Hello OI community, Please forgive and be gentle...
I am a total newbie to Solaris of any kind, or anything at all to do with any flavor of Solaris, open or otherwise - all my prior Unix experience is with GNU/Linux and very ancient versions of BSD. My current mission is to get *some*/any form of Solaris, open or otherwise, running on a not-too-new UltraSPARC machine - a SunBlade 1000, a hand-me-down from a former employer who went out of business. The first question which I probably need to answer is "Why?". Well, here are my issues: * I need to set up a new server in my personal machine room that is just a tad newer/beefier than my DEC MicroVAXen running 4.3BSD. * For psychoemotional reasons, I cannot use x86 hardware. In order for me to be a happy and whole person, I need my server's CPU architecture to be something other than x86. I realize that my hand-me-down UltraSPARC is probably something like 1000 times slower than an entry-level x86 PeeCee one would get today at Best Buy, but to me that is a perfectly acceptable price for the emotional happiness I would get from using a non-x86 machine - the latter is absolutely priceless. * I know about Linux/SPARC, and I've already played with it: I've got a little Ultra 5 running Bobware, a SPARC port of Slackware, with a 2.4.36.9 kernel. But for this particular server I think some form of Solaris would serve me better than Linux: the primary special features I have in mind for this server are ZFS and zones; both of these are perfectly native in Solaris, but a pita to bring up in the Linux world. Also the SPARC hardware support is probably better in Solaris than in Linux, I would imagine... * Speaking of hardware support: my machine is heavily FibreChannel- based. The system HDD in the SunBlade 1000 is an FC drive, and for my main mass storage system, I plan to attach an FC JBOD (also a hand-me-down from the same former employer) to the FC connector on the back of the SunBlade 1000, and make ZFS vdevs out of the many FC drives I've got. Given that this FC subsystem is a standard part of the SunBlade 1000 machine as designed and sold by Sun, I would imagine that Solaris supports it 100% - but no idea about Linux/SPARC... The machine in its current state, as it came from the former employer who donated it to me, seems to run Solaris 8. That version predates ZFS, so I need either Solaris 10 or an "Open" variant. Seeing how the OpenSolaris community and its successors seem to be totally x86-dominated, with SPARC seeming to have fallen by the wayside, I had at first resigned myself to having to use a binary-only release from Oracle (yuck). So I went through their clickwrap license BS, and downloaded sol-10-u10-ga2-sparc-dvd.iso. But there is a problem - it's a DVD image, not a CD. I have never seen a DVD drive on a classic SCSI-based SPARC machine. Aside from the Ultra 5, all of the UltraSPARC machines I've got (the SunBlade 1000, and some Ultra 30/60/80 boxes) are SCSI-based (plus FC on the SunBlade 1000), and don't have IDE/ATA, let alone SATA. My SunBlade 1000 lacks an optical drive altogether, but I can pull a SCSI CD-ROM drive from one of the other Ultras - the latter have CD-ROM drives with classic 50-pin SCSI connectors. I have never seen or heard of a DVD drive with a 50-pin SCSI connector. I don't know if such things exist at all, but if they do, I imagine they probably cost an arm and a leg. But if the OS distribution is only available in the form of a DVD image, how is one supposed to install it on a classic SPARC machine like Ultra 30/60/80 or SunBlade 1000? Then I was pleasantly surprised to see that the OpenIndiana community is not totally x86-exclusive, and there was a SPARC release made a week or so ago by some wonderful fellow. But again, the ISO file is DVD-sized, not CD-sized - hence the same problem as with Oracle's version. I wonder, what would it take to produce a distribution of OI for SPARC that fits on a CD? Assume that it's going to a server that will be used with a serial console, no monitor or keyboard ever, hence no need for any desktop GUI components. (The ability to use a serial console instead of a keyboard/monitor for operations such as initial OS install is one of the main reasons why I need SPARC rather than x86. I love my real DEC VTxxx terminals, and hate PeeCee keyboard/video/mouse stuff with a passion.) If some kind soul/angel can build a CD-sized ISO image of any version of Solaris/OpenSolaris/OI/whatever (well, any version that supports ZFS and zones) for SPARC that is bootable on a real Sun UltraSPARC machine, I would be forever grateful, and would also gladly compensate the benefactor with a Bitcoin payment. (I have 3 BTC to spare right now, and might be able to scrounge up more.) SF _______________________________________________ OpenIndiana-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://openindiana.org/mailman/listinfo/openindiana-discuss
