pjg@relay.eu.net (11/17/89)
Our group is considering the purchase of some SUN 3/80s and SparcStation-1. We have now some 3/50s and Sun 4/110 running SunOS 3.5 (Sun UNIX 4.2 Release 3.5EXPORT and SunOS Release Sys4-3.2_REV2_EXPORT) and we want to be able to run the same version of the OS in all the machines. This means that, for the moment, we do *not* want to upgrade to SunOS4.0, at least while we can't upgrade the memory of the 3/50s. My questions are: - Can we run SunOS 3.5 on the 3/80 ? If yes, is it binary compatible with the version running on the 3/50s ? - Can we run SunOS Sys4 3.2 on the SparcStation ? If yes, is it binary compatible with the 4/110s ? Thanks
hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick) (11/25/89)
- Can we run SunOS 3.5 on the 3/80 ? If yes, is it binary compatible with the version running on the 3/50s ? No. The 3/80 uses the 68030 memory management. Thus portions of the kernel are different than the kernel used on the older 68020 systems. Even under 4.0.3, you will use a different kernel for the 3/50 and 3/80. The 4.0.x kernel is generally upward-compatible with 3.x, so you might be able to get away with using a 3.5 kernel on the 3/50 and a 4.0.3 kernel on the 3/80, but using 3.5 utilties, compilers, etc. You'd need to have separate versions of utilities that depends upon kernel structure, e.g. ps, pstat, etc. 4.0.3 networking is based on 4.3BSD, so some networking things may be different as well, e.g. ifconfig. Presumably you would put these things into an enlarged /usr/kvm. I'm not sure that I recommend this approach, but I think it could made to work with some fiddling. I'd try it first before buying a bunch of systems though. - Can we run SunOS Sys4 3.2 on the SparcStation ? If yes, is it binary compatible with the 4/110s ? Same answer. The Sparcstation has its own special hardware, particularly the SBUS, which Sys4 3.2 has never heard of. Even under 4.0.3, there are different kernels for the 4/110 and SS1. Again, you may be able to use the utilities and have only kernels and a few kernel-related programs differ. But it will take some experimentation to set up. We were in a similar situation a year ago, and decided to move everything to the newest OS. I think I regret it. It took a year of working with the Sun support people to get a 4.0.1 kernel that doesn't have the various NFS hangs and file confusion problems. (I'm fairly sure that not all of these fixes are in 4.0.3.) And our 3/50's have become more or less just terminals. I'd be inclined to run your 3/80's and SS1's under 4.0.3, and leave well enough alone on the older systems until 4.1 comes out. (This assumes that 4.1 is tested and debugged better than 4.0, and that it will make 4MB machines usable again. If it has the same reliability problems as 4.0, people may want to start looking for another vendor.) I'm using a SS1 as a file server. With fast external SCSI disks (we're using 780MB H-P disks), it does quite well. That would allow you to put together a self- contained setup for your 3/80's and SS1's, running 4.0.3. The only thing that worries me about that is that I recently saw signs of the NFS hangs on our SS1 file server. It was running stock Sun 4.0.3c. This won't happen now that I've gotten source and put in all known fixes. But it might happen to you. So I'd be inclined to make use of the SS1 as a file server contingent on getting Sun to give you all known NFS and file system fixes.