[K12OSN] LTSP on Sparc

[Jim McQuillan]

Terrell,

Very cool stuff, i'm wondering where you got the /opt/ltsp/sparc treen.

Also, you are using 3 nics to serve the various archetectures, but
that's hardly necessary.  I just want to point out that you can have
logic in the dhcpd.conf file to detect the dhcp-vendor-id, and hand out
the required information based on that id.
There's notes for doing that at:


http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/bin/view/Ltsp/DHCP#How_to_automatically_pass_the_co

Also, while your on the wiki, if you could post your Sparc info on the
http://wiki.ltsp.org/twiki/view/Ltsp/CpuArchitectures page, that would
be great.

Thanks,
Jim McQuillan
jam at Ltsp.org



On Fri, 22 Jul 2005, [ISO-8859-1] "Terrell Prudé, Jr." wrote:

> Zouhir Hafidi wrote:
>
> > norbert a écrit :
> >
> > > Salut / Hi
> > >
> > > Les stations Sparc utilise RARP pour se lancer, du moins c'est ceque les
> > > miens exige.....
> >
> >
> > :-)
> >
> > >
> > > The Sparc stations require RARP to launch.. anyway thats what mine
> > > require.
> >
> >
> > just update OpenBoot ...
> >
> > ZH
>
>
>
> Yesterday, I demo'd this very setup for Thomas Jefferson HS out here in
> Fairfax, VA, and in preparing for said demo, I learned a few things.
>
> Mr. Hafidi is right; you've got to update OpenBoot to v3.31.  It was in v3.31
> that DHCP booting became supported in addition to the old RARP method.  Yes,
> at last, I finally had time to try this.  It works, and pretty well, given
> that Ultra 5's have built-in 100BaseTX/FullDuplex NICs built into them.  :-)
> This is good, because I have several Ultra 5's waiting to be used as thin
> clients.  However, I needed to modify two lines in the file
> /opt/ltsp/sparc/etc/lts.conf in order for the mouse to be recognized.
>
>   X_MOUSE_PROTOCOL   = "PS/2"
>   X_MOUSE_DEVICE     = "/dev/psaux"
>
> My changes for my Ultra 5's were the following.
>
>   X_MOUSE_PROTOCOL   = "busmouse"
>   X_MOUSE_DEVICE     = "/dev/sunmouse"
>
> I learned that, to update OpenBoot, you've got to have Slowaris installed on
> the SPARC's hard disk.  My guess is that it's because the Solaris boot loader
> likes the firmware updater program better than SILO does.  With GNU/Linux and
> SILO installed, when you run the OB updater, you get a "FATAL ERROR" message
> saying that the ELF binary has more than one entry point, so sorry, better
> luck next time.  Looking for a way to do this with a Free Software OS instead
> of Slowaris, I then installed OpenBSD and tried updating the firmware, but
> sadly, a similar error pops up with OpenBSD's boot loader.  Oh well, it takes
> about 40 minutes to install Solaris 8 on these boxes.  I did so with one hard
> disk and used that hard disk for all of my other Ultra 5's.  This saved
> several hours.
>
> Once all this is done, this "old" UltraSPARC came right up with the K12LTSP
> login screen.  The UltraSPARC's hard disk can now be removed.
>
> The only thing bad that happens is that TuxType crashes with an X11 opcode
> error, though TuxMath doesn't.  I believe that this is because the X11 version
> here is an early release candidate of XFree86 4.4.0 and not the final version.
> I imagine that a later version of XFree86 or X.org would work fine; I just
> haven't had time to compile it and try it yet.  Interestingly enough, I had
> previously had Red Hat Linux 6.2 for the UltraSPARC installed on it and simply
> popped "X -query 172.16.3.254 &" at the end of /etc/rc.d/rc.local.  Why such
> an ancient version of RHL?  It works, that's why.  :-)  The nice part for
> software testing purposes is that RHL 6.2 has XFree86 3.3.6, which, as it
> happened, allowed me to see if I could repro this issue with an older X11
> version.  TuxType was happy as a clam with 3.3.6.  TuxMath didn't seem to mind
> either way, though.  Ah well, hardly a show-stopper.
>
> The end result:  I now have a single K12LTSP server that can netboot x86, PMac
> 52x0, and SPARC boxes as thin clients...simultaneously.  How?  I have four
> NICs in this box--three inside, one outside, like so.
>
> eth0 = inside, 172.16.0.254/24, Gig-E fiber (x86 terminals)
> eth1 = outside, DHCP, 100BaseTX copper (to the main bldg. LAN)
> eth2 = inside, 172.16.2.254/24, 100BaseTX copper (PMac terminals)
> eth3 = inside, 172.16.3.254/24, Gig-E copper (SPARC terminals)
>
> Each of these subnets and NICs is sitting in its own VLAN, and all the thin
> client subnets are being served by dhcpd on the K12LTSP server.  Life is good.
>
> --TP
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