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Solaris 9 x86 Review
ValourX writes "Here is a review of Solaris 9 x86, 08/03 edition. Now that the single-CPU edition is free to download for non-commercial use, people will be compelled to write a Solaris CD and try it out. Read this first -- there are a lot of things you should know before you begin. You might want to check out the documentation or explore other resources like the hardware compatibility list as well."
Don't get me wrong. I'm a Sun guy going back to the SunOS 3.5 days, Solaris is a wonderful thing. But, for x86, we have lots of *BSD and Linux options. Solaris on x86 has previously been limited in hardware supported, and in community participation.
Can someone suggest a case where it would make more sense to use x86 Solaris rather than Sparc solaris?
It seems to me that Sun's resources in these (ahem) difficult times for them would be better spent in developing what they're best at - big, robust, server-room boxes, rather than diluting their OS development efforts by spending time porting it to Intel.
If you have a few bucks you might want to get an older sparc to try Solaris on. Sol x86 is a security nightmare, and its not the same as using sol under sun's arch. e.g. I run most of my sites on sun boxes, and love it, using x86 sol... Hate it. Definitely not the same if you ask me
MoFscker
Don't forget to check out Sun Freeware to save some time trying to compile stuff on Solaris. The Sun guys love to compile things using the Sun cc compiler, which they don't include in the normal distro. Good luck adding in new perl modules that aren't native perl to the perl that comes with Solaris.
Definitely not the same if you ask me
How comes? Do Sun deliberately package their x86 version differently? If so, what's different?
That said, Linux or BSD with olvwm or XFce can be made to look so much like Solaris that most users won't care, and the hardware compatibility won't be a problem. I guess it depends on what is more important in a given context, really.
I went to check out the SUN site with the links, http://wwws.sun.com/software/tours.html#4 Click "Security Everywhere" hehe
It takes time for you to get the system the way you like. Right now Solaris 9 is the absolute lowest "TCO" unix/linux for enterprise to servers and down to workstations. Redhat workstation costs hundreds more and has less true application support (certified vendor support) then Solaris9 X86.
And your lying through your teeth if you say there is no support.
Software: http://www.sunfreeware.com
Help/Guides: http://www.sunhelp.org
Patches: http://sunsolve.sun.com
Solaris9 X86 is a good stepping stone, a good resource to learn from and if accepted by the industry a very stable platform.
Sun DOES provide security updates, sun DOES provide software updates and there is already a ton of Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment stuff ported to solaris.
Give it a try, i'm sure you may like to see what an industrial strength workstation feels like to run. Honestly.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Well, he does say "If you're feeling particularly masochistic you could pay a ton of money for SCO's rinky-dink UnixWare or OpenServer products" which suggests to me that he doesn't rate UnixWafre highly.
The SMP edition is available for $699 ;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I've never felt compelled to post anything to /. before, but this review truly didn't give the proper perspective needed to fairly judge Solaris x86.
Solaris x86 is an amazingly stable OS, and I've met many, many people who work in data centres who swear by it. Stable + secure + supported are the most important things to people who rely on mission critical applications.
Now, to clear up some of the misconceptions of this reviewer:
1. Almost any piece of open-source code will run on it after you compile it properly. Yes, you have to install GCC and change some of your path settings. Time it takes to do this: 5 minutes. You can get a binary version (for x86) of GCC from any of the sunfreeware.com mirrors.
2. This software is not meant to run with every piece of hardware out there. As this software is mainly meant for servers in the x86 world, why does it need to support a Radeon9600 card or an Audigy card?
3. The problems the reviewer was having were mostly configuration problems. Googling around will bring up web pages that show you how to set up network cards, etc.
So - while the review was written well enough, it totally failed in providing the perspective required to judge this product fairly. There is a steep learning curve required to learn Solaris, but once you learn it, its stability and usability features are well worth it.
Has it really? Funny, since Sun is still in pre-beta with Solaris 10.
