Re: tlug: HELP!!!

[Scott Stone <sstone@example.com>]

On Wed, 10 Jun 1998, Alan B. Stone wrote:

> I'm in trouble.  I've spent the last three days trying to install
> Solaris 2.6/x86 on one system within my office.  Now, now...let me
> explain.  Have any of you taken a real good look at this product?  I
> can't believe it's even on the market and carries the SUN label.  I'm
> appauled, and probably fired....but that's beside the point.
> 
> Practically nothing is supported by the few drivers they provide.  I'd
> be willing to bet the first release of Linux had better driver support
> than this product (okay, maybe not, but you should really take a look). 
> You have to make your way through the installation praying that you've
> done this before so you'll get through it.  The lack of documentation is
> just amazing.  The book that is provided basically says, "insert boot
> disk and cdrom,"..."then sit back and we'll do the rest."  Boy is that
> far from the truth.  I've installed the same OS on several Sparc
> platforms and WOW! what a difference.
> 
> I'm telling you, Linux, and I don't care what the version...is
> lightyears ahead of this.  I just don't understand why he can't capture
> a bigger piece of the pie.
> 

I don't think that Solaris x86 has that much pie, either... does it?

> Anyway, tomorrow I have the great pleasure of trying to utilize the
> source drivers I downloaded and see if I can piece something together. 
> Oh how I wish I could go to the boss and say, "See...I told you we
> should have bought Linux!"  

I've installed Solaris x86 before, but it was on an older P75 machine that
I guess had fairly standard hardware... it seemed to recognize at least
that much of it.  But, I did have to retry the install several times, and
call Sun tech support two times and get four patches from their FTP site
before the thing would come up properly.  Then I had to go to sunsite via
FTP (at least that worked out of the box, sort of), download some 'extra
fluff' packages like as, ar, make, gcc, g++, flex, yacc, bison, xterm,
etc.  Yeah, it comes with CDE but no xterm.. at least the one I had did.

Oh, one thing to watch out for, Solaris wants to use NIS/NIS+ by default
and the only other choice is 'other', if I recall... this means that if
you use DNS for name lookup you have to edit /etc/resolv.conf by hand
after the install and add 'dns' in the appropriate places.

--------------------------------------------------
Scott M. Stone <sstone@example.com, sstone@example.com>
               <sstone@example.com>
Linux Developer/Systems Administrator for Pacific HiTech, Inc. 
http://www.pht.com		http://armadillo.pht.co.jp
http://www.pht.co.jp	        http://www.turbolinux.com


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