UNIX Sysadmin Resources – FAQs Sun Microsystems (Part 2)

This content was originally created, collected, and maintained by Stokely Consulting.
As of May 2005, it is being hosted and maintained by Bill Bradford.


Page 1:
Disabling BREAK on Sun console serial ports
Sun FAQs

Page 2:
Software for Suns & Solaris x86
Sun Pictures, Illustrations & Visio Shapes
Solaris x86 specific info
Sparc Laptops

Page 3:
Performance Tuning, Security & Process Mgmt
Solaris Patch Management
Sun Keyboards
Using non-Sun monitors
Other Sun/SPARC info, sites, tools…


Software for Suns & Solaris x86:

Large Archive Sites:

sunfreeware.com Solaris Software for SPARC and x86 is a shareware site of pre-compiled Solaris 2.x software, containing lots of applications that Solaris admins have been looking for, like top, emacs, tin, gzip, emacs, gcc, perl5, proctool and more. Many HPC and scientific programs optimized for UltraSPARC. All software is ready to install via pkgadd. Nicely presented page.
Solaris Package Archive contains a large number of tool packages, pre-compiled for many Solaris versions. GNU tools and many other popular tools.
SunSITE is Sun’s worldwide information exchange. Check here for public domain software and other Sun information at SunSITEs around the world.
Sun download center always has free software to download. Also see Sun Promotions, Downloads and Upgrades. You never know what you’ll find in either place, but there are often some gems.
ftp://opcom.sun.ca/pub/freeware/x86 contains lots of extremely-useful Solaris x86 software.
The Depot Archive from the University of Florda has a huge number of software packages, precompiled and ready to install, for Solaris 2.5, 2.6, and Irix 6.2. Well-presented archive.
freeware4Sun.com has pre-compiled binaries for Solaris 2.5.1 – Solaris 7, including x86 and 64 bit packages. Site includes software, patches, gnome, kde, games, docs, and more.
ftp.patriots.net has a large collection of software, precompiled and pkgadd-ready for Solaris 7 Sparc and x86, and Solaris 8.
RiddleWare’s Solaris X86 Links & Archives includes sw, mailing lists, archive sites, and Java stuff for Solaris x86.
The "ready-to-go" Solaris Helpers Page has pre-compiled Netscape Navigator helpers for SPARC and Solaris x86. Contains browser utilities, audio and video players, image and document viewers, VRML browsers, plugins for MIDI, Tcl/Tk, conferencing, screen lockers, and more. Source included. Nicely organized page!
Solaris Package Archive contains many GNU tools and other essential, free Solaris software for Intel and SPARC, Solaris 2.3 to Solaris 7, pre-compiled and ready to install easily.
Sun BigAdmin Software & Downloads is filled with Sun Software, freeware, WebStart Wizards and more.
SunScreen 3.1 Lite is available free from Sun. It’s a firewall product designed to protect individual servers or very small workgroups. It is built from the same code as the full SunScreen 3.1 product, providing high-speed, dynamic stateful packet screening, with a few exceptions.

Individual Tool/Packages Sites:

DOCUNIX is a tool to document Solaris systems. Shows a host’s configuration information in views created from the data collected by Sun Microsystems’ Explorer Data Collector. Evaluation copy available via download.
HA/FST Free high availability clustering software for Solaris. HA/FST works similar to other HA tools. Heartbeats sent across a private network are monitored. If these heartbeats fail and subsequent checks across the public network fail, then a failover can occur. Additionally, each application is monitored at configurable intervals for soundness. Application failovers can trigger a restart or a failover.
Hardwr lists the hardware found on your Unix machine. Writen in csh and runs on at least Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Digital Unix, Ultrix, Irix, SCO, Linux, Nextstep. From Stephan Garnaud. Site in French and English.
hostid is a small, free C program which allows you to temporarily change the hostid of a SPARC machine to a value of your choosing. It also allows the platform name (as reported by “uname -i”) to be changed and works with Veritas disk manager. It also allows the hostid to be changed on the fly, without requiring a reboot. The change in hostid will only last until the next reboot, or until the next time you change the hostid. Written by John Birtley.
memconf reports the size of each SIMM/DIMM memory module installed in a SPARC system along with the system type and any empty memory sockets. In verbose mode, it also reports the banner name, model and CPU/system frequencies and address range and bank numbers for each module. From Tom Schmidt.
Solaris Resource Manager is a tool from Sun for enabling resource availability for users, groups, and applications. Can control and allocate CPU time, processes, virtual memory, connect time, and logins on a fine-grained basis. White papers: Solaris Resource Manager 1.0, Controlling system Resources Effectively, and Solaris Resource
Manager for Solaris Enterprise Server
.

