[SPARCbook] Powerlite170 and Solaris 9

[Lionel Peterson]

> From: "Borgen_Gary" <gary.borgen at verizon.net>
> Date: 2004/02/22 Sun PM 08:03:58 GMT
> To: <sparcbook at sunhelp.org>
> Subject: [SPARCbook] Powerlite170 and Solaris 9
> 
> Well, I am about to give up on running Solaris 9 12/03 on my
> RDI Powerlite 170.

Out of curiousity, why not step back to, say, Solaris 8?

> I've run into several problems that I can't seem to find a
> solution for:
> 1.  Audio support for the sun4m arch has disappeared.

That Sucks.

> 2.   I am running DHCP and attaching to a D-Link router.
>     While I can get an IP address and surf the net, I can
>     never set the hostname to anything that sticks.  I have
>     run the hostname commad and set the hostname, set the
>     hostname.le0 file to read a proper hostname, but the
>     system always reboots to "hostname: unknown".  The D-Link
>     does not have the ability to assign a hostname.

Well, why rely on DHCP - esp. from the D-Link?

This is not a Solaris 9 issue, IMHO.

In my house, I simply assign a static IP address, and neither my gateway address (defaultrouter) nor the ISP nameservers IP addresses ever changes, so it all "just works".

> 3.  The system is dog slow under gnome and hangs when I try to
>     have more than two windows open.
>     My Powerlite 170 has a 170 MHz processor, 128 MB of ram,
>     and 6 GB of hard drive space (512 MB swap).  I don't expect
>     the system to be fast, but crashes aren't good.

Odd, the SS/5-170 desktop I have is *reasonable* [0](with double the RAM) with Solaris 7 - which again begs the question, why Solaris 9? Is it access to prior release media?

> 4.  I takes about 8 hours to do an install from scratch.

WOW - a single-speed CD-ROM? What on earth could be taking that long? The Solaris 9 for x86 install I just did took several hours (about 3 I figure), but not *eight*!

> 5.  Sun is threatening to drop support for the sun4m arch in
>     future releases.

OK - that doesn't mean Solaris 8 and 9 won't work...

> I'm sure I could improve the speed by removing processes I
> don't intend to use (i.e. sendmail), but I'm not sure if I
> could improve it to the point of usability.

With *only* 128 Meg RAM, every little bit helps...

> Before I reformat and try Aurora Linux, does anyone have
> any suggestions?

Try an earlier release of Solaris?

Keep the list updated on your status - I have a Powerlite 170 that I want to get into use soon...

Thanks,