[SunRescue] Recommend starter Sun?

[User Bobkeys BSD Bob the old greybeard BSD freak]

> > That is the first one that boots and loads fine, in my hands.
> > It even came up well on my 4/300, after using the IPX to load it.
> > OpenBSD, has always been, for me... insert floppy, boot, and 30
> > minutes later it is loaded, from cd or ftp.
> 
> Agreed -- the OpenBSD install routine is pretty good on both x86 and
> Sparc (can't speak for other platforms).  I've installed it on sun4c
> hardware with both netboot and floppy boot without problems, although I
> didn't find the OS to be all that stable...I would random get kernel
> panics for no apparent reason.

You are the second person I have heard of getting these random
panics.  I have never hand any on my machines (SS1/SS2/IPX), but
I have not tried other classes of sparcs other then the old vme
things (someday I will get richenuf in guildern de realme to get
me a biggie sparc).   It sounds, offhand, like more of a hardware
problem than an OS problem.  There was some talk on some of the
sparc lists of memory alignment problems in some ram configurations
in some machines.  I am also curious if there may be some speed
or timing problems with ram that is just right on the edge of spec.

> Linux runs fine and is pretty stable on Sparc, too, but when I last
> tried it, I was running the Redhat distribution.  I'm not a fan of
> Redhat.  Apparently, there's now a Slackware port for Sparc, which I
> suspect I would like substantially more.  Still, the Redhat version
> didn't give me substantially better performance than Solaris 2.6 and
> did give substantially worse performance than SunOS 4.1.4.

Slack sparc?  Hmmm, I should try that.  Redhat was overburdening on
my IPX, and slow on the SS1.

> Still, Solaris seems to be the most stable OS that I've run on Sun
> hardware, which I suppose makes sense for obvious reasons.  I have not
> tried NetBSD on Suns, though, but it's fine on x86 hardware (but
> doesn't have SMP support).

Ahh, yeah, but the freebies are not all that bad in my hands.  The old
SS1 OpenBSD web/ftp-server has been rock solid for the past couple of
years.  It is slow, but would really crawl with Solaris.  I just brought
an Alpha into the office today, to replace it with something a tad more
zippy.  Still, I gotta give the old SS1 credit, in that it has handled
the load well, given a goodly bunch of internal and external drives to
work with.  It dies at 6 drives on the bus, but has handled 5, well,
with nary a burp, until the power went down a couple weeks back and
the nvram turned out to be dead.  Oh, well, more fits with the soldering
pencil to redo the nvram......  that is my one real kick on Suns, that
silly nvram chip.  The OpenBSD has done me well.  I think the NetBSD-1.5
and up will do fairly well, too.  A NetBSD-1.5.1 release ought to be out
soon, as well as a 2.9 OpenBSD.  They will be good to compare with each
other.

Bob