Somewhat annoyed by reality but I have to ask.

[ here you need to hear a long whine noise like metal failing ]
I have a Fujitsu/Oracle M3000 brick sitting in my world and near as I
can tell it runs nothing other than Oracle Solaris 11.3 and will never
be able to run anything else. Not even the "free to download" Oracle
Solaris 11.4 because the Lawnmower killed all sparc support for all
sparc hardware other than a T4 and upwards. For now anyways.
[ end of high pitch whine ]

Thus with 64G of ECC memory and four very expensive 15k rpm SAS disks
the thing is a brick. Or is it ?

Is there any reasonable way to :


[A] netboot Debian

[B] toss it on a scrap heap for re-cycle


Would love to hear any input from folks who have tried.


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

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I haven't this kind of server, but some others Sparc64. OpenBSD and NetBSD don't run on M3000. You can test FreeBSD that supported some
SPARC64, but...

"UltraSPARC is a Tier 2 architecture through FreeBSD 12.x. It is no
longer supported in FreeBSD 13.0 and later."

Best regards,

JKB

The FreeBSD folks have been perfectly clear that sparc is dead to them.
So no. Anyways I was curious about the Debian port.



--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

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On 5/14/22 17:52, Rick Leir wrote:

From folks who have tried? Sorry, no. If the info below is not helpful, sorry and please just delete my message.

Is illumos or SmartOS an option? Info from Bryan Cantrill:

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

Following a few links from that article to https://illumos.org/docs/about/distro/ , I see that

derived systems claim to have SPARC builds: Tribblix, DilOS, and V9os.

cheers -- Rick

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

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On 15/05/2022 14:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 5/14/22 17:52, Rick Leir wrote:

 From folks who have tried? Sorry, no. If the info below is not
helpful, sorry and please just delete my message.
Is illumos or SmartOS an option? Info from Bryan Cantrill:
http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

Following a few links from that article to
https://illumos.org/docs/about/distro/ , I see that
derived systems claim to have SPARC builds: Tribblix, DilOS, and V9os.

cheers -- Rick

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

They should still run just fine on older versions of Solaris (8 or 10 ?)
and similar
aged Debian and BSD variants. Not trash, just stuck in their own time.

I have customers still running Ultra 60s and a few still on ancient
stuff running
SunOs 4.1.4, they still run the tasks they were bought for and will be
replaced
with modern kit when they finally die. The killer will be the SCSI disks.

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On 05/15/22 15:57, Chris Newport wrote:

On 15/05/2022 14:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 5/14/22 17:52, Rick Leir wrote:

From folks who have tried? Sorry, no. If the info below is not
helpful, sorry and please just delete my message.
Is illumos or SmartOS an option? Info from Bryan Cantrill:
http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

Following a few links from that article to
https://illumos.org/docs/about/distro/ , I see that
derived systems claim to have SPARC builds: Tribblix, DilOS, and V9os.

cheers -- Rick

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

They should still run just fine on older versions of Solaris (8 or 10 ?)
and similar
aged Debian and BSD variants. Not trash, just stuck in their own time.

I have customers still running Ultra 60s and a few still on ancient
stuff running
SunOs 4.1.4, they still run the tasks they were bought for and will be replaced
with modern kit when they finally die. The killer will be the SCSI disks.

Been running Solaris 10 on an M3000 for 5 or 6 years now, for the home
lab server. Has a perfectly usable desktop with the addition of an
XVR300 graphics card and a pcie usb card, as the usb on the M3k is
not reachable from the host os. Forget the make, but just looked for a
usb card with a chipset supported under the sol 10 hcl.

Damn good machine and faster than any other Spparc ever run here...

Chris

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Hi!

On 5/15/22 15:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

FWIW, Oracle has released a community version of Solaris called "CBE" [1]
which runs on any SPARC-T4 or newer machine. So, if you want to run a
current version of Solaris, you can do that with a used T4 off eBay.

