Sparcstation LX advice

[bdina]

I am now the proud new owner of a Sun Sparcstation LX, I finally have taken the plunge. I must admit, I already love it more than my Alphastation and Wintel boxes, I can't believe that I had waited so long for this. I can't wait until I can afford a big-boy.

anyway to my question.

BACKGROUND INFO:
The box powers up, it has solaris 2.5 on it, I have no idea of how large the HD is on the box, but I do know that I have 48MB of memory. The box boots partially (I am accessing the computer via the serial interface), I get to a point where services are started, and it just seems to hang, I am not sure that this really matters to me however, as even if it did get to a prompt I have no account on the box and no way of knowing the passwords to any accounts that may exist on the box.

QUESTION 1:
What I really want to do is install solaris 9 on it, I have no use for X at this time, I really just want to be able to run a simple webserver, maybe e-mail as well, I will stick to working all of my X stuff on my P4, the web site claims solaris 9 will run on this machine however it also states that I need 600MB of HD space, and 64MB of memory, I have read though by others that it will run on less, like I said, no X, will this work?

QUESTION 2:
If question 1 is answered with a "yes" then I have a second question, how difficult would it be to perform a network install of solaris? I have no cd-rom drive for this machine, I do run plenty of linux and some FreeBSD, and have NFS running already, I am not sure if solaris uses NFS for network installs though.

QUESTION 3:
This one doesn't really matter to me but would there be any way to salvage the 2.5 install I have already, is there some type of "single-user mode" like in linux that I can access to repair it, might be fun to try even if I do install solaris 9.

 

[daFranze]

Q1: I guess Sol9 does not install on the HDDs they are to small (200 MB HDD default)

Q2: you need to setup a boot- and installserver; Solaris boxes use bootparams, tftp and NFS

Q3: once set up a bootserver you can boot the OS from net (boot net -sw) and do a remote dump
tar cf - . | rsh remotehost dd if=- of=/the/dumping/device/eg/a/tapedrive (this works with .rhosts permissions on a Sun, Linux etc. may have different Commands/Mecanisms)

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

 

[bdina]

> Q1: I guess Sol9 does not install on the HDDs they are to
> small (200 MB HDD default)

so assuming my HD is large enough, 48MB memory is enough memory for a Solaris 9 install?

> Q2: you need to setup a boot- and installserver; Solaris
> boxes use bootparams, tftp and NFS

can I run the installserver using linux, or by install server do you just mean an NFS mountpoint somewhere with the media.

> Q3: once set up a bootserver you can boot the OS from net
> (boot net -sw) and do a remote dump
> tar cf - . | rsh remotehost dd if=-
> of=/the/dumping/device/eg/a/tapedrive (this works
> with .rhosts permissions on a Sun, Linux etc. may have
> different Commands/Mecanisms)

howbout the bootserver, what do I need for this?

 

[daFranze]

Q1: I'm not sure, I do not have much experience with old HW and new OS, but 48MB RAM is not much, I think it's ok, but give enough swap (2x RAM, as an old rule of thumb)

Q2 & Q3: all Docs I know deal with at least 2 Suns (1 Installclient and 1 Installserver), I'm not sure what you need if Installserver is not Sun. Pl search for more information at

http://docs.sun.com

and

http://sunsolve.sun.com

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