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GenTimJS Guru
Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 406 Location: NH, USA
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 2:12 am Post subject: [Semi-OT] Anyone here have experience with sun ray clients? |
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Anyone here have experience with Sun Ray thin clients?
I recently got one, but the sun docs arent helping much...
sunray 1
sb1000 srss2.0
connected on hub
srss2.0 is installed per the docs
when the client boots up, it gives me an hourglass with two little bars under it
i think i need to update the firmware, but using utfwadm and utfwsync doesnt seem to do much..
thoughts? _________________ -Tim Smith |
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spikkle n00b
Joined: 04 Jun 2003 Posts: 40 Location: Tech-Armpit (GA - USA)
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2005 4:59 pm Post subject: Sun Ray 1 thin client |
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I noticed no-one has responded here, and since I recently came upon a few of these units myself, I will share what I have learned thus far:
These are "true" thin clients. They have no boot capacity outside of a network-boot environment.
They cannot be used with the LTSP project, as they only support booting from the SunRay server software (get it here: http://www.sun.com/download/products.xml?id=41c758f9)
They have 100MHz processors and 8 megs of ram each, and can run a display up to 1920x1200 (23" sun monitor). The low ram and processor isn't a problem really, because what you have in a SunRay 1 is not a computer, it is a remote interface to a computer (the server).
No processing or cacheing is done on the clients.
Currently, I am trying to get the SunRayServer3 software to operate under my gentoo system (2.5GHz P4, 640MB ram). Sun says you have to have licenses to run the SRS3 software with the clients ($100 per seat licensing, unless you have a lot of them in which case you can buy in bulk). I don't have a license yet since I hope that I can take advantage of the 90 day "trial" period to try out the clients with the linux version of Sun's software to evaluate if I need to run Solaris to get proper functionality out of them (like USB mass storage and USB printer support).
If I manage to get it working, I will try to remember to post my results here. _________________ Spikkle,
It's like what forms at the corners of your mouth while you sleep, only softer, wetter, and with more substance. |
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GenTimJS Guru
Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 406 Location: NH, USA
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Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2005 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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Please do, I still cant make mine do much ...
I'm using SRSS2 under solaris/sparc and the ray boots to an hourglass with two little dashes under it and just sits ... _________________ -Tim Smith |
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ozbird Apprentice
Joined: 21 Oct 2003 Posts: 185
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Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 1:28 pm Post subject: Re: SunRay terminals |
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I had about 30 of the original SunRay 1 terminals running on an E450 running Solaris 8 at work, with mostly positive results.
They are essentially a fancy dumb terminal - a frame buffer and audio codec in a box. The server does all of the hard work (running the applications, X11 etc.) The "hot seat" desktop system looks great in demos, but is nothing special when you realise that it's all running on the server regardless of whether the user is "plugged in" at the time... RAM and swap space are your friend.
The remote management software is quite useful, but unless you have a fetish for long hexadecimal numbers, give the terminals names and record them (and the terminal location) in the database so that you know which one to reset when a user complains...
The SunRays have only modest video playback acceleration - low resolution videos work fine, but full-screen video dropped a lot of frames. Getting some audio applications to work with the SunRays took some effort, and in some cases simply didn't work.
Sun recommends that the SunRays are connected to a dedicated network connection; I opted to use the gigabit network backbone shared by regular devices and keep them separated via a VLAN. This seems to work fine, except for the occasional audio glitch (which may or may not have been coincidental.)
We had a high failure rate of the terminals due to the same dodgy electrolytic capacitors that killed many PC motherboards of the same vintage; to their credit, Sun replaced all of the terminals with new ones that didn't have this problem at no cost. No complaints!
We eventually replaced the SunRays with a home-grown Linux thin-client solution, mainly because of the multimedia limitations and the server resources required for large installations is rather daunting. The newer models may have improved this, and the recently announced SunRay Server for Linux is interesting - but a little too late.
If you're only going to use them for word processing, basic web browsing etc., the SunRays work very well.
Good luck! |
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jshanab Guru
Joined: 22 Dec 2003 Posts: 359
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Posted: Sat Mar 19, 2005 3:14 am Post subject: Close but no cigar |
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I have been trying to get the srss 3.0 to work on gentoo, i have 2 sun ray 1's to play with
I used the rpm2targz utility to get all the files installed, the utinstall was saying it was done but not actually doing anything.
I got the kernel modules compled and installed, but when I try to run any of the configuration scripts it says that the software is not installed. Obviously there is one more component that needs to be running. Anyone get any further? |
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penguini n00b
Joined: 15 Feb 2005 Posts: 2 Location: Australia
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Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 11:24 am Post subject: |
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Hi GenTimJS
Hmmm... methinks getting SRSS3.0 working on Gentoo (P4?) probably wont help someone with SRSS2 troubles under solaris/sparc
You have old firmware on your Sun Ray so the SRSS2.0 doco wont be much use to you at this stage. When the Sun Ray successfully connects to your Sun Ray server, and it's firmware is updated, then the SRSS2.0 doco will apply.
I suggest you take a look at the older SRSS1.3 admin guide ( http://docs-pdf.sun.com/806-7712-10/806-7712-10.pdf ) as this has some pics of what you have described. As I understand it you are looking at the 'Startup Icon' (refer to page 96) and the problem has to do with the Sun Ray waiting for DHCP parameters.
According to the admin guide the hourglass with two dashes under it means:
"DHCP Pending Definition:
The appliance has detected the Ethernet carrier but has not received its initial parameters from DHCP yet. This icon is displayed as part of the normal startup phase and is usually displayed for only a few seconds. Actions to take if this icon stays on for more than 10 seconds:
* Make sure that DHCP on the Sun Ray server is configured correctly, is up and running, and has not run out of IP addresses to assign to clients."
How have you got the software configured? Does your server privide DHCP services? It'd be useful to know more about your network topology?
When you ran 'utadm', after the initial install, what arguments did you use:
'utadm -a <interface_name>' for private interconnect, or
'utadm -A <network_address>' for shared network mode? |
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