Here is the summary of "OS upgrade question for multiple machines"
>From the responses, I am going to upgrade the Sun3's to 4.1.1_U1 and all the
Sun4's to 4.1.3 to get the bug fixes. Thanks to everyone that replied.
Roger
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My original messages follows.
I have been looking over software upgrades for our Suns that past few
weeks, and reading this list as well. I am also fairly new at this so
pardon the lack of experience. Here is what we have here:
1 4/280 Server 32MB memory about 1GB of disk space (SunOS 4.1)
1 4/370 Deskside server 56MB memory about 2GB of disk space (Sun OS 4.1.1)
Many Sparc SLC's and SparcStation 1+'s and one Sparc2
There is also a 3/280 Server 32MB memory 1.5 GB disk space (Sun OS 4.1)
and 6 3/50 workstations and a 3/60 workstation.
I know the Sun3 is out of the question for Solaris, but are these other
machines a candidate for Solaris?? Most of the Sparc workstations only have
8MB of memory, so they would be slow from what I have read. If
Solaris is a bad idea, will all of these machines including the 3/280
handle 4.1.3?? I would like to be using the same OS across all the
machines, but if it can't be done, then it can't be done.
Is there anything else I should be aware of going from 4.1/4.1.1 to 4.1.3
if its a good idea to goto that OS?? It will not be an upgrade, the
disk partitions need to be redone in a bad way, so it will be an
installation, and then restore.
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The responses now follow.
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Robert D. Worsham wrote:
> 1 4/280 Server 32MB memory about 1GB of disk space (SunOS 4.1)
> 1 4/370 Deskside server 56MB memory about 2GB of disk space (Sun OS 4.1.1)
> Many Sparc SLC's and SparcStation 1+'s and one Sparc2
All of the above will support Solaris 2.x
> There is also a 3/280 Server 32MB memory 1.5 GB disk space (Sun OS 4.1)
> and 6 3/50 workstations and a 3/60 workstation.
All of the above will not run anything greater than 4.1.1_U1
> I know the Sun3 is out of the question for Solaris, but are these other
> machines a candidate for Solaris?? Most of the Sparc workstations only have
> 8MB of memory, so they would be slow from what I have read. If
> Solaris is a bad idea, will all of these machines including the 3/280
> handle 4.1.3?? I would like to be using the same OS across all the
> machines, but if it can't be done, then it can't be done.
It can only be done if you run 4.1.1. The sun3's won't run anything
later than 4.1.1_U1 which is the 4.1.2 sun3 equivalent.
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Thomas Walter wrote:
As an upgrade, taking Sun4's from 4.1 to 4.1.3 is painless. I have a fairly
generic network of a 4/690MP, and a selection of 1+'s, IPC's and a SS10 as
well as 10 diskless 3/50's and 3/80's. I had no problems....custom files such
as /etc/hosts, printcap, were not affected. Remember that SunOS support for
Sun3's ends with 4.1.1. As for Solaris 2.x..........I won't switch until I
absolutely have to, probably next summer.
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Steve Hanson wrote:
I assume you mean Solaris 2? Solaris could just as well mean 4.1.3.
Anyway - You can't run any of the Solaris2/SunOS 5 releases with 8 meg. You
need 16. But otherwise Solaris 2 runs on any of the Sun4 machines. Note
however that Solaris 2 will disable the fpu on your 4/280, so it won't do
floating point very fast any more. Ther eis no 4.1.3 for any Sun 3 machines -
4.1.1U1 was the terminal release for the 3 series.
You can upgrade from 4.1.1 to 4.1.3, but not from 4.1. And of course, you
can only upgrade the 4's. I'd say with the systems you describe you just
can't consider Solaris 2 unless you buy more memory. You certainly will
want to upgrade your 3's to 4.1.1 and your 4's to 4.1.3, though. Much
less buggy in the long run.
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Russ Poffenberger wrote:
SunOS 4.1.1 is the last OS released that supports Sun-3's. All other Sparcs
can run 4.1.3.
