[rescue] "New" SPARCserver 20

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

Hi there. I'm new here.

I just picked up a "new" SPARCserver20 and have some questions I hope to
find answers for here. Thanks in advance.

Uh, specs, I guess... 4 50Mhz processsors (4 x 390Z55), ROM Rev 2.15.

The RAM variously reports either 240M or 224M, depending how I move it
around. Why? What does this mean for my chances of ever adding VSIMMs?
Should I bother? Which brings us to...

No vram; no problem. I stuck a GX card in. Good enough for what I need
for now, it'll likely run headless eventually anyway. The GX card would
only work in the upper rightmost sbus slot. Any idea why?

Specs I can find mention 1.2G drives as max, of which it has two. Can I
replace one of them with a 9G IBM SCA drive? I know I can use it in an
external box, but I'd rather it were inside if possible.

If I boot to the drives that are in there, it boots, runs fsck with lots
of 
"
/dev/rdisk/c1t3d0s6: No such device or address
Can't open /dev/rdisk/c1t3d0s6.
/dev/rdisk/c1t3d0s6: CAN'T CHECK FILE SYSTEM.
/dev/rdisk/c1t3d0s6: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY. 
"
errors, and drops to a maintenance shell. I don't have root passwd. This
thing sat in the back of an Intel repair shop for three years, and
no-one remembers where it came from (They *gave* it to me!). 

I assume these are all due to missing external storage, and wouldn't
worry about it if I could finish the boot or enter the maintenance
shell. But I can't.

So in that case, I'll just load another OS. What's best? I've got
Solaris 2.6, Solaris 8, Red Hat Linux 6.2, and NetBSD 1.5.

So I'll try them out...

Put one in and "stop-a" so I can type "boot cdrom"...

Keyboard doesn't seem to work 'till I "stop-a" TWICE. It obviously
receives keyboard signal, because I get lights on boot, and can stop-a
to get an "ok" prompt. But it takes nothing after that unless I "stop-a"
again. Then I can type boot cdrom. Which brings us to...

boot cdrom (oohhh, is that 2x slow)

Solaris 2.6 - It works now for some reason. kewl. It's going, so I'll
let it.

Should I switch to one of the others? Keep 2.6? If I keep it, can
someone outline what I should do to secure it? (I've been away from
Solaris for a couple of years playing Linux sysadmin for a web hosting
company, used to do Solaris for a financial firm, back when 2.6 was
new.)

I'd like to put it where I have a Linux box now, at the end of a 1.5M
SDSL line as firewall/web/mail server doing NAT for a small internal
network. Is this a reasonable use for this box? For some reason the idea
appeals to me. Besides, my daughter would really like to have the P3
that's doing the job currently.

Suggestions for software? Does Solaris have anything like ipchains or
iptables? I know I can run apache and openssh, so that's cool. And I
assume I can upgrade sendmail to something reasonable?

Anyway, I've typed enough. I'll sit back and enjoy the barrage of
longed-for respona.


Gracias.


---sambo