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Diezel
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 8:58 pm    Post subject: SPARCStation 5 anyone? Reply with quote

My question, has anyone been able to build Gentoo on an old SPARCStation 5. I bought one and was thinking of makeing it my development box. Since it has a huge 20" CRT. I like the look of this machine and if anyone has any ideas on problems on this one pleas report.

Cheers,

Mats
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BxBoy
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 03, 2003 9:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have a Sparcstation 20 that I might want to run it on. So far it has Solaris 8. Tell me how it goes..
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Ferris
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 6:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I installed GenToo on a Sparc-20 with no problems (all it takes is time),
and on a SparcBook-3GX, which is like a portable SparcStation-5.

Also, Linux in general runs fine on an SS5 (but I haven't tried GenToo on
one because of internet connection problems-- dial-up speed from the SS5).

So, it should build, and even X should run pretty well on it once you get
it started up. An SS5 is actually a pretty nice machine, so long as you
don't insist that it be really fast. (And expect it to take a few days to do
the initial compile and install. But it will do it.)
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Ferris
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 6:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Let me qualify my response. I believe that there are some 170MHz SS5
systems around. I understand that Linux is problematic on those systems,
and a search will turn up a lot of discussion on that issue. As a reference,
the SS5-equivalent I built GenToo on was pretty minimal:
CPU = 110MHz;
MEM = 32Mb;
DISK = 4Gb
You'll want a lot more memory that that, though.
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Gordium7
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 04, 2003 7:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I bought a SS20 up on Gentoo.

All it takes is time, as has been stated before. My initial build took most of a day, and that was starting from the Level 3 CD Image. BTW, having the CD available makes a really good emergency disk. I know..... ;)

X -windows also took 18+ hours to build. Seems to work well enough however. I admit to using Blackbox as the window manager though, as the prospect of compiling KDE or Gnome seemed like overkill when the actual use of X-windows will be somewhat limited on this machine.

Initially, my box had a SM-50 and 64 MB ram. It had some 'mystery' errors when building some large packages. Once I upped the ram to 256 MB, all the mysterious errors went away -- I also made my smallest drive (512 MB) dedicated as a swap parition so that may of helped as well.

Also, make sure that you have adequate disk space since Gentoo is a bit of a hog. My 2 GB parition I had mounted as /usr was 75% full after the system and X Windows build.

I have since upgraded to dual sm-71 processors. Makes a bit of a difference. Last weekend I finally got my SMP kernel built successfully using 2.4.21-r1 -- prior to that there had been some glitches on the last couple of releases concerning the SPARC 4m SMP code.

Its a fun machine to tinker with... kind of like hot rodding an old car. Parts seem plentiful and pretty cheap. I have had a lot of good deals off of eBay.

I plan on using it for a couple of website, java, and information security classes on my agenda.
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Diezel
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I already noticed that this takes time :) (bootstraping 26h 20 min and going :) ) <--Edited 5.8 16:00 EET
As soon as the bootstrap is done I am gona emerge distcc and let my P4:s do some of the work. The specs on the system,
110 MHz prcessonr
128Mb RAM
SCSI CD.
1Gb HD (this is a bottle neck)
20" Sony Trinitron monitor.

I was hoping I could get X and Fluxbox up on this one. Since I wanted it to be my little codebox. The 20" CRT makes it possible to have many many nice konsoles up. And my favourite tool when progrmming is Vim. So I just need the console :)
And the Sun Unix keyboard is just sweet for this purpouse, my x86:s all have scandinavian keybs and the Sun is just better( in means of layout).
Hope I get everythin up this week ;)
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Diezel
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 6:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok a "little" problem. I had a powerfailure when I was out and I dont know if the bootstarp finnished...Is there any way of checking?
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bazik
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 05, 2003 9:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

mahellma wrote:
Ok a "little" problem. I had a powerfailure when I was out and I dont know if the bootstarp finnished...Is there any way of checking?


