Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 11:57:36 -0600 From: "Ryan Thompson [FreeBSD]" <freebsd@sasknow.com> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: NT reliability (was: Microsoft service packs... (was many other threads...)) Message-ID: <3836E110.D8098E1B@sasknow.com> References: <3.0.3.32.19991119101303.01216df8@mail.embt.com> <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9911191518480.22999-100000@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <19991119135747.53682@mojave.sitaranetworks.com>
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Greg Lehey wrote: > > I was witness to an amusing incident here recently. The guy in the > next cube runs NT for some obscure reasons, and suddenly he couldn't > access some network service. After several attempts, we discovered > that the Ethernet connection was no longer functional. I discovered > that there is some kind of log file in the system, but nobody was able > to determine the cause. > > It doesn't seem to be possible to stop and start interfaces on NT; > instead, you reboot. Not what I would expect of any good OS, let > alone a "server" OS (whatever that means). So we rebooted. No go. > Changed the Ethernet board. No go. Changed the cable. No go. Put > all the old stuff back and booted PicoBSD. Go. > > OK, we thought, it's NT's fault. Reboot NT. Go. > > The only explanation we can think of is: if you have problems with NT, > threaten to replace it with FreeBSD. That'll scare it into behaving. > > Greg > -- > Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key > See complete headers for address and phone numbers Ha! Gawd the truth is funny, sometimes. :-) That reminds me of a not-so-long ago time when a friend of mine who (then) was about two exams away from his MCSE was idly (or not-so-idly) complaining about having problems getting his cable modem connection to work with NT. (His cable provider, like many others, uses DHCP to negotiate IPs). Basically, his problems stemmed from some errors he made when configuring NT's DHCP client (and his NIC drivers)... To make this story short and to the point (without embarassing my commercially-educated friend more than is necessary :-) After I nagged at him to try *BSD or Linux or something other than NT, he quite adamantly insisted that what he was doing was correct, and his problems would only get worse when using an "undocumented, poorly supported, and anti-user-friendly OS", further adding that if it couldn't be done in NT, it couldn't be done at all. Anti-user-friendly. I like that one :-) After he had thrashed his copy of NT (and registry) so severely that nothing short of a reinstall would get it working right again, he FINALLY relented to give FreeBSD a go. With my help, we had a fully functional network/XFree install up within a couple of hours... Rebooting only twice; once after the initial boot floppy install, again after his kernel was rebuilt. (Ok, and again to see the splash screen we installed--but that was purely for our entertainment :-) For whatever reason, he decided he didn't like FreeBSD after a week or so (probably because he missed the cute little add/remove programs dialogue), he installed Win'98 on his machine. His loss, IMHO. Small OSes amuse small minds. The really good ones amuse the rest of us :-) - Ryan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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