Date: Tue, 25 Jan 00 20:51:03 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #3 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Tue, 25 Jan 00 Volume 13 : Issue 3 Today's Topics: choosing an old sun for day to day use Giving away old Sun stuff NAT or IPFW under Solaris 6 or 7? several from Digest V13 #2 Sparc LX Spate of break-ins Sun 3/75 monitor Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 (5 msgs) Twin-heads & twin CPUs +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com | | Requests: suns-at-home-request@net-kitchen.com | | WWW Archive access: http://www.net-kitchen.com/~sah | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 21:47:45 -0600 From: "John E. Petty" Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com, jbl@andrew.cmu.edu > Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 14:23:08 -0500 > From: jbl@andrew.cmu.edu > Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use > To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com > ---------- Snip --8<------------ > > However, I am at a loss as to what to get. I have a very low > budget (~ $100). There appear to be a number of IPXen and LXs > sold on eBay for about that price. What sort of maintenance > burden and performance can I expect out of these machines? I > had a 4/330 which I played around with for a while, but I do > not think that it was fast enough for my tastes. Any help or > direction would be much appreciated. I have seen many, many IPX machines fail due to heat. They are packed too tight inside the box. A Sun-certified serviceman who handles our maintenance at work told me the same thing. As long as he got paid to swap out the boards with new ones, it was allright with him. Get at least a Sparc-2. The next release of Solaris will not cover Sparc-2's or older machines. the Sun-4M machines with M-bus are expensive for what you get. -- Enjoy, John E. Petty ~ 1983 R100RT and 1996 R1100RT-P ~ New Orleans, Louisiana ~ IBMWR Non-Anonymous Elf ~ http://www.ibmwr.org/ - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 21:18:32 EST From: Rlsnuffy@aol.com Subject: Giving away old Sun stuff To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Hello All, I have a couple of pieces of old Sun stuff I was getting ready to put out in the trash - then I figured I better ask here first if anybody wants it. An old 3/60 with 24 MB ram - I think the boot ROM is v1.9... I used it for years, retired it the middle of last year when I decided I didn't want to deal with Y2K'ing it... It could use a bath (I'm a smoker) otherwise worked fine... A 501-1162 CPU board. These boards were used in the 3/50's I think. I have no idea the condition of it - I'm not even sure now how I ended up with it. If anyone is interested in either piece, let me know - taker pays shipping - otherwise they go to the dumpster in the next week or so... Thanks for the bandwidth. Bob - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 07:57:26 -0500 From: "Rudis, Bob [NCSUS]" Subject: NAT or IPFW under Solaris 6 or 7? To: "'Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com'" Dan, Check out ipfilter and some good Solaris-oriented sample configuration docs @: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ipfilter/ and http://users.orac.net.au/~doug/network/ boB brudis@ncsus.jnj.com - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 17:01:12 -0500 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: several from Digest V13 #2 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com "From: jbl@andrew.cmu.edu "Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use " for the kind of apps you mention, they'll all have adequate performance. i'm posting this from my sparc-2 [ipx level] with weitek cpu. screen redraws are perceptible [and i have a gx+] but don't annoy me. compiles are kinda slow... character apps like vi and lynx run faster than i do. i've had -no- hardware issues in ~4 years. "From: Dan Mahoney "Subject: NAT or IPFW under Solaris 6 or 7? " "I'd like to stick a 2nd ethernet card in one of the IPXs and configure it to "route for the other IPX and couple of PC's in my home network. the sun boot process automatically configures routing services if it detects more than one ethernet interface. nothing needs to be done. this doesn't include address translation or ip forwarding. you should be able to find something that does this at sunfreeware.org. "From: Huge "Subject: Twin-heads & twin CPUs " "Since I have enough parts to run my SPARC 10 (with Solaris 7 & "Openwindows (Yes, yes, but I like it.)) double headed, what's involved, "other than plugging in the second graphics adaptor and screen, that "is? boot -r [duh!] and some monkeying with the cde startup script. i don't remember exactly what, but i found it in either the fb faq or the solaris faq. look for them at sunhelp.org. "Also, I have a possibility of getting another CPU for this box. Again, "what's involved in running it, other than just plugging it in? And what's "the SPARCserver 10MP that the CPU's coming out of going to make of it? assuming it's the same as the cpu already in there, nothing. -some- mismatched combinations -will- work, but this situation was never intended... the 10mp will boot normally, run slower. __________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay I used to be pessimistic but it never works out internet rambler I