[OpenIndiana-discuss] [UNSUBSCRIBE]

[Jim Klimov]

On 2013-06-09 17:54, Fred Liu wrote:
> Ever IT staff knows the answer of your equivalent question.
> 
>> From: ken mays [mailto:maybird1776 at yahoo.com]
>> The question can pertain to 'does Oracle Linux 6.4, Solaris 11.0, and Solaris 10u1-u10 work or install on the new SPARC T5 or SPARC64-X servers?'.

I think it was a trick question ;)
Disregarding Linux, IMHO the point was that the code-bases of those
older Solaris releases were same as or close to what was available
to OpenSolaris when it was closed down and illumos appeared. So, if
that level of kernel support happens to be adequate to run on a new
server, lucky you (us). If not - then not. Likely, outside of Oracle
and Fujitsu nobody has the expertise and right to do that integration
properly. And until these boxes show up on eBay as "used" and old,
they are likely to run Oracle Solaris bought from Oracle anyway.

On a wider scale, I'd expect the "backward compatibility" of CPUs
to allow execution of older OS versions, at least if the family is
supported (sun4u/sun4v). There may be missing drivers for optimal
use of these CPUs (i.e. crypto acceleration, intimate knowledge of
threads' association to cores to optimize task queuing, etc.) but
as long as the HBAs and NICs have appropriate drivers, at least
some things might just work. Unless some CPU-specific errata is
needed as well...

I wonder if someone on the lists has access to a new box and can try
Martin's LiveDVD there just for kicks ;) So far he has explicitly
stated support for nearly all Sun server and desktop SPARC machines
released before 2011 - which is about the time that kernels diverged.

//Jim Klimov