SUMMARY 2: Sun4c clients on Solaris 8 (continue)

With regard to some requests to my previous summary, I find it practical
to deepen and specify it in some more details in this summary 2.

Background:

First I will repeat that I myself haven't tried to boot Solaris 8 on my
diskless clients.  The reason is that my client architechture is sun4c,
while Solaris 8 only support sun4m and newer.  Therefore I had to add
the Solaris 7 End User OS support on my Solaris 8 server's /export
filesystem.  That is ca 300 MB total with 'client usr' in /export/exec. 

Because I should use the diskless sun4c's as X-terminals for the Solaris
8/CDE 1.4 application host and OS server, I expect some of the End User
Solaris 7 software and setup can be stripped and tuned for this purpose.
If some of you have a successful description for and experiece with
this, I would like to hear it.


1. Installing of the previous Adminsuite 2.3/Autoclient 2.1 (with Host
Manager) from the origianal Solaris 7 EAS 2.0 CD onto Solaris 8 was the
first, central problem.  The recommended Web Start and next the
admin_install script both ended without any successful installation.  

The Solaris 7 EAS 2.0 Installation Library doc (Oct 1998) page 46 lists
the 12 packages for Adminsuite 2.3/AutoClient 2.1 installed together. 
The Solstice launcher is there said to be dependent of the SUNWsadm1 and
SUNWmfrun.  

My solution was therefore to 'force' the installation throughout by help
of pkgadd like this:

# cd /cdrom/..../Adminsuite.../Solaris/sparc/pkgs/admin
# pkgadd -d . SUNW*

I skipped the warnings about package dependencies during the
installation.


2. After the installation, the Solstice Launcher Menue with Host Manager
could successfully be started on the Solaris 8 OS server:

% solstice&  


3. In my case I had to manually delete my previous /export/filesystems
(not /export itself) and then run fsck on /export. 


4. I also deleted (commented out) the previous server and client boot
and OS type info in /tftpboot and /etc/bootparams. 


5. Then the Host Manager was able to add the Solaris 7 OS services for
sun4c I wanted, next list the server system as generic and convert it to
OS server and lastly add the diskless client.   


I should like to hear back if and how possibly also Solaris 8 works
for diskless clients sun4m and newer.


Terje J. Hanssen

 

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: SUMMARY: Sun4c clients on Solaris 8
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 00:48:56 +0100
From: "Terje J. Hanssen" <nteknikk@monet.no>

I got no repy with solutions, but after some work I found a workaround
myselfe:

Sun with Solaris 8 don't longer support the sun4c architecture, and
therefore don't support the many SS1 (diskless) clients around.  Indeed
no Sparc based clients are longer supported, only the new SunRay 1 thin
client (terminal).

1. I succeeded with some 'hacking' to install the earlier Solstice
AdminSuite Host Manager from the Solaris 7 EAS 2.0 CD onto the Solaris 8
disk.  

2. Next I set up my Sparc as a Solaris 8 OS server with Solaris 7 in
addition, just to support the old sun4c clients as before.  That is on
the enlargered root slice I installed the Solaris 7's 'root' and 'usr'
in the Solaris 8 /export directory.

3. This made it possible to boot and run the SS1 diskless clients as X
terminals with the Solaris 7 root and usr image from the Sparc Solaris 8
OS server.  The latter itselfe boot and run Solaris 8 as a server and
workstation.


--Terje J. Hanssen
Nordland Teknikk as


"Terje J. Hanssen" wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Earlier this month, this list had a query about diskless clients on
> Solaris 8.
> 
> The Solaris 8 (server pack) includes an add-on CD named Solaris 8 Admin
> Pack.  This contain selected software from the Solaris 7 Easy Access
> Server software for Solaris 8, among others Solaris AdminSuite 3.01.  I
> would expect the latter also contain the "Host Manager" tool to install
> OS support for clients.
> 
> The problem is however, that Solaris 8 has discontinued the support for
> Sun4c based SparcStations (EOS).  Still many of these SSs are used as
> useful diskless clients working as X-terminals.
> 
> Therefore I wonder:
> Is there a way to save or re-install the Solaris 7 support image for
> diskless Sun4c clients (eg. root and X) when upgrading the OS server
> itself from Solaris 7 to Solaris 8?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Terje J. Hanssen
> Nordland Teknikk as