believe that it's unlucky to be superstitious adh@an.bradford.ma.us DRIVE NOW -- TALK LATER - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 05:05:21 -0700 From: JAZ Subject: Sparc LX To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com >Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000 14:23:08 -0500 >From: jbl@andrew.cmu.edu >Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use >To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com I have an Lx running Solaris 7. I use it for learning Unix. Its running on a cable modem. (firewall software is the next step). Its a little slow at times, but it was relatively cheap and until I really need more speed I'll keep it. I run Netscape Navigator 4.7 and its fast enough. I got Star Office, but its soooo slow, and klutsy to boot. I can get email on it and its fine, but I'm trying to get Pine installe and set up. For vi I think its fine. text editors/ word processors don't need much for typing. Its a lot simpler than word on my imac and sometimes faster. I've got a 2 gb hard drive and 64 mb of ram. I paid $99 for the LX plus a hard drive, monitor and ram. I think around $295 total, this was about a year ago. Make sure if you buy one you get some kind of warranty. James Zuchelli jaz5@ix.netcom.com - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:44:36 +0000 From: "Jon Laughton" Subject: Spate of break-ins To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com All these reports of break-ins are a bit worrying: my machine has also been attacked by this "danz" character in the last month, and I initially thought it was just an isolated incident. I'm intrigued how these people know which addresses to attack. My machine was broken into when on-line downloading the news (on a nightly schedule) at 3.30 am UK time. Only the emergency timeout that I set on the connection prevented the b.....d from finishing his work. Looks like installing some security tools is worthwhile even on a home machine. Jon Laughton - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 05:40:25 -0800 From: "Paul Khoury" Subject: Sun 3/75 monitor To: "SunHELP List" , I hope this is okay to post to the list, but I have 2 Sun 3/75 Monitors I don't need if anyone is interested. I'm located in Southern California - don't know if they work, but they do power on - the systems they came with work fine, one of which I'm using now. Paul - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 09:23:57 +0000 (GMT) From: Pete Fenelon Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > However, I am at a loss as to what to get. I have a very low > budget (~ $100). There appear to be a number of IPXen and LXs > sold on eBay for about that price. What sort of maintenance > burden and performance can I expect out of these machines? I > had a 4/330 which I played around with for a while, but I do > not think that it was fast enough for my tastes. Any help or > direction would be much appreciated. Maintenance burden on an IPX is minimal, assuming it's got a decent disc in it (actually, you may find running it with external disc in a SCSI box is preferable -- I've got a (large-ish) disc, Exabyte tape and CD-rom in a three-bay SCSI crate. Performance -- well, as far as I/O is concerned it's fine, as far as CPU is concerned it's up there with a middling 486. I can't compare it directly with a 4/330, but there are plenty of tables out there that will. The IPX also has the advantage of being extremely compact. - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 21:56:58 -0500 (EST) From: Rick Leir EPS Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: Dwight McKay > In my case, daily use includes LaTeX, lynx, and e-mail as well > as generous use of vi for editing code, reports, papers, etc. An IPX or LX would be more than adequate for this. However, I am sure that Netscape will creep into the stable, so you might want to load it up with RAM, disk, and 24 bit colour. You could do better with Solaris 8 on a used P200. cheers -- Rick Rick Leir rleir@igs.net 613-828-8289 http://www.igs.net/~rleir/ - Fight for web standards. http://www.webstandards.org/ The WaSP! "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 22:08:58 -0500 (EST) From: Rick Leir EPS Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: Dwight McKay > Openwindows (Yes, yes, but I like it.)) double headed, what's involved, > other than plugging in the second graphics adaptor and screen, see man X(1). I think you just pass it args identifying the two devices, and everything works. Get them in the right order, and the pointer will glide from screen to screen. Do you know who Zaphod Beeblebrox was? > Also, I have a possibility of getting another CPU for this box. Again, > what's involved in running it, other than just plugging it in? And This might just be a boot -r. Be sure that the CPU's are identical. cheers -- Rick Rick Leir rleir@igs.net 613-828-8289 http://www.igs.net/~rleir/ - Fight for web standards. http://www.webstandards.org/ The WaSP! "Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly." - Henry Spencer - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 22:39:10 -0600 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > There is already an xvnews for Solaris 2.5 at > > http://sunfreeware.com > > The matter has got slightly more urgent, since it isn't Y2K > compliant, so I have to be able