My evening so far...

[dbhost]

PCI-E 8GB Fiber channel card check.
Dell PowerEdge 2950 Check.
Second card check.
Second 2950. SON OF A *#%^! They gave me a card for a 2950 but the ancient piece of junk they want me to install in is an 1850... Old 66mhz PCI slots and all. Won't even fit the hole...

Call supervisor and interrupt his dinner to explain the flub...
Give up on second box...

Attempt to install driver (kernel module) for device. No dice. RHEL driver not happy...

Copy tarball.

tar -xvzf tarfile.tar.gz
cd tarfiledirectory
./configure
make
make install

oooh look at all the Matrix-ey characters on the screen...

I know most won't understand, but the Linux guys here should know what I am talking about...

[Denco]

Understand fully. I was a DBA and Sys Admin. Here's an alternate route:

1. cd /
2. rm -r *
3. long weekend
4. order new system
5. assign install to jr sys admin

[JSUPreston]

I'm real fuzzy on my *nix commands, but I understand the frustration.

I was in an AIX class back in '97. They had to fly an RS400 from Texas to Alabama for the class. Anyway, some time on day 4 of a 5 day class, I somehow got to the root of the partition and issued rm -r.

According to the instructor that set up the box, it was a "hardware" problem that allowed me to do that. I was still wet behind the ears at the time, but my BS meter was going off. We took a small break while he started a new load from 8mm tape.

The rest of the class was, "if our box hadn't been destroyed, you could do..."

Yeah, hand it off to a junior tech. Let him call the vendor and get you a new card.