Is Debian is the most similar to Suse or RedHat Or None of them?
 

Hello All,

I have a question, which should be clear from the heading. I was wondering if anyone knows if Debian is most similar to (directory structure, packaging, drivers. modules etc) Suse OR Redhat?

I have access to some drivers and packages for Redhat and Suse but I use Debian and no source is available, so I was wondering it's possible to do some linux-o-rama cartwheels and tricks to make these drivers and/or packages install and work on my debian machine, but not sure which one to pick.

Thanks so much
\R

Red Hat and SUSE both use .rpm package management, while Debian uses .deb. Some users have reported success using an app called "Alien" to convert .rpm to .deb, but I have not tried this personally. My preference is to install a native .deb when possible, or else install from source.

"Some drivers and packages" is rather vague. If you have a specific question, I'll do my best to help. A good place to search for Debian packages (unfortunately temporarily unavailable) is: http://packages.debian.org

Hey Snowpine,

Thanks for that. Sorry if that sounded vague...let me be a bit more clear:
so I have Debian installed on a 64-Bit SUN Sparc server, which has a Qlogic iSCSI HBA installed and connected to the SAN. However, Qlogic doesn't provide drivers and their SANSurfer package for Debian, only RedHat and SUSE. They also don't provide the source. So I was wondering if there's a way for me to pick these packages and drivers and somehow through some wizardry install it and use to configure this HBA to work on Debian. Talking to Qlogic support, I got the nonchalant "Debian isn't supported, please install RedHat or Suse", I mean really? It's not that easy a decision sometimes to just blow your OS and pick a different one just for one HBA to work esp. in the world of OSS and Linux where there are such crazy smart people out there who can make anything work :)

Cheers,
\R

Is any of the code compiled for Sparc, or is it just x86 (which wouldn't work)?

Afraid I don't know the answer. Did you check out Alien yet?
http://www.howtoforge.com/converting...deb_with_alien

Hello,

Yes, there are SVR4 pkg datastream packages available for Sparc for the iSCSI Driver and for Qlogic SANSurfer CLI utility from QLogic, if that helps

Thanks
\R

snowpine,

yes, I am checking it out. Will report back how it goes. It may not be today though...thanks for the pointer BTW :)

Cheers,
\R