[rescue] [OT?] Linux on a SS2

[Phil Stracchino]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2004 at 09:06:01AM -0500, Carl R. Friend wrote:
>    Greetings Rescuers!
> 
>    I've got a (possibly off-topic) question to the assemblage here:
> Is anyone successfully running Linux on a SPARCstation 2, and if so,
> how'd you load it?
> 
>    I'm getting really sick and tired of an old firewall box (on a
> 486) that I want to bring (1) a little more up-to-date and (2) to a
> slightly more obscure architecture.  I'd like to take advantage of
> the stateful features of the newer kernels and get a bigger disk drive
> so the auditing stuff doesn't have to be rotated twice a day.
> 
>    Right now I've got a copy of RedHat 6.1 for SPARC on CD, and it gets
> to about the third package (ld.conf) and wedges up.  Ideas?


Well, one of the problems here is that Red Hat has odd definitions of
"supported".  When Red Hat says "X is supported on Y", as often as not
it means "Well, someone reportedly got version 1.3.2 of X to work on
revision 8.2 of Y once, but we never actually verified it ourselves, and
X is now version 3.7.4 and Y is revision 14.6, but hey, you trust us,
don't you?"

In this particular case, while Red Hat has *officially* supported Sparc
for quite a while, in the real world, Sparc support in Red Hat has been
very spotty, and sometimes works and sometimes doesn't.  They abandoned
it altogether a few major revs back.

I'll second the other recommendations:  Go with OpenBSD instead.  It's
much mo' bettah on a firewall.  And instead of ipchains, you get to use
pf, which is also much mo' bettah.


-- 
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 : phil stracchino : unix ronin : renaissance man : mystic zen biker geek :
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 :   2000 CBR929RR, 1991 VFR750F3 (foully murdered), 1986 VF500F (sold)   :
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