Look into /var/log/emerge.log
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Diezel
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 12, 2003 3:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Problems with build. The base system eats the whole disk 900Mb so I need to do it all over. -Os flags in make.conf if you try it on a small hard drive. Learn from my misstakes :)

Otherwise the system seems to preform very well for a "grandpaa".
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 14, 2003 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've got a SPARCstation 5, the incompatible 170 Mhz Fugitsu processor model. I had all kinds of problems installing RedHat and Suse. But I've got Gentoo on there now and it has been working without any problems since I got it up. It is painfully slow...
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 29, 2003 5:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There was a guy on ebay a few months back selling 32mb SS4/5 DIMMS for $3.50 US each. for $35.00 I maxed out all of systems.

EDIT:

I found him:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3054781196&category=20327

Though his prices have gone up to $4.50 each. Still a good bargain. And he ships very quickly. Only US bidders though...
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2003 3:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mine's installing now, and gawd it's been bootstrapping for 25 hours.

SPARCstation 5 110MHz
256MB Ram
2x 9.1GB 10K RPM drives

I have about 10 various machines with distcc, and I'll for sure be using those for the rest of the install. waiting for this is highly annoying though!!
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 5:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My Sparcstation 5 (110MHz, 64M ram, 2x9Gb hd) is happily running Gentoo right now and is serving as my DNS server. Its also running X, fluxbox, gkrellm, & fwbuilder...

It took me several days of compiling to get things built, but now its solid as a rock...
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 9:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

H0bb3z wrote:
My Sparcstation 5 (110MHz, 64M ram, 2x9Gb hd) is happily running Gentoo right now and is serving as my DNS server. Its also running X, fluxbox, gkrellm, & fwbuilder...

It took me several days of compiling to get things built, but now its solid as a rock...


I just wanted to say mine too. It has 3 nics, and is serving appletalk on one, samba and NFS on the second, and FTP/webserver to the outside world on the onboard one. These machine are MULES!! I've tried killing it, but it won't stop.
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redog
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 1:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I am unable to boot the SS5 with any of the gentoo cd's...
I have a redhat6.2 cd that boots it fine tho....

which boot iso are you guys installing from?
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stonent
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2003 3:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

redog wrote:
I am unable to boot the SS5 with any of the gentoo cd's...
I have a redhat6.2 cd that boots it fine tho....

which boot iso are you guys installing from?


Can you explain further? Are you using the sparc iso or the sparc64? Your model uses just the sparc iso.
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 18, 2003 2:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm hoping not to have too hard a time with Gentoo on my Sparcstation 5. I've got the 110mHz model with 256mb and 4.2gb, so aside from a slow CPU I shouldn't have too much problems with general apps. I do expect to be waiting a while for the initial compile though. :)
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dnix
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 07, 2004 7:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi all, I'm trying to install gentoo in a Axil 311 that is a clone of the SS10 for use like a firewall.
Now I'm at the beginning (bootstrap) running just for one hour... (wait dnix, wait...) but he seems that for now there are no problems.
If someone has suggestion or tips... help me! :wink:
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Stieltje
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 09, 2004 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have the same config as Diezel, but with the exception that I don't have a CD..

I have used this machine at the univ, got it for free when they got obsolete this wednesday :) I really like this machines :)

I am planning on netbooting this one though, and running gentoo on it, with the sparc-sources, mainly cause I do not have that CD :/

So I wonder a little where to start, I mean, I probably need to do alot of compiling on my x86 machine, at least the kernel, so I wonder how you set up a protected "isolated" subsytem so that I don't need to do any changes in my make.conf, ie I a virtual sparc environment on my PC. Maybe that is not neccesary, just a thought though...

it was very easy to set the SS4 environment to netboot, so that part is finished.

any suggestions, or any advice on this matter?

Thanks
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've tried distcc-ing my SS5 with Solaris but did not work. Guess, if you run Gentoo on x86, cross-compile should do.
Anyways, SS5 is running smoothly (and loud, bloody disks ;), X with Fluxbox are fine, no problems so far.
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dnix
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PostPosted: Thu Feb 05, 2004 2:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I installed the axil and it work very well!
super stable, compiled (but not all packages) with cross compiling on a x86.
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