****Re: I'm uncomfortable with firmware update

[Craig White]

On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 13:36 -0500, J. Epperson wrote:
> On Tue, November 20, 2007 13:00, Craig White wrote:
> > ---- there is a kind of proof of concept to it...Dell support for Linux
> > has certainly had an edge to it, it's constantly improving and I'm
> > willing to live with some of the roughness as it improves (wish they
> > would chip in and help with kernel/grub support on Optiplex 320 but that
> > is not for this list).
> >
> > Of course, the administrator always has the option of the normal
> > methodology of updating BIOS/firmware which makes sense to them.
> >
> > I tend to view BIOS/firmware updates as not time critical unless of
> > course, they are time critical so I don't really mind being part of the
> > process of getting this methodology up to speed...clearly it's not for
> > everyone.
> >
> 
> Ah yes, the non-time-critical update, the lack of which can intermittently
> turn our mission-critical resources into bricks and/or alphabet soup.
> 
> Part of getting this methodology up to speed will be establishing the
> processes/discipline necessary to produce repeatable and regression
> testable results.  That's what gives me the heebie jeebies:  doing the
> same scenario multiple times AFAICT and getting different results.
----
well, if the definition of insanity is to repeat the same behavior and
to expect different results, then it might be argued that this is sane
behavior...maybe.

to be fair...

It worked well on my Optiplex 320's on Fedora...

There is a lot of different hardware out there that it has to account
for.

The issue of different identification (and identical BIOS/firmware
versions) of needed updates on identical hardware running different
versions of Linux OS (direct cause?) is a bit disconcerting but I am
hopeful that these things will all get worked through and though I can
understand why others might not want to participate in less than ready
for prime time implementations of this sort, I am willing to work them
out.

Craig