I just recently acquired 2 Sun UltraSPARC servers.... What can/should I do. reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nats15 · 2011-05-25 14:03 I am primarily a Linux geek, but have wanted to learn BSD for a while. I am curious what I can do with these since I have no experience with the SPARC architecture. I am in need of both an FTP and a firewall, but don't want to waste a machine on something that could be considered trivial. Any suggestions?? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2011-05-25 14:19 Start with being more specific. Sun made a lot of ultrasparc servers, and over a long period of time. What do you actually have? There is nothing special or magical about sparc from a user standpoint, install an OS, install packages you need, configure them. All you really notice is that it doesn't have the ugly legacy crap PCs have (4 partition limit, messed up memory reservations, a BIOS, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-05-25 14:22 Load OpenBSD on one as your firewall, and load solaris on the other as your firewall. Solaris is descended from BSD, so it will give you a bit of insight as to how BSD's differ, which you can compare to your linux knowledge. I personally run oBSD on a sparcserver20 as my home fw, and it has been installed and working since 2003, so its a very stable platform. the one caveat is oBSD doesn't do SMP on sparc all that well. Also, Do you have at least two nics on the fw system? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shieldforyoureyes · 2011-05-25 14:38 I wouldn't call Solaris a descendant of BSD. SVR4's BSD claims were mostly marketing. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pro547 · 2011-05-25 15:29 If i am not mistaken you _could_ get away with routing on one nic by either doing router-on-a-stick or via aliases. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kaiise · 2011-05-25 15:47 render cluster on demand with running a openbsd latest stable ipf. depends how much power they use too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-05-25 16:10 Considering he has a Sparc, it would be a missed chance to not use Solaris for at least a short while. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tad1214 · 2011-05-25 16:15 My server at home is a Netra AC T1 200, Love that little box. I stuck dual 73gb scsi's in it and 2 gb of ram with a 500mhz sparc. Runs just fine as a small file server and a web server for personal use. The 140w psu is nice on the power bill too. I installed FreeBSD on it and it works absolutely perfect. Occasionally some ports don't support SPARC but nothing show stopper yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nats15 · 2011-05-25 16:24 I don't have the exact specs of the machine here at work, but I do know it used to be a file server for a bank. I just want to put it to use, but not waste the potential of the server. Until I received this machine I did not even know SPARC was an architecture. I will try to get more info for you ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SolomonKull · 2011-05-25 17:24 A public BBS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1esproc · 2011-05-25 18:13 Find out what kind of power this thing sucks, chances are it's so old and inefficient you could replace it with something more modern which uses much less power and is much more powerful. You should probably just recycle it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neoice · 2011-05-25 18:18 or just old and underpowered. I have a 300MHz SPARC that can barely run ncurses-based installers :/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2011-05-25 18:40 I would just donate it to a project that could actually benefit from the use of an ultrasparc machine. Then get a low powered machine or use a virtual machine to learn linux/bsd/whatever. The architecture matters little unless you're doing architecture specific programming/testing. You're probably spend most of your time trying to figure out what software is compatible with your flavour of UNIX & UltraSPARC. For example, one of my favourite tools for development is valgrind, but don't expect to see your favourite OS on SPARC [support it](http://valgrind.org/info/platforms.html). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2011-05-25 18:42 I had much success with FreeBSD 6 on an Ultrasparc IIi a while back, it's almost 15 years old now, right? People in #freebsd on freenode back then told me they were surprised it worked so well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2011-05-25 19:05 SunOS was BSD based, Solaris is not. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sheptard · 2011-05-25 19:51 Yeah, he should have first hand experience as to why Solaris sucks and is a pain to administer! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ILikeLeptons · 2011-05-25 19:52 wow really? i have a sparcstation ipx that is about as powerful as a 486 (ballpark est) and it runs ncurses things fine... maybe you just have absolutely no ram? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-05-25 20:25 I have a machine with a ross hyperSPARC 200mhz that easily runs ncurses installers. Maybe you need a better Frame buffer? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neoice · 2011-05-25 20:27 hm, maybe. OpenBSD was about the only thing I could install without watching it draw line-by-line. FreeBSD and Debian took 3-5s per screen. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-05-25 20:37 OP- For real fun, get your hands on an Indigo2 or octane, and try to install Irix 6.5. Also, don't read up on disklabels first. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2011-05-25 21:09 If it is a bigger machine, it will draw a lot of power so keep that in mind. In general the old big machines aren't worth powering up because they cost so much and are less powerful than your phone. If you have a smaller machine then it is basically just a (probably not very powerful at this point) regular old server. A lot of older sun machines were very well built and are very nice to work with from a hardware perspective, especially the netra series. Assuming it is a smaller machine, use it for anything you'd use any other old server for, a web server or mail server or whatever you like. Some software packages might not be available because of portability problems, but that is only little projects written by one guy that doesn't know there's a world outside of 32 bit little endian machines. Anything major should be available for whatever BSD you pick. Some machines won't have video, they'll have a console port instead. Just use a normal RJ45 serial cable like you would for a cisco. