[rescue] "New" SPARCserver 20

[Brian Hechinger]

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

if they are the kind with 1MB eCache, maybe not super duper speedy, but VERY
nice (especially to have four)

> 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.

my one sparc20 (the one on my desk) has a 2.1GB drive, and my other sparc20
(the one that has my home directory on it) has a 4GB and a 9GB drives in it.
i think that limit is boot/root size?  i wouldn't know, i'm one of those old
school guys who believes / should be minimal in size (mine are rarely larger
than 50MB or 100MB)

> /dev/rdisk/c1t3d0s6: No such device or address

c1 = second SCSI controller, so one that would be plugged into an SBus slot.

> 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.

yeah, it looks like they had an external drive on it, at the very least one, 
maybe more.  to recover a lost password you can boot off of the CD and mount
/ manually and blank the passwd, but in general, you want to re-install the
OS yourself since you don't know how they had this thing setup and would
probably run into reouble at some point.  avoid the agrivation. :)

> 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.

in my humble opinion?  it's multi-CPU so skip NetBSD and Linux.  none of the
"free" OSes (hey, solaris is free too! *G*) have very good MP support on 
anything but intel if they have it at all.  i'd choose 8 unless you have
an application that doesn't work on 8, but you don't sound like you are in
that boat, go with 8.

> boot cdrom (oohhh, is that 2x slow)

oh yeah baby!!  just installed a full blown with OEM of 8 on my sparc20s. too
lazy to put the 32x on the server, so i installed on the internal 2x.  luckily
i had other things to do as well. :)

> 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.)

pretty much the same as linux, grill /etc/inetd.conf and remove everything
you don't need, same for /etc/rc2.d

> 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.

heh, she doesn't like Solaris? :)

i ran a sparc5 with a 70Mhz CPU and 128MB ram as a firewall between my entire
home network (not a small one at that) and the internet over a 1.56Mbps ADSL
line.  if i saturated the line, i think i pushed the sparc5 up to 20% CPU
usage running IPFILTER (with ipmon disabled, since ipmon would suck up the
rest of the CPU time and i was only interested in how much CPU the actual
filtering took)

recently upgraded the firewall to dual SM61 sparc10 with 128MB ram since i
couldn't find an FDDI card that would work in the sparc5, and i wanted my
firewall/router to hang off of my FDDI backbone.

i guesss what i'm trying to say is: that sparc20 you have should be able to
very easily handle firewall/web/ftp/mail/dns/etc with no trouble.

> 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?

i run IPFILTER on Solaris 8 and am completely and 100% thrilled with it.

http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/

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

it's what we are here for. :)

-brian