The last time I used Solaris professionally was 2003, so as far as
today's world goes, I might as well be a newbie.

I acquired an Ultra 5+ with Creator 2D or some other graphics package
(which doesn't matter; I am not a graphics person).

It has Solaris 8 on it, and I was able to change the root password with
a Solaris 10 CD that I burned on my Mac.  But I was unable to install
Solaris 10.  Don't remember why; it was months ago.

I'm tired of it sitting in a corner gathering dust.  Would like to get
it running as a fileserver, DNS server (for my own LAN only), etc.
Maybe even as a firewall, although my router itself does a good job of that.

I don't have a Sun mouse, and can't afford to get one at the moment.

Some of my questions:

1. Can Solaris 8 use a USB mouse without tweaking anything?  It comes up
in X11, and without a mouse, I can't open a shell window to change anything.

2. IF (highly unlikely) I can ssh or telnet or rlogin to it as root, how
hard is it to enable a USB mouse (if even possible).

3. If I can ssh or telnet or rlogin to it as root, can I just add
xterm or something like that to the login scripts for root?  Or have
them set $DISPLAY to point to my Mac?

4. Is it possible (without pulling hair) to install Solaris 10 without a
mouse, and make it come up in shell instead of X11?

No point telling me how cheap a mouse is: thanks to a major accounting
screw-up, I'll be in the red for some time yet.  Of course, if someone
in Allen County, Indiana wants to loan or donate a mouse..... (or a
fancy Sun monitor)

5. When I get rich again (Ha!), is there any point in buying a 13W3
monitor?  I have a 13W3 to VGA adapter—is there any advantage to using
that instead of the VGA connector on the motherboard?

--
Wes Groleau

   Hispanics want immigration reform but…
   http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/russell?itemid=1493

The Ultra 5 Doesn't have a USB port in the first place to the best of
my memory (granted, it has been some time). Don't know where you are
going to plug in said USB mouse.. If it does, why not try it? It'll
either work and answer a bunch of your questions, or not work, and if
it doesn't work its not going to work.

If you have an OHCI PCI board for USB ports, you probably could put it
in a slot and have USB ports and have everything recognize and work.
BUT it has to be OCHI only. No UHCI, no EHCI, nothing else newer.

But, why not boot off your CD-ROM that you changed root password on,
and disable CDE from starting? Then you'll have a text screen to
interact with the system on.

That is probably your best course of action for doing anything.

You can always find the session startup scripts and drop in dtterms or
xterms to start upon logging in, but doing CDE without a mouse will
drive you bonkers. Just stick with the (pretty slow) text screen.
Or at least get it running so you can have sshd running and the link
and remote X11 session into it from whatever you are currently typing on.

Since Solaris 8 didn't come with sshd at all, it'd be pretty hard for that.
rlogind/telnetd won't accept remote root logins without configuring it
to specificly allow that.

All of $8 on eBay generally (plus the same in shipping).

No, no advantage at all. Way way back in the day, workstations monitors
were a lot higher end, supporting higher resolution, higher refresh
rates than the run of the mill PC stuff. But that flip/flopped a long
time ago.

Yep, any USB mouse should be OK.

No need, as a mouse should just work.

Don't use telnet; telnet is evil!  If you use ssh -X from your Mac, you'll
be able to run X programs on your Ultra 5 and have them displayed on the Mac.

Yep; select text install (and while your at it, use ZFS for your root
pool).

No point at all.  A modern LCD monitor will work better.

Happy New Year!

--
Rich Teer, Publisher
Vinylphile Magazine
                                                    .  *   * . * .* .
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                                                    .*.  / *  \  . .
                                                      . /*   o \     .
                                                    *   '''||'''   .
www.vinylphilemag.com                               ******************

Except when you install Solaris 10, or was the support added after
Solaris 10?  Not sure.  I did run a UHCI/EHCI (VIA) PCI card on
my Ultra 5/10 but I did needed to get UHCI supported on SPARC.

Casper

On 01-01-2012 12:31, Casper H.S. Dik wrote:

Thanks, Casper, for letting me know there are posts that my newsserver
chose not to show me!  :-)  Getting them from Google for review.....
(pasting from Google to T-bird trashes the quote marks--sorry, folks!)

Doug McIntyre:
 >Wes Groleau <Groleau+n...@FreeShell.org> writes:
 >... Ultra 5+ ... Solaris 8 ....
 >1. Can Solaris 8 use a USB mouse without tweaking anything?  It comes up
 >in X11, and without a mouse, I can't open a shell window to change
anything.

The Ultra 5 Doesn't have a USB port in the first place to the best of
my memory (granted, it has been some time). Don't know where you are
going to plug in said USB mouse.. If it does, why not try it? It'll
either work and answer a bunch of your questions, or not work, and if
it doesn't work its not going to work.

*** Good point, I will go check ... Nope, no USB.

If you have an OHCI PCI board for USB ports, you probably could put it
in a slot and have USB ports and have everything recognize and work.
BUT it has to be OCHI only. No UHCI, no EHCI, nothing else newer.

*** I can check the old WinTel boxes in the basement, but I doubt it.
*** I don't know those other acronyms.  Would there be a clue on
*** the board?

But, why not boot off your CD-ROM that you changed root password on,
and disable CDE from starting? Then you'll have a text screen to
interact with the system on.
That is probably your best course of action for doing anything.

