Sun Fire servers....

[Ken Gunderson]

On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 08:48:54 -0700
"David O'Brien" <obrien at freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 11:05:20PM -0500, Nathan Whitehorn wrote:
> > I'm running 6.1-STABLE on one. Works beautifully. Avoid the SATA RAID. 
> > It's terrible, and causes fs corruption. And you'll need to update to 
> 
> Is this with more tha 4GB of RAM?  There was a SATA bug that should be
> fixed in 6.1-STABLE (but maybe not).

I've got a few boxes running on Tyan B2865 boards, wh/is what I think
Sun uses for the X2100 servers.  They max out at 4GB ram.  I don't know
about Sun's offering but the factory BIOS that ships w/the 2865 is
pretty sketchy.  They seem to work pretty well once you flash them
though.  Cannot comment on the SATA raid as I've not used it, nor
would I. For simple mirroring gmirror has worked well.

The above in reference to server machines.  I have a couple XP
workstations that work well.  I also have a fbsd-i386-6.1 workstation.
Wanted OpenOfice.org, win32 codecs, etc.  Several of my common apps
have been dumping core.  One difference between this machine and the
others is an Opteron 180 vs. 165.  Maybe the faster CPU is revealing
weaknesses the 165 doesn't?  I mention this because I've also had
problems w/a TA26 running 252's that I've not seen on essentially the
same TA26 configurations running slower, e.g. 246's and below.

Speaking of OpenOffice.org, it looks like the fbsd port is maybe close
to 64bit clean.  Anyone actually running the 64bit port?

These SunFire boxes look quite attractive so keep us posted
on your experiences w/them ;-)

-- 

Best regards,

Ken Gunderson

"The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty 
decreases."  (Thomas Jefferson)