Cargo Cult sysadmining

Mikkel L. Ellertson mellertson at gmail.com
Tue Aug 7 22:24:35 UTC 2012


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On 08/07/2012 03:22 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
>
> I still remember when configuring X included selecting by hand the
proper driver for your card, and how badly things would fsck
themselves up if you had the wrong one. At the time, I was using a
Virge S3 card, which needed its own driver, as well I knew. Then, an
upgrade for X came out, and the README said that you didn't need the
special driver for my card. *WRONG!* After reconfiguring with the
proper driver, I sent a nice little email to the maintainer, letting
him know about the error.
>
> What I got back was an arrogant snotty-gram telling me that he's
the one who wrote the driver and he knows that it works with my
card. I replied, telling him that he may have written the driver,
but I'm the one trying to use it and No It Doesn't. He shut up and
stopped arguing.
>
> The point of this, if there is one, is that things are much better
now than they were back in the Second Millennium, and nobody in
their right mind would want to go back. Doing it by hand, including
compiling and installing your own kernel to learn how it's done is
one thing. Having to do it because there's no other choice is
another. (And no, this doesn't include gentoo because they've
automated the process so that you don't have to do it all yourself.)
Remember when you could smoke a monitor with the wrong settings in
your X configuration? Not a problem with most (all?) current
monitors. They just give a message that the signal is out of range.
But with the old analog-only monitors you could really damage
hardware with software settings!

Mikkel
- -- 
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and
taste good with Ketchup!
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