to recompile it on Solaris 2.... Not Y2K? I haven't tried it since the roll over. I too really like xvnews. I have found, however, that with the news server at work, it doesn't quite work right. The news server at work is on (MickySoft) NT - I'm not sure of the brand or version. I will read news, and new messages will come along, but I don't see them. If I remove my .netrc file, or go in and edit out the numbers that keep track of which articles I have and have not read, then I see the old messages that I have already read (those that are still on the server anyway), plus the new ones that I am not seeing. I kind of suspect that the news server is renumbering the articles (or something to that effect), of which xvnews is ignorant. In other words, xvnews knows that I have read everything up to article 500 in newsgroup x.y.z. The news server gets 100 more postings, but 200 of the current ones expire. Rather than numbering the new postings 501-600, it renumbers the existing articles (201->1, 202->2, ...) and so the new articles are numbered 301-400, which xvnews thinks I have already read. That's my theory anyway, on what's happening. I have been using the 2.5 version from SunFreeware. Maybe the latest version of the NNTP protocol supports some kind of renumbering scheme which xvnews does not? Netscape seems to work fine. My big problem with Netscape is that I use it for e-mail, in which case (like it or not) it will post your e-mail address in news articles (and here comes the boatload of junk e-mails). Anyway, my point is, if you get xvnews Y2K okay, then you still may have problems (the same ones I had pre-Y2K) with xvnews thinking that you have already read articles that you haven't. Another reason I really liked xvnews is it uses "textedit" for editing articles, thus I have access to everything in my .text_extras_menu file (very powerful and useful if you ask me). I haven't invested in learning some other X-Windows based newsreader (like knews), because I have hopes of figuring out the renumbering problem because I want to make use of my .text_extras_menu stuff (which is definately a "OpenWindows only" type thing - unless Sun brought this functionality into CDE). I just haven't had time to troubleshoot it. If you get svnews working, I'd be interested in getting a copy from you, if you don't mind. -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 22:15:48 -0600 From: Garry Garrett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #2 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com > I'd like to stick a 2nd ethernet card in one of the IPXs and > configure it to > route for the other IPX and couple of PC's in my home > network. I know The 2nd ethernet card may not be necessary. You can give the same ethernet card multiple IP addresses. Simply add both IP addresses to your /etc/hosts file (with different names) and create a file /etc/hostname.le0:1 (I'm assuming that "le0" is the original ethernet card) and put the name of the 2nd IP address in that file. I am presuming that you want to setup a "private IP address" network for your IPX's and PCs and that you have ADSL or Cable Modem or some such ethernet based connection to a WAN. Your "routing" IPX would have whatever IP address your WAN assigns you, plus a private IP address. Of course, you could *route* the traffic, but I think your are really talking about *proxying* the traffic. > how to setup NAT under FreeBSD and I've stumbled through > ipfw with > Linux, but I don't know if Solaris even supports anything > like this. > > Could anyone point me towards some documentation on this > subject? Sorry I can't be more helpful here. Last time I setup proxying, it was with SOCKS. I'm not sure that I'd recommend SOCKS these days (it requires modified clients to use it - you replace 6 networking function calls with their "SOCKified" equivalents). Of course, Netscape comes with SOCKS support, but if you are going to want to do telnet, ftp, etc. you are going to want a more seemless proxying solution. I haven't had a need to, so I haven't kept up with what's new. -- Garry Garrett http://monarch.papillion.ne.us/~ggarrett - ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 22:22:02 -0500 From: "Arthur J. Byrnes" Subject: Twin-heads & twin CPUs To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com At 09:25 PM 1/16/00 -0500, Hugh wrote: >Also, I have a possibility of getting another CPU for this box. Again, >what's involved in running it, other than just plugging it in? And what's >the SPARCserver 10MP that the CPU's coming out of going to make of it? The CPU's much match as far as speed and cache size, and they must be able to be used as duals. Sun made several CPUs that will not operate in the dual mode. There are some jumper changes that need to be done for various CPUs, but I think that was just for speeds. I think that if all 3 CPU's are the same part number, you could mix with no problem. Otherwise, you will have to pull both from the 10MP and put the other one in their place. You must also be using an OS that will use both CPUs Solaris 2.X and I think 4.1.3b ========================================= Arthur J. Byrnes Disclaimer; These views are those only of the author, Arthur. Be sure to visit my Web Site. http://www.ajb.com ========================================= - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************