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Recommended Solaris versions

E

eeguru

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I'm starting to revive some old Sun machines that have been sitting since acquiring them. I was just curios what would be the best OS to install? I would prefer sticking with Solaris for two reasons, software compatibility with other software and hardware like VideoPix and FDDI cards and some Veritas packages, and secondly.. these are Sun boxes. Though I supposed *BSD heritage can be traced directly from SunOS. I'm open to other OSes as long as they will support all the hardware. But even with Solaris, I'm not sure what is the best version for each machine in terms of features/performance trade-off. And how do I obtain Solaris licenses now?

Machine #1: SPARCserver 20, 2x ROSS 200 MHz single CPU MBUS boards, 2x SX/CG14 8MB frame buffers w/ Aux Vid Board, 256MB RAM, PrestoServe SBUS NFS Cache, FDDI SBUS dual link adapter, and a TBD 4th SBUS card (ideas?). I have 2x 20" Sun CRTs I'd like to run dual head. And I'm looking to buy a couple refurbed SCA drives before they are unobtainium.

Machine #2: Enterprise 3500. It has 8 CPUs but I'm unsure of the speed. And most of the heat-sink paste has dried causing the sinks to come lose. Lot of work there before first power-on. It does have 2GB per CPU board - 8GB overall (64x 128MB DIMMs!). DVD drive, Graphics I/O mezz carrier w/ 3D Creator, FDDI dual link, and SBUS FC controller. I have 16x 18.2 GB FC drives, but I'd like to buy some larger refurbed drives before those are unobtainium as well. I also have a 14 bay rack mount FC StorEDGE A5000 cabinet. But I may get rid of it if I can put higher capacity FC drives in all 8 internal slots. With only the GBICs on the I/O mezz and the SBus card, I believe I can only support two halves or one whole of either the internal bays or the StorEDGE bays. I'd like an OS that has built-in RAID/volume management. Linux or *BSD may do a better job of that. But I do have a sealed copy of Veritas Storage Manager 3.1 and Solaris 8 Server that came with it.

Machine #3: Ultra 30 MiniTower. Haven't delved into it much, but all RAM banks are populated.

Machine #4/5: Either IPX or SPARCstation 2. These are very similar machines in specs. Since I already have a nice pizza box in the SS20, I may get rid of the SS2 and keep the IPX. I'm looking for a Power uP upgrade. But for now it's stock. I'll upgrade the RAM to 64MB and likely install the VideoPix frame grabber SBUS board and an Ethernet controller so I don't have to use an AUX to TP adapter. I'll put a SCSI2SD on it for ease of maintenance. The SS2 really doesn't have an I/O advantage unless I run it headless to free up the GX frame buffer. But I get video for free on the IPX.

I also have an Enterprise 420R rack unit. However I'm looking to adopt it out to a good home. Would be local pick-up only as it's too heavy to ship.

Curious on thoughts from Sun zealots.
 
Unless you have all the software you'd ever want to run already in your possession, I wouldn't run Solaris at all, anymore. I'd run NetBSD.

As much as I like(d) Solaris*, getting software to run on it has gotten difficult to expensive. NetBSD is similar enough that an administrator can easily adjust, and a user might not even notice the difference.

(*I've been using NetBSD so long now that I may have forgotten most of Solaris' peculiarites.)
 
Hmm, personally I would :
SS20 -> Solaris 2.5.1 or 2.6
E3500 -> Solaris 8 or 10
U30 -> Solaris 2.6
IPX/SS2 -> Solaris 2.5.1

Licenses : always a difficult issue, but you do not need an activation key.
 
I think the Solaris recs from Ed G are pretty right on (though I'd probably do Sol 8 on U30), but like KC9UDX I'd recommend one of the BSDs if you want to use them as semi-daily drivers. Much easier to get usable software.

And if your Sparcstation 2 needs a new home, let me know :)
 
I generally agree with Ed G, but it depends on what you want to do with them.

However, if you want to really use them, I think any version of Solaris is slow on sun4c systems (IPX/SS2, in this case). I have 2.6 on my maxed out IPX (with a clock-doubled Weitek processor and the add-on memory board) and it is still kinda slow.

I think Solaris went through a curve where it was initially slow on the sun4c systems because it needed more work, then got better, then got slow again because it was optimized for more powerful sun4m and sun4u systems. 2.5 or 2.5.1 may be the sweet spot, but I haven't done any benchmarks to confirm. I have copies of 2.6 and 7, so that is what I run.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I worked in the Solaris OS group from 2.4 to 7 (initially commands/libraries, later i/o infrastructure. I went back during Solaris 10 development) and my desktop system that I used to build my code on was a SS2 (with either 16 or 32M of memory), running the release under development. It didn't seem that slow, except to start applications from the UI, until they gave us all Ultra 1s (which were reportedly slower for the people who had had SS20s).

Now I am running 2.6 or 7 on a SS20 with dual 150MHz hyperSPARCs and that runs CDE very nicely.

alan


alan
 
The only problem with BSD-on-SPARC is that support for graphics acceleration is somewhat limited - though it looks like OpenBSD finally supports the XVR-1200, so I might have to give it a shot...
 