Adrian

[1] https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/post/announcing-the-first-oracle-solaris-114-cbe

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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On 5/15/22 14:58, Chris Quayle wrote:

On 05/15/22 15:57, Chris Newport wrote:

On 15/05/2022 14:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 5/14/22 17:52, Rick Leir wrote:

 From folks who have tried? Sorry, no. If the info below is not
helpful, sorry and please just delete my message.
Is illumos or SmartOS an option? Info from Bryan Cantrill:
http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/


Following a few links from that article to
https://illumos.org/docs/about/distro/ , I see that
derived systems claim to have SPARC builds: Tribblix, DilOS, and V9os. >>>>
cheers -- Rick

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we >>> are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

They should still run just fine on older versions of Solaris (8 or 10 ?)
and similar
aged Debian and BSD variants. Not trash, just stuck in their own time.

I have customers still running Ultra 60s and a few still on ancient
stuff running
SunOs 4.1.4, they still run the tasks they were bought for and will be
replaced
with modern kit when they finally die. The killer will be the SCSI disks.

Been running Solaris 10 on an M3000 for 5 or 6 years now, for the home
lab server. Has a perfectly usable desktop with the addition of an
XVR300 graphics card and a pcie usb card, as the usb on the M3k is
not reachable from the host os. Forget the make, but just looked for a
usb card with a chipset supported under the sol 10 hcl.

Damn good machine and faster than any other Spparc ever run here...

It is a damn good machine. However it can *only* run Solaris 10 or maybe Solaris 11.3 and in both cases you need an Oracle contract. Otherwise
good luck getting updates or access to the IPS repo.

As I keep saying over and over and over I wanted to run Linux on it.

Solaris was taken out behind a chemical shed and killed five years
ago and yes Bryan Cantrill would know the truth :

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

Speaking as someone that was on the OpenSolaris governance board
there was nothing but deathly silence right up until the Lawnmower man
pulled the plug one night. No discussion. Just silence.

Dennis Clarke

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On 5/15/22 16:43, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hi!

On 5/15/22 15:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they
are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

FWIW, Oracle has released a community version of Solaris called "CBE" [1] which runs on any SPARC-T4 or newer machine. So, if you want to run a
current version of Solaris, you can do that with a used T4 off eBay.

Adrian

Yep. I have a friend that is doing that but there is no joy in it.
I think the real issue for me is that the M3000 is a brick.
A 64G ECC memory brick with 15k rpm SAS disks in it. Sad.


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC^H^H^H^H^H/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

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Hi Betrand, Dennis,

On 13.05.22 17:32, BERTRAND Joël wrote:

Dennis Clarke a écrit :

Thus with 64G of ECC memory and four very expensive 15k rpm SAS disks
the thing is a brick.  Or is it ?

Is there any reasonable way to :


    [A] netboot Debian

    [B] toss it on a scrap heap for re-cycle


Would love to hear any input from folks who have tried.

I haven't this kind of server, but some others Sparc64. OpenBSD and NetBSD don't run on M3000. You can test FreeBSD that supported some
SPARC64, but...

@Bertrand:
Did you actually test OpenBSD on a M3000? Because from what can be read
at [1]:

```
Supported machines
[...]
* Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise M4000/M5000/M8000/M9000
[...]
OpenBSD 4.4 may trigger a hardware fault on the SPARC Enterprise M4000/M5000/M8000/M9000 that can only be cleared by a field engineer. A workaround for this problem is available in OpenBSD 4.5 and later.
[...]
Unsupported machines
[...]
* Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise M3000
* Sun SPARC Enterprise M3000

OpenBSD may trigger a hardware fault on the SPARC Enterprise M3000. With
older versions of the firmware, this fault can only be cleared by a
field engineer. Make sure you update the firmware before trying to run
OpenBSD on these machines. Firmware XCP 1116 and later are known to
allow end users to clear the fault themselves. There is no evidence that running OpenBSD actually damages the hardware.
[...]
```

It actually sounds more like OpenBSD could work on a M3000 like on a
M4000 and up. And if a recent enough firmware is running, user's can
clear the possible fault - triggered by an ancient OpenBSD 4.4? -
themselves, if need be with modern OpenBSD versions.

I don't have one of these but would assume that the hardware
configuration (chipset, etc.) of M3000 and M4000 should be close enough
to expect to run the same OS.

[1]: http://www.openbsd.org/sparc64.html

UPDATE:
Ok, I did a search for M3000 and OpenBSD and stumbled upon this thread here:

https://sparc.openbsd.narkive.com/oKF6NMGJ/hardware-fault-on-m3000

It confirms that users can clear that fault with a recent enough
firmware - well, Mark Kettenis is also the maintainer of the sparc64
port of OpenBSD - but also states that the M3000 is different to M4000
and up in handling character output on the serial console. WTF?