I suggest you check your facts again.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
a) You say things like "if you have a Sun workstation [...] you're more or less stuck with Solaris"
b) You compare the Watch Errors to the linux console not by referring to the console, but by referring to the keyboard shortcut for TTY1. (Obviously you don't know the horrors of having console messages scroll up your OpenWindows desktop)
c) You have the audacity to complain that Solaris X86 won't run SPARC-only binaries or OS X Binaries. (It also, sadly, does not make toast pop out of your CD drive)
d) You don't know about Sun disklabel format. Perhaps you've never actually used fdisk from the console.
e) You complain that there was no /etc/resolv.conf. You never read the manpages to discover exactly where Solaris keeps its info (hint: try /etc/networks, /etc/hostname.[dev] and /etc/nsswitch.conf)
f) Instead of taking a screenshot, you link to a hideous old CDE screen grab. You demonstrate a complete ignorance of Motif, and god help you if we mention NeWS.
g) You complain that you can't migrate data. Perhaps because Solaris doesn't know what the hell Ext2 is.
h) You complain about Scroll wheels. Then you mention a "usual" fix, for XFree86. That "usually" doesn't work on my SGI box, either. How rude!
i) You refer to the default shell as SH. Not the Bourne Shell, no. just SH
Fewl...
OK, this is all just a guess, but I believe it's an educated one.
Solaris/Sparc will continue to be their preferred high-end server platform, and the place that they put most of their R&D money. It will never be pushed as a desktop environment, except for those environments which require it (data analysts, geophysicists, etc.)
Linux/Sparc they won't touch.
Linux/x86, they're pushing on the desktop now with their "Java Desktop." I think that they'll push this _heavily_, even trying to sell to random people off the street. (witness their dealing with Office Despot, last week.)
Solaris/x86. With their recent ties to AMD, I suspect that they're going to encourage people to use Solaris/x86 on their cheap server lines (esp. the blades), and possibly push the application companies to port their Sparc versions over. Ideally they'd be running Landmark apps and such on Solaris/Sparc machines, but right now many of them are pushing Linux/x86, which is much cheaper for a given performance level right now.
The biggest reason for Sun having Solaris/x86 at all is to keep people who can't justify the hardware costs of Sparc gear right now, to keep (or in some cases, start) running Solaris (ideally on Sun boxes), rather than going to ye randome Linux platform. Now if Sun can differentiate between their own Linux/x86 offering (end-user desktop) and Solaris/x86 (workstation and low-end server) while maintaining their REAL product (Solaris/Sparc), then they might have a good plan.
I think that this latest action is mostly to run the x86 product up a flagpole, just to see if anyone cares.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Just like I posted to the last solaris story, with this in the license, who in their right mind would ever even download it:
E. NOTICE OF AUTOMATIC SOFTWARE UPDATES FROM SUN. You acknowledge that the Software may automatically download, install, and execute applets, applications, software extensions, and updated versions of the Software from Sun ("Software Updates"), which may require you to accept updated terms and conditions for installation. If additional terms and conditions are not presented on installation, the Software Updates will be considered part of the Software and subject to the terms and conditions of the Agreement.
F. NOTICE OF AUTOMATIC DOWNLOADS. You acknowledge that, by your use of the Software and/or by requesting services that require use of the Software, the Software may automatically download, install, and execute software applications from sources other than Sun ("Other Software"). Sun makes no representations of a relationship of any kind to licensors of Other Software. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL SUN OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE, PROFIT OR DATA, OR FOR SPECIAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE OTHER SOFTWARE, EVEN IF SUN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
-Justin
Can someone suggest a case where it would make more sense to use x86 Solaris rather than x86 Linux?
Having the same OS on newer and more optimal hardware (read x86) as on old overpriced one (Sparc)? Give me a break.
The compnay where a friend of mine works they installed Linux on all low-end Sparc stations the used to host small servers. And they exchanged mid/high-end Sparcs with Power4/PPC thanking IBM for a very good exchange program. Of course Power4/PPC run Linux/PPC. They have Linux everywhere across all server (and even some desktop) computers and very happy with drammatically reduced TCO because of that. Also, after living like that one year they analyzed their failure statistics and found that their reliability is ncreased a lot. No need to mention that the time foe bus and security holes has beem droped a lot (before they lived for years with promises from Sun to fix a known annoying bug).
So, one more time, why would I need Solaris/x86?
Less is more !
