Re: TOP Network Interface Port of a Sun Ultra 30

On 2008-08-06, Barry L. Bond <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Don!

First of all, thank you as always for your kind and fast help!

I have, and will make note of if I wind up using, your suggestions on
what to mv (S to s, K to k, hostname to Hostname, etc.).

You probably don't need to bother with changing the 'K' entries,
as they just try to turn off the service -- which you never turn on with
the 'S' ones changed to 's'. Essentially, scripts are invoked during
changes of system state (e.g. booting through single-user mode to fully
up, or shutting down to single-user mode), and looks at the ones
starting with 'S' and feeds them to /bin/sh with an argument of "start",
and the ones starting with 'K' are feed to /bin/sh with an argument of
"stop". Files with any other starting letter are simply ignored, and
the changing from upper case to lower case lets you see what it should
be changed back to when you are ready.

Hmm ... not using two cables to watch both at once?

Well, I just didn't think of that! I didn't know you wanted to see
both at the same time! :-O :-)

I figured that it would be a quicker test, since you could check
both at once. :-)

[ ... ]

Don, thank you for your advice.

I had "skimmed" your most recent posting before I left for work, this
morning. And, I was intending to contact you to ask you a question.

And then, at work today, I got another unbelievable and big reason to
ask you something else!

First, the question I was going to ask this morning.

I just purchased an ESP-16 MI 16-Port Serial Hub. This is to give me
up to 16 serial connections again, for the Linux computer.

O.K. I have *no* experience with serial hubs, so everything
that I tell you will be just a guess.

This connects to the LAN. What I had was a PCI card in my Linux
computer, and it had a SCSI cable to a board (mounted on my wall, near the
computer) that had the 16 DB25 serial connectors.

But, this device connects to an Ethernet port. (More flexible. And,
there are drivers for Solaris and Linux, so I would actually be able to
have the Sun support these serial connections! I have other limitations
on the Sun that makes it not as possible to support the DEVICES I have on
the Linux, but the serial connections themselves will be drivable from the
Solaris as well as the Linux!)

O.K.

This leads to my question.

I was told that it would connect to one of the free computer ports on
my D-Link router. And, if I wasn't needing to get other pieces of
hardware at this same moment, that is what I'd do, the only thing that
would even enter my mind to consider.

(I trust the network addresses are such that they wouldn't be
broadcast over the Internet! :-O The man I spoke to said they wouldn't.)

You'll have to set the addresses of the serial port hub to the
working range of whatever they are connected to -- but you can
hopefully prevent the hub from originating connections to the outside,
and *hopefully* your D-Link does NAT (Network Address Translation) of
outgoing connections so the outside never sees your internal IP
addresses, even if the hub does connect to the outside (such as to
report home if it is one of those systems which likes to call home).

However, since I need (or needed, as of this morning) to get at least
a new Ethernet serial card, if not a new motherboard, would there be a
significant speed difference if I were to connect this to a network card
directly inside the Sun, as opposed to the D-Link router, where the data
must leave the Sun and go through another port?

That all depends on two things:

1) What is the bandwidth that your connections handle. If
the hub and the D-Link will handle 100BaseT (the hme0 and hme1
ports will I know), then you probably are fine, unless you start
transferring a lot of data through multiple ports, including
through the D-link to/from the outside.

I was thinking that if I chose to try a new Ethernet card, I'd get
one that had at least 2, and I would wind up with at least THREE network
ports on the Sun computer.

I've been suggesting the QFE (Quad Fast Ethernet) card, which
has four hme style ports. In searching for one on eBay, be careful not
to get an sBus version, since it won't work in your current computer, or
the new one which you mentioned below.

One port would go to the router, which has
been my "normal" setup. One would be available for the Linux. And, one
could be used for me to plug in this ESP Serial Hub I just ordered, this
afternoon.

Would there be a significant speed difference?

My *guess* is no.

The 7 terminals I had "hard coded" to 19200 baud. Two of the other
devices were 2400, and 1 was 1200. Not fast.

Unless there is a lot of overhead in the protocol connecting it
to the computer, you can probably run *all* of the ports full bore
without problems. And -- it should be less load on your computer than
built-in serial ports, because it should be able to buffer a line and
request a transfer of a whole line at once, instead of an interrupt per
character transferred (and thus a full context switch to the handler and
back) as is normal with a built-in serial port.

