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slackline
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:31 am    Post subject: Hard-drive advice... Reply with quote

Hi,

I've inherited an Ultra 10 from work for nothing and fancy getting Gentoo up and running on it for fun.

However, as they seem to be 'ultra' paranoid they've taken the HD out before letting me have it, so I need to get a replacement.

I've never touched anything but x86's before and would be grateful for some simple advice on an appropriate HD to stick into it.

Should I be looking at IDE or SATA or SCSI HD?

Looking to the future, can anyone recommend a good wiki/documentation place for Ultra 10's.

TIA and apologies for the dumb n00b question,

slack
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NeddySeagoon
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 3:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

slack---line,

The Ultra 10 has the worst hard drive controller known to man but its works ... slowly.
Put an IDE drive in and install there. You will need to use it to boot anyway.

I've added a SIL 3112 SATA controller to my U10 but be careful with your choice of hardware as the SPARC CPU cannot run the on board BIOS. Anything that needs the BIOS executed before it can work will fail.

There is a Gentoo SPARC project, liveCD and so on.
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slackline
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 4:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Thanks for the tip NeddySeagoon. Not too worried about speed and so forth, its more to learn the intricacies (vagaries) of a different arch.

A cheap IDE it is then :)

cheers,

slack
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rjmars97
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PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 8:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Along the same lines, I just scored a Sun Fire V120 that does not have a hard drive. From what I gather, it uses a 68 pin Ultra Wide SCSI interface. Can I just grab one of the cheap Compaq or similar drives off ebay, or will I have to pay big cash for a Sun branded drive? Will I also need a drive caddy? This is my first experience with SPARC and Sun hardware, so I'm not sure what to expect.
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korz
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 6:31 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi rjmars97,
I have an U60 workstation which uses SCA scsi drives. I was able to get all of my spare sca harddisks to work in my ultra 60 and non of them were original sun spare parts. So, I think, you won't need a Sun branded harddisk, either.
You will probably need a "whole disk" partition on your harddisk. Concerning my U60, if there is no whole disk partition, the machine will not boot from this disk.
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 1:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There's no "probably" about it. Partition 3 must be the whole disk. For example, here's one from a SB1000:


Disk /dev/sdb (Sun disk label): 27 heads, 107 sectors, 24620 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2889 * 512 bytes

Device Flag Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 0 22 31779 83 Linux native
/dev/sdb2 u 22 698 976482 82 Linux swap
/dev/sdb3 u 0 24620 35563590 5 Whole disk
/dev/sdb4 698 24620 34555329 83 Linux native

Regards,
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slackline
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've another hardware question and didn't see the point in starting a new thread so will ask here.

I've got a spare HD that I've bunged into the Ultra 10 and am about to start forging ahead with the installation.

One drawback is though that I don't have a monitor for the box. My first thought was to get one of these but I'm not sure if this will work with the Ultra 10. I suspect not since the hardware spec indicates that the keyboard/mouse is mini DIN-8?

Is it possible to do a headless install on a system and ssh in early on? I couldn't find any obvious docs on this.

I also noticed on the hardware spec that the HD is listed as "Up to two 4.3 GB (4500 rpm) or 9.1/20.4 GB (7200 rpm), 3.5-in. Enhanced IDE HDD". I'm guessing this is the spec that Sun were selling it with, and if I have a larger HD it should work?
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gerrit_hoekstra
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi slack--line,

I have a ST3160023A 160GB drive on my beloved Ultra-5 (which I believe is pretty much the same inside as your Ultra-10) and it runs smoothly, although perhaps not optimally. Here is what things look like on my machine:
Code:
beavis etc # fdisk -l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda (Sun disk label): 255 heads, 63 sectors, 19455 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Flag    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1             0       122    979965    1  Boot
/dev/hda2  u        122       244    979965   82  Linux swap
/dev/hda3             0     19455 156272287+   5  Whole disk
/dev/hda4           244      3891  29294527+  83  Linux native
/dev/hda5          3891      5715  14651280   83  Linux native
/dev/hda6          5715      9362  29294527+  83  Linux native
/dev/hda7          9362     19455  81072022+  83  Linux native
beavis etc # df -m | grep hda
/dev/hda1                  942       115       780  13% /
/dev/hda4                28159      2866     23864  11% /usr
/dev/hda5                14084       350     13019   3% /var
/dev/hda6                28159       173     26557   1% /home
/dev/hda7                77929       181     73790   1% /opt

As fas as a headless install goes, you need at the very least a Sun keyboard. Get it to boot from the cdrom, so on power up, press Stop-A, then blindly type: boot cdrom. The sshd daemon is not started by default so you will first have to set the root password and then start this daemon blind once the CD-drive light stops flashing (commands: passwd and /etc/init.d/sshd start). Portscan for your machine or look in your list of DHCP clients, ssh to it as user root and the new password, and then proceed as per the usual install.

Have some blinding fun!
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slackline
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PostPosted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 11:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cool, cheers for confirming larger HD's will work and for the advice on the headless install, I've got the keyboard so will have a go at that, sounds like fun anyway. Anyone want to place a bet on me hitting it right first time? :lol:

slack
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 2:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I did a headless install last night and realized that in my previous posting there were some steps missing and furthermore, that there is a lot else that can go wrong. So I put a fail-proof process together on the Gentoo Wiki:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Perform_a_headless_Gentoo_install_on_a_Sun_SPARC_Ultra-5/10

Comments and corrections are of course invited. I am also keen to hear whether this works for other vintage Sun boxes.
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Cool, good work on the write-up.

Not sure if I'll have time this weekend, but will certainly give it a go and let you/the wiki know how things went.

slack
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I commented on the talk page that I'm pretty sure it's possible to do this with a null-modem cable and a terminal emulator rather than a Type 5 keyboard, which might be useful to some. I'm looking into it.
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chance2105
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You could do it blind.

Or, better yet, over serial console:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-sparc-faq.xml#doc_chap2_sect1
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ah, I didn't realize that was already covered in the FAQ. Thanks.
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bkzshabbaz
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 9:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Since we're on the topic of HDs...I wanted to add a bigger HD to my U60. I've been eyeing a 73GB drive on ebay. Is the U60 restricted to only the drives listed here:
http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/validateUser.do?target=Systems/U60/components
?
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