[rescue] Help with SunFire V240 Server

[Jerry Kemp]

Hello Lionel,

On 04/ 4/13 03:33 PM, Lionel Peterson wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've had this lying around for a while, decided it was time to do something
> with it. "It" is a SunFire V240 w/ 2 CPUs of unknown speed, with 4x wiped
> HDs (2x 72G 2x146G SAS) and 8 Gigs of RAM. It powers-up fine, runs through
> all diagnostics, then stops and drops to the open-boot prompt ('ok').
>
> I'd like to get this running, I presume Solaris is still an option (albeit
> an older release w/ no patches available), but other choices must be
> available - suggestions?

Solaris is an option for you, up to the current (and just recently 
released) Oracle Solaris 10u11.

The V240 is a Sun4u.  Solaris 11+ are limited to Sparc M-series, Sparc 
T-series and X86 64 bit only.

You can install the old OpenSolaris Indiana or OpenSolaris Nevada.

Currently, there is this distro that you should be able to install the 
OpenSXCE Sparc distro.




>
> And, of course, since this server does not have a DVD drive on-board, how
> should I go about installing an OS? Is a USB optical drive an option? USB
> flash drive? I don't have a boot server available and would prefer to not
> set one up if at all possible.

You could find/acquire/borrow a DVD for this box.

You can plug in a USB DVD drive and install from that.

I have never installed from a USB stick, but I don't know why that 
wouldn't work.

You can set a jumpstart server.  If you don't have a box to devote to 
being a jumpstart server, you can set up a jumpstart server in 
VirtualBox VM, or something similar.

hope this helps,

Jerry


>
> I can connect to the machine and watch Power-on tests, and can interact
> with the OBP via a serial connection.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Lionel