Solaris 9 x86 multiple CPU license question

[DamianDelCampo]

I'm an IT professional with past Unix experience looking to move from Windows Support roles into Unix Systems Admin roles.
As a hands on, experimental and educational system I was going to buy myself a cheap older 2/4 Xeon cpu system and running the free x86 Solaris 9 on it.

The free license for x86 is only valid for single CPU machines, so my question refers to using the free binaries on a multi-cpu system

1) Will the install fail or only run off 1 cpu?

OR

2) Will it install/operate correctly using all cpus leaving me the need to sort out licensing in the near future?

 

[daFranze]

I do not know, BUT usually Sun Software has a grace time to test it and it will send mail, create popups or messages if the license will expire shortly

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[DamianDelCampo]

Thanks, this was my thinking from previous experience of Sun downloads ie Studio ONE, Star Office etc.

I was looking for a more definte idea though, because if I'm not going to be able to install Solaris on a quad CPU, I need to either

1) buy a fast single (p4 2-3Ghz) cpu machine and use Solaris
OR
2) buy the quad cpu (Xeon 400-600MHz) and use FreeBSD instead.

 

[octorian]

I know at least from experience on SPARC, that any and all "licensing" with Solaris itself (not add-on software) is purely on paper. There are no license files of any kind, and the ISOs you can download from Sun's website will run on any machine it is supported on (regardless of CPU count).