Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Sun Linux in a Cobalt LX50



Only for play a bit with may new server I installed the original Sun Linux 5.0 what was shipped with the server. First I did a clean install to see what happens, but the Restore discs didn't made the Service Partition.

After some reading of the manuals I found that the Service Partition has to be made from the Diagnostics CD. The seller sent all the originals discs with the machine and no effort of downloading nothing was necessary.

Once I had the service software loaded I played a bit and found a software called Service Partition Administration. I think this part is not in the handbook. After the software appears in the screen, a new menu is showed. It has some features like a hard disk partitioning software: View service partitions, create partitions, format, etc.

But when I selected Create a new Service Partition, it says that the hard disk must be empty. And now, What? Some more play and some reboots later I used the Go to DOS option of the Service Software. There is a DOS OS and it has FDSIK, not the usual MS-DOS FDISK but similar. If you delete all the partition of the hard disk, remeber to Save the changes (in the MS-DOS utility was not necessary.

After the hard disk is erased and the server rebooted, you can create the new Service Partition. One more reboot with the Diagnostics CD and the Software can format and install the diverse diagnostics and configuration programs.

When everything is ready, come the easy thing: install Sun Linux 5.0: Just boot up the server with the first restore CD and do an automatic install... tomorrow some updates will be applied and see what happens.

See you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi there,

A tricky question 12 years later: do you still have Sun Linux 5.0 distro CDs available? The thing is that it look like there's no ISO images for Sun Linux flavor existing in the wild.

Titox said...

I just have uploaded all I have of Sun Linux 5 for LX50 to the ARCHIVE:
https://archive.org/details/SunLinux5forCobaltLX50

Best Regards,
Titox