[lpi-discuss] Some Objective Feedback

[Mark Miller]

We received some good objectives feedback from Ian Shields of IBM. Feel
free to add your comments!


I will go through the links in the review material to provide feedback,
but I wanted to give some general feedback on topic 101 here. I just got
through the first piece of updating the IBM LPI tutorials and this is
the topic I just finished. You can find the new tutorial at
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/edu/l-dw-linux-lpic1101-i.html?S_TACT=105AGX01&S_CMP=HP

Note that this is a registration page, although the tutorial is free. If
you already have an IBM ID and password you should be able to use it. If
not, registration is free.

My general sentiments are:
- 2.6 kernel seems to have done a good job of integrating support for
many devices, but there are differences between 2.4 and 2.6.
- I don't even own a machine that still has an ISA bus. Should we still
be worrying about things like isapnp and pnpdump?
- If we drop ISA stuff, how many folks actually configure IRQ, DMA or IO
ports for PCI. PCI is inherently PnP, so you shouldn't need to do it. Is
ti appropriate to LPIC-1?
- What's the goal of configuring a system without a keyboard? Are we
assuming rack mounted servers, blades ro somethign similar? Are we
assuming that access for initial setup will be via serial port? Or a
management interface that emulates telnet?
- Should we consider SATA drives as well as SCSI and IDE? how about USB
drives? configuring BIOS to boot from a USB key?
- Modem section should be in with communications devices (and let's get
the spelling of winmodem consistent between the two sections). Note that
winmodem is a registered trademark of US Robotics
- With regard to outbound dialup. Does anyone still use SLIP or CSLIP?
Or just PPP? Folks dialing an ISP today are more likely to use something
like kppp rather than edit config files by hand. What's our goal here?
- How much are we expecting folks to do for sound (particulalry if we
drop ISA)? Ditto for PC expansion cards.
- SCSI section need to consider that USB, and SATA drives show up as
SCSI. We should also consider the impact of scsi generic (sg). FC2
dropped scsi_info altogether.
- USB is in 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, with differences between them. Need
ehci for USB 2.0.

Ian Shields Ph.D.
Linux  Technologist, ISV & Developer Relations
IBM Corp
Research Triangle Park, NC
ishields at us.ibm.com 
-- 
Mark Miller
Program Manager
Exam Development Level 1
Linux Professional Institute