The Sun Shack
A FREE Archive of 
Data and
Information
Owned, Maintained and Developed by Craig Dewick
www.sunshack.org - www.sunshack.info
This is now the second entry page of the site. It's the first stage in re-designing the site for our 2007 (which is our tenth anniversary year!) to make it load faster. This page is currently very over-loaded with material which will take a fair amount of time to load on a dial-up connection, and each of the major parts found on this page will become seperate sub-pages over time.
The SunShack is an independent, public domain website located
in Sydney, Australia and has absolutely no connection with Sun
Microsystems Inc. in the USA, or with Sun Microsystems here in
Australia. All information is provided here entirely free of charge
with no warranty or guarantee of any kind. Please read and
familiarise yourself with our full legal statement
if you're unsure of your rights and responsibilities before using any
of the information presented here.
|
To quickly locate the section you're after, use the index below:
Sun Shack MAIN Index 
- - Sun Microsystems Mailing Lists and WebRings,
- - Online Web-Based Forums which are free to register and use,
- - Image Galleries which are free to register and use,
- - Newsgroups on Usenet, etc.,
- - Patches for SunOS/Solaris installations (including Solbourne systems),
- - Data Reference Sources,
- - FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) links,
- - Other Miscellaneous References,
- - Operating Systems for Sun Hardware,
- - Useful System Sdministration Software,
- - Other Software Resources,
- - Anti-Microsoft Campaigns,
- - Would you like to Make a Donation?
Sun Microsystems Mailing Lists and WebRings
SRK_Specials 
- The original Sun
Ripened Kernels mailing list for Sun hardware special item announcements.
With the cessation of commercial trading on Ebay (since September
2006) this might take on a lot more significance again in the future.
Aussie-Sun - If you are located in
Australia, New Zealand or a neighbouring country, and you have
an interest in hardware and software from Sun Microsystems and compatible vendors,
then the Aussie-Sun mailing list could be the
place for you...
Cobalt_Users - Sun abandoned online
support for Cobalt Networks appliance server products in April
2006 and this mailing list is provided as an alternative.
Additionally, you are encouraged to explore the Sun Microsystems Users
and Enthusiasts WebRing that provides a way for you to share your
Sun-related enthusiast website(s) with thousands of potential extra
visitors!
Note that there are also a series of online forums available though some people prefer mailing lists and some prefer web-based forums.
Online Web-Based Forums 
>
Please explore and contribute to our online web-based
forums if you would like to discuss any topic relating to:
Image Galleries >
Please explore and contribute to our image galleries
if you have any Sun-related or similar images that you'd like to share with
other like-minded Sun server and workstation users and enthusiasts!
Newsgroups on Usenet, etc.
There are a number of newsgroups hosted on Usenet, and other
regional news heirachies, which cater for the Sun community:
| Newsgroups on Usenet, etc. Covering Sun Microsystems Topics | |
|---|---|
| aus.computers.sun | Local discussion forum for Australia and New Zealand |
| uk.comp.sys.sun | Local discussion forum for the UK and neighbouring countries |
| comp.sys.sun.admin | The main Usenet newsgroup for system administration and related issues |
| comp.sys.sun.announce | Announcments about new products and solutions (this is a moderated Usenet newsgroup) |
| comp.sys.sun.hardware | Sun hardware discussion forum (including 3rd-party and Sun-clone hardware and systems) |
| comp.sys.sun.misc | Miscellaneous discussion about Sun hardware and software |
| comp.sys.sun.wanted | Sun hardware and software trading newsgroup |
| alt.sys.sun | An alternative discussion forum for everything to do with Sun systems |
| comp.unix.solaris | This group is specific to SunOS 5.x (aka Solaris 2.x) discussion on both Sparc and Intel platforms |
| misc.forsale.computers.workstation | Not just for Sun equipment, but there's a lot of Sun gear traded in this Usenet newsgroup |
Patches for SunOS/Solaris Installations including Solbourne systems running OS/MP
If you are looking for information about patches for SunOS and/or Solaris
installations, the best place to look is SunSolve. This is the official repository
for all Sun patches and patch kits for SunOS 5.x (aka Solaris
2.x) and above on Sparc (Sun-4 architecture and up) and
80x86 (bleh!) platforms. If you're located in Australia or
New Zealand, check out the Australian mirror site for speedier
access.
