Date: Sun, 6 Feb 00 19:54:48 EST From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #4 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sun, 6 Feb 00 Volume 13 : Issue 4 Today's Topics: "Front" key under RH Linux 6.0 choosing an old sun for day to day use (2 msgs) ethernet and i/o problems -ss10 Home for 4/260? need SS5 CD mounts Ready for parts for Classic SPARC 20 and SOLARIS 8 Spate of break-ins Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #3 Twin-heads & twin CPUs Video Pix card (sbus) and Solaris 7 Weitek CPU in UK? +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 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: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 12:16:54 -0600 From: Evan Person Subject: "Front" key under RH Linux 6.0 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com Does anyone know how to make the "Front" key work under RedHat Sparc Linux 6.0 with Gnome/Enlightenment like it does under Solaris? Ditto the "Open", "Copy", and "Paste" keys. Hardware is a Sparc 5 with Type 5 keyboard. Thanks, Evan - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 08:06:33 -0500 From: "Sheldon T. Hall" Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use 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 > ---------- 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've got an LX. I love it. It's compact, relatively quick (especially in text mode), and generally pretty smooth. The LX will take 128 MB RAM, though only 96 MB is documented and supported. Solaris likes RAM, so the LX's having twice as much as the IPX is a big win. The LX will be supported by Solaris 8; the 4c machines like the IPX, IPX, Sparc 1 & 2, etc., fall off the supported list after Solaris 7, IIRC. The LX has the best graphics capabilities of the lunchbox series, I think. If you don't care about that, though, a Classic (not Classic X) is the same basic box and would probably be cheaper. I think you can "over-RAM" a Classic to 128 MB, too, but check before you plunk down the dosh for either the box or the SIMMs. Compared to the performance of a modern Intel box, the Sun lunchboxes all suck, of course, but then the lunchboxes are 6 or 7 years old. Compared to the Intel boxes of their day, they were astonishing. Of course, the Suns cost about 4 times as much ... I think an IPX cost about $10k in '93. I get a big kick out of the LX's capability-to-size ratio, too. My LX is our intranet webserver, NTP time server, DNS server, SMTP server, and a major fileserver, as well as running a number of programs that monitor LAN and WAN connectivity. That's a lot of work for such a small box. -Shel - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 16:17:18 +0000 From: Bob Hoekstra Subject: choosing an old sun for day to day use To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com jbl@andrew.cmu.edu wrote: > I am thinking about getting an old Sparcstation for daily use. > In my case, daily use includes LaTeX, lynx, and e-mail as well > as generous use of vi for editing code, reports, papers, etc. > I would also like to use this with Samba to share my home > directory with my own Windows machine and with the computers > in the campus computing labs. > > However, I am at a loss as to what to get. I have a very low > budget (~ $100). There appear to be a number of IPXen and LXs > sold on eBay for about that price. What sort of maintenance > burden and performance can I expect out of these machines? I > had a 4/330 which I played around with for a while, but I do > not think that it was fast enough for my tastes. Any help or > direction would be much appreciated. IPX and LX and quite fast enough for the apps you mention. Avoid the IPC, which is a lot slower. A SPARC 2 might be OK, but this is better with the Weitek chip. More upmarket are the SS10 and SS20 (but these may be out of your price range) which have a number of processor options. Note that a CDE login can take quite a while if you are running Solaris, but once there you should be OK. If you want to run Netscape, the newer versions are serious resource hogs, versions 3.x are a lot faster though lack some functionality. You may be better off with more efficient OSses: SunOS 4.x, Linux or NetBSD. -- -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GO/! d- s++:+ a+ C++(++++) US+++$ P+ L+ E--- W++ N++ w--- O- V- PS+ PE- Y+ PGP- t+ 5++ X+ R* tv+ b+ DI++ D G e(*) h++/-- r+++ y? ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ ----------------------------------------------------- Bob Hoekstra: APL & Unix Consultant Tele: +44 (0)1483 771028 (Home) +44 (0)7710 562345 (Mobile) Web site: http://www.khamsin.demon.co.uk Home email: Bob.Hoekstra@khamsin.demon.co.uk ----------------------------------------------------- - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 10:58:17 -0700 (MST) From: Arthur Wouk Subject: ethernet and i/o problems -ss10 To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com i have a ss2 which is very stable running solaris2.4 amd a ss10 which is less stable running solaris2.5.1. the ss10 still has the original seagate 2.1gig drive, which is the cause of the instability (all the profesionals know about those problems). i plan to upgrade the ss10 to a safe hard drive shortly to end those problems, and bring the os level up to solaris2.6 on both. i have them interconnected via the serial ports and a null modem cable and successfully interchange using ckermit. however, the speed is slow, so i tried to set up a 10BaseT ethernet. got the tranceever for the ss2, a cheap hub (www.pricewatch.com is