Re: sparcs in general
On Tue, 20 Aug 2002, Kevin J. Kalupson wrote:
> I've been running debian for over two years now on PC's and now doing server
> related things as well. I am about to acquire a sparc 5 and a sparc 10
> workstation. Will they work in a similar fashion as a PC? What I mean is,
> will I be able to install debian and have them function as stand alone
> machines on my network or are the dependent some how on a larger sun server?
> I have allready assumed answers to these questions but I have learned to know
> better than to count on assumptions. Does anyone have any recomendations for
> a new sun with linux user, etc?
Well, the machines aren't PCs. They are different, yes, and the install
procedure is slightly different, but it's nothing that can't be overcome
with a bit of poking around.
A few things you'll need to know:
stop-a drops you to firmware (prompt is 'ok')
to boot from a CD-ROM, one usually types: 'boot cdrom' or if that doesn't
work, you can specify the device's full path, starting with /iommu (you
can 'cd /iommu' and 'ls' once inside to check out the contents).
Once you have Linux installed on these boxes, they will function much like
their PC counterparts; they are indeed independent of a large-scale
server.
But, the above machines are rather slow, and they're the old 32-bit
SuperSPARC-class chips (SPARCstations are about ten years old now, maybe
more). They are fun to play with, though, so enjoy :)
--
Kelsey Hudson khudson@compendium.us
Software Engineer/UNIX Systems Administrator
Compendium Technologies, Inc (619) 725-0771
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