Hi Thierry, On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 02:22:28PM +0000, Thierry ITTY wrote: > I have the opportunity to be given some sun sparc station 5 > > I know it is possible to run linux on them, it might be interesting > on the other hand, I've been told those machines compare to Pentium 75 or 90 > so the question is : is it worst installing linux on them, as servers ? as > workstations ? as enhanced X terminals ?
First of all, it's important to find out which *type* of SparcStation 5 you've got there. Basically, there are four: A 70MHz, an 85MHz, a 110MHz and a 170MHz variant. The latter is using a slightly different CPU[0], which causes problems with Linux. For example, you cannot install RHL 6.2 out of the box on a SS5/170 (however, it does *run* on that machine, albeit not 100% stable). Also, as you can imagine, there are differences in speed. I have a SS5/170 at home, running Linux. As mentioned, RHL 6.2 could not be installed. I ended up installing Mandrake 7.1b instead[1] (Debian or SuSE might be another option, but I haven't tried either of them on this machine - they might also be more up to date than RHL 6.2). It was working, but not too reliably - not something I'd use for a server. Later, I moved that Mandrake 7.1b installation to RHL 6.2 [2], then upgraded to Aurora 0.2 [3]. As for speed, I'd say the comparison with a P75 or P90 is probably correct, however, in my experience, the Sparc seems to cope better under load than an equivalent P75/P90 [4]. For lightweight sever use, they should be absolutely fine, especially the 110MHz and the 170MHz version. As a comparison: I have a SparcStation LX (which has less power) running as firewall/NAT/dial-up "server" and it's doing nicely (though it's running OpenBSD). As workstations, they're probably a bit slow - one of the main problems would be graphics (most of them only have an 8bit frame buffer, 24bit ones exist, but are hard to come by). As X Terminal, I'd expect them to be fine. Also, make sure you have enough RAM in them - SS5 RAM is not exactly cheap. And you have to keep in mind that the internal disks are 80pin SCA connector Fast SCSI - again, not quite that easy (or at least cheap) to get. You can, however, also use external SCSI drives. For more information about the SS5: http://www.obsolyte.com/sun_ss5/ (http://www.obsolyte.com/ is a great starting point for information about them olde Suns, besides Sun's own pages). Also, have a look at the FAQs at that page and of course the SPARC Linux FAQ: http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html And, last but not least: There's also a Red Hat-hosted mailing list specific to RHL on Sparc... :-) Cheerio, Thomas P.S.: And of course, there's always OpenBSD [5] or Solaris, if you decide not to run Linux on that box... [0] "TurboSPARC" instead of "SuperSPARC" [1] Debian or SuSE might be another option, but I haven't tried either of them on this machine - they might also be more up to date than RHL 6.2 [2] yep, manually. It *is* possible, but not recommended for the faint at heart - or those that have anything to loose... [3] An effort of a small volunteer group to port RHL 7.2 to SPARC - see http://aurora.linuxpower.org/ [4] Just my observation - nothing scientific, I'm afraid [5] My second SS5/170 runs OpenBSD 3.0 -- http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html ...'cause only lusers quote signatures! Thomas Ribbrock | http://www.ribbrock.org | ICQ#: 15839919 "You have to live on the edge of reality - to make your dreams come true!" _______________________________________________ Redhat-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