wonderful), and connected the whole. problem: the hub shows that that the ss2 is live on the ethernet, but that the ss10 is dead. `truss ftp ' from the ss10 goes to sleep after a failed ioctl call (i can post that output if needed). in addition there is a strange error message on booting the ss10 which is discussed in the message below from someone at sun. so does anyone have any info about the error message below? a patch 1149833 is available only to contract support! i can't even find out what is fixes - hardware or software - etc! anyone have similar problems with ethernet? :Arthur, : You may want to check out bug id: 1149833 at sunsolve.sun.com... : :Bob : :The opinions in this e-mail are mine. They are in no way related :to the opinions held by my employer, Sun Microsystems. : : :arthur wouk wrote: : :> sparc10 running solaris2.5.1 (unpatched). during boot i get the :> the following error message repeated several times, and then the boot :> continues: :> :> ar_rput_dlpi DL_??? (7) failed; dl_errno 3, dl_un errno 0 :> :> this happens three different times during the boot. system runs, but :> there are troubles with i/o over the ethernet line and some problems :> with the latest release of kermit,though none before. :> :> what does it all mean? - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 06:12:21 -0500 From: Blake Sobiloff Subject: Home for 4/260? To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com Hi all, I have a 4/260 that I don't use and don't want to transport the next time I move. It has one 32 MB memory board and three 8 MB boards, and a bootable SCSI CD-ROM. There's also the old tape drive I removed to make way for the CD-ROM. Comes with Solaris 2.4 on CD-ROM, but no hard drive, monitor, keyboard, or mouse. Anyone interested in it? I'm in the Washington, D.C. area. -- Blake Sobiloff Higher Education Consulting KPMG LLP McLean, VA - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 10:22:57 -0600 From: BHamill@mbcm.org Subject: need SS5 CD mounts To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com I bought a CD for my SS5 through an Internet auction. It came without the cylindrical t-shaped mounts that you need to put it in the case. I thought these would be easier to find than they actually are- Sun is willing to sell me a CD with the mounts, but not the mounts, and I haven't found any other sources (struck out with local Sun vendors, etc.). Does anyone know where I can find these? Barry Hamill Info Services bhamill@mbcm.org (612) 871-3300 x2216 - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 22:59:28 -0500 (EST) From: Scott Ehrlich Subject: Ready for parts for Classic To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com Hello to all: After an unexpected delay is misfiled emails, I am now ready to pursue putting my inherited SPARCClassic into a workable state. I only have the CPU. Video and system memory are unknown quantities. There is a hard drive (~500 Meg) which I would like to upgrade to 1 Gig. What I need (for now): - CD-ROM (I have SunOS 4.1.4 on CD) - Sun Type 4 or 5 keyboard (Type 5 would be preferred) - 1 Gig hard drive (actually, how much disk space would a full install of 4.1.4 utilize)? I plan to connect it to a mini hub, so a Sun keyboard may not be needed. I am told SPARCs can operate via their serial port, with no monitor, keyboard, or mouse. How does this work? I have the full Service Manual printed from a PDF file from Sun. I think I may have taken myself off the list, and have just readded myself. Please include me in correspondence if you opt to also reply to the list. Please help me get this thing going. Thanks! ---------------- Scott Ehrlich Massachusetts Institute of Technology Departmental Computing Support Office: E40-335 Email: scott@mit.edu Phone: 617-253-0028 - ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 18:13:30 -0500 From: "Don Woodward" Subject: SPARC 20 and SOLARIS 8 To: Has anyone successfully installed SOLARIS 8 on a SPARC 20 - I can get past where it sets up the swap space. I have a 1GB internal and a 2GB external drive. Just an FYI, I installed SOLARIS 8 on an LX with 96MB RAM, a 1GB internal and a 1GB external successfully. Don Woodward www.sunsunsun.net "A Resource for Your Sun at Home" - ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 20:34:06 -0800 (PST) From: David Wolfskill Subject: Spate of break-ins To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com >Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 19:44:36 +0000 >From: "Jon Laughton" >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. Often, they don't. (Or so I gather.) Rather, they set up port-scanning software on a machine... I would assume(!) that the machine in question is often one they've already cracked. >.... >Looks like installing some security tools is worthwhile even on a home >machine. That is something I cannot overemphasize. At home, in preparation for the DSL install, I picked up a used PC, installed FreeBSD 3.2-RELEASE (from the CD that was handed out at the June USENIX) on it, set up ipfw & natd, and it's worked fairly well. (Biggest annoyance is that the Alcatel 1000 network termination device -- I can't bring myself to call it a "MODEM" -- tends to not only lose sync, but also fail to figure out that it's confused. So I picked up a little bit of X10 stuff, cobbled up a Perl script to ping Pac*Bell's gateway periodically, and if it failed twice in succession, power-cycle the Alcatel device. Here's some output from the log: Jan 17 08:16:47 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 