Tony's Little Corner of the Web

Must update this thing more often...

So I've put Gentoo on the box too. Window system is KDE with Beryl/Emerald.

It's running Solaris Express (snv_52) and only Solaris. Yes, Solaris can be a desktop OS!

I've added nvidia graphics and opensound audio drivers to get things up to speed.

$ cat /etc/release 
                            Solaris Nevada snv_52 X86
           Copyright 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                           Assembled 06 November 2006
$ uname -a
SunOS snorky 5.11 snv_52 i86pc i386 i86pc
$ isainfo -v
64-bit amd64 applications
        cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu 
32-bit i386 applications
        cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu 
$ psrinfo -v
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 02/10/2007 23:49:10
  on-line since 02/10/2007 20:41:36.
  The i386 processor operates at 2000 MHz,
        and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
Status of virtual processor 1 as of: 02/10/2007 23:49:10
  on-line since 02/10/2007 20:41:44.
  The i386 processor operates at 2000 MHz,
        and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
        

Extra software

• Studio 12 EA Compilers
• ClusterTools 7 EA parallel tools
• Grid Engine 6.1 preview
• various useful Blastwave packages

$ cat /etc/release 
                            Solaris Nevada snv_50 X86
           Copyright 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                            Assembled 09 October 2006
$ uname -a
SunOS lem 5.11 snv_50 i86pc i386 i86pc
        

Option      "IgnoreDisplayDevices" "CRT, TV"

I've also installed the newest Studio Express compilers.

$ cat /etc/release 
                            Solaris Nevada snv_46 X86
           Copyright 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                            Assembled 14 August 2006
$ uname -a
SunOS lem 5.11 snv_46 i86pc i386 i86pc
        

My Linux swap partition is now permanently kept with a bogus fdisk type; Linux doesn't seem to care and it prevents the Solaris installer getting confused about where existing installations are.

• seriously depleting fish stocks in the oceans
• starting to run short of potable water

Of course, skeptical pinch of (sea?) salt and all that, given the various interpretations of zodiacal timeframes and what these "ages" might possibly mean...

This also keeps the temperature waaaaaay down in the idle state: 43°C opposed to 65°C at top-speed.

The cpufrequtils package allows you to inspect and change parameters (e.g. governors).

Now the question is: can I get Solaris to do the same?

Divers alarums, hat throwing etc.

$ cat /etc/release 
                            Solaris Nevada snv_38 X86
           Copyright 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                             Assembled 18 April 2006

$ uname -a
SunOS lem 5.11 snv_38 i86pc i386 i86pc
        

Wow, that's a lot of configurable "eye-candy".

So we're up and running! Huzzah, balloons, pomp & circumstance, exeunt:

$ cat /etc/release 
                            Solaris Nevada snv_36 X86
           Copyright 2006 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                             Assembled 20 March 2006
$ uname -a
SunOS lem 5.11 snv_36 i86pc i386 i86pc
$ psrinfo -v
Status of virtual processor 0 as of: 04/28/2006 18:45:10
  on-line since 04/28/2006 18:30:34.
  The i386 processor operates at 1533 MHz,
        and has an i387 compatible floating point processor.
        

I also found an OpenSound driver for Solaris x86 and the via8233 sound card I have. Previously I'd had no luck at all getting audio working on this machine with Solaris. Now it works fine. The osstest command did sensible things, and xmms from BlastWave makes the right noises.

Installed fine, there's a script that comes with the driver called nvidia-xconfig that rewrites your xorg.conf to switch to the nvidia driver. Everything's working. I added a few options, e.g. turn off the NVIDIA logo, which I find a bit startling...

I've installed ClusterTools & GridEngine on top of Solaris:

$ mpinfo -N
NAME UP PARTITION OS    OSREL NCPU FMEM   FSWP   LOAD1 LOAD5 LOAD15
lem  y  run       SunOS 5.11  1    258.83 733.42 0.56  0.43  0.18

$ qhost
HOSTNAME                ARCH         NCPU  LOAD  MEMTOT  MEMUSE  SWAPTO  SWAPUS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
global                  -               -     -       -       -       -       -
lem                     sol-x86         1  0.41  510.0M  251.0M  517.0M     0.0
        

After experiencing the same non-booting problems as before, I went through the BIOS and turned off everything I could, especially the serial and parallel ports. After that, it booted fine and I was able to install snv_33 successfully. Re-enabling the ports afterwards didn't hurt anything.

In the process, I sort-of-accidentally-what-an-idiot whacked the Gentoo install (possibly fdisk-related with linux swap and solaris partition types). So I re-partitioned the disk and did an initial install.

Ho hum, maybe it's a sign that it's time to do something different. The machine is getting rather old and I've been thinking of saving up pennies to get something more exciting...

They say it gets rather humid in summer, but after living in Houston...I suspect I'll cope better than they think.

I rather like this little beast. Easy to carry, nice user interface, everything works nicely. It's mainly for making notes, email, and presentations. I also got an AirPort Extreme with it.

Like snv_15, the CD starts to boot, but stalls during hardware detection. No idea why yet...

Interesting. I presume she meant coup de grâce but if so, I'm sure Stevie Wonder and Bob Geldof would be rather upset...

Or maybe she meant pâté de foie gras, which is somewhat mind-boggling!

The CD starts to boot, but stalls during hardware detection. No idea why yet...

As does the Schillix live CD...

Having some problems with Solaris. It knows the device is there, but I can't get it to see the file system.

It's installing at least, with the graphical installer too! I'm only doing the core install of Solaris to start with as a proof of concept. If it all works well, I will probably do a full installation.

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