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shieldforyoureyes · 2011-05-26 01:12 Installing Irix is probably the worst experience I have ever had involving computers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- shieldforyoureyes · 2011-05-26 01:15 That's a good sign. The really low-end Suns aren't interesting - they're really just PCs with weird CPUs. But the higher-end stuff gets a little exotic. The higher-end it is, the more likely you should run Solaris on it, instead of Linux or BSD. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- agentdero · 2011-05-26 05:19 Can I have one? :) I still regret donating my UltraSPARC II to a Linux developer in Texas, such a solid machine. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- joedonut · 2011-05-26 05:27 > Solaris is descended from BSD... Sun OS 1 through 4 only, and ends in '94. Solaris 2 through 10 are SysV derived, which started in '91 or '92. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- joedonut · 2011-05-26 05:44 All the comments about power cost are very true, but the boxes if not too old and not too large are quite fun. I've SB100's and use them with OpenBSD as router/firewall/and a handy place to stash another backup of (don't laugh) iTunes. I will say I've become accustomed to a lot of GNU utilities, which does make working with them sometimes difficult. The small size, simplicity, and PF help me stay however. If they're PCI-based rather than S-BUS-based many (perhaps most) common PCI NIC's will work, giving as many interfaces as you've slots. Careful watching of a few web sites can yield inexpensive QFE (Quad Fast Ethernet) or a quad gig SunSwift card. Sometimes SCSI cards can be had cheaply, the disks not so often, at least not of any great size. A SCSI-SATA adapter runs ~USD 100.00, but again careful shopping can sometimes gain a SAS card which will accept inexpensive SATA DASD. The inbuilt IDE/EIDE interfaces tended to suck quite a bit, but will do nicely to get you up and running if the boxes you're getting have one. Once in a while you can find a commodity PCI SATA card which will work, and boot. I couldn't find one, so I boot from a CF card and OpenBSD access the SATA card where the OBP can't. Although now more common, one nice thing about these boxes has been their ability run headless (no keyboard, monitor, or mouse). If you need a keyboard/mouse/monitor, the 13w3-VGA adapter can be had, as can Sun keyboards. Starting around 2000 both VGA and USB started to appear, allowing use of more common (cheaper) peripherals, including, once in a while, a KVM. Good luck, have fun! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eleitl · 2011-05-26 08:26 > 140 W PSU An Atom-based server would take an order of magnitude less power, at higher performance. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eleitl · 2011-05-26 08:27 How much power do these take, and what kind of CPUs are these? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tad1214 · 2011-05-26 12:58 Sure but this server was free ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-05-26 12:59 I guess I'm showing my age ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eleitl · 2011-05-26 13:43 Yes, but you're paying >100 USD/year annually (probably double that in EURoland, at our juice prices) to just operate it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tad1214 · 2011-05-26 13:58 True, I do plan on getting a more efficient server eventually. Needs to be rack mount though which narrows my choices a good bit. Logic supply has some cool ones though. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- eleitl · 2011-05-26 14:11 I'm running a few of http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015A-PHF.cfm (some with an SSD as well as a 1 TByte 3.5" SATA, the SSD "mounted" by hotglue, though you can use double-side adhesive tape. Notice these are Intel NICs and you do get IPMI. I've also just bought a HP N36L but latter isn't rackmount -- though pretty compact (useful as a NAS, also has optional IPMI card). These Atoms are a bit dated though now, no idea what else in rackmount embedded-like space you can get today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nats15 · 2011-05-26 14:43 why run Solaris over BSD/Linux? BSD would have been my first choice, but I am curious about your reasoning. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- joedonut · 2011-05-26 15:10 And so am I, sadly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hemmar · 2011-05-26 23:39 i had a friend get an pci old board with a 755 socket and slots for ddr ram. it was a board used for running x86 software nativly on sparc boxes. he bough a sparc system, loaded up the pci board, and installed an old sun os on it just so he could prove it works by running an ntp server on it in x86.... the point of this story is ntp is always an easy place to start. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MidnightCommando · 2011-05-27 07:56 are you sure you're not trying to make him commit suicide? Irix is nice, but daaaaaaaaaaaamn the installation is unfriendly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dsies · 2011-05-28 21:27 The enterprise series machines (ie. E3500/4500/6500 etc.) all incorporated some very cool features. 'Dynamic Reconfiguration' being one of them - it allowed you to loose various components on different boards and continue functioning without issues. Essentially a more parallel blade pre-cursor. There's some neat software in Solaris as well - zones, dtrace, etc. As far as running Sol 9/10 on the sparcstation's - I would probably avoid that as the machines are fairly slow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nats15 · 2011-05-29 01:27 I am fairly certain this is not one of the machines you mentioned, but I will look. I am leaning towards running BSD ATM, but wanted to hear what others had to say. Slackware/RH are my comfort zones, but I want to branch out. Solaris I have absolutely no background on it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- puddingpimp · 2011-05-30 18:25 Boat anchor. these old machines aren't worth the electricity they'll use, and there's no reason you'd want to use them rather than a new pc/embedded system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vir_novus · 2011-06-14 03:10 You'd be fine, plus Sun/Oracle has so much good documentation out for Sol, you really have no excuse to get stumped on something. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- drzorcon · 2011-07-06 20:20 Does that include that time no one speaks of, which involved vasoline, a pentium 60 with the division flaw, 300 feet of latex tubing, and the bottom half if a pdp11/23 ? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- robvas · 2011-07-13 02:40 Some of the framebuffers don't have the right support and are almost useless to use from the console.