Sun PCI products/drivers/info:

Sun I/O Technology/PCI and Sun PCI Network Cards from Sun’s Web site.
Open Sound System is a commercial product that supports Sound Blaster or Windows Sound System compatible sound cards in Unix workstations supporting ISA or PCI bus. Many Unix versions and cards supported. From 4Front Technologies.

Sun Pictures, Illustrations & Visio Shapes:

Bruce Pullig’s Sun Visio Stencils contains very nice, free Visio stencils for a lot of Sun and related gear.
NetZoom contains good looking Visio shapes and symbols in other formats for Sun equipment and other gear. From Altima Technologies, Inc.
Sun Product Photos includes systems, chips, boards, ASICs, peripherals, storage and more. From Sun Microsystems.
Sun Marketing Photos has photos of systems, boards, facilities, events and more.
Sun Marketing Resource Center Illustrations contains drawings of Sun products, diagram elements other electronics and 3rd party hardware. No Visio shapes. From Sun Microsystems.
Sun System Handbook has nice photos of all Sun systems and there are photos of entry level servers elsewhere on sun.com.
Microsoft Visio Network Center has a few Visio shapes for Sun. They write: “Only customers who obtained Visio Enterprise Network Tools before it was discontinued on June 30, 2002 can download from the Visio Network Center site.”

Solaris x86-specific info:

Google groups: alt.solaris.x86: Search or browse the alt.solaris.x86 newsgroup at Google
Solaris Developer Connection from Sun, includes Solaris x86 Driver Updates, certification, compatibility lists, support, services, education, patches, and FAQs.
Solaris x86 Hardware Compatibility Lists including Intel x86, PowerPC and software version variations.
Solaris x86 hints gives needed information on hardware (including a Solaris x86 laptop list), disk diagnostic tools, setup and more. Part of the fine Phil’s Software site at bolthole.com.
Solaris on Intel – x86 FAQ covers the frequent questions posted to the alt.solaris.x86 newsgroups. The information is extremely useful to those running Solaris x86. Maintained by Dan Anderson.

Multi-booting Solaris:

Multi-booting Solaris and other operating systems explains how to do multi-booting with Solaris, Linux, Dos, MS Windows, and NT 4. Well-written by Mariusz Zynel.
Multi-Booting Windows 98, Linux, and Solaris gives a good explanation of how to set up multi-booting. By Brian Gollsneider, published in Sys Admin magazine.
Solaris on Toshiba Tecra 550CDT covers setting up and running Solaris x86. Good installation report from Youri Podchosov.
Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ ("unofficial" but useful info).
Solaris IA Platform Network Driver Porting Kit for Linux Drivers uses Linux driver source to produce a binary Solaris driver for 32-bit Intel systems. Free development tools from Sun.
Patch for increasing serial port speed on Solaris x86 changes the Solaris x86 asy driver to allow speeds 57600bps and 115200bps by remapping speeds 50 and 75. Requires a 16550A or higher UART. Includes a special note for dp-4.0 users. This patch is not applicable to Solaris x86 2.5[.1] DU7 users. Written by Andrew Gabriel.
XFree86 on Solaris explains how to get, install and configure XFree86 on Solaris x86. Written by Gregory A. Lazzaro.

Sparc Laptops:

Nature World Wide Technology Corp, maker of Sparc laptops.
NextCom LLC, maker of a complete product line of SPARC based mobile servers, SPARC laptops, Mobile Linux servers and rugged Linux Notebooks.
Tadpole, maker of Sparc laptops, rackmount servers and server appliances.