Re: solaris 1/6 on Sunfire v245 ?


The reality of things is that the workaround I suggested actually works.

Conclusion : When you just copy /usr/platform/SunFire-V215 and
/platform/SunFire-V215 from a 6/6 to the same directory on 1/6 and add a link
in those directories it will work just like any other 1/6 install.

The main reason that these directories do not exist on 1/6 is simply that the
SunFire-Vxx5 series did not exist when 1/6 was released and obviously it was
impossible to add that kernel and module support in later on so the minimum
revision for SunFire-Vxx5 had to be 6/6.
So the foul play involved is actually not quite as extensive as has been
suggested by some in the thread and the supportability of it is certainly not
going to be any problem at all.

As for some of the silly comments that were jousted : it was managment that
asked me to find this solution, Plan B was an extra OS image on the jumpstart
server.
It is not a solution I personally like at all. But sometimes you need to be
pragmatic and these servers had to be ready "yesterday".

As for a new OS image takeing 2 weeks in manhours to deploy... well as it
happens we have a highly virtualised environment where finishing scripts are
only the beginning of what will happen to a server after the initial
jumpstart.
But the framwork behind it all is therefor complex and it takes more time
than just an add_install_server to get an OS image added to the jumpstart
server (servers actually) because that's only the start of what our
framework requires.
The two weeks was a ballpark guess, maybe it's one week but certainly not "2
hours" and every day was a day to much for business reasons.

Hope at least the information I provided on how to boot SunFire-V245 with 1/6
will be helpful to other pragmatic sysadmins.
The workaround is probably possible for all servers that were added in
between 1/6 and 6/6. Enjoy.




On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 22:25:55 +0200, Michael Vilain wrote
(in article <vilain-33760F.13255526092007@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

In article <0001HW.C3207F660004C18AB019F96F@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
watchie <watchie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


Is it possible to get Solaris 1/06 running on a Sunfire v245 , does
anybody
have any experiences trying this ?
The company I work for needs this functionality because we try to maintain
the same Solaris 10 OS image on all servers in order to ease maintenance.

What maintenance? You are years behind Solaris 10 8/07
...
Even if that had worked it would be unsupported. And rightfully so
...

Sorry , my young guru-friend for not keeping our +300 servers up to date
with
the latest version of Solaris 10.
My sysadmin team just seems to prefer to be home at night with their family

and Business doesnt allow them to be brought down during daytime... sigh.

Mind you, it is a technical question in a technical forum so whether or not

it would be 'supported' or not should not lay to heavily on your soul. But
rest assured, with the amount of servers we tend to buy from Sun and
Fujitsu
i'm inclined to think they'll probably give us at least a 'best effort'
should problems ever arise after the faul play.
In fact, they'll be more than happy to come to the conclusion that they
are
indeed geting payed for support on a server they can reject as
unsupported.
And they will smile all the way to the bank when they go to deposit the
support contract money. None of your or my concern however.

Actually, if you're their manager, it most emphatically and essentially
_is_ your concern. Because if you manage to hack Solaris to run on
hardware that it doesn't support, you and your whole team just went into
the Solaris support business. Unless you wave a lot of money in front
of the right faces at SUN corporate, I doubt you'll get any sort of
support for running a version of Solaris on hardware it's not supported
on. I'm sure it can be done as a time and materials project by be
prepared with a large can of Vasoline and several changes of underwear.


That said ... maybe someone more forgiving will still find it in their
heart
to give me a few ideas on the topic at hand : is it possible in some way to
boot a SunFire V245 with Solaris 10 1/06. Somehow I would think a few minor
modifications (probably copies of directories from 06/06 ?) should suffice
but which ...

In my attempts I tried to copy /usr/platform/SunFire-V215 from a 6/06 over
to
the jumpstart image of Solaris 1/06 and linked SunFire-V245 to it (as is
the
case with Solaris 6/06).
Did the same in /platform.

My main concern is the generic kernel itself ... I could copy it over from
6/06 but here I clearly need to tred more carefully since there obviously
is
already a /kernel in 1/6 and thererfor just swapping it with a /kernel from
6/06 might be more than Solaris 1/6 can handle.

Does anyone have any experience with this type of open heart surgery ?

Cheers,
Watchie


OK, maybe you are one of those people that likes to push the envelope on
such things. In companies that run production environments where
downtime is a measured metric, that's usually frowned upon. If you're
in an academic or development environment, then messing with hardware
and the kernel may be something you can get away with. Sounds like the
latter. You may have to go with maintaining your own Solaris source
tree to get this to work. Good luck with that.

Alternatively, you could standardize on only machines that run the
version and release of Solaris you've standardized on. Which is easier?
Hacking Solaris to run on hardware Sun doesn't support, figuring out how
to make Solaris run on unsupported hardware and supporting it, or hiring
someone from the Sun Kernel team to do your project.

I think you have this whole thing bass-ackwards.




.

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