[OpenIndiana-discuss] OpenSolaris on SPARC

Mon Jul 30 16:33:54 UTC 2012

Fantastic!  I can't wait to fire up my sb1000 again!

I have an xvr1200 but I have pretty much determined I will never be able 
to use that card again....

Do you know what card would work best?  I have an ati radeon (xvr 100?)  
card and a couple of those monstrous creator3ds.

On 07/30/12 02:13 AM, Martin Bochnig wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> yes, I resumed work a few weeks ago.
> X11:  problem solved(!)
>
> And weather SPARC is dead or not, I still have 18 SPARC boxes here in my room.
> Fully equipped with all existing frame buffers that ever existed
> (except XVR-200, XVR-300, XVR-1000 and XVR-1200 at this time, because
> I had sold them).
> I also have a T1000 now with PCIe x1 to x16 Adapter. Although this box
> has not even USB and only a single narrow PCEe slot, I could test the
> XVR-2500 that way. And OBP detects it as boot-console, although the
> T1000 was never intended to run in a non-headless configuration
>
> On SPARC I no longer fiddle with libdevinfo, libpciaccess and Xorg
> (weather libpciaccess based or old xserver 1.2), but instead I
> focussed on getting Xsun to function, which Alan  Coopersmith has
> thankfully opensourced 2 years ago in his spare time, just in the
> first, last and probably only ever moment it was possible (BIG
> THANKS!).
>
>
> BTW: If you visit Oracle's site, SPARC is still quite well and kicking.
> http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/t-series/sparc-t4-processor-ds-497205.pdf
>
>
> Or which other vendor can offer a comparable CPU with up to 64 threads
> running at up to 3.0GHz?
> Letting alone the low power consumption per cycle.
>
>
> My only problem with Illumos as code-base is, that much stuff
> belonging to legacy SPARC hardware (which includes all workstations)
> seems to have been dropped from Illumos.At least that was my first
> impression a month ago.  And for this reason I based my initial
> version of SPARC-OpenIndiana on Nevada 125 for the first demo release.
>
> That way I intend to convince folks, that we should merge in the
> missing platform specific pieces.
> But one step after another.
>
>
> After I had promised things in the past, this time I did not want to
> make _any_ public announcement, until the SPARC-OI demo iso is ready
> for download.
> Now that you started such a thread, staying silent was no longer an option.
> Yeas, there will be SPARC-OI.
> My personal goal is and always has been, that we can offer a
> functioning X-Windows.
> So it shouldn't be a server-only release, limited to serial console/RSC/Alom.
> And thanks to Alan's openXsun open-sourcing contribution, this dream
> has *finally* come true.
> The code can be found at
> http://dlc.sun.com/osol/x/downloads/openXsun/openXsun.tar.bz2 and is a
> stripped cut-down version. But meanwhile I added some missing
> functions to build/link it sucessfully. Plus it even functions now on
> my test machines
> (U1/U2/U5/U10/U30/U60/U80/SB100/SB150/SB1000/SB1500R/SB1500S/SB2000/SB2500R/SB2500S/Tadpole
> SPARCle/T1000). It only took a few days and was a child's game when
> compared to what is required to modify libdevinfo/libpciaccess/Xorg to
> get only a small number of frame buffers working, with  instabilities,
> minute-long PCI-scanning delays, crashes and bus errors.
> openXsun works now with my additions and it is a heaven's gift.
>
>
> Please give me 4 weeks for the preliminary SPARC-OI release.
> Everything incl. of course the src modifications will be released.
> Thanks for your patience,
>
>
> regards,
>
> Martin
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 29, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Jim Klimov <jimklimov at cos.ru> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>>    There are some discussions about whether illumos on SPARC is
>> a dead-end or not (i.e. whether it is stupid to buy HW systems
>> from the one vendor and not buy their software support, or if
>> there is more than one vendor, or if anyone would pick up the
>> open-sourced processor designs for the Niagaras and build some
>> cool appliances or servers). So, just for the anecdotal sake,
>> I wanted to share this weekend's experience about OpenSolaris
>> on SPARC - and how it saved the day.
>>
>>    While it may seem unlikely at this moment that new SPARC
>> systems would be rolled out for OI to get installed on them,
>> there are many already-deployed reliable boxes which would
>> run obsolete (or our new) software "until they fscking die".
>>
>>    I was asked to look at a T2000 with Sol 10u8 which did just
>> that: it died during what could have been fsck - if ZFS had
>> one. Apparently, the system's users did nothing formally
>> invalid, they were just zfs-sending and zfs-receiving some
>> datasets within the pool in order to recompress older data
>> with gzip-9, then they tried to destroy the older dataset
>> tree and rename the compressed copy to take its place.
>> Something went wrong, the pool locked up with no IOs taking
>> place (according to iostat). The "zfs" commands all hung,
>> however "zpool status" and friends did not. Filesystem
>> operations also went well, so running zones were properly
>> stopped and the box was ultimately rebooted. It did not
>> come back up.
>>
>>    Luckily, there was a Solaris installation server in
>> that network, so it took a few minutes to prepare a LAN
>> installation resource from a stashed SXCE snv_129_sparc
>> image, and boot the T2000 from the network, into single
>> user mode. OpenSolaris found nothing suspicious about
>> the data pool and the rpool, imported and exported them
>> without complaints. While at the rpool, we deleted the
>> /etc/zfs/zpool.cache file to allow the system to boot
>> its Solaris 10. It booted, but also hung at subsequent
>> "zpool import -R / pool" request - in the same way:
>> no iostat operations to report, and no errors in the
>> logs...
>>
>>    Back to the networked boot of OpenSolaris, where we
>> imported the data pool, destroyed the remaining old
>> uncompressed datasets and completed the renaming of
>> compressed datasets to take place of those ones,
>> transparently to the zones and other consumers.
>> This did unclog something, so the Solaris 10 image
>> did afterwards quickly import the pool and happily
>> uses it today.
>>
>>    Yesterday the old OpenSolaris SXCE for SPARC did
>> save the day. I can easily imagine hitting some bugs
>> in ZFS that were fixed after the last SXCE release,
>> where a hypothetical "OpenIndiana for SPARC" image
>> would be able to save us - even if it is not (yet)
>> used as the everyday OS for the box.
>>
>> Hope this story entertains someone and helps others,
>> //Jim Klimov
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Dr. Daniel Kjar
Assistant Professor of Biology
Division of Mathematics and Natural Sciences
Elmira College
1 Park Place
Elmira, NY 14901
607-735-1826
http://faculty.elmira.edu/dkjar

"...humans send their young men to war; ants send their old ladies"
	-E. O. Wilson