run it on the SPARC
>  port?
>  _______________________________________________ 
Well, if it is just lamp, ldap etc etc, it just works out of the box.
I can't tell iv any flavour of virtualisation will work, as my machine
just have 512MB mem in them.

In case you have something that creates lots of hw-interrupts, you are
probably far better off with sparc archticture:
Due to backwards compatibility intel based PC's still have to be
compatible with the very old IBM-PC design.

If it is just sip/iax you want, why not? I presume you don't want to
stream & convert a couple of hundreds hifi connections...
Even for that, there are some debates wether intel or amd is better ;-)

otoh, with those new intel-boxes, one can take advantage of the latest
cpu-enhancements (AES-intructions), nice for encryption (vpn/disk)
and you can use high-res video boards.


Hans

[A E [Gmail]]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt; wrote:

>  On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt;
>  > wrote:
>  >         I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
>  >         As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still
>  >         recommend it
>  >
>  > I see, interesting. I'm starting to lean towards giving this a go,
>  > even though most people have pointed out the issue with constant
>  > updates to the Sparc port and them not being in sync with the updates
>  > available on the same number x86 release.
>  >
>  > Lastly, Hans, I am not really sure what "fancy" would be ....I'd
> think
>  > it's kinda relative as to what defines 'fancy'. If running a VoIP
>  > server on it, along with a bunch of modules/plugins etc on it is
>  > fancy, well then I'm in trouble I guess :( I know people are running
>  > that same software on Fedora on COTS x86/x86_64 machines (possibly in
>  > production) but does that mean I can successfully run it on the SPARC
>  > port?
>  > _______________________________________________
>
>  Well, if it is just lamp, ldap etc etc, it just works out of the box.
>  I can't tell iv any flavour of virtualisation will work, as my machine
>  just have 512MB mem in them.
>
>  In case you have something that creates lots of hw-interrupts, you are
>  probably far better off with sparc archticture:
>  Due to backwards compatibility intel based PC's still have to be
>  compatible with the very old IBM-PC design.
>
>  If it is just sip/iax you want, why not? I presume you don't want to
>  stream & convert a couple of hundreds hifi connections...
>  Even for that, there are some debates wether intel or amd is better ;-)
>
>  otoh, with those new intel-boxes, one can take advantage of the latest
>  cpu-enhancements (AES-intructions), nice for encryption (vpn/disk)
>  and you can use high-res video boards.
>
>
>  Hans
>
>  Not sure if that answered my question. I'm not going to be running LAMP, 
LDAP,
Virtualization or would have any H/W Interrupts as far as I can tell.
It's purely software based call-control/switching with ODBC connection to an
external DB. Purely SIP traffic in and out. Expecting a couple of 100
concurrent calls with no compression or codec translation (ideally). I also
don't need VPN or Disk encryption, nor would any of those machines need a
video card or even a video chip :)

The question was mostly, if someone is running the same scenario as I'm
planning on as described above on a x86/x86_64 platform with Fedora 15, then
would I be able to run it just as stable on SPARC port, all things being
equal and ignoring the speed of updates available for the sparc port.

[A E [Gmail]]

On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:15 PM, A E [Gmail] <all.eforums(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Hans Witvliet
> <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt; wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
> > > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt;
> > > wrote:
> > >         I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
> > >         As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still
> > >         recommend it
> > >
> > > I see, interesting. I'm starting to lean towards giving this a go,
> > > even though most people have pointed out the issue with constant
> > > updates to the Sparc port and them not being in sync with the updates
> > > available on the same number x86 release.
> > >
> > > Lastly, Hans, I am not really sure what "fancy" would be ....I'd
> think
> > > it's kinda relative as to what defines 'fancy'. If running a VoIP
> > > server on it, along with a bunch of modules/plugins etc on it is
> > > fancy, well then I'm in trouble I guess :( I know people are running
> > > that same software on Fedora on COTS x86/x86_64 machines (possibly in
> > > production) but does that mean I can successfully run it on the SPARC
> > > port?
> > > _______________________________________________
> >
> > Well, if it is just lamp, ldap etc etc, it just works out of the box.
> > I can't tell iv any flavour of virtualisation will work, as my machine
> > just have 512MB mem in them.
> >
> > In case you have something that creates lots of hw-interrupts, you are
> > probably far better off with sparc archticture:
> > Due to backwards compatibility intel based PC's still have to be
> > compatible with the very old IBM-PC design.
> >
> > If it is just sip/iax you want, why not? I presume you don't want to
> > stream & convert a couple of hundreds hifi connections...
> > Even for that, there are some debates wether intel or amd is better ;-)
> >
> > otoh, with those new intel-boxes, one can take advantage of the latest
> > cpu-enhancements (AES-intructions), nice for encryption (vpn/disk)
> > and you can use high-res video boards.
> >
> >
> > Hans
> >
> > Not sure if that answered my question. I'm not going to be running LAMP,
>  LDAP, Virtualization or would have any H/W Interrupts as far as I can tell.
>  It's purely software based call-control/switching with ODBC connection to an
>  external DB. Purely SIP traffic in and out. Expecting a couple of 100
>  concurrent calls with no compression or codec translation (ideally). I also
>  don't need VPN or Disk encryption, nor would any of those machines need a
>  video card or even a video chip :)
>
>  The question was mostly, if someone is running the same scenario as I'm
>  planning on as described above on a x86/x86_64 platform with Fedora 15, then
>  would I be able to run it just as stable on SPARC port, all things being
>  equal and ignoring the speed of updates available for the sparc port.
>  
At the risk of sounding like a total tool, could I ask if someone can point
me to the documentation related to installing/configuring Fedora on Sparc? I
have spent 15-20 mins finding it but haven't found anything specific.