All of Sun's public patches and patch reports for SunOS 4.x and above are available via SunSolve FTP, or the Australian mirror. Note that patches for SunOS 4.x are only available via FTP, even though patch reports are still on the web pages.
Also note that patches for the Sun-3/3x series are no longer available from SunSolve, but they are probably still available from Heiko Krupp's Sun-3 Archive.
Solbourne OS/MP
(SunOS 4.1.3 clone) patches
For those of you who possess Solbourne Kbus multiprocessor Sparc
clone systems, OS/MP (Operating System /
Multi-Processor) patches are provided in the first instance by
Grumman Systems Support
Corporation. If you have a current Solbourne support contract, you can
contact Grumman for a password to the complete OS/MP patch distribution.Unfortunately, Grumman, like Sun, don't put all patches in the public domain, so I've made available for ftp all the public patches for OS/MP 4.1C (the most recent version of OS/MP).
The following are some other major sources of data and information about Sun
Microsystems and related equipment:
Data Reference Sources
Sun's Own
Documentation Server @ docs.sun.com
Sun has it's own documentation server located at docs.sun.com. Most documentation produced by
Sun is available there in a variety of formats - notably HTML but
there are a lot of PDF files too.
The Sun
Shack Data Archive
My personal collection of information tid-bits,
etc. which I've created mostly by myself and/or collected during the
time I have been building, operating and maintaining Sun machines. During
this time I've been trying to learn and understand as much as I can about
Sun software and hardware. It's a never-ending process...
Special Notes: 
David Tong's
excellent Sun
Framebuffer FAQ, along with his Colourmap and Sun Framebuffer
History FAQ's now have a local Australian presense in my archive, as do
Sun's Field Engineer Handbooks!
The Sun hardware image collections have been imported into the new image galleries and will slowly been updated and edited to provide more reference info with the pictures.
If you have any useful Sun hardware information that you think other people
would find interesting, especially if it's not easily available anywhere
else, please send me some email with the details.
Make sure you unpoison the email address to remove the anti-spam
feature.
Sun's System
Adminstrators Resource Portal @ BigAdmin
The BigAdmin portal is Sun's
Web-based, community-driven repository of resources specifically for
system administrators -- by sys admins. Keeping in the tradition of
bulletin boards, the BigAdmin portal enables users to both receive and post
useful information, resources, and tips. The BigAdmin team continually posts
useful, cool things that sys admins care about. However, realising that the
team can't identify all resources that are available, they also encourage
the user community to submit things that they find useful.
The Sun-3
Archive
The Sun 3 Archive is an excellent
place to check for any information relating to the Sun-3 (Motorola
68020 based) and Sun-3x (68030 based) workstations.
Information on all aspects of Sun-3 and Sun-3x series hardware and firmware
is available.This archive is maintained by Heiko Krupp, but it contains information contributed by many people.
The Sun
Hardware Reference
The Sun Hardware
Reference contains a myriad of information about Sun hardware. If you
are building, maintaining, and/or operating older Sun machines, you
need to keep a copy of this reference handy.The reference was maintained by James Birdsall with contributions from many others (including myself), however there are enough web-based references around now that are better alternative sources of most of the info.
Stokely Consulting, operated by Celeste and Peter Stokely, provides well-rounded consulting services on all aspects of Unix system administration and management, as well as hosting a myriad of web pages containing an endless supply of useful information.
The most useful collection of web pages they provide are their Unix
Serial Port Resources, which cover virtually everything to do with
serial ports. Their web pages concentrate mainly on SunOS and
Solaris systems, but cover others as well.