Well, did the IPX not have a 25MHz clock? Not sure it has been a long time ago when I had one. Quite a nice little box.
After that, I was able to put my hands on a SS5@85MHz, later to be replace with a 110 MHz one.
Suns I have owned :
ELC
IPX
SS5 @85
SS5 @110
U10 @ 450MHz of which 2 were running Sun Cluster 3.0
E450 (aka boatanchor)
E3000
SB100
Sunray 1
Sunray 1b

Suns I own
V120 (2)
U20
U24 (3)
U27
T1000 (2)
T2000
T5220
x4100 (4)
X4150
x4200
x4500
Sunray2 (10+)
Sunray3 (3)
Sunray3 dh

The pizzaboxes are housed in a NGR900 rack

I know, it's a bit much but I always liked the Silver stuff.
 
Well, I am doing an IPX restore, and run both Solaris 2.7 (A little sluggish, but supports things like DHCP), and SunOS 4.1.4 on different bootable disks. SCSI2SD works great for this. I also have a TGX plus card and a 64MB RAM expander (128MB total) hacked in there with a hardwired cable - see my recent post on this. I have a lot of Software packages built for these machine - if you need anything, let me know.

Simon
 
Didn't think of the dual boot from multiple SCSI2SD disks. Thanks for that tip.

Update on the E3.5K. Replaced thermal paste and remounted heat sinks on the I/O board and 2 CPU boards. I wanted to at least power things up, do CPU/memory diag, and sort out the dead IDPROM issues. But when I first powered things on, I get an immediate fault light on PPS0 and the clock board, I get no power light on the I/O board, and the front fault light goes solid immediately. Every thing else is green (2 CPU boards, Aux PSU, and P/C PSUs). Power is on, all the fans come up, and the first CPU prints "Hardware Power ON" on the system console, but nothing else.

Have ordered another PPS0 and may borrow the one in Earl's E3K this week to make sure it really is a fault in that module. So stuck for now.

And after a little more reading, I'm keeping a lookout for a E5500/E6500 machine. It would be nice to have a large gen 1 Ultra Sun and I could migrate all the 3500 hardware + the A5000 into the larger rack on the long-shot I ever find one. I've also added a SPARCcenter 2K to my wish list. But I'm pretty sure Santa will never deliver without an industrial strength sleigh. And before anyone points out E10Ks, they are a bit much (relatively) and finding one with a working SSP is more of a challenge.
 
commodorejohn said:
The only problem with BSD-on-SPARC is that support for graphics acceleration is somewhat limited
Click to expand...

A bunch of reverse-engineering work on gpx was done for MAME, hopefully some of that will make it to *BSD.

I tried bringing the last SPARC Linux up a few months ago. It was painfully slow.
 
Oh and the E3.5K CPUs are all 336 MHz.

And someone robbed the UPA graphics cards out of the Ultra30 before it wound up in my hands. Unfortunate.
 
Actually tried to load 2.5.1 on both the IPX and SS20. I burned the ISO from archive.org (and WinWorld but was same ISO). However I couldn't get OB3 to start it. Kept saying the label was invalid. On the IPX, tried all variations of 'boot sd(0,6,0)', and 'boot sd(,6,0)' and target 2 'boot sd(0,6,2)' and 'boot sd(,6,2)'. No luck. The CDROM was recognized in probe-scsi and was address 6 target 0. When I would try boot, it would pulse the access light before erroring out. Do I need a floppy to boot-strap it? 2.4 had the same issue. Same problem on the SS20 with 'boot cdrom' An original Solaris 2.7 Sun CD booted in the same drive just fine with the same commands.

-Alan
 
I'd poke around and see if you can get other slightly different images of 2.5.1 just to test. I know I had to try a couple different rips of SunOS 4.1.4 before I found one that my SS2 wanted to get along with.
 
I have never booted Sun hardware off of floppy (I started in the early 90s) and I used to administer those, so I'm guessing either the rip is bad, or the drive you're using can't read burned CDs (which is sometimes common). One old wives' tale is to burn the CDROM at the slowest speed possible -- see if that helps?
 
When I had an IPX back in the late 90s, I ran 2.5.1 on it (with openwindows, even. Much more pleasant than CDE) from an original install kit. I agree with the possibility that the drive can't boot from burned CDs, I've had that problem a lot with older drives on my older AXP. You may want to scout around for a cheap install kit on ebay, or possibly some NOS 650mb CD-Rs (the 700mb ones are unreadable on many drives through the late 90s).

If you do decide to ditch the IPX, drop me a PM.
 
I don't think it should matter, but I've run into that multiple times over the years myself, even very recently. If I cared to take the time and waste some CDRs, I could probably nail it down. I've got a Phillips CDD-2600 which *might* be legitimately succeptible to this.

A couple weeks ago, I burnt 5 CDRs at high speed, and two failed to read (but read just fine in several other drives). Upon retrying at 6x, both worked. But this is hardly scientific. The speed might not actually be the issue.

It sounds like you and I had similar experience with these machines. I *should* still have a Sparcstation 20 with a floppy drive (might have given it away). If so, I'll have to try booting from a floppy if I ever get round to fixing the NVRAM. (Good grief, Gboard automatically suggested NVRAM. That's spooky.)
 
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