Also, which version should I be trying? In the download section on fedora
website, I see that even the netboot iso for v15 are available for sparc64.
is that safe to try or should I be using v14?

Thanks so much

[A E [Gmail]]

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 5:47 PM, A E [Gmail] <all.eforums(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 6:15 PM, A E [Gmail]
> <all.eforums(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>
> > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt; wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
> >> > On Thu, May 5, 2011 at 4:20 PM, Hans Witvliet <hwit(a)a-domani.nl&gt;
> >> > wrote:
> >> >         I am still running Aurora-Linux on my Netra-T105.
> >> >         As long as you don't want anything fancy, i would still
> >> >         recommend it
> >> >
> >> > I see, interesting. I'm starting to lean towards giving this a go,
> >> > even though most people have pointed out the issue with constant
> >> > updates to the Sparc port and them not being in sync with the updates
> >> > available on the same number x86 release.
> >> >
> >> > Lastly, Hans, I am not really sure what "fancy" would be
> ....I'd think
> >> > it's kinda relative as to what defines 'fancy'. If running a
> VoIP
> >> > server on it, along with a bunch of modules/plugins etc on it is
> >> > fancy, well then I'm in trouble I guess :( I know people are running
> >> > that same software on Fedora on COTS x86/x86_64 machines (possibly in
> >> > production) but does that mean I can successfully run it on the SPARC
> >> > port?
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >>
> >> Well, if it is just lamp, ldap etc etc, it just works out of the box.
> >> I can't tell iv any flavour of virtualisation will work, as my machine
> >> just have 512MB mem in them.
> >>
> >> In case you have something that creates lots of hw-interrupts, you are
> >> probably far better off with sparc archticture:
> >> Due to backwards compatibility intel based PC's still have to be
> >> compatible with the very old IBM-PC design.
> >>
> >> If it is just sip/iax you want, why not? I presume you don't want to
> >> stream & convert a couple of hundreds hifi connections...
> >> Even for that, there are some debates wether intel or amd is better ;-)
> >>
> >> otoh, with those new intel-boxes, one can take advantage of the latest
> >> cpu-enhancements (AES-intructions), nice for encryption (vpn/disk)
> >> and you can use high-res video boards.
> >>
> >>
> >> Hans
> >>
> >> Not sure if that answered my question. I'm not going to be running LAMP,
> > LDAP, Virtualization or would have any H/W Interrupts as far as I can tell.
> > It's purely software based call-control/switching with ODBC connection to an
> > external DB. Purely SIP traffic in and out. Expecting a couple of 100
> > concurrent calls with no compression or codec translation (ideally). I also
> > don't need VPN or Disk encryption, nor would any of those machines need a
> > video card or even a video chip :)
> >
> > The question was mostly, if someone is running the same scenario as I'm
> > planning on as described above on a x86/x86_64 platform with Fedora 15, then
> > would I be able to run it just as stable on SPARC port, all things being
> > equal and ignoring the speed of updates available for the sparc port.
> >
>
>  At the risk of sounding like a total tool, could I ask if someone can point
>  me to the documentation related to installing/configuring Fedora on Sparc? I
>  have spent 15-20 mins finding it but haven't found anything specific.
>
>  Also, which version should I be trying? In the download section on fedora
>  website, I see that even the netboot iso for v15 are available for sparc64.
>  is that safe to try or should I be using v14?
>
>  Thanks so much
>  
Ok, I guess I was wrong. Netinst ISOs are only available for v12-beta, so I
guess that's the one to try and the installation is just any other install
over the net like I did for debian in the same environment with the use of
rarpd, tftp etc? I have never understood though how to install the full
distribution using NFS, I suppose once I have the minimal net install, I
need a local repo to point to?

Thanks

[Lamar Owen]

On Friday, May 06, 2011 07:40:27 PM A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  Ok, I guess I was wrong. Netinst ISOs are only available for
> v12-beta, so I
>  guess that's the one to try and the installation is just any other install
>  over the net like I did for debian in the same environment with the use of
>  rarpd, tftp etc? I have never understood though how to install the full
>  distribution using NFS, I suppose once I have the minimal net install, I
>  need a local repo to point to? 
Yes.  AFAIK that's the same as for Intel, so the docs are pretty good for that part.