Featured under this grouping are two tutorials on using modems and terminals with Sun workstations. They are:
- - Celeste's
Tutorial on SunOS 4.1.x (aka Solaris 1.1.x) Modems and Terminals, and
- - Celeste's
Tutorial on SunOS 5.x (aka Solaris 2.x) Modems and Terminals
The Solbourne Shack
Solbourne Computer were a company that built their own Sparc based
clone machines that ran a SunOS/Solaris-derived operating system called
OS/MP. Solbourne developed their own bus system called Kbus
which was much better than Sun's VME derivative, and they succeeded where
Sun failed (until Solaris 2.4, aka SunOS 5.4, became reality) in bringing
real multi-processor support to the Sparc platform.Solbourne no longer exists as a computer manufacturer and does not support it's hardware or software anymore, so like real Sun products which are not supported any more, information is scarce. However, Stephen Dowdy at the University of Colorado's Department of Computer Science, maintains the Solbourne Shack, which is a goldmine of information about Solbourne's Sparc-clone systems.
Unix Guru
Universe
Touted as the official home page for Unix system
administrators, Unix Guru Universe is
definitely a very diverse site which certainly does provide a wealth of
information about some 70+ flavours of the Unix
operating system.UGU offers tutorials for people new to Unix, along with an excellent search engine tailored for use by Unix system administrators who need to locate information quickly.
Information about events, software and hardware vendors, system security, and a range of other topics, is all available to help out Unix sysadmin's get their job done more efficiently.
FAQ's are documents containing a series of frequently-asked
questions about a particular topic or subject. A number of
people maintain FAQ's on issues relating to Sun hardware and software, and
links to the ones I know about are presented here: FAQ
(Frequently Asked Questions) Links
The Sun
NVRAM/HostID FAQ:
- The Sun
NVRAM/HostID FAQ, written by Mark
Henderson, answers questions commonly asked in the
comp.sys.sun.admin and comp.sys.sun.hardware newsgroups about
the hostid and NVRAM/IDPROM chips in Sun workstations. These
chips often fail after about 5 to 7 years from the date they were originally
installed.
As a side-effect, this document also tells you how to change the hostid and default ethernet address of a Sun workstation. These two operations are not trivial and can void your RTU (Right To Use) license for SunOS/Solaris.
- The Sun
CD-ROM FAQ:
- The Sun CD-ROM FAQ
addresses most of the commonly asked questions about using CD-ROM
drives with Sun workstations. Issues such as compatibility with rebadged
Sony CD-ROM's sold by Sun, and modifiying units from other manufacturers are
covered.
The FAQ was originally written by Kyle Downey, and is now being maintanined by Mike Frisch.
- The Sun
Framebuffer and Colourmap FAQ's:
- The Sun
Framebuffer FAQ covers lots of information about Sun's framebuffers for
Sparc machines. It's maintained by David
Tong, who works for Sun, so he has access to lots of info that isn't
readily available otherwise.
David also maintains the Sun Colourmap FAQ and the Sun Framebuffer History FAQ which should be read alongside David's framebuffer FAQ since the three documents are complementary to each other.
Special Note:
The Sun Framebuffer
FAQ, along with the Colourmap and Sun Framebuffer History
FAQ's now have a local Australian presense in my local Sun
Shack Data Archive, so if you can't get the documents from the first set
of links, try my local archive instead. - The Sun
Computer Administration FAQ:
- This is a collection of common
questions posted to the 'comp.sys.sun.*' newsgroup heirachy. It
it maintained by Rob Montjoy.
- The Solaris
2 (aka SunOS 5.x) FAQ:
- A list of frequently-asked
questions about Solaris 2.x (aka SunOS 5.x) which is maintained by Casper Dik.
- The Sun
Managers mailing list FAQ:
- A list of common
questions posted to the Sun
Managers mailing list. The FAQ is updated twice a month and is intended
to benefit readers of the Sun system administrators list as well as reduce
traffic to the list by providing quick answers to common problems.