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Tom Crummey wrote:
All your machines will run 4.1.3. I would advise moving to that since it
contains many bug-fixes and enhancements over 4.1/4.1.1. You can also have
4.1.3 on your 3/60. We had no real problems, though check the PROM revisions
on your 4/490.
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Mark Anderson wrote:
To my knowledge, all of the Sun4's can use SunOS 4.1.3 (Solaris 1.1).
I'm not knowledgable about the requirements of Solaris 2.x, but I
believe that it is not mature enough for our needs. In addition,
many of our applications have not yet been ported to it, and there
are many public domain programs that we use that are not ported.
We are running 4.1.3 on all our machines, and we will hold off
going to 5.x for as long as we can.
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Bert Robbins wrote:
The sun3 systems can be upgraded to 4.1.1 only, the last release
for the sun3. The sun4 systems can be upgraded to 4.1.3.
I run a mixed version shop here with sun3's running 4.1.1 and
sun4's running 4.1.1 and 4.1.3. Our plan for the future is to
upgrade all sun4's to 4.1.3 and then turn most of the sun3's
(3/80's) into Xtermincal vi the Xkernel package.
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Andy Feldt wrote:
1) While Solaris will run on 4/200 series machines, the FPU is disabled
and all floating point instructions are emulated in software. This
makes 4/200 (and the same is true for 4/100) series machines bad
choices to upgrade to Solaris 2.x
2) Solaris 2.x *requires* 16Meg of memory according to Sun. In point of
fact, 24Meg is barely enough to just start up OW without having the
machine crawl and 32Meg is needed if you want to run some small (<8 Meg)
programs and still be able to *use* your window system. I have found
that any time the virtual memory being used exceeds the physical
memory, everything begins to creep slowly.
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John DiMarco wrote:
>I have been looking over software upgrades for our Suns that past few
>weeks, and reading this list as well. I am also fairly new at this so
>pardon the lack of experience. Here is what we have here:
>1 4/280 Server 32MB memory about 1GB of disk space (SunOS 4.1)
This will run Solaris, but without FPU support. So expect FP to run very
slowly.
NB: check to see if all your periphs are supported, though.
>1 4/370 Deskside server 56MB memory about 2GB of disk space (Sun OS 4.1.1)
This will run solaris fine. Again, check your periphs.
>Many Sparc SLC's and SparcStation 1+'s and one Sparc2
They will all run Solaris, if they have more than 8MB. 12MB is minimal
if you don't run open windows, otherwise 16MB is required.
>If Solaris is a bad idea, will all of these machines including the 3/280
>handle 4.1.3?? I would like to be using the same OS across all the
>machines, but if it can't be done, then it can't be done.
No, the sun3s will only run 4.1.1. Upgrade everything to 4.1.1 and stay there
until you get new hardware.
>Is there anything else I should be aware of going from 4.1/4.1.1 to 4.1.3
>if its a good idea to goto that OS?? It will not be an upgrade, the
>disk partitions need to be redone in a bad way, so it will be an
>installation, and then restore.
There's no point in going to 4.1.3 unless you have SS10s, LXs, Classics,
or 600 series machines. Stick with 4.1.1 (with all the important patches)
instead.
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Glenn Satchell wrote:
4.1.1_u1 is the last release for the sun3's. You should install it
because it has many bug fixes.
As for the sun4's they will all run Solaris 2.x, hovever as you noted
with only 8meg they will be pretty slow - you really want at least
16meg or more in them. Solaris 2.x does not support the old floating
point unit (fpu) in the 4/280 so any floating point calculations must
be done in software which slows them down a bit.
Installing 4.1.3 is *very* worthwhile - all your aplications should run
unchanged and you will get the single biggest benefit of 4.1.3 - the
fast fsck at boot time so reboots take only a minute or two not 1/2
hour! I would suggest putting all your big disks on the sun4's and nfs
mount them on the sun3s if necessary. That way the sun3s will reboot as
quickly as possible too with only a small amount of disk to check.
While the upgrade does work, I think it is worth the effort to do a
full install as you can then make your filesystem setup as clean as
possible.
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The end....
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:08:09 CDT