I have a cable modem. As far as traffic on the network, it varies,
too. The "normal" things happening that are occurring (normally) 24 hours
a day, whether I'm at the system or not is, once every five minutes, the
Sun checks to see if we have any RoadRunner email, and transfer it here,
if we do. And, I have a couple of Network Time Protocol systems available
on the Internet, and thusly, the time on my Linux system is normally kept
set perfectly that way. (The Sun's NTP uses the Linux system to keep it's
time set.)

So far, you aren't talking about much load.

In other words, not much.

When I'm on the system, various web pages (including radar,
especially this time of year, the time of frequent thunderstorms and
hurricanes, living in Florida), sometimes classical music via the
Internet, about a half hour every weekday morning I listen to John
MacArthur (gty.org) while eating breakfast, etc.

A bit more bandwidth there -- images consume a lot, but radar
images don't update that frequently.

The broadcasts are more significant, but still not too bad as
long as you aren't throttling things down to 10BaseT somewhere in the
link, and I think that your bandwidth on the cable side of the D-link
will be more of a limitation.

The bottom line is this: if there were going to be a speed
difference, since I am (or was, see below) about to look into purchasing
something "new" and therefore have a couple/few options I would not
otherwise have, I would look for SPECIFICALLY a particular product.

Now, I'll mention what occurred at work today! :-O

Today, a co-worker gave me a Sun Ultra 5! :-O (I don't know what to
say, except I said thank you multiple times!) :-O

O.K. I have one of those -- serving as my firewall -- with a
QFE card installed.

(He heard me indicating things I was having to work through because
of our recent lightning strike and he said he had it, and there is no one
who wants a computer this slow these days!) :-)

This Ultra 5 is one of several Suns he picked up from a NASA auction
for a very low price. He put Solaris 9 on it, and it works. He says the
speed is 333 MHz. (My Ultra 30 is 248 MHz.) It has a 9G hard drive.

Note that the hard drive is an IDE one, not a SCSI one, so you
can't use your old drives from the Ultra-30 (I don't know what size they
are), and the IDE is not as fast a drive as the SCA SCSI interface in
the Ultra-30 and Ultra-60. (Of course -- you could add a PCI card which
can handle one or two SCSI busses out the back of the computer -- but
you'll need housings for the drives too.

And -- you have a practical limit of no more than a bit over 120
GB on the IDE drives -- thanks to a limitation in the controller
hardware.

It has only one network port. And, it is a much thinner cabinet,
sitting flat like on a desk rather than on the floor. (This actually, is
a minor problem for me, just because of the way my desk and computer area
is arranged. I don't really have room on my desk for it. But, don't take
that minor annoyance as a sign that I won't gratefully use it if you agree
it's good to!) :-D

Note that you can run an Ultra-5 stood on edge. I ran mine that
way beside an Ultra-10 when it was one of the two web servers (now I
have another Ultra-10 for that location), and the firewall was on an
Ultra-1.

It has 3 PCI bus slots available.

Yes -- all 33 MHz ones.

It has one network port.

Yes.

The only Ethernet port on my current Sun that is working is on a PCI
card!

Yes -- and since it is showing up as hme1, it should work in
there too.

Would I be able to take the PCI card from the Ultra 30 and put it in
one of these PCI slots?

Yes.

If so, that would allow it to have two network
ports!

Or -- five if you got a QFE card instead. :-)

The remaining question is how much do you need to do to move
everything which you are doing on the Ultra-30 to the Ultra-5. Note
that you can't simply move the drive(s) from the Ultra-30 to the
Ultra-10 (wrong interface, and even with a SCSI PCI card you can't
*boot* from the SCSI drives AFIK.

Note that while I have installed Solaris 10 (a free for the
download OS these days) in an Ultra-5, I did not run it for long -- just
played with it. It is now running OpenBSD instead.

Note also that an Ultra-5 and an Ultra-10 have the same system
board, and maybe even the same CPU, depending on age. The Ultra-10 is
tower style, and it has more room -- especially for a fancier graphics
card like the Creator-3D. There is the bus connector in the system
board in the Ultra-5, but there is no room to mount the card, and no
place for the mounting bracket. If you want to do pretty graphics on
the system, you will probably eventually want the Ultra-10 and the
Creator-3D card with it. The built-in VGA connector on the Ultra-5/10
system board is rather limited -- lots of colors only at the lower
resolutions, lots of resolution at fewer colors.

But make a DB-25 connector with pin 2 jumpered to pin 3 for a
quick test for the VT-??? series terminals. That way you aren't
depending on anything else --just the ability for the keyboard to send
out a character, and the display to receive and show it.

I will do that. In fact, I MIGHT have a loopback connector...

Good Luck,
DoN.

--
Email: <dnichols@xxxxxxxxxxx> | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---
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