Why do you think Sun is going with the SuSe/JDS for their desktops? Solaris blows when it comes to hardware compatability, and thats exactly what you need when you are doing desktops, since you will find just about any mix of cpu, disks, controllers, networking, sound, video and periferals on a desktop PC.
Solaris was DESIGNED as a workstation OS for SPARC boxes with very specific hardware specs. It grew up to be an enterprise OS to be run on SPARC boxes with very specific hardware specs.
Expecting it to run flawlessly on your generic whitebox PC is like expecting to use a hammer to open a beer bottle. Sure it could work, but the results are more than likely to be ugly.
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."
You are trolling, aren't you? Or you completely do not know what are you talking about. Or you just work for Sun. There is no other explanation why would you post here such a bullshit.
The only company that still insist that Solaris has lower than Linux TCO is Sun. Another company that is saying the same about Unix vs Linux is SCO. All others, including IBM, HP, and even SGI, agree that Linux has lower TCO, despite the fact they sell own Unix distros.
By the way, it becomes suspicious, all three companies are saying the same about Linux: Sun, SCO and Microsoft. Something is common for them behind the scene.
Less is more !
If you decide to compile stuff on Solaris, some problems are likely to occur if you aren't aware of them.
./configure
1) Do NOT use GNU binutils. GNU strip and GNU ld do not understand Solaris x86 ELF headers and create corrupt binaries.
2) In almost 100% of the cases, GNU autoconf will not figure out that the Solaris linker requires the specification of a runtime linker option. Solve this by running autoconf like;
LDFLAGS="-L/foo -R/foo"
This is obviously pointless to do if you're using static libraries.
For more info, read ld(1).
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
When I saw:
The Solaris 9 binary license is not all that restrictive when compared with Microsoft's EULA, but the additional supplements end up piling on so many more restrictions that it's more or less on par with the Windows license.
I know Solaris isn't GPL'ed, but the SCSL still lets you peek at the code if you want. (http://www.sun.com/solaris/source)
One thing that CDE/Solaris is missing is a comprehensive network configuration panel; network settings still have to be set by hand in Solaris 9, unfortunately.
Try typing: smc& at the command line. Sun Management Console is a very powerful tool indeed.
The most detrimental compatibility issue that I encountered with Solaris 9 x86 was that it did not have binary compatibility with Solaris SPARC, GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, OS X, MS Windows or any other operating system.
One word Mister, lxrun. Try it.
This article really should have been written by someone who knows at least a little about Solaris. Or by someone who doesn't mind reading some documentation before writing their review. Apparently the author just expected to sit down and have the OS install itself, and then teach him how to use it.
And yes, there are security flaws in Solaris. That's why the SunAlert bulletins are your friend. That's why you need to roll out the new KJP's when they come out, make sure you keep up on your patch management etc. In other words you know, be a systems administrator and actually ADMIN your systems.
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
First off, I have little Solaris admin knowledge. I run BSD and Linux myself, but I've got some experience with Solaris as a workstation and server. That said, none of your criticisms are really specific to Solaris, or even on-topic.
So first, out of date software: the current Xfree release is 4.3. If you got a complaint with 4.1, say what it is. Regardless, though, if you are running Solaris as a server, you don't give a shit what the X server is on it, and even as a workstation, it's usually used for high-end scientific applications; it doesn't need to be incredibly user friendly or run the latest games.
Second: Solaris (or at least the SunOS servers I just checked to be sure) doesn't have a /lib/modules. So as I'm pointing out right now, purely for the casual reader's benefit, you are full of shit.
Third: Back to X, eh? Nobody likes X. It sucks to configure on any system, pretty much (except maybe RedHat). If you can't handle it, you probably aren't a Solaris admin. And if looking up your monitor's horizontal sync is such a big deal, use Windows. I use the text xf86config utility whenever I install a new system, I look up my monitor's sync specs, and I'm good. Not really that hard.
Fourth: When have you ever put a USB mouse or scanner on a server? And honestly, x86 Solaris, as discussed above, is good for learning and for environments that need to be homogeneous. But most Solaris workstations run on Sparc.
Firth: You're an idiot. A few Linux distros use RPM. Solaris is not Linux. RPMs also are widely regarded as sucking.
