Solaris fried
As I was waiting for linux to work on T1000 I played around a little with solaris 10. It's some kind of a different world for a linux user, but it's not completely unfamiliar.
I installed gcc, eclipse with cdt and subversion, different gnu utilities like grep and tar (because the solaris versions are not ... well ... so much fun). It all worked fine. Using crosstool from Dan Kegel and compiling a build system I like - cmake - made me some headache. Finally I found some hint that adding "/usr/local/lib" to the standard solaris search path might help. "crle -l" is the tool for that. The german helptext said that this command would add a path to the search path. What it really does is replace the search path. That is what I know now.
So "crle -l /usr/locallib" definetly kills your system. Don't even think about using it. Solaris will not find the standard librarys anymore. I don't need to say, that crle requires a library to work. Needless to say that this setting is stored permanently. No chance to undo it.
A cure would be to boot from cd. But the T1000 has no cdrom drive.
So evaluating solaris is on hold at the moment. I hope Dave Miller solves the linux network problem soon ...
What happened before - booting linux
I was a little clueless what command is required to boot linux on the T1000 via network. Fortunately Colm MacCárthaigh could help me. His
blog is btw an excellent resource if you are interested in how T2000 performs with linux compared to solaris10.
Entering "boot net boot.img base-config/package-selection= base-config/install-language-support=false" at OpenBoot prompt does the trick.
After some waiting you can see linux kernel booting and ubuntu setup starts.
Now for the bad part:
[ 11.632520] tg3.c:v3.47 (Dec 28, 2005)
[ 11.798541] eth0: Tigon3 [partno(Sun 570X) rev 9001 PHY(5714)]
(PCIX:133MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet 00:14:4f:21:d8:b4
[ 12.303733] eth0: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] Split[0]
WireSpeed[1] TSOcap[1]
[ 12.748787] eth0: dma_rwctrl[76148000]
[ 12.947836] eth1: Tigon3 [partno(Sun 570X) rev 9001 PHY(5714)]
(PCIX:133MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet 00:14:4f:21:d8:b5
[ 13.549771] eth1: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] Split[0]
WireSpeed[1] TSOcap[1]
[ 13.996801] eth1: dma_rwctrl[76148000]
[ 14.203520] eth2: Tigon3 [partno(Sun 570X) rev 2100 PHY(5704)]
(PCIX:100MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet 00:14:4f:21:d8:b6
[ 14.802860] eth2: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] Split[0]
WireSpeed[1] TSOcap[1]
[ 15.246159] eth2: dma_rwctrl[769f4000]
[ 15.454006] eth3: Tigon3 [partno(Sun 570X) rev 2100 PHY(5704)]
(PCIX:100MHz:64-bit) 10/100/1000BaseT Ethernet 00:14:4f:21:d8:b7
[ 16.027869] eth3: RXcsums[1] LinkChgREG[0] MIirq[0] ASF[0] Split[0]
WireSpeed[1] TSOcap[1]
[ 16.387325] eth3: dma_rwctrl[769f4000]
These kernel messages mean that the T1000 has a Broadcom Tigon 3 gigabit ethernet chipset, whereas the T2000 is equipped with Intel eepro.
The result is that until now
networking does not work for linux on the T1000 :(.
I am in contact with
Fabbione (the ubuntu maintainer) and
David Miller (the kernel developer) in order to solve this. But because of the time difference between Europe and US progress is slow. We will see what this day brings.
What happened before - linux is on it's way
The T1000 automagically boots into Solaris10 setup. So I answered all the annoying questions, using the dead slow 9600 bps serial over telnet connection. "uadmin 2 0" makes an end to this. So we should be on Open Boot Prompt "{0} ok" right now.
Time to deactivate Solaris autoboot: "setenv autoboot? false".
For booting linux I chose the ubuntu bootable
network image.
In order to boot T1000 via network you have to prepare two things: a rarp server and a tftp server. No problem, debian delivers it all via apt-get, package names are "tftpd" and "rarpd".
To configure rarpd you have to create/expand a file "/etc/ethers". There you simply put a line containing mac adress of eth0/bge0 of your T1000 (can be found on the neon orange customer information sheet) and desired ip-adress for it. Then simply "/etc/init.d/rarpd start" and rarpd is up and running.
To setup tftpd you should check that the tftp-line in "/etc/inetd.conf" is not commented out. All files that should be served have to be in "/tftpboot" dir. So we put our bootable network image there. After that there has to be a symbolic link to this file. The link name is the ip address of the T1000 coded in hex uppercase letters. For example 192.168.1.1 translates to C0A80101. "ln -s boot.img C0A80101" should do the trick.
What happened before - the arrival
On April 12 I decided that joining the Sun Try and Buy campaign for the Sun Fire T1000 and T2000 servers would be an interesting idea.
So I applied for a T1000 (6 cores, 1.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 80 GB hd) for evaluation at work.
After easter vacation I got mail from Sun. We were accepted for the program and the T1000 should be shipped on April 28. Cool!
On April 21 I got a big package from Sun. More than one week early. Cool!
So we opened the package. Here is what we found (all pictures taken by my co-worker Björn Herwig):
Me (right) and my co-worker Dr. Dirk Stieler(left) were amazed about this nifty part of hardware.
The design of the front panel is way cool.
Few connectors on the back panel, but - everything you need :)
Sun is supplying a CAT5-serial to DB9 adaptor with the T1000, so connecting it to my linux workstation was no problem. Setting minicom to 9600, 8N1 and connecting the T1000 to power supply was done in few seconds.
Initial startup forced an extensive power on self test. This took some time. One cup of coffee later, the system management console (ALOM) prompt was active.
First I setup my password (using the "password" command ;)) then configured
telnet for the net management port using the interactive setup command "setupsc".
After this I had to use "resetsc" to restart the machine.
Telnet to the T1000 worked out of the box. Fine. Time to make some noise now.
"poweron" started the machine.
And man was it loud. I mean really loud. Some marketing guy who was around in our development department was shocked. His eyes getting bigger and bigger staring at the machine. That was fun.
Ok, so better "poweroff" fast. Ah. Silence. What a pleasure. Time to take the cutie to our server room now. Byebye T1000. See you via telnet.
germany, 7:10 am
I woke up this morning and thought: today is the day to start my blog.
Well - here it is.
Currently I am busy with the new Sun Fire T1000 Server at
work.
I will post some details about the linux setup on this machine later today.
