[SunRescue] Solaris 1.1 on Sun 4/330

[Dave McGuire]

On January 9, Tim Harrison wrote:
> I just got my copy of Solaris 1.1 in the post, and I'm staring at my OS
> collection, wondering where it'll go.  Then, it hits me.  Gee, I wonder
> if I can put this on the (currently non-functional) Sun 4/330.  Is this
> a Good Plan[tm]?

  Hi Tim.  Solaris 1.1 (aka SunOS4) will run wonderfully on a 4/330.
There are some caveats for SunOS4 on *any* machine, though...the most
annoying will be its lack of reasonable support for DNS (you'll need
to obtain and install a package called "resolv+" if it's still around,
or the resolver libraries that come with more recent releases of ISC
BIND) and the total lack of fuctionality of the SunOS4-distributed
version of nslookup.  Just replace that binary with one from a newer
BIND release and you'll be fine.  Also, the distributed version of
fsirand sucks; there are some patches floating around for that
somewhere.  The problem with it is that its "randomness" isn't very
random, making for large NFS file-handle-guessing security holes.

  There are other issues as well; if I can remember any I'll email
them to you.  SunOS4 is getting a little long in the tooth (nowhere
near ten years old though, if I recall correctly) but it's still a
perfectly viable operating system for SPARC hardware, and it performs
reasonably well.  Much faster than Slowlaris (erm, Solaris) 2.x,
that's for sure.  I currently manage about a dozen SunOS4 machines in
production at various places.  They Just Keep Running(tm) and require
little or no attention.

  I've built and managed upwards of two thousand SunOS4-based SPARC
machines over the years.  Please don't hesitate to drop me a line if I
can be of any assistance with it.


               -Dave McGuire