3.5 to 4.1.1
2007-12-25 7:18:00
>In about 2-3 weeks I will be taking the giant leap from 3.5 to 4.1.1.
>Any pointers, etc would be appreciated. The machine in question is a
>3/160 with 4 Meg of memory, 1/4" tape drive, internal SCSI disk, ~300 Meg
>Fujitsu Eagle on a Xylogics 451. It is pretty lightly used.
> Specifically:
> 1) Can I just load the 4.1.1 tape and go for it? Or must I go from
> 3.5 to 4.0 to 4.0.3 to 4.1 to 4.1.1?
Just stuff the 4.1.1 tape in and go from there. 4.1.1 is a full install
and should go right in. It was suggested by several to spend some time
with the manuals to lessen the culture shock of going from a 3.x to 4.x
system.
> 2) Which of the install (sun_install?) programs have bugs, etc?
There were no complaints here at all. Everyone said that the installation
stuff should go well.
> 3) I know I need to customize the kernal because of lack of memory.
> Anything in particular that just won't work? or that will make a
> big difference? (pointers to cheap memory upgrades would be
> appreciated but I'm pretty sure I'll have to make do with 4 Meg.)
And everyone said with one breath. GET MORE MEMORY. Forget about window
systems with only 4 meg. Several suggested that the GENERIC kernel
was a good place to start, then hack out everything that was not needed.
One person suggested dividing the disk into 2 pieces; one to run with 3.5
and the other to hold 4.1.1.
I've included the most comprehensive answer below. Thanks to all the
others who replied as well.
>From: "Manavendra K. Thakur" <pur-ee!zerkalo.harvard.edu!thakur>
Answer #1
>
>Yes, you can install 4.1.1 directly. In fact, you *have* to, since
>there is no upgrade path from 4.0.3 to 4.1 to 4.1.1. I.e., both 4.1
>and 4.1.1 require full installs.
>
Answer #2
>
>Well, you realize that you will have to load the OS from a cartridge
>tape drive. The reason is that the CD-ROM distribution of SunOS does
>not contain the boot code for sun3 and sun3x machines. So you have to
>boot munix from tape and go from there. I much prefer the CD-ROM
>distribution since it is a random access device. Also, the tapes have
>the binaries in compressed tar format. This makes it a pain if you
>want to later go back and extract only one or two files for any
>reason. Sun compressed the files to reduce the number of tapes needed
>for each architecture. The CD-ROM has enough room to contain
>uncompressed binaries for all four architectures (sun3, sun3x, sun4,
>and sun4c).
>You should be aware that 4.1.1 will be the last SunOS release that
>will be distributed on tape. More importantly, it will be the last
>release to support the sun3 and sun3x platforms. You will be stuck at
>4.1.1 release levels if you retain your machine as a sun3. Sun has a
number of attractively priced upgrades available. You should call
>your Sun sales rep and check out the deals.
>You should interleave your swap partition across both your disks if
>you can arrange it. This will give you better swap performance.
>Don't use a swap file (a regular unix file created by mkfile(8) -- see
>man page) to give yourself more swap; it's slow. Use a raw disk
>partition instead if you can.
>One more thing about swap space: make sure that the sd0b partition
>(the primary swap partition) is at least 8 MB large. Anything less
>than that, you won't be able to load the miniroot into sd0b. (Well,
>actually that's not too bad. If you have a larger swap partition on
>some other disk, you could always copy the miniroot to that partition
>and boot off it. But it's a pain since almost all the sun install
>stuff assumes sd0b is your primary swap partition. Best just to leave
>it at that.)
>
Answer #3
>
>You *definitely* want to upgrade your memory if it is at all possible.
>I have only 4 MB in my 3/160, and believe me, everything comes to a
>grinding halt any time sendmail or some other process starts up. It
>takes me over five minutes each morning to login and start up X
>Windows! Even if your machine will get light use, I would strongly
>urge upgrading your machine. Otherwise, the machine won't be worth
>the work you'll get out of it. Especially if you intend to run any
>sort of windowing system on it.
>
>Oh yes, for better performance, don't run routed (use static routing
>instead).
>
>Trim just about everything out of the kernel. A good way to get
>started on this is to 1) boot with the GENERIC kernel, and then make a
>list of all the devices listed in the /var/adm/messages file. 2)
>Delete all other devices (the ones that didn't show up in
>/var/adm/messages) from the GENERIC configuration. (Make sure to copy
>the configuration file to some other filename before you edit it!) Or
>you could start from the XYMT160 file, which you can find in
>/sys/sun3/conf. That's actually probably a better way than starting
>with the GENERIC kernel. I retract my earlier statement!
>
>Husband your MAXUSERS setting in your kernel config file. I think the
>default is 8. If the machine really isn't going to get much use, you
>may want to cut this down to 6 or possibly 4. I don't have much
>experience with this.
>Don't make the machine an NFS server if you can help it.
>If you can, get rid of NIS (Yellow Pages) too.
>If you're attached to an internet, you'll probably want to use BIND
>(nameserving) rather than NIS to do hostname lookups. If you want to
>install BIND, make sure to install the SHLIB.ETC software category
>(selected via the software form in suninstall) so that you can modify
>your shared C library. (Don't worry if you haven't done this before;
>it's a fairly painless process. There a number of guides on how to
>install BIND and recreate your shared C library with the resolver
>libraries floating around on the net. Mail me if you want my copy.)
>What else? You may want to get a copy of "SunOS 4.1 Performance
>Tuning," which was written by Hal Stern of Sun. It's a excellent
>guide that will tell you a lot more about how to get the most
>performance from your machine. I'm afraid I can't remmeber the
>address I ftp'ed the code from. Send mail to <halstern@sun.com> to
>ask about where you can get a copy.
>Hope this helps!
Comments
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