The installs that I have done thus far have all been local media, though.  And you will
want to use the VNC graphical installer, since the text mode installer is rather minimal. 
Also, you'll want/need to take the installer's defaults; don't try to do
anything fancy or change too many things during the install, as anaconda seems to be
somewhat unstable on SPARC.

Which specific SunFire boxen are we talking about here?  PCI, or SBUS?  The more details
the better, as the docs for the SPARC stuff really are sparse, and are primarily found in
the archives of this list.

SBUS in particular can be painful, since udev doesn't autodetect SBUS devices as of
F12.

RHEL and Fedora compatibility

[David Juran]

On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:


>  I also have yet another question and this may be one of the other
>  silly questions, but are CentOS / RHEL rpms compatible with Fedora? As
>  I mentioned, one of the biggest reasons I want to try out Fedora or
>  any Redhat based Distro is primary because of the driver availability
>  of some of the hardware I need to use as well as the core application
>  i.e. VoIP switch is all developed and best supported on them. However,
>  the driver argument will fail if I'm unable to install the RPMs built
>  for RHEL on Fedora. Is that usually seamless or is there some package
>  conversion, unpack, convert, repack kinda voodoo magic involved?  
Since Fedora is the upstream project for RHEL, most (if not all) of the
things in RHEL are already in Fedora...

-- 
David Juran
Sr. Consultant
Red Hat
[phone]

RHEL and Fedora compatibility

[A E [Gmail]]

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 3:06 PM, David Juran <djuran(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:

>  On Thu, 2011-05-05 at 16:59 -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
>
>  > I also have yet another question and this may be one of the other
>  > silly questions, but are CentOS / RHEL rpms compatible with Fedora? As
>  > I mentioned, one of the biggest reasons I want to try out Fedora or
>  > any Redhat based Distro is primary because of the driver availability
>  > of some of the hardware I need to use as well as the core application
>  > i.e. VoIP switch is all developed and best supported on them. However,
>  > the driver argument will fail if I'm unable to install the RPMs built
>  > for RHEL on Fedora. Is that usually seamless or is there some package
>  > conversion, unpack, convert, repack kinda voodoo magic involved?
>
>  Since Fedora is the upstream project for RHEL, most (if not all) of the
>  things in RHEL are already in Fedora...
>
>  Ok thanks David. That really helps. I will set up a test environment and 
take
Fedora for a spin.

[Rafal Maszkowski]

On Thu, May 05, 2011 at 11:45:39AM -0400, A E [Gmail] wrote:
>  2011/5/5 Rafal Maszkowski <rzm(a)icm.edu.pl&gt;
>  > I run Aurora and Fedora on E250 since several years and it works. It is
>  > a typical server with mailman and some WWWs. Currently I have Fedora 12
>  > there and I hope to upgrade to F15 easily. I only worry about the
>  > updates. In fedora-secondary the most recent releases/12 and
>  > development/12 package is from 2010-05-07, updates/12 - from 2010-09-12.
>  > The mainline F12 does not have updates since December anyway so I have
>  > to upgrade to next available version - F15.
>  Thanks for the note. Ok, so how serious is it the environment that you run
>  it in? Are these Fedora/Aurora machines you have running in production and 
It is one of our public services servers (FTP mirrors, space for WWW,
mailing lists, archie etc.). It is definitely not my prime job although
I try to keep it running. Secondary architecture for second class users.
Sometimes not-lethal problems have to wait quite long for solving.

>  serving clients/customers as opposed to an inhouse project? You
> clearly seem
>  to be a veteran of fedora and fedora on sparc in particular. I have not
>  touched fedora since v1 or something a long time ago but as I understand
>  fedora is a "non production" Distro in general and always in Flux?  Would
>  that be fair to state? If so, should one dare to run it in production esp.
>  with the Sparc port, given the issues with the updates as you mentioned? 
Without some time to keep updates up to date I would not dare to use
Fedora/Sparc for a service I plan to make money from. I use Fedora,
currently #14, on various x86_64 and i386 machines. The too short
support is not a really big issue for me. Upgrades are very easy, I
often do them without rebooting (the kernel waits for a next power break
or other occasions, especially on a server with terabytes of disk space
to fsck if something goes wrong). I use the same F14 on a PC at work, on
a large FTP server, on new notebook, on an ancient 10 year old
notebook... so more less the same version on the Sparc64 server is
convenient. I was planning seriously to split with RedHat but I did not
succeed yet.

R.
-- 
Tą bronią zabójczą są media, które robią ludziom wodę z mózgu. I tą bronią
   macie walczyć i zwyciężać. (kpt. Z. Sulatycki do uczniów WSKSiM)