Re: TOP Network Interface Port of a Sun Ultra 30

On 2008-08-07, Barry L. Bond <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi again, Don!

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).

My old D-Link router (where I had had time to read the manual and do
things with it) definitely did NAT. I an nearly certain that this one
does, too. (The D-Link is primarily my firewall. And, I very much liked
the older one.)

But, I will verify this.

O.K. I also believe that it should have NAT.

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.

Heh heh... I know. :-) I've seen (well, HEARD OF) cards that had 2
and cards that had 4 ethernet ports. That's what I meant by AT LEAST 2
more. :-)

With the 4 port ones having the advantage that there are more
spares if it gets zapped again -- *if* the only thing which gets zapped
is the tiny ferrite core transformers which couple the signals from the
net to the card's logic. If it is *badly* zapped, it will take out the
whole card, of course -- and maybe the computer, too.

Would there be a significant speed difference?

My *guess* is no.

I have also asked this question of a coworker today, who seems to
know a lot about this. He also said no, it wouldn't be.

O.K.

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.

Not being able to use the hard drives would be okay.

I now have 2 hard drives in the Ultra-30. It was given to me with a
4.2 G drive. Just nearly 2 years ago, I installed an 18.2 G drive.

I really don't have much on the Sun. (The Linux is the system where
I have a LOT of personal things.)

I "made do" with the 4.2 G for a few years. I expect the 9G one in
the Ultra 5 would be okay.

I think that you want more than that. Pick up an 80GB or so,
which should be plenty -- even for Solaris-10 (which is free for the
download). And it might make you more likely to *use* the Sun for more
as well.

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.

Thank you! :-)

Check for vent holes on both sides. Put the side without vent
holes down. I *think* that I had the computer with the right edge down
when I was using it that way -- but it is difficult to check now, since
it is on top of an 8' high relay rack. :-)

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. :-)

:-D

So, it appears that I could have 2 network ports with the Ultra 5, if
it is indeed working.

Indeed so.

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.

Yes. I DO NOT have much time right now.

That would suggest that the quicker way to go is to grab a
replacement system board for your Ultra-30 and swap that in -- making
sure that additional cards are in the same slots.

Now, I really don't have that much that is "personal" on the Sun. I
did install a "top" command, because I used to log on to it every day from
the Linux and leave it running in a window.

O.K. Note that if you get Solaris 10 four downloads (or is it
five) to make an image for burning a DVD, and a second DVD for the
"Software Companion" (pre compiled net sources programs with source
present too), you will wind up with top in /opt/sfw/bin ready to run,
saving you the compilation -- and you will wind up with a lot of other
things in there as well.

I was going to look into
compiling Bacula on it.

Not familiar with "Bacula". If it is for linux, and is similar
to other things which I have been interested in, you have to download and
compile a bunch of libraries before you can compile the program itself.

I have two USB external hard drives on the Linux
computer. And, I was thinking I could do a backup of the Sun via Bacula,
too. I hadn't finished that.

You can do it with gnu tar and ssh as well. Hmm ... do you have
ssh on the Ultra-30? It now comes with Solaris 10 as well.

There is a tape drive that was given me with the Sun. I have only
one tape. I HAVE done a backup on it, using ufsdump. (That was primarily
to have my sendmail and router/network configuration files, primarily!)

Hmm ... what kind of tape drive? Sun has used a lot of them
over the years. For an Ultra-30 (assuming that your tape drive is
contemporary with the computer) I would expect perhaps either a DAT
drive or an Exabyte. (Exabyte will use 8mm tapes like those used in
camcorders. But tapes are not interchangeable between all kinds. The
8505 drive would read anything older (back to the original Exabyte 2.3
GB 8200 and up to about 7GB with the right tapes. Then there are the
Mammoth (up to around 40GB with the tapes made for it), and the
Mammoth-II (up to around 60 GB native or 150 GB with the drive's
built-in compression). You need to do a little work in the
/kernel/drv/st.conf file for the Mammoth-II, but the plain Mammoth (also
called the 8900) is supported normally. I don't have that much
experience with DATs -- except for audio work, not computer backups) so
i can't tell you as much about them.

The worst thing for me would be configuring Solaris 9 from scratch.
Not that that is horrible; in fact I would normally consider that great!
I just DON'T have much time right now...

There are some differences in the way Solaris 9 is set up, and
quite a few in Solaris 10. Most of the stuff in /etc/init.d and in
/etc/inetd.conf have been moved to a different program to maintain them,
though some still have hooks in /etc/init.d for ease in turning them
off. For example, sendmail has the following (in part):

======================================================================
'start')
svcadm enable -t network/smtp:sendmail
;;

'stop')
#svcadm disable -t network/smtp:sendmail
svcadm disable network/smtp:sendmail
;;
======================================================================

so you see that it calls svcadm to do things -- and the '-t' means
"temporary" -- until the next reboot only. If you *really* want to turn
it off full time, issue the command without the "-t" as in my
modification to the "stop" entry.

It does make it easier to turn on or off a single entry in what
used to be inetd.conf.

I'll keep this in mind. Tomorrow (Friday) is the only night of the
week that I sit up late. (Saturday is the only day of the week that X-10
doesn't get me up at a particular time, where it's 3:30 on weekdays and
5:00 on Sundays.) :-) I may look into it, although I have other things
that I also HAVE to do tomorrow night...

Always.

But, I guess I'm still considering whether I may want to get a QFE
card or new motherboard. Those aren't expensive. However, this,
money-wise, may not cost anything. (On top of the things I've been
replacing, this is good...)

For most things, I would prefer the Ultra-60 (or Ultra-30) to
the Ultra-5/10 -- especially with the latest CPU -- but for things like
firewalls or web servers, the Ultra 5 or Ultra 10 works nicely and
generates less heat. I think that for your mail servers it would do
better too. You don't need that much horsepower.

And for serious things I am now using The Sun Blade 1000 (Soon
to receive a Sun Blade 2000) and the Sun Fire 280R (rack-mount version
of the SB [12]000 machines.

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.

Okay, thank you. I hadn't even considered that...

And you *may* have a Creator-3D in your Ultra 30 already. But
if you just want it to be a server, keep the fancy graphics card out,
and use a simple VGA monitor plugged into the system's framebuffer on the
system card.

Not that this is very critical to me, either. I use my Linux system
a LOT more for this type of thing. The Sun truly was just a mail host and
a router for the Linux system. That is the only thing I COUNTED on, and
it COULD NOT HAVE BEEN BETTER for that! It ran... and ran.. and ran! :-)

O.K. For that -- the Utlra-5 will probably suffice --
especially with a newer (and larger) drive in place of the current 9GB
one. And it is possible to add a second drive in the Ultra-5 or
Ultra-10. You can also swap out the CD-ROM drive and replace it with a
DVD-ROM drive -- and as long as you update the firmware you can boot
Solaris-10 from that. Older firmware doesn't know about booting from
DVDs but will boot from CD-ROMs in DVD drives.

Barry

BTW I keep having the feeling that we've interacted before -- whether on
this newsgroup or elsewhere.

Enjoy,
DoN.

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