So maybe using a graphics card and keyboard instead of the serial
console to boot this machine could make it work with OpenBSD? Just make
sure to never output anything on the serial console... :-)

****

For Linux on SPARC64 (on a PRIMEPOWER 250 with SPARC64 V+ actually) you
can see how that goes on [2]. GRUB runs there and Linux even starts to
boot (incl. printout of kernel messages) but leads to a "RED State
Exception" really fast. OpenBSD runs fine on them, though.

[2]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-sparc/2018/02/msg00074.html

Cheers,
Frank

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Hi!

On 5/16/22 00:15, Chris Quayle wrote:

It is a damn good machine. However it can *only* run Solaris 10 or maybe
Solaris 11.3 and in both cases you need an Oracle contract. Otherwise
good luck getting updates or access to the IPS repo.

Never bothered about updates, but what is the IPS repo ?. Could we
have a group buy for, say a V120 and share ?. Depends on the cost I'
guess.

The last update released for 11.3 is called

"Oracle Solaris 11.3 Limited Support Updates (LSRU) 11.3.36.24.0"

and can be found on some torrent sites.

For Solaris 11.4, you can just install the CBE version which has full access
to update repositories for free.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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On 05/15/22 22:25, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 5/15/22 14:58, Chris Quayle wrote:

On 05/15/22 15:57, Chris Newport wrote:

On 15/05/2022 14:52, Dennis Clarke wrote:

On 5/14/22 17:52, Rick Leir wrote:

From folks who have tried? Sorry, no. If the info below is not
helpful, sorry and please just delete my message.
Is illumos or SmartOS an option? Info from Bryan Cantrill:
http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/


Following a few links from that article to
https://illumos.org/docs/about/distro/ , I see that
derived systems claim to have SPARC builds: Tribblix, DilOS, and V9os. >>>>>
cheers -- Rick

Yep .. been there and read that. Even if any of those did work at
all we
are going in a circle and landing back on some Solaris thing. That is
not really of any value any more. It is beginning to sound a lot like
Oracle sold a whack of machines to people about ten years ago and they >>>> are all dead pieces of trash and junk today. Nothing runs there any
more.

They should still run just fine on older versions of Solaris (8 or 10 ?) >>> and similar
aged Debian and BSD variants. Not trash, just stuck in their own time.

I have customers still running Ultra 60s and a few still on ancient
stuff running
SunOs 4.1.4, they still run the tasks they were bought for and will be
replaced
with modern kit when they finally die. The killer will be the SCSI
disks.

Been running Solaris 10 on an M3000 for 5 or 6 years now, for the home
lab server. Has a perfectly usable desktop with the addition of an
XVR300 graphics card and a pcie usb card, as the usb on the M3k is
not reachable from the host os. Forget the make, but just looked for a
usb card with a chipset supported under the sol 10 hcl.

Damn good machine and faster than any other Spparc ever run here...

It is a damn good machine. However it can *only* run Solaris 10 or maybe Solaris 11.3 and in both cases you need an Oracle contract. Otherwise
good luck getting updates or access to the IPS repo.

Never bothered about updates, but what is the IPS repo ?. Could we
have a group buy for, say a V120 and share ?. Depends on the cost I'
guess.

As I keep saying over and over and over I wanted to run Linux on it.

If you dig around the Oracle site, there is an early version of Linux
Sparc, though development seems to have come to a halt. Have a copy
here, but never tried to install it as yet, but the sources might
be a help for other work, if available.

I gave up with Linux after systemd and run FreeBSD as far as possible
these days. No Sparc support since 11.2, but have 11.0 rel running on
both a V215 and T1405. No hardware framebuffer, but built between 2 and
300 packages to run an Xvnc remote desktop. At least on the V215,
it's plenty fast enough to do some real work. Still trying to build
Firefox, but so many dependencies. Seems very solid.

Solaris was taken out behind a chemical shed and killed five years
ago and yes Bryan Cantrill would know the truth :

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2017/09/04/the-sudden-death-and-eternal-life-of-solaris/

Speaking as someone that was on the OpenSolaris governance board
there was nothing but deathly silence right up until the Lawnmower man
pulled the plug one night. No discussion. Just silence.