Finally, you go way off topic and talk about Debian users switching (with a link to www.ibm.com as proof?). Right. Anyway, you're an idiot, I know I've been trolled, but I wanted to clarify some of your BS for the other readers.
Sun machines are not different from PCs in any significant way besides the processor (which is slower than modern PC processors at most tasks in spite of being 64 bit and having boatloads of cache) unless you have a multiprocessor machine. The days when every Sun machine was superior to every PC are long, long gone. The days when Solaris was superior to Linux for single-processor machines, likewise, have receded past the horizon and are well out of sight. Solaris' only real advantage today is on systems with many processors, especially when you get out of the realm of what Linux will actually run on.
As for your lowest TCO, I don't believe Sun when they say it, and I don't believe you. Where's the figures?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These are things you won't notice immediately "out of the box", but you'll certainly notice them if you need maximum uptime for your mission-critical enterprise applications. If the factors I mentioned above mean something to you, then you probably already have Solaris in your environment.
The main reason this is useful to me is for "kicking the tires" of Solaris 9 (as the CoyboyNeal implies in his caption). At work we are still running Solaris 7 on production servers and don't have a lot of spare Sparc systems lying around for testing. Being able to install Solaris 9 under VMware or random x86 systems is a very convenient way for me to get some experience with this release. However, I can't think of a good reason to deploy it in production.
I administer a network consisting of a mix of SPARC Solaris, Win2k Professional, and 1 SCO unix box. The SCO box is very old and is used as a controller for a special application. Some time ago I decided to port the SCO box software to Redhat linux 8.0. As I was nearing completion of the port I discovered that Redhat was dropping this line of linux.
I believe it's important to be able to maintain patch levels on my systems for security reasons. Knowing that in the future I will not be able to keep my patches up to date leaves me feeling that Redhat left me high and dry. In my mind I cannot justify paying Redhat annual support for their Enterprise version of linux when I only need patches. I can handle the other support issues myself.
I'm comfortable with Solaris administration on the SPARC platform but I have no experience with the x86 version. After reading the review I believe the described shortcomings don't apply to my situation, except perhaps for the networking problem. I don't need sound or graphics at all and I have no problem configuring networking manually.
Solaris patches are easily reviewed and a list of recommended security patches is released on a regular basis. The patches are easy to download from a high performance site and I don't have to worry about access to those patches because I didn't pay for a priority connection.
The full documentation is available to download in pdf form or html.
With the help of the review, I think I just talked myself into redirecting my port of the old SCO box to Solaris x86. At least I should give it a try.
As a captive sparc-solaris user for many years, my experience has been that most of the development tools have some bug in them and need to be replaced with Gnu equivalents to compile any of the popular packages you find on the net. And my linux boxes are usually configure-make-make install and you're done. Under solaris, I almost always have to change something to get it to compile. Not to mention most of the dependencies won't already be on your system.
sadly the reviewer had boot problems.
x86 Solaris WILL live happily with Windows and Linux and a multi-boot system is trivially possible so long as you take some care. The most obvious gotya! is the Sun disk partition id is the same as the Linux swap partition id.
x86 does NOT insist on using an entire disk. It will happily install into a suitable partition pre-created with the Sun disk partition id. During the install pseudo-partitions will be created as needed within the actual partition.
I've had triple-boot systems with Win98, Redhat Linux and Solaris all installed on the same drive.
The reviewer also had network problems. With NICs on the HCL list and many work-a-likes there should be no problems at all.
You do need to understand what you are doing when installing Solaris, and it helps to understand the network configuration it will be plugged into before you start.
On the other hand, after answering a handful of questions at the beginning, the installation itself is trivial and automatic on supported hardware.
I've been using x86 Solaris as my main desktop system for a number of years now in preference to both Windows and Linux (though I'm writing this on a RH8 box) and it does everything that I need day to day.
Remember, free as in speech, not as in beer. Giving away your labour is not the idea. The idea is that you don't hamstring your customers so that they can't tinker around with your OS if they want to.
Apple's OS X seems to be the best of both worlds. Fast and sexy, non-technical people seem to love it. Get under the hood and its just BSD. Download any POSIX source, compile and install. Tons of documentation, read the kernel source, do whatever you want.
