[rescue] [OT?] Linux on a SS2

[Patrick Finnegan]

On Saturday 14 February 2004 23:13, Eric Webb wrote:
> So, you guys are talking me into finally loading OpenBSD on this
> SS5/170 I have gathering dust.  I'm not *really* needing an extra
> layer of firewalling, but I had considered using it for this purpose.
>  I may use it to run a VPN between my home and the homes of other
> family members.

It may just be a Linux thing (but I *think* it applies to the *BSD's as 
well), but I think the only thing that'll run well on a SS5/170 is 
Solaris, due to Fujitsu doing something strange with their Sun4m 
implementation.  I had Debian running on a 170 for a while, and was 
getting a kernel panic about once a day.  When I replaced the machine 
with a 85 (or maybe 70), it ran rock-solid.  A friend of mine has tried 
installing Debian (and Redhat SPARC) on some other 170s, and hasn't 
ever gotten it to install successfully.

Has anyone gotten NetBSD or OpenBSD to install/run without problems on a 
SS5/170?  I'm just realizing I've never tried... about the only thing I 
use a *BSD for (NetBSD) is for DEC hardware that Linux doesn't support 
(or doesn't support well), and for a brief time on a PReP-based 
RS/6000.

It's quite funny actually why I use Linux...  The reason I ended up 
chosing it (which at the time I was chosing Slackware Linux) over 
FreeBSD was based on what they said in a Walnut Creek CDROM catalog I 
got in the mail.  It's funny how the "littlest things" can influence 
your life. :)  I've now moved on to using Debian, but used Slackware 
from about '96 when i installed it on a 486 using the UMSDOS filesystem 
so I didn't have to reparition my computer, until sometime in 2002.  
Slack still has its charm, but it's nice to not have to compile most 
things from source (why would I want to recompile from source when 
someone else has done it for me?  How much faster can I really make 
bash when I compile it for my specific processor?).

Pat
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