[Nottingham] linux on sparc

[Tom Bird]

On 17 Feb 2003, mike wrote:

> i've got a old sparcStation5 (uh.how do I find out more?) on my desk and
> I really want to get linux on it, but my sparc/solaris knowledge is
> almost nill.
> I've installed on intel plenty, but what do i need to look out for on
> sparc?
> Can anyone give advice on starting an install (boot floppy??) best
> distro (yeah, debian) and other gotcha's? It's gonna be used for
> web/media streaming(quicktime/helix). Location of tfm's to r also
> appreciated.

If you can get a cd-rom for it (remember, has to support 512 byte sectors,
AFAIK any mac one should do), most distros will cd boot.

Then there's net boot, if you can be arsed fiddling around with
tftp/bootparamd/rarpd/nfsd and so on.

And of course, solaris 9 CD images are available from sun.com, runs nice
and fast on this ultra 1 (166mhz ultrasparc, 128mb ram, 18gb disk).

My old firewall (mothballed until I get broadband again) was solaris 8 on
a modestly specced (85mhz) ss5 with a 2gb disk.  No need for X on a
firewall, ended up with only a tiny bit of that 2gb used.

-- 
Tom  [www.hambule.co.uk] [tom@hambule.co.uk]