Sun Sparc Ultra 5 OS

[KK]

At work we have these ultra 5 work stations that they have stopped supporting. So instead of getting rid of the box like everyone has done, I wanna keep it and put some type of software on it. I was playing with it today and downloaded aurora, installed it, everything seemed to work fine even though this was the first time I ever loaded a linux based OS. The only issue was trying to get the second monitor to work. I wanna know your opinions on what y'all would load onto one of these. Should I stick with this aurora, or change it out to something else such as Solaris 10. I'd like to have something that has a bunch of software programs that are compatible with it.

 

[flyers1]

Well if you want the full Sun/Solaris 'experience' you should probably try out Solaris 9 or 10. 9 might be better for that box since it max's out memory at 512Mb which might be too small for Solaris 10. You can download solaris 9 for free from sun.com. sunfreeware.com has lots of open source sparc compiled software available. Also, most open source apps and software suites for various unix/linux distros have Solaris compatible binaries.

Just don't expect blazing speed. It is a nice machine to learn the basics of Solaris and sun hardware but you won't get much performance out of it....

 

[n0cmonkey]

Can't go wrong with a BSD.

 

[Nothinman]

As usual I'd go with Debian, but you'd probably get better support from a BSD since Sparc support is falling behind these days. Very few people have them or even care enough to test and support the architecture.

 

[dclive]

Released in 1997; too old to be useful. Toss it or sell it and (to learn Unix or a Sun variant) get a cheap x86 setup and put SunOS on it.

Honestly - 1997. Don't bother.

Source: http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbo...o?target=Systems/U5/U5

 

[flyers1]

yea. I agree with dclive. Use it to learn sparc solaris if interested...otherwise, ditch it. You can run any linux variant or BSD on any decent x86 machine.

 

[KK]

I put solaris 10 on it today, still gotta figure out the dual monitor configuration. I did get both monitors to come up with the desktops, but whenever I click on anything on the right one(coming off the pci card) it kicks me back to the login screen. I'll tinker around with it tomorrow and see if I can get it somewhat stable with decent resolution. As far as tossing it, nah, no need to do that. I have too much empty space on my desk, and I can't seems to locate a dvi monitor for my laptop to run dual off it. Anyways once I get it working decently, all I would need it for would to bring up telnet sessions into other systems.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: dclive
Released in 1997; too old to be useful. Toss it or sell it and (to learn Unix or a Sun variant) get a cheap x86 setup and put SunOS on it.

Honestly - 1997. Don't bother.

Source: http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbo...o?target=Systems/U5/U5

It could easily work as a minimal webserver (personal wiki or similar), DNS server (get a bunch of ram and use malwaredomains.com's list for blocking), LDAP/Kerberos server, a small database server, development system (OpenBSD/sparc64 seems to find bugs in applications no other system can find), or even a diskless X client.

Yeah, these can all be done with a newer x86 or amd64 system, but that might require money. And there's nothing like having a system that will survive a direct hit from a small nuclear warhead (I'm building a bomb shelter out of old SPARCstations ).

The ATA chipset on these systems (U5/U10) is "teh suck," so anything IO intensive is bad juju unless you have a scsi card.

There's no reason to throw it out, its usable (I met someone who uses an Ultra 5 for his workstation just a few months ago).

 

[MadRat]

Sounds like X is crashing on your right screen. I hate X.

 

[KK]

Originally posted by: MadRat
Sounds like X is crashing on your right screen. I hate X.

it was some setting I put in, something about xinerama. once i took that out, everything seemed to function alright. right now trying to get some 3270 emulator to work on it. But in the mean time have another project for a coworker. We located a ultra 10, and decided to fiddle around with that. It's only a 300mhz and had 4.3gb drive. we put in a bigger drive, loaded it up with solaris. we tried to change out the cpu to a 360mhz but the box wouldn't even boot. I'm trying to flash the OBP thinking that might recognize the processor but am running into a roadblock doing that. I gotta work this weekend so I'll have something to do.