Dennis Clarke

I'm still sore about Sun as well. Early Sun 3 that got me started in
unix and have been running Sparc boxes for decades now. Also testing
Open Indiana Hipster on X86, but no Sparc version, sadly.

Have various Sun machines and parts if that would be any help to the
group, T2000, T5220 iirc and perhaps others, all bought along the way to experiment with. In the UK though...

Chris

.

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On 5/15/22 18:18, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hi!

On 5/16/22 00:15, Chris Quayle wrote:

It is a damn good machine. However it can *only* run Solaris 10 or maybe >>> Solaris 11.3 and in both cases you need an Oracle contract. Otherwise
good luck getting updates or access to the IPS repo.

Never bothered about updates, but what is the IPS repo ?. Could we
have a group buy for, say a V120 and share ?. Depends on the cost I'
guess.

The last update released for 11.3 is called

"Oracle Solaris 11.3 Limited Support Updates (LSRU) 11.3.36.24.0"

and can be found on some torrent sites.

I have 11.3 but need an Oracle contract to get much of anything done.

For Solaris 11.4, you can just install the CBE version which has full access to update repositories for free.

Does not work on anything previous to a T4. At all. Period. Will not
install and detects unsupported hardware. The Lawnmower strikes again.


--
Dennis Clarke
RISC-V/SPARC/PPC/ARM/CISC
UNIX and Linux spoken
GreyBeard and suspenders optional

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Hi Dennis!

On 5/16/22 03:58, Dennis Clarke wrote:

The last update released for 11.3 is called

"Oracle Solaris 11.3 Limited Support Updates (LSRU) 11.3.36.24.0"

and can be found on some torrent sites.

I have 11.3 but need an Oracle contract to get much of anything done.

No, you don't. You download the update - which is 20 GB in size - and you get an
Solaris repository with the latest package versions for Solaris 11.3.

Paying Oracle customers don't get anything more recent either unless you have an
extra LTSS support contract which costs a lot of money.

I have used the 11.3 LRU update on my SPARC T5240 without any issues.

For Solaris 11.4, you can just install the CBE version which has full access >> to update repositories for free.

Does not work on anything previous to a T4. At all. Period. Will not install and detects unsupported hardware. The Lawnmower strikes again.

I didn't claim otherwise. I just said that Oracle is kind enough to at least provide Solaris 11.4 to the community for free now with full access to the update repositories.

Adrian

--
.''`. John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' : Debian Developer
`. `' Physicist
`- GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546 0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913

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On May 16, 2022, at 1:20 PM, Dennis Clarke <dclarke@blastwave.org> wrote:

On 5/16/22 04:01, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hi Dennis!
On 5/16/22 03:58, Dennis Clarke wrote:

The last update released for 11.3 is called

"Oracle Solaris 11.3 Limited Support Updates (LSRU) 11.3.36.24.0"

and can be found on some torrent sites.

I have 11.3 but need an Oracle contract to get much of anything done.

No, you don't. You download the update - which is 20 GB in size

Really? An update from somewhere eh ?

Those package updates are signed. The package manager won’t install anything that has not been signed with Oracle’s signing key.

Adrian

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On 5/16/22 04:01, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:

Hi Dennis!

On 5/16/22 03:58, Dennis Clarke wrote:

The last update released for 11.3 is called

"Oracle Solaris 11.3 Limited Support Updates (LSRU) 11.3.36.24.0"

and can be found on some torrent sites.

I have 11.3 but need an Oracle contract to get much of anything done.

No, you don't. You download the update - which is 20 GB in size

Really? An update from somewhere eh ?

Paying Oracle customers don't get anything more recent either unless you have an
extra LTSS support contract which costs a lot of money.

Yeah .. I had that. Nope. Not any longer.

I have used the 11.3 LRU update on my SPARC T5240 without any issues.

Well, as I said, I have 11.3 on the M3000 brick now.

For Solaris 11.4, you can just install the CBE version which has full access
to update repositories for free.

Does not work on anything previous to a T4. At all. Period. Will not
install and detects unsupported hardware. The Lawnmower strikes again.

I didn't claim otherwise. I just said that Oracle is kind enough ....

Oh please .. words never spoken nor written before just appeared.

Dennis

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