Re: Is there a way to use Linux on the E450 ?

In article <eeiefh014gl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx (DoN. Nichols) wrote:

According to Josh McKee <jtmckee@xxxxxxxx>:
In article <slrnegnc80.deo.avenger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

[ ... ]

Serial console. Ability to inventory and examine devices. Nifty forth
programs. More configurable, more flexible. Real diagnostics. Doesn't
have the brain damage of years of legacy crap (boot in first x cyls).
Predictable NIC-independant network booting. Provides a unified
configuration point for everything from display configuration to
SCSI initiator ID.

I know what some of the features are. What I'm wondering is how often
these features are actually used/needed that would justify warranting
them over the simpler PC BIOS. Aside from the serial console I can't
imagine the other features being overly useful. For example how many
forth programs have you written and for what purpose? What do you mean
by "more configurable and flexible"?

O.K. I've got a Sun box -- an older one, let's say.

Let's not say. I am asking for real world examples. SCSI ID management
and conflict resolution has been a non-issue for quite some time.
Likewise PC SCSI controllers provide a means to see which devices they
have detected on their interfaces.

As for the built-in FORTH -- I've seen it used to cause the
probing of a given interface to delay until the device on that interface
is booted. I've seen it used to re-program the HOST-ID and mac address
in the NVRAM after a battery has died in the NVRAM chip (usually not a
problem until the system has been powered down for quite a while, as the
NVRAM is normally supported by the power supply in the system -- but
eventually they do die.

So this is something that you've never really done yourself. I would be
curious to know what percentage of Sun users have actually used this
capability. I suspect the number is low.

And it can be used to automatically specially configure the
ethernet interface, or various other things at boot time.

Or -- it can be used to add custom security features to the
booting of the system -- beyond the normal security mode features which
prevent booting from anything other than the default device -- or
prevent booting at all -- until the right password is entered.

I'm not looking for things that can be done. I'm looking at things that
people are doing with it. Again I am not challenging anyone that the OBP
provides more functionality than the PC BIOS. What I am wondering is how
frequently is the additional functionality being utilized. So far the
heavy hitters I've seen are:

1. Ability to redirect output to the serial port.
2. Ability to probe disk information.

And -- the OBP can be used to define the proper boot device.
Some older systems boot from SCSI-ID 3, with the second internal drive
being SCSI-ID 1. But OpenBSD, when loaded into such a system, wants to
boot from the lowest SCSI ID present.

I have seen this as a problem on PC systems. However I am curious to
know how much of a problem this is in practice.

As an example of (a subset of) the settings, here is something
swept out from the eeprom settings (all of which can be changed from the
serial console -- or the keyboard and screen -- before booting (except
the security mode, of course).


======================================================================
boot-command=boot
auto-boot?=true
watchdog-reboot?=true
diag-file: data not available.
diag-device=net
boot-file: data not available.
boot-device=/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0:a disk
======================================================================

I am aware of these OBP settings. As I said I have a number of Sun
systems myself. And again I have to say that they're nice things to have
but how frequently are they used? I am not going to go through everyone
of them but I would like to point out that PC server systems do have
watchdog reset capability.

Josh
.

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