New toy
So my computer got here on Monday, a full two days earlier than projected by FedEx. That was good news. Even better news was that, unlike February of 2006, it wasn’t busted, which means I get to keep it. 
Everything is looking good and the box seems in perfect working order.
I began setting it up Monday evening. For the first time ever I used Solaris netboot to install the OS rather than burning CDs and installing from them. I started preparations to set up my current workstation as boot- and install-server on the weekend.
On Saturday, I downloaded all five Solaris CD-ROM images. On Sunday I set up the install directory, copying everything into a single directory.
The following list is of steps is more for myself, so I know where to look if I ever need to do it again. Anybody remotely sane can skip over the following list. 
- Burn CD #1 onto a rewritable CD and making sure volume management for the CD drive is working properly. Both steps are necessary, due to the way SPARC boot CDs are laid out (several partitions on a CD). There’s no (easy) way to access all required partitions other then burning the image to CD and have volume management mount the slices (partitions) properly.
- Copy the contents of CD #1 into the install directory (
./add_to_install_server /mnt/disk1/isostuff/solaris/INSTALL/). - Mount CDs #2 through #5 through the loop-back (lofi) interface, saving myself the trouble of actually having to burn them onto CD, and copying the contents into the install directory.
- Do the same for the language CD.
- Finally, set up all services that need to be running on the install server: NFS, TFTP, BOOTP.
./add_install_client -e 0:3:ba:44:98:b5 titan sun4u - The step about setting the MAC (ethernet) address of the client workstation on the install server is crucial. The install server has no other way of identifying who’s asking for a boot image. Before, I had just done
./add_install_client -d titan sun4u, which was rewarded with an error message about not receiving ARP/RARP replies when I tried booting the new system.
I enjoyed not having to watch the installation in order to swap out CDs. There were no CDs to be swapped. Everything was already sitting on the install server and got installed in one big sweep.
After that all the Blastwave packages that I am using on a daily basis went onto the box. From KDE to OpenOffice and from Apache to Samba and everything in between.
The “toughest” point here was to get a copy of wget up and running first in order to download the Blastwave packages. I decided to just install the SUNW copy of wget (/usr/sfw/bin/wget) and use that to boot-strap Blastwave.
Next on the list of things to do is to migrate all the data over. Once that’s done, I can start using my new computer as my main workstation and retire the old one.
Anybody interested in an Ultra 60 with dual 450 MHz CPUs, 896 MB of RAM, 36 GB and 18 GB hard drive? lol It’s still not a bad box, especially if used as a server. On the desktop, it’s not the fastest of the bunch.