Back to the Main Index
Other miscellaneous sources of reference information are listed here:
Other Miscellaneous References
The Master Sun
Disk Format Parameter Reference (aka 'format.dat'):- The master Sun
format.dat is the most up to date version of the 'format.dat'
file supplied as part of every SunOS/Solaris distribution. If you have a new
disk or tape device and you need to know it's formatting parameters (to be
used with the 'format' utility) check this file first to see if
someone else has contributed the entries you're after.
The master format.dat file is maintained by John DiMarco, however corrections and/or updates should not be sent directly to John, but you can instead submit them by email to the Sun Managers people.
-
SystemNews:
- Since its inception in 1997, System News has helped Sun Channel
Partners increase their installed base business (IBB) by providing their
customers with news services in print, on the web and by email. System News
also provides web and newsletter services to Sun Microsystems in the US and
WorldWide. SystemNews newsletters are published frequently in the
'comp.sys.sun.annouce' Usenet newsgroup.
-
SunHelp:
- Bill Bradford's SunHelp is
another alternative site for links to Sun data and information sites. It's a
good alternative if this site doesn't have the information you need, and
Bill makes sure the site is always up to date with the latest news about Sun
and related issues.
You can email Bill with any comments about his site.
-
Suns-at-Home:
- Suns-at-Home is a
mailing list for people who own and use Sun workstations at
home and therefore don't normally have access to the full range of
resources that corporate users have at their fingertips. The list is managed
by Dwight McKay, and it covers topics such as:
- system maintenance
and sources for parts
- free software
- dial-up access (SLIP,
PPP, modems)
- uses of Suns at Home
(Home control, UUCP, Internet access)Digests come out weekly when there's a sufficient volume of messages.
- Cuddletech -
Unix with Sex Appeal!:
- If you're after something on a slightly different plane, then check out
Cuddletech. This site is about as
hardcore Unix as you can get! Be warned, it's quite unlike any
Unix-lover's site you have seen before! 8-)
- The Rough
Guide to Mbus Modules:
- This site is a reference-guide to CPU
configuration of MBus-based computers, and a brief reference-guide to
the available MBus modules. The guide was created and is maintained by Mike Spooner.
- The Sparc
Product Directory:
- Are you searching around to find out who might be able to supply you
with a particular hardware product for your Sun or Sun-compatible
Sparc-based machine(s)? The Sparc Product Directory
might be the right place to look.
This site is a very extensive search engine for Sun and Sun-compatible hardware and related products.
Back to the Main Index
There are quite a few choices when it comes to choosing a mature, stable
operating system to install on Sun hardware:
Operating Systems for Sun Hardware
Solaris
Sun's primary operating system is Solaris. It runs mainly on
Sparc machines, but Sun's decision to start selling machines based on
x86-based Opteron processors means Sun now has a fully-developed
strand of Solaris for AMD Opteron-based machines as well.The Solaris operating environment is comprised of two parts:
Prior to 1991, SunOS was based on BSD Unix and was released in versions up to 4.1.4. From then on, Sun made a radical change to a totally new code base for SunOS which was based on AT&T SYSV Unix, and the releases of SunOS since then have had version numbers in the 5.x range.
Sun first started bundling a graphical user environment with SunOS near the end of the SunOS 4.1.x development, calling the last few releases by the new name of Solaris with version numbers for the combined OS + GUI operating environment starting from 1.0.
When Sun shifted to SunOS 5.x, they changed the Solaris version numbering as well. From SunOS 5.1 up to SunOS 5.6, Sun referred to Solaris officially as Solaris 2.x, with the 'x' being the same as the SunOS 5 minor release number. From the release of SunOS 5.7, Sun changed their approach again, and since SunOS 5.7's release, Solaris versions have officially dropped the '2.' at the front of the version so Solaris 7 and upwards have co-incided with the release of the SunOS 5.7 and upwards operating systems.
OpenBSD
The OpenBSD project produces a free, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based
Unix-like operating system. The development team of volunteers work to
emphasize portability, standardisation, correctness, security and integrated cryptography.
