[SPARCbook] Powerlite170 and Solaris 9

[Borgen_Gary]

For some reason these reply's are not getting in the Archives.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Borgen_Gary" <gary.borgen at verizon.net>
To: "Rich Kulawiec" <rsk at gsp.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 1:42 PM
Subject: Re: [SPARCbook] Powerlite170 and Solaris 9


> Rich,
>
> I was planning on killing all the processes, if I can get by the other
> problems.
>
> I'm sure that 128 MB of RAM is not enough at this point.  I am looking
into
> expanding it to 256, but it's a tough beast to find.  My memory board has
a
> lot of vacant pads for more memory.  I'm trying to find chips to fill it.
>
> The Powerlite 170 is basically a portable SS5, with TGX graphics and a
> Crystal CS4231audio chip.  That's why I can't figure out the audio.
>
> pkginfo |grep -i audio  gives me the same results as you, except two more
> entries in the GNOME2 results.
>
> Which release of 9 are you using?  12/03 or 4/03?  12/03 does not have any
> "audiocs" driver in the /platform/sun4m/kernel/drv directory.  So it was
> maybe compiled without it?
>
> The "hostname: unknown" with is mainly an annoyance.  Plus not being able
to
> fix it bugs me.  I'll check the Google Usenet for a solution as suggested.
>
> I've run debian linux on a SS5 before and it ran fine.  I'll post after I
> try Aurora.
>
> Gary
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Rich Kulawiec" <rsk at gsp.org>
> To: "Borgen_Gary" <gary.borgen at verizon.net>
> Sent: Sunday, February 22, 2004 1:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [SPARCbook] Powerlite170 and Solaris 9
>
>
> > On Sun, Feb 22, 2004 at 12:03:58PM -0800, Borgen_Gary wrote:
> > >     My Powerlite 170 has a 170 MHz processor, 128 MB of ram, and 6 GB
of
> > > hard drive space (512 MB swap).  I don't expect the system to be fast,
> but
> > > crashes aren't good.
> >
> > I don't get this.  I have a 110 MHz Sparcbook 3GX with 128M of RAM,
> > a 2G disk, and about 128M of swap running Solaris 7 and it's reasonably
> > responsive.  (Though starting things like Mozilla takes a while.)
> > I'm not running GNOME, however: and I usually kill off the Solaris
> > "dtwm" and run "icewm", though that's probably inconsequential.
> >
> > Suggestion: try shutting down unused daemons such as NFS stuff, the DMI
> > stuff, etc., and see if performance improves.
> >
> > Suggestion: run "top" and see if you've filled that 128M.  Which
> > ties into my question:
> >
> > Question: is the combination of all the GNOME stuff large enough that
> > you're paging?  (Let me pause to note that running the GNOME desktop
> > on my 170 MHz, 256M RAM, Sparc 5, Solaris 9 desktop was rather sluggish.
> > Given that it matches your CPU speed and has double the RAM, I wonder if
> > perhaps the combination of memory exhaustion and bloated GNOME code is
> > causing your problem?)
> >
> > > 1.  Audio support for the sun4m arch has disappeared.
> > > I have done /reconfigure several times, yet no /dev/audio entry ever
> > > occurs.  In addition, the audio entry is missing from the
> /platform/sun4m
> > > directory.
> >
> > Ah.  I'm not much help here, as I've long since given up on audio on my
> > Sparcbooks.   However, I *do* have audio under Solaris 9 on my Sparc 5
> > (and it works!).  Question: what do you get if you run:
> >
> > pkginfo |grep -i audio
> >
> > I get:
> >
> > system      SUNWauda                         Audio Applications
> > system      SUNWaudd                         Audio Drivers
> > system      SUNWaudf                         Audio Sound Files
> > system      SUNWaudh                         Audio Header Files
> > GNOME2      SUNWgnome-audio                  GNOME audio support
framework
> > GNOME2      SUNWgnome-audio-devel            GNOME audio support
> framework - developer
> >
> > on my Solaris 9 desktop.
> >
> > > 2.   I am running DHCP and attaching to a D-Link router.  While I can
> get an
> > > IP address and surf the net, I can never set the hostname to anything
> that
> > > sticks.  I have run the hostname commad and set the hostname, set the
> > > hostname.le0 file to read a proper hostname, but the system always
> reboots
> > > to "hostname: unknown".  The D-Link does not have the ability to
assign
> a
> > > hostname.
> >
> > Solaris does not seem to like dynamically setting the hostname
post-boot.
> >
> > Question: why are you trying to set the hostname?  (Reason for question:
> > I have my Sparcbook set up so that outbound mail will always carry the
> > correct return address for me, no matter where I'm plugged in.  Since
> outbound
> > mail is the only thing that interacts with the outside world by
hostname,
> > and since I have it set up to omit the hostname ;-), only people who
> > look closely at the headers will notice that I'm moving from place to
> > place while doing this.)
> >
> > > 3.  The system is dog slow under gnome and hangs when I try to have
more
> > > than two windows open.
> >
> > See comment above about GNOME bloat + possible memory starvation.
> >
> > > 4.  I takes about 8 hours to do an install from scratch.
> >
> > Yipes.  I don't get that: even my old Netra (which is my firewall here
> > at home, running Solaris 9) only takes a few hours to install.  And it
> > has a fairly clunky CDROM drive. I wonder why your install is so slow?
> >
> > > 5.  Sun is threatening to drop support for the sun4m arch in future
> releases.
> >
> > Yeah, I know.  Given that I have a bunch of Sun4m machines, I'm probably
> > stuck.  However: I run OpenBSD on quite a few of them and it is
incredibly
> > stable and fast.  It lacks support for some things -- though that's
being
> > addressed bit by bit.  It may be worth your while to snag a copy of
> > OpenBSD 3.4 and fiddle with it -- if you're going to fiddle with Aurora
> Linux
> > anyway.
> >
> > Question: any general comments on Aurora Linux?  I keep meaning to
> > get a copy and try it, but just haven't found time.
> >
> > ---Rsk