*** Duh!  Thanks for the clue-by-four.  :-)  That is obviously
the way to go.

You can always find the session startup scripts and drop in dtterms or
xterms to start upon logging in, but doing CDE without a mouse will
drive you bonkers. Just stick with the (pretty slow) text screen.
Or at least get it running so you can have sshd running and the link
and remote X11 session into it from whatever you are currently typing on.

*** Thanks again!  That was the goal anyway, to have it in a closet
as a server maintained from the Mac out here on the desk.

 >2. IF (highly unlikely) I can ssh or telnet or rlogin to it as root, how
 >hard is it to enable a USB mouse (if even possible).

Since Solaris 8 didn't come with sshd at all, it'd be pretty hard for that.
rlogind/telnetd won't accept remote root logins without configuring it
to specificly allow that.

*** Well, telnet is OK, since the router blocks it from the outside.
*** And I can login to an "ordinary" account, then 'su' to root.
*** Once I get a shell so I can _create_ an account.

 >No point telling me how cheap a mouse is: thanks to a major accounting

All of $8 on eBay generally (plus the same in shipping).

I spoke the truth literally.  In the red for at least one more week.

 >5. When I get rich again (Ha!), is there any point in buying a 13W3
 >monitor?  I have a 13W3 to VGA adapter..

No, no advantage at all. Way way back in the day, workstations monitors
were a lot higher end, supporting higher resolution, higher refresh
rates than the run of the mill PC stuff. But that flip/flopped a long
time ago.

*** Thanks.  It will run headless once it's configured, so the
*** humongous boat anchor CRT I have on it now will suffice.

Rich Teer      

 > 1. Can Solaris 8 use a USB mouse without tweaking anything?  It comes
up in
 > X11, and without a mouse, I can't open a shell window to change anything.

Yep, any USB mouse should be OK.

 > 2. IF (highly unlikely) I can ssh or telnet or rlogin to it as root,
how hard
 > is it to enable a USB mouse (if even possible).

No need, as a mouse should just work.

*** Except no USB as Doug pointed out.

 > 3. If I can ssh or telnet or rlogin to it as root, can I just add
 > xterm or something like that to the login scripts for root?  Or have
them set
 > $DISPLAY to point to my Mac?

Don't use telnet; telnet is evil!  If you use ssh -X from your Mac, you'll
be able to run X programs on your Ultra 5 and have them displayed on the
Mac.

*** I could be wrong, but I think telnet _within_ my LAN is safe,
*** since my router blocks literally everything incoming.  I will
*** of course take additional precautions against the VERY slim
*** chance of a trojan getting in

 > 4. Is it possible (without pulling hair) to install Solaris 10 without a
 > mouse, and make it come up in shell instead of X11?

Yep; select text install (and while your at it, use ZFS for your root
pool).

*** When I find my CD (or burn another one), I will try that.
*** Although something went wrong in the previous attempt,
*** don't remember what.  Does Solaris 11 have a SPARC version
*** compatible with this old thing?

 > 5. When I get rich again (Ha!), is there any point in buying a 13W3
monitor?
 > I have a 13W3 to VGA adapter?is there any advantage to using that
instead of
 > the VGA connector on the motherboard?

No point at all.  A modern LCD monitor will work better.

*** No LCD here (except the Mac built-in), but the old CRT should
*** be fine until I'm ready to go remote.

Thanks, both of you, for getting my aged brain working again!

--
Wes Groleau

There are some ideas so wrong that only a
very intelligent person could believe in them.
                         -- George Orwell

No!  Telnet is a mindset thing, and using ssh is no harder (easier,
infact, due to fewer letters in the command name).  Just act as
though telnet doesn't exist.  If you get into the habit of "this is
a safe environment, I'll use telnet", you'll get stuck with a bad
habit.  What's so bad about ssh anyway?!  :-)

--
Rich Teer, Publisher
Vinylphile Magazine
                                                    .  *   * . * .* .
                                                     .   *   .   .*
                                                    * .  . /\ ( .  . *
                                                     . .  / .\   . * .
                                                    .*.  / *  \  . .
                                                      . /*   o \     .
                                                    *   '''||'''   .
www.vinylphilemag.com                               ******************

On 01-02-2012 11:45, Rich Teer wrote:

Nothing, if you're not too lazy to set it up, or (as Doug says would be
required), I have to install it first.

Your habit assumption is inaccurate.  I am already in the habit of using
telnet on my LAN and SSH everywhere else.

I take it back.  There is one inconvenience to SSH, although the
security makes it worthwhile.  Every time I make a local change or the
admin at the other end makes a change of certain type, I have to decide
whether to accept a new key or whether to snoop out whether I am being
spoofed.

--
Wes Groleau

   Thinking It Through
   http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=476

Employ ssh keys for publickey login; it won't save you from needing to
re-affirm a remote host key, but you'll make back the time spent a hundred
times over.

TCP and X tunneling, sftp, passwordless login... there's so much value to
SSH that I never understand why people use telnet at all, even on an isolated
two-node network.

--
Brandon Hume    - hume -> BOFH.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Ca/

Although, they do have secure versions of telnet, just not in the
Solaris world. I use a secure encrypted version of telnet back to some
FreeBSD machines when bad hardware on them crash sshd from time to time.

Should just turn off those ancient machines some day. All the users
were given alternative servers long ago.

+1

password ssh is a breakin waiting to happen. use big fat pubkeys and you
will never ever have an issue

yep!