[rescue] decisions, decisions

[Curtis H. Wilbar Jr.]

On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 17:02, Bill Bradford wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 04:28:56PM -0400, James Fogg wrote:
> > Run Solaris on a box native to Solaris and known to have excellent
> > physical quality and good performance, stability and heavy lifting
> > ability
> > OR
> > Run a version of Solaris that is still in development on comodity
> > hardware known to be of lesser physical quality that will have slightly
> > better light load performance but possibly worse heavy load performance.

Still in development ???

huh ?

1. What software isn't 'in development' ? (answer: EOL'd software)
2. Solaris for x86 has been in development since Solaris 2 for Sparc
   (I worked for SunService supporting 2.1, 2.4, and 2.5)

Now sure... driver support on the x86 sucks (well, in Solaris 10 I
think it sucks)... compared to Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD... (in 
that many devices (like all the PCI RAID controllers I own) don't
have drivers (at least on Solaris 10 which did away with many of
them)).

Now as for quality... I'll have to give Sun Sparcs the thumbs up
there... there is good x86 stuff... but there is also lots of
x86 crap... (I don't like running systems without parity or
ECC memory for one).

I've personally run Solaris 8 for x86 for light fileserver and
mail server use since 2000.  No crashes/problems till the hardware
started to die. (OLD hardware!).

> 
> True, I'd tried to forget about the problems I had getting x86 working on
> a number of boxes.

If you start to talk RAID controllers and stuff, you'll have a problem
with Solaris 10 (I think Sun's idea of an x86 HCL these days is a joke,
when I worked there it was IMHO much better, and easier to see what
Sun actually supported for hardware (not what a user reported to work)).

If your using common SCSI controllers, and one of the supported
ethernet controllers then you should be OK.

> 
> After thinking about it, I'll probably stick with the '60.
> 

Can't go wrong with sticking with a 60 (this ASCII generated on a
U60 as I type :-) ... unfortunately with only one 450mhz processor :-(
).

-- Curt

> bill