[technobard]

Belisarius, you're mostly right. Just a little background on RAC - In a RAC configuration, two or more nodes (i.e. separate machines) share a single database on a shared filesystem. Each node runs the binaries which can be shared as well and starts its own separate processes. The data can be accessed by connecting to either instance. It's meant to be a way to scale up database access. It can also be configured to work in failover mode, so that only one instance is accessed at a time.

As I understand it, Oracle has done a number of modifications to a 2.4 kernel and compiled it. It's available as a binary. I'm not sure about the source. The normal firewire HD drivers only support access by a single node. For multiple nodes to see the same drive, both connected via firewire cable, kernel modifications were required in addition to driver changes. There are also dependencies outside of the kernel, that aren't satisified by every distribution. I'm not sure what all of those dependencies are. RHEL is certified to work, as well as the SUSE Enterprise version. Oracle's position is that you're on your own if you pick anything else. I'm sure with enough effort, other distributions can be made to work, but I'm trying to avoid some of the headache.