OpenBSD supports binary emulation of most programs from SVR4 (ie. Solaris),
FreeBSD, Linux, BSD/OS, SunOS and HP-UX.For Sun enthusiasts such as ourselves, ports of interest are the OpenBSD sparc (32-bit) and sparc64 (64-bit) ports. There is at present no supported port of OpenBSD for the Sun3/3x Motorola 68020/68030-based family - the Sun3/3x port has been discontinued though it may be supported again in the future.
NetBSD
Are you interested in an open-source alternative to
SunOS/Solaris? Are you interested in working with an operating system that
is up-to-date and continuous developing? If so, you might be
interested in NetBSD.NetBSD is actively supporting Sun users/enthusiasts with ports for the Sun3/3x (Motorola-based), Sun4/4c/4m (32-bit Sparc-based), and Sun4u (64-bit UltraSparc-based) Sun platforms.
If you are located in Australia, there's a local mirror site which might prove more accessible.
Debian Linux
for Sparc
Continuing along the open source tip, if your preference is
for a SYSV-based Unix OS instead of a BSD-ish one, take a look at Debian.Debian is probably the most popular version of Linux for Sparc which is released totally under the GNU Public License (aka GPL), and as a result Debian is completely open-source. Like NetBSD, it's support base is not huge, but is growing all the time as interest in alternative operating systems for Sparc-based machines grows.
UltraLinux -
Index of Linux Ports for Sparc Systems
UltraLinux is the name given to the port of Linux the
SPARC family of processors most commonly found in Sun workstations and
clones. It supports most workstations including the older 32bit SPARC
processors and the newer 64bit UltraSPARC based workstations.The port began in late 1994. Working with very little technical information about the hardware, David Miller, Miguel de Icaza and Peter Zaitcev had a reasonable stable system by the end of 1995. After that the development team grew as did the list of features and machines supported.
By October 1995 Red Hat had released its Linux distribution for the SPARC platform. In early 1996 Dave began to work on support of the UltraSPARC processors. Now Linux runs on almost all of various SPARC hardware and supports the majority of additional hardware available for them.
An Australian mirror of the UltraLinux website is located here.
Useful System Administration Software for SunOS/Solaris and Other Unix Platforms
The following software packages are very useful for assist system
administrators of SunOS/Solaris (and other Unix platform) systems:
- OpenSSH
- secure remote login and file copy services
- 'OpenSSH' is a
FREE version of the SSH protocol suite of network connectivity tools
that increasing numbers of people on the Internet are coming to rely on.
Many users of telnet, rlogin, ftp, and other such programs might not realize
that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it
is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively
eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other network-level
attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides a myriad of secure tunneling
capabilities, as well as a variety of authentication methods.
OpenSSH uses the GPL'd OpenSSL library to provide many of it's cryptography features.
- The
Webalizer - web server and squid proxy server logfile analysis tool
- The 'Webalizer' package from
Bradford Barrett is a powerful analysis tool for web server, squid
proxy server, etc. log files.
- memconf
- memory configuration utility for Sun SparcStations.
- 'memconf'
is a superb utility written in Perl which determines the
configuration of the RAM modules in Sun workstations. It uses the SunOS 5.x
'prtconf' and 'prtdiag' utilities to provide core information
that's processed by the script. Note that SunOS 4.x isn't
supported.
- libpcap
- packet capture library:
- 'libpcap' is a
specialised packet capture library that supports both SunOS 4.x (BSD-based)
and SunOS 5.x (SYSV-based) on Sun Sparcstations.
-
scsiinfo - SCSI disk paremeter extractor:
- 'scsiinfo'
extracts formatting and other parameters from SCSI hard disk drives that
aren't listed in /etc/format.dat and can optionally create entries to
be added to your system's format.dat file.
- tcpdump
- TCP debugging aid:
- 'tcpdump' is a protocol
packet capture and dumper utility. It requires the 'libpcap' library
mentioned above.
