Linux Arghhh!

Today was a great day for installing a new server, but unfortunately it was on an older version of Linux Fedora 5 (current version is 7). I unpacked the new IBM 3250 server with 2 GB RAM, a XEON processor and dual SAS drives. IBM doesn't include a self starting install for anything other than Windows, which is shocking. They are already married to Suse and Redhat Linux but it wasn't even an option. I do like the IBM for the additional features you don't find on other servers, like Chipkill memory and Light Path diagnostics. In a perfect world you don't need either, but we are talking about computers here. I haven't found a computer yet that was 100% ready for sale, but we do make do. After getting help from the other techs in downloading and burning the install CDs I went for the install. For some weird reason the LSI hard drive controller is not turned on in the BIOS. We have weird problems like this with every server. I enabled the SAS Raid 1 and created the partition. Then I booted into the first CD and went to install. I was so glad that the OS we used had a driver for the controller, and it recognized the hard drives right away. Then I went to install the OS packages by checking the options the web team had requested and let it run. With just a few percentage points left the installation failed. I rebooted and had to start over. This time I chose to not install all the packages. I just went for the web server. We can always add the other components like PHP and SQL afterwards. I crossed my RAM chips and the install completed. Although the 3250 sounds like a small jet plane they are quiter than their predessors, the x330 series. Once I completed the install I called it a week and headed for a haricut and home. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe I have a selective memory.