Linux/SPARC64 Hardware Compatibility List

Four years ago I sent in an email with my box's details. This time I
have two new boxes; 

Model - Ultra 60
Kernel - 2.6.34-gentoo-r11
Stability - Excellent
OBP - 3.31
Net - Yes (HME)
Sound - Yes (CS4321)
Framebuffer - sunffb
Submitter - alexbuell
Comments - Dual 360MHz processors, 2GB RAM, 2 x 36GB SCSI SCA disks.
Console and X11 working well. Minor problems with GNOME/Firefox need
resolving.

Model - Sun Blade 2000
Kernel - 2.6.34-gentoo-r12
Stability - Excellent
OBP - 4.16.4
Sound - Yes (can't remember which chipset)
Framebuffer - xvr500 
Submitter - alexbuell
Comments - Dual 1.2GHz processors, 4GB RAM, 2 x 73GB FC-AL disks.
Console working well, need X11 fbdev although display looks corrupted,
X11 still works fine. As above, minor problems with GNOME/Firefox needs
sorting although I intend to help fix those problems.

Regards,
Alex

I use to have a Sun Blade2000 Workstation, I believe mine was a 900MHZ model.
I concur that it's pretty stable with Gentoo and Sparc64.

I had two issues with it:
1.  The QLogic QLA2000 controller.
Namely because you have to build the initrd disk image to load before you can 
get to the hard drive,
at least post 2.6.16 or 2.6.18. May be they corrected that again; not sure. 
(Issue was a firmware
blob was needed; I somewhere 2.6.16-18 they stopped letting you build the blob 
into the kernel,
thus the initrd was then required and not easy to get setup either.)

2. The NIC, at least when I ran it several years back, didn't auto-sense 
properly.

However, I can't say if either of those are still issues or not since I am no 
longer at the company
where I had that box, so I don't run the Sparc64 one any more. It'd be great to 
know if those
issues were resolved as I do know of another equivalent box that was running 
into those same
issues, and the maintainers aren't as savvy - they may not be using it now as a 
result. So it'd
be nice to get them going on it again.

Ben----- Original Message ----
> From: Alex Buell 
> To: 
> Sent: Fri, November 12, 2010 4:45:12 PM
> Subject: [gentoo-sparc] Linux/SPARC64 Hardware Compatibility List
> 
> Four years ago I sent in an email with my box's details. This time I
> have two  new boxes; 
> 
> Model - Ultra 60
> Kernel - 2.6.34-gentoo-r11
> Stability -  Excellent
> OBP - 3.31
> Net - Yes (HME)
> Sound - Yes  (CS4321)
> Framebuffer - sunffb
> Submitter - alexbuell
> Comments - Dual  360MHz processors, 2GB RAM, 2 x 36GB SCSI SCA disks.
> Console and X11 working  well. Minor problems with GNOME/Firefox need
> resolving.
> 
> Model - Sun  Blade 2000
> Kernel - 2.6.34-gentoo-r12
> Stability - Excellent
> OBP -  4.16.4
> Sound - Yes (can't remember which chipset)
> Framebuffer - xvr500 
> Submitter - alexbuell
> Comments - Dual 1.2GHz processors, 4GB RAM, 2 x  73GB FC-AL disks.
> Console working well, need X11 fbdev although display looks  corrupted,
> X11 still works fine. As above, minor problems with GNOME/Firefox  needs
> sorting although I intend to help fix those  problems.
> 
> Regards,
> Alex
> -- 
> Tactical Nuclear Kittens
> 
>

On Fri, 2010-11-12 at 15:01 -0800, BRM wrote:

> I had two issues with it:
> 1.  The QLogic QLA2000 controller.
> Namely because you have to build the initrd disk image to load before
> you can get to the hard drive, at least post 2.6.16 or 2.6.18. May be
> they corrected that again; not sure.  (Issue was a firmware blob was
> needed; I somewhere 2.6.16-18 they stopped letting you build the blob 
> into the kernel, thus the initrd was then required and not easy to get
> setup either.)
> 
> 2. The NIC, at least when I ran it several years back, didn't auto-sense 
> properly.
> 
> However, I can't say if either of those are still issues or not since
> I am no longer at the company where I had that box, so I don't run the
> Sparc64 one any more. It'd be great to know if those issues were
> resolved as I do know of another equivalent box that was running into
> those same issues, and the maintainers aren't as savvy - they may not
> be using it now as a result. So it'd be nice to get them going on it
> again.I did not encounter issues with the FC-AL disks nor with the gigabit
ethernet cards, so yes, these probably have been resolved. 

I use an initrd (ramfs) with the kernel to boot the disks, was a
complete PITA to get set up but once booting it all works beautifully. I
put the firmware into the initrd, but compiling the firmware into the
kernel also works just as well but the initrd method is probably better
contrary to the wisdom put forth in the sparc forums on Gentoo.