And people were like having a party just to buy the thing. I think geeks should be 1000% behind this product and Apple too.
I seldom read all the way through Slashdot comments because of signal/noise ratio but Solaris is near and dear to my heart. I've used Solaris/SPARC in server environments in several projects at several companies and I would like to weigh in with a vote of confidence for two very important factors: reliability, and scalability. In our telecommunications startup we had a multi-tiered web server / application server / database architecture. We designed it to scale big and we needed incredibly high uptimes. We put a lot of effort into architecting the solution and we relied very heavily on Solaris for reliable and scalable 'servability'.
It delivered 100%. We had major problems in other areas of our company, project, and personal lives but Solaris was the bedrock of our company and it was stable. We never had to worry about bugs or issues or whatevers.
We leveraged a lot of free software to sweeten things, we intermixed development on Windows to cut our development costs.
As someone who has worked closely with Solaris I was pretty disappointed with one apparently biased Linux user's inability to make light work of a Solaris install. Solaris is not a hobby system and you aren't going to play too many games on it. No you aren't going to have fun recompiling the Solaris kernel, but then maybe there are other productive tasks at hand...
- AndrewZ
The Solaris Companion Software CD comes in the Solaris Media Kit and contains many Free and Open Source packages compiled and packaged for Solaris. They install under /opt/sfw and include gcc-2.95.3 and gcc-3.3.x, gdb, ddd, KDE, GIMP, Emacs, vim, Python, MySQL, you name it, it's probably there. You can download the ISO images for Solaris 8 and 9. Note that it is updated to correspond with the current Update release of Solaris.
GNOME has been shipped with Solaris for quite some time now. Another thing that people don't realise is that some Open Source software is installed under /usr/sfw by default as well.
Stick Men
Way to go Sun.
I threw out a copy of solaris7 x86 that I recieved during Linux expo 2000 recently.
Reason? First off only 2 ethernet cards were supported, no UDMA EIEDE was supported, no USB support, no graphics card support, etc.
I could not even get it to see my hard drives on my old pentiumIII system.
However, I went to Suns site and looked at the HCL for Solaris9. Big difference!
For example my broadcom 411 integrated ethernet card still is not reconigned under Linux or FreeBSD but its fully supported under Solaris. Also my soundblaster live, geforce 4, Sony Dvd writter, and both broadcom and netgear nics are fully reconogigned.
The only problem I see is that I use both USB keyobards and mice. USB is supported but I did not see my keyboard there.
Also look under the supported motherboard section? Over 35 models are supported!
Sun is making a shot here and looks like they are listening.
My only concern about solaris is lack of package managment. Do I have to build things by source with it? I love the ports of FreeBSD and Gentoo.
http://saveie6.com/
The license starts at $99 for a single cpu commercial license...
- Never use the 'install' disk to install - always use 'disk 1' to start the install. When you get to the DNS/NIS/LDAP screen the reviewer talks about, you cannot get past it without correct info if you use the install disk. If you use disk 1, you can skip past it after it complains that it can't fetch the info.
The problem seems to be that the install won't let you set a default gateway, so stuff off-subnet is unreachable, and I've never gotten it to behave correctly.
Of course, because the info doesn't get saved, yo have to setup resolv.conf etc yourself.
#include "sig.h"
The author starts out by writing that Solaris was formerly SunOS and was derived from, among other things, 4.4BSD-Lite. How can we take the rest of the article seriously?
SunOS and Solaris pre-date 4.4BSD-Lite by over ten years.
SunOS describes the kernel and operating system services. Solaris describes the "operating environment".
Solaris was not "designed for SPARC and UltraSPARC." It was written originally to run on SPARC derivates as well as the x86 platform, specifically the AT&T NCR platform which preceded Sun's short-lived x86 SunOS machines, though, technically, the AT&T NCR and Sun x86 boxes predate Solaris. The x86 port of Solaris is by no means a new product.
The author complains quite a bit, but that should be expected in the Compatibility and the Installation sections of the article. Long-time Solaris users are familiar with all these problems.
I would have liked some facts to back-up the throwaway comments like "not all that restrictive", "rinky-dink", and "not very impressive".
Kris
Kriston