17 08:20:06 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 21 16:55:22 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 21 16:58:41 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 23 22:43:57 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 23 22:47:17 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 24 16:58:45 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 24 17:02:34 janus dsl_mon: DSL still down (00:03:48 so far) Jan 24 17:05:53 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 24 18:03:24 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 24 18:06:43 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 25 04:25:41 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 25 04:29:00 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 25 05:48:50 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 25 05:52:09 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Jan 25 13:51:04 janus dsl_mon: DSL now down Jan 25 13:54:24 janus dsl_mon: DSL now back up Since implementing this, the connection has only gotten wedged once (since July)....) Oh...! We were discussing security; pardon.... So I set up the natd/ipfw machine ("janus") to syslog to an internal machine, thus reducing the need for anyone to actually login to it. And by default, FreeBSD is set to mail a status report to "root" every morning... and it summarizes anything that ipfw logs. So I set up ipfw to not only log any UDP traffic it rejects or TCP setup traffic it rejects, but also any externally-originating TCP setup that is permitted. (There are few of these, though SMTP qualifies, since I never signed up for one of Pac*Bell's POP maildrops; I dislike POP, especially when there are multiple roles receiving mail.) So I see various "interesting" things, and when they reach an appropriate threshhold, I'll report them. One thing that tends to accelerate that process is if very similar "interesting things" show up in the log for a similar firewall I set up for my mother's DSL connection: I have its daily reports mailed to me, as well. (She was rather surprised to find that her connection was being probed by a machine using an IP address assigned to an ISP in Russia.) (BTW, I chose to use FreeBSD as a base for the firewalls because most of the machines I administer at work run FreeBSD. I assure you that I have no love whatsoever for PC hardware.) Even before the DSL connection, I set up TCP Wrappers on my old 3/60 (that handled the dialup duties, thanks to the intervention of a used PortMaster 2)... and would encounter "interesting" things even then. For this audience, it may well be that Darren Reed's ipfilter would be a good fit... though I keep my desktop (SS5) well on the inside, where it's unlikely to be hurt much by events out in the Internet. (The firewall PC is something I would have no compunctions about disconnecting, powering off, or replacing. Granted, SS5s are old by now, but it makes a fairly nice desktop... though if the price were right, I wouldn't mind upgrading it from a /110 to a /170. I think of a firewall machine rather like an electrical fuse: if it needs to be sacrificed for the good of the network it protects, so be it. Besides, I have backups.) Sorry for the lengthy ramble; hope some of it was worth it. Cheers, david -- David H. Wolfskill david@catwhisker.org As a computing professional, I believe it would be unethical for me to advise, recommend, or support the use (save possibly for personal amusement) of any product that is or depends on any Microsoft product. - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 06:49:37 -0500 From: "Robert Blackshaw" Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #3 To: ----- Original Message ----- From: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) To: Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2000 8:51 PM Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V13 #3 > 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... > I doesn't need Y2King, mine turned over into 2000 without a whimper. Even though I don't use it all the time it keeps perfect time. Bob - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 09:26:24 -0500 From: adh@an.bradford.ma.us (Sandwich Maker) Subject: Twin-heads & twin CPUs To: Suns-at-Home@net-kitchen.com "From: "Arthur J. Byrnes" " "You must also be using an OS that will use both CPUs Solaris 2.X and I "think 4.1.3b the only sunos4 that's mp-safe is 4.1.4; it was specifically for ross modules [and included ross patches] but works equally well on ti modules. other versions require the ross patches directly. __________________________________________________________________________ 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: Sun, 30 Jan 2000 22:00:26 -0500 From: Robert Bencze Subject: Video Pix card (sbus) and Solaris 7 To: suns-at-home@net-kitchen.com Hi all, Trying to get a VideoPix card to work on a Sparc2 running Solaris 7. I followed instructions I found, and the SUNW packages, but the kernel doesn't see to recognize the presence of the card. Will this combination work, or am I wasting time and effort. Thanks in advance! boB - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 12:24:06 +0000 From: Steve Mynott Subject: Weitek CPU in UK? To: Dwight McKay (The Moderator) does anyone have a source for Weitek CPU upgrade for a sparc 2 in the UK? -- 1024/D9C69DF9 steve mynott steve@tightrope.demon.co.uk http://www.pineal.com/ never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. -- mark twain - ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************