MicroVAX 3100 booting question...

From: R. D. Davis <rdd_at_smart.net>
Date: Thu Apr 26 23:30:09 2001

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001 healyzh_at_aracnet.com wrote:
> Define older hardware. On my Sparc 10 and 20 I run Solaris 2.6 as it's the
> last version to support some of the hardware I use. Though I've been

Ah, you're using newer hardware. ;-) I was referring to a Sun 4/110
running Solaris 2.4... as well as a 3/60 that was running SunOS 4.1.1.
Both my SparcServer 1000 and my Ultra are running Solaris 8. Now, I'm
not in the habit of just switching off machines; I prefer to shut them
down properly whenever possible. However, if the machines go down due
to a power failure, etc... or just a test to see how they react to
being switched off before I begin to load software and data onto them
and use them for anything. The ones running Solaris 8 are much more
likely to necessitate a manual fsck than my other machines for some
reason; not sure why. Any ideas?

> threatening to move the Sparc 20 to Solaris 8 when I upgrade its harddrives.

Out of curiosity, what hard drives are you using that Solaris 8
doesn't support? Will it support most older 5-1/4" SCSI hard drives
and SMD drives, or the Emulex SCSI <-> ESDI apater?

> I'll put it another way, if you have the chance to shut a UNIX box down
> properly and don't, you're a fool. Especially if the system is like my one

I agree, which is why I make every attempt to do so. Not only do I
not want to risk losing data from a crash, but I also don't want to
waste my time having to to a restore that should never have been
necessitated in the first place.

> Linux box and has a lot of disk space hanging off of it (about 70GB), as
> that's some serious fsck time! Personally if a system has an option to shut
> it down gracefully, that's what I do, no matter the OS.

It's bad enough to have to wait for a check through 768MB of RAM,
without having to endure a manual fsck through quite a few gigabytes
of disk space.

Wow, you must really trust Linux! Your experiences with it are
probably different than mine, but I don't have enough faith in it,
based upon prior experiences with RedHat Linux. Based upon those
experiences, RedHat Linux appeared to have a less stable filesystem
than FreeBSD, and was more prone to need lots of help with a manual
fsck when power was lost, or when the machine crashed while running,
which wasn't uncommon---particularly if Netscape was being used on it.
What flavor of Linux are you using?

--
Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: 
All Rights Reserved            an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & 
rdd_at_perqlogic.com 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such
http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd   beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.
Received on Thu Apr 26 2001 - 23:30:09 BST

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