and pretty much Joe User have now heard of mailing lists and blogs. Still
   they resist, so the next chain to yank is "it's too hard to switch" - oops,
   GUI  and  web admin interfaces abound. Can't lean on that one too much
   anymore.  What  else? Well, change manaegement is the real problem - a
   problem about people, not about technology - and that's about policy. 

   But what about when your fought-for-and-won distro of choice changes its
   policies? What if you don't like them anymore? Whoops. Of course the mswin
   folk have dealt with the changing winds from Redmond every other season, but
   we've grown rather fond of having a choice... and it upsets our applecart
   when  the  spirit of a distro changes. I've watched it over the years.
   [86]Slackware was one of the earliest distros at all - only had 3 or 4
   competitors and you may not have even heard of them if you're new to the
   game - and being a distro proper made life easy. Slackware has its loyal
   followers everywhere - but you won't find them saying it's because they
   wanted to have their hand held, no way. [87]Red Hat put together the system
   for  the  ordinary  guy,  the average Joe... and around the time those
   [88]Caldera people were looking good for a good standing in the business
   world, decided that was their new definition of Joe. Their trend toward the
   business world has gone so far they will barely accept money from Joe's
   buddy out here on the street anymore. What? and have to answer his phone
   calls?? They run and hide. Much more fun to accept money by the industrial
   size barrel for the occasional call now and then from a corporate contact.
   The community that had grown to be fond of them takes this two ways: 

    1. a personal challenge, after all the whole point of the GPL and other
       free licenses is for projects to continue when the original folk bail on
       it;
    2. vote with their feet, especially if any other policies of basic set up
       are annoying them. There's a lot more distros to pick from now, maybe
       it's time to go shopping.

   That's where the [89]Fedora plan came in. Of course, I've ggot my clients,
   and I heard diddly squat from them about the [90]Fedora Legacy project - to
   keep RH consumer distros in security patches at least; lots more about
   considering the offers of Progeny or other consulting vendors to keep them
   in good health. Fedore's lifeblood will be the people who took the challenge
   seriously and though their first burst of energy was a painful birth, I
   think the kid's coming along nicely. 

   Mind you, the Linux users of the tinkering spirit, with their off brand
   distros and literally a pile of Debian derivitives, are not safe from the
   winds of change - they need to learn to set their sails too. The Debian
   project just went through a vote that changed some minor wording in their
   core document, the Debian Social Contract... and oh, the flame wars that
   have arisen if one interprets the new word they chose a bit more broadly.
   It's not that bad folks, it just isn't - but people who thought they were
   standing on solid ground got mildly dizzy when the bandwagon shifted even a
   little bit. The purists who want to know that "free means free" will feel a
   bit happier setting sail this way. Those qho quail that it may vastly slow
   down the Sarge release are probably wrong; yeah, it's slow but what I have
   learned to view as signs of impending release with the next few months -
   breakage for brief times now and then of core dependencies and thence the
   install  of core packages - have been happening of late, and I've just
   learned  to  keep an ear flapping in the wind for the howling of their
   [91]Bug Tracking System entries. The really painful ones get FAQ status in
   freenode's #debian channel by being listed in the topic you read as you
   enter. Luckily they also get dealt with rather quickly, but I wouldn't
   exactly  update via cronjob these days; I like to keep a closer eye on
   things. 

   That's just a couple of examples. Now that the word "Linux" gets a few less
   glassy stares I also hear the hiss of people zipping their hand back with
   burnt  fingers everywhere. The good news is there are at least as many
   varieties of burn cream as there are hot stoves to touch or hot sidewalks
   to stroll along. The bad news - good news in disguise - is there are so
   many choices! 

   That's the way it is in the Open Source world, though, folks. For anything
   big enough - the world is their beta tester. If we aren't - then the result
   will not be up to a world of users. Take your choice when to take a plunge -
   but Summer is here. Enjoy your time at poolside, soak in some rays or lay
   the Sunblock 2000 as thick as you feel you need to in all its designer
   colors - but the time will come to dive in. Serves millions. Enjoy. 
            ____________________________________________________

(?) Redhat + scsi RAID = Excedrin headache #459

   From Faber Fedor 

 Answered By: Faber Fedor, Benjamin A. Okopnik, Kapil Hari Paranjape, Jim
                                                                  Dennis 

   Hey Gang, 

   I've  got  a  problem  that  I've fixed three other times in different
   enviroments, but this time it's driving me nuts. 

   The short of it is this: I've got a newly upgraded RedHat 9 on a PII 400 MHz
   box running RAID 5 using LSI Logic MegaRAID 500 SCSI. When the system boots,
   I get the following panic: 
    creating boot device
    creating root device
    mounting root filesystem
    mount: error 6 mounting ext3
    pivotroot: pivot_root(/sysroot,/sysroot/initrd) failed: 2
    umount /initrd/proc failed: 2
    Freeing unused kernel memory: 132K freed
    Kernel panic: No init found.  Try passing init= option to kernel