🚀 go-pugleaf

awouk@blackhole.nyx.net (arthur wouk) writes:

>i run solaris 2.8 on a sparc10 with ross hypersparc 150 cpu, and
>adequate ram. what is the end of the line for this configuration with
>supported os? is it sensible to upgrade to anything newer?

The whole sun-4m line (well, what's left - the SparcClassic support was
dropped when Solaris 9 came out) will be unsupported in Solaris 10.

That said, Solaris 9 runs beautifully on any Sun-4m system other than the
Classic. If you need to have Solaris, 8 or 9 is a very good match for a
Sparc 10 or 20 based machine.

Alternatively, if you want to get better performance, look at an alternative
operating system like NetBSD (www.netbsd.org) which will continue to support
almost all older Sparc-based Sun hardware long after Sun drops support for
it.

I have NetBSD running on a Sparc 20 as an FTP server - it's a true
set-and-forget system only needing occasional admin attention and an annual
shutdown to clean out dust and vacuum the power supply and air intakes
clean. The OS is the key here - Solaris too can be set-and-forget if it's
used in a headless server set up without installing or using any of the
X-based GUI packages. And not having X installed frees up a lot of the
system's resources for other things. NetBSD is very 'lightweight' compared
to Solaris, but Solaris is the only OS which directly supports and exploits
all of the hardware features in each machine Sun's released during a certain
'sliding' timeframe that is covered in the support base for each Solaris
release.

Another alternative is Linux. Ports of Linux such as Gentoo (www.gentoo.org)
are fully open-source and better suited to Sparc hardware than traditional
Linux flavours such as Debian and Redhat. Check the UltraLinux site
(www.ultralinux.org) for more general info on Linux for Sparc platforms.

Regards,

Craig.
-- 
Post by Craig Dewick (tm). Web --> "http://lios.apana.org.au/~cdewick".
Email me at "cdewick@poison.lios.apana.org.au". Explore my public-domain Sun
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