OS Review: NetBSD 1.6.2 on SPARC64

JigSaw writes "NetBSD is the king of operating system portability, running on 40+ different hardware platforms, including x86, MIPS, and even the Sega Dreamcast. So it comes as no surprise that among the supported platforms, NetBSD runs on Tony Bourke's Sun Ultra 5. Here is his review."

Comments

Re:What's the big deal?

[Anonymous Coward]

a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userland.
NetBSD wants to have 64-bit userland.

Re:Too bad

[beholder77]

You can download snapshots of more recent source code on it's way to NetBSD 2.0 at ftp://releng.netbsd.org. I've had very positive experiences with the new kernel and userland so far, but YMMV.

Re:Ultra 5? Oh please no

[680x0]

A far better measure of how well an OS has been ported is an Ultra 2.

I have an Ultra 1 (UltraSparc @ 167MHz), and I have to say that my experience installing NetBSD 1.6.1 was quite similar to his experience (panic during install, no binary packages available, etc.) And, besides, the review seemed to focus on the app side of things, not the driver/hardware side.

That said, I don't think there's anything major that can't be fixed. Once installed, it's run flawlessly, and the only package I couldn't compile from pkgsrc is Apache 2.x (I installed Apache 1.x instead).

I've had the (32-bit) sparc port of NetBSD running solidly on a SparcStation-2 for over a year and a half (it's my DHCP/NTP/DNS server).

Re:Too bad

[Kraken137]

Thanks for that pointer... after toying with it for a while, I realized that if I simply created the ld0* devices by hand (a serious pain in the ass), everything was fine and the installation could continue.

Re:Ultra 5? Oh please no

[agent dero]

I installed OpenBSD on my Sparc Station 5 without a hitch, but on my dual CPU ultra2, it paniced in the very end of the installation

Here's some tips:
when it paniced for me, it was really done installing, it will drop you into single-user mode. From there (where I was) you'll really just have to create the rc.conf file. And maybe do some disk-limbo and some network configuration with 'ifconfig' but it's not too difficult.

The same basic thing happened for me with NetBSD when I first tried it, but now, it runs like a champ, give it a try

(I got the Ultra2 from AnySystem.com on eBay for $70, try them out) </shameless plug>

Re:The only real competitor to Linux...

[Anonymous Coward]

No because the spotty kids don't hold the copyrights to the code. Ask "the bulk" of them how they feel about infringing copyrights of the holders though? Then ask RIAA and the US government the same question.

Then ask IBM whether they care about companies infringing their copyrights (code they paid developers to write). Ask Intel, HP, Sun, OSDL, Transmeta, the US government (NSA), Cisco, Motorola, Nokia, dozens of eductional institutions, Red Hat, Suse, etc., Dell, NEC, Toshiba (to name some prominent ones), what they think of their copyrights being violated?

Sorry you lose buddy. Linux isn't made by "spotty kids". Maybe you're thinking of BSD.

Similar problems

[harikiri]

I have an Ultra5 here at home that I test things out with from time to time. At one stage I envisionged being able to use it as a server running Open/Net/FreeBSD.

NetBSD (1.6.1) had the crashing issues with installer, and once I finally got it installed I too had issues with packages compiling.

So I decided to skip instead ot OpenBSD 3.4. Got that installed, only to discover that the applications it supports in its ports tree is smaller and not up to date.

I then looked into FreeBSD. Now I have an external monitor I use with my Ultra5, and both recently (5.2) and a while back (5.1 or 5.0) I simply couldn't navigate past the initial boot screen to complete the install. The problem with FreeBSD on sparc is that it retains its curses-based install GUI, which renders in some horrible way (term is fucked up) when using a monitor. There are 4 options you can try when using installing, and none of them worked to give me a readable screen. To date I haven't tried installing via console, which could be the key.

Either way, OpenBSD has proved to be the easiest and most stable for installing on Ultrasparc to date, so that's what I'm recommending at present to people at work (have it on a few Ultra 5's and E220's).

Re:Similar problems

[PrettyBoy_75]

I ran into the same problem when trying to install FreeBSD on my Ultra 5. Try using CTRL N and CTRL B (or CTRL P... been a while :) ) to navigate.

Re:Similar problems

[nutznboltz]

Try a serial console. Just plug the ttya port into another computer's serial port with a null modem and use tip or cu.

Re:Similar problems

[Octorian]

Actually, I was sorely disappointed with my only recent OpenBSD/sparc64 experience. However, I will say that OpenBSD/sparc runs beautifully.

I had been using an old SPARCstation 5 for something, under OpenBSD, and wanted to upgrade to a more powerful (and rackmount) machine. So I got myself a nice Netra t1 105.

Initially I tried OpenBSD/sparc64 3.3 on it, of course. Well, getting it to work with a mirrored root disk was very painful, and resulted in 30+ minute boot times whenever there was an impropper shutdown. Beyond that, it did work, though the machine was performing much more slowly than I had expected. Furthermore, I had to do some digging and manually apply a kernel patch so that one of the network interfaces wouldn't randomly crap out every once in a while.

Then, given that this box was doing some network stuff, I wanted more ethernet ports beyond the two "hme" controllers built-in. So I picked up a QFE (4-port hme 10/100 NIC) and stuck it in the PCI slot. OpenBSD totally hated that, and I never had any luck getting it to work. Sure it detected the card, but forget about forwarding packets. A friend of mine was using a similar card in his box, though he only had one on-board hme. Only one port on the card worked for him. So I'll guess OpenBSD doesn't like more than 2 hme controllers on a machine.

Eventually I had enough, and just switched the machine over to Solaris 9. I found some good guides for locking it down, and all the software I needed would run on that OS. So after a little bit of effort, I managed to convert the box. It now runs perfectly, all my ethernet ports work, the on-board watchdog timer is supported, and software mirroring of the root disk works painlessly. Oh, and the machine is also performing MUCH faster now.

At this point, I will still say OpenBSD/sparc works wonderfully on the older 32-bit SPARC boxes, but I've lost all faith in the sparc64 port. I'm still eager to see how FreeBSD/sparc64 turns out, though, but right now Solaris just "works better" for all the UltraSPARC machines (and their associated hardware) I have and use.

Re:Ultra 5? Oh please no

[680x0]

I hate to reply to my own comment, but it looks like the binary packages are available for 1.6.2 for sparc64.

Re:Ultra 5? Oh please no

[Octorian]

The U5 and the U10 are the same exact machine. The only difference is the case, PCI riser card, and the CPU speeds they shipped with. The motherboard is identical.