I'd wait and see what happens in a couple of weeks. Even if you continued your transition, the worse case scenario is having to by a RHE subscription for updates.

However, given past history- there will always be at least one full RHE clone around... It's a fairly safe bet.

And it turns out the wife is actually the *guy* respinning RHE3 and RHE4 over at Whitebox.

"That bastard killed my distro!!"

I believe it decends from debian unstable.

But if you've got 50 boxes around the world you are responsible for, the word "unstable" is a deal killer.

Ubuntu Server?

No offense to the Ubuntu team intended (or to you) but that's not exactly a hardened OS with the kind of long term support one needs in a data center.

If low budget to you is a simple LAMP stack- then maybe. But no one has been beating up on Ubuntu server- and it really needs professional QA before anyone tries to use it for more than a novelty.

The logical alternative for new deployments would be Debian, if you wanted to dump RPM based systems.

Replying to my own post...

Whitebox Linux went offline due to hurricane Katrina. Everyone folded into CentOS.

Actually- it's concerning... but not a crisis.

Some of my boxes have data continuity from RH 7-9, then Whitebox Linux, to CentOS 3-4-5.

The pain is in the migration. The joy is in the freedom.

If CentOS bellies up I have enough boxes to justify maintaining myself from source rpms, or moving to another RHE based distro. It's always a pain. But I bet I got 8 years of functionality from Whitebox/CentOS. A pretty good deal.

Somewhat concerning, considering the number of CentOS servers I have in the wild.

I'd suggest disabling yum updates on your CentOS boxes until this gets sorted out. Might want to do updates by rebuilding src rpms directly from Redhat.

Just the fact they even have to address an issue like this makes me nervous.

Um?

A surge protector doesn't help you if the EM field collapses on the wireless antenna.

At that point the charge created by the collapse goes directly *through* your electronics to the nearest ground. Which equals *poof* to your electronics.

A surge protector will protect you through a clamp circuit if the surge comes through the outlet.

That's a nice sentiment... And I agree.

But I think the main point has to do with networking fundamentals. Wireless is a virtual shared media. All clients on a node share the same amount of bandwidth. 54Mb can start looking pretty slow with ten busy clients.

Modern switched wired networks segregate traffic between nodes, rather than working as a broadcast type network (wireless/thinnet). So you have a massive performance advantage by using wired networks. A quality 24 port 100Mb switch has an theoretical aggregate capacity of 4800Mb assuming all ports are used to capacity in full-duplex mode (And the backplane can handle it), 2400Mb in half duplex mode, where as a 54Mb wireless network only has 54Mb which is split up between every node on the network. The math is a no brainer. Even with real world non theoretical numbers, the performance difference is staggering.

Wired is the only way to go in a production environment with *supplemental* wireless access for roaming and mobile users.

One of the other advantages of cat5/e is it's use of inductive reactance to mitigate EM interference. The gauged twist in the pairs increases signal quality, but also mitigates the collapse of EM fields (mostly from local lightning strikes) and the unbridled voltage they create (which is directed right into your network electronics and connected nodes). Proper grounding aside- it doesn't help if the voltage is already in the circuitry.

Go 100% wireless in your office, and enjoy damage from all those wireless antennas picking up current from a collapsing EM field.

Every spring, we lose a couple of laptops, one or two wireless nodes, and a wireless camera or two. It's always after a storm and it's never the wired equipment.