-
traceroute - packet route tracing utility:
- 'traceroute'
displays the route packets take to travel from one host to another. Note : The traceroute utility is now included as a
standard part of the Solaris operating environment.
-
xcpustate - snapshot performance monitor:
- 'xcpustate'
(which runs under X-Windows) can monitor CPU load distribution (on
multi-processor systems), as well as disk performance, on Sun systems
running SunOS 4.x and 5.x variants.
-
sysinfo - system information interrogator:
- 'sysinfo' displays
various types of information about a host's hardware and operating system
software.
-
change-sun-hostid - change real or apparent hostID:
- 'change-sun-hostid'
is a collection of C programs and scripts for systems administrators which
allow one to change the real or apparent hostID of a Sun workstation.
-
sudo - superuser do:
- 'sudo' allows a system
administrator to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run
some (or all) commands as root or another user while logging the
commands and arguments
Back to the Main Index
I use a very large array of software which is either public-domain or
shareware, and this software greatly expands the boundaries within
which my machine(s) can perform.
Other Software Resources
There are many resources available for finding high-quality non-commercial software, so here are a few that you may find useful:
- The Solaris
Package Archive for Sparc-based platforms:
- These files are supplied as a service to the internet community to allow
them to quickly
configure their machines with useful free software.
A package, in this sense of the word, is a installable collection of files with embedded configuration details which instruct the installing program on file attributes, locations, pre and post installation procedures and also system requirements. Solaris comes with the complete System V package tools installed. You don't need to do anything special to utilise them.
-
SunFreeware.com - Freeware for Solaris:
- Similar to the Solaris Package Archive, SunFreeware.com is another site which
provides pre-compiled software pacakges for Solaris systems. It's not
quite as focused as the previous site, but still contains just about all the
free pre-compiled software you're likely to need.
- The GNU
Project and the Free Software Foundation:
- The GNU Project was started in 1984 to
develop a completely-free Unix-like operating system. The result of this
ongoing project has been many high-quality, free software packages
that are streets ahead of the standard software utlities supplied by most IT
vendors.
The Free Software Foundation is dedicated to eliminating restrictions on copying, redistribution, understanding, and modification of computer programs. They do this by promoting the development and use of free software in all areas of computing---but most particularly, by helping to develop the GNU operating system.
- Jedi, Lios and
Circlet Software Catalogs:
- Jedi, Lios and Circlet are local machines on my network. All three
machines run an extensive array of software which is third-party
freeware and shareware, as distinct from the software supplied as part
of the operating system distribution(s).
- Unix
Audio Software:
- Audio hardware and software support for Unix systems is a rare
commodity, but slowly there is more audio support emerging as multimedia
becomes more integrated with contempory IT platforms. My Unix audio page contains
references to all of the audio hardware and software that I know about which
runs under Unix variants such as Linux
and Solaris.
- The
ready-to-go Solaris Helpers Page:
- If you are confused about how to go about adding extra
functionality to your web browser to support various multimedia data
object types, then take a look at the Solaris Helpers
Page which is maintained by Johan Hagman.
Back to the Main Index
- Boycott
Micro$oft
- Are you sick of the lack of competition in the information systems
industries, especially the software industry? Are you sick of companies that
believe they have a mandate to take over, monopolise and
control as much of the IS industry as they can, and ultimately control
and manipulate the way we lives our lives? If you are, join the Boycott Micro$oft campaign and support
competition, free markets and innovation.
- Dont be
Soft on Microsoft!
- Bill Gates is the modern-day equivalent of a Robber Baron, well on his way
to creating a Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft's operating system and software
are installed in a majority of the personal computers on the market today,
and because Microsoft controls the standards and architecture that control
the design of software, the company continues to capture market share.
When necessary, Microsoft buys up its competitors. Consumers are increasingly dependent on computers and the Internet for both business and personal communications. A Microsoft monopoly threatens to end innovation and leave consumers without competitive choices. Join NetAction's Consumer Choice Campaign today!
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