Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Sun Fire V120 as NAS part 5: Users, rows and some tips

Well, I had some problems with the screen rows (lines) when using the vi editor. Some time surfing the net later I found a good solution: the TERM environment variable. The /etc/profile script only can set this variable only in two ways: sun-color or sun:
(...)
if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
then
        if /bin/i386
        then
                TERM=sun-color
        else
                TERM=sun
        fi
        export TERM
(...)
This could be changed at the Solaris prompt typing:
# TERM=vt100
# export TERM
But with this commands the values are lost when the user logouts. Due all the connections to the server console or terminal will use a vt100 terminal simulator I decided to modify the /etc/profile script as follows:
(...)
if [ "$TERM" = "" ]
then
        if /bin/i386
        then
                TERM=sun-color
        else
                TERM=vt100
        fi
        export TERM
(...)
One problem solved. Go to the second one: with only the root account nobody can login into the server via ftp, smb or something like that. I decided to create an admin account like my linux servers:
# useradd -d /export/home/admin -m -s /bin/ksh -c admin admin
# passwd admin
New password:
(...)
Ok now I can open a FTP session. -d specifies the user folder, -s sets the shell he will use and -c specifies the full name of the user (use " to enclose the name if it has spaces). Obviously the las word is the account name.

Another problem I had was that the man pages were not working. Man seemed installed but not the documentation files. I tried adding the routes to the path but finally the solution is more easy: the package SUNWman was not installed while the package SUNWdoc was perfectly on the hard disk:
# cd /cdrom/sol_10_1009_sparc/Solaris_10/Product
# pkgadd -d . SUNWman
One more thing: How to complete shutdown (well in this server it means 'put the server on standby'):
# shutdown -y -g 0 -i 5

6 comments:

randomshinichi said...

hey, I'm ritchan from Nekochan forums, I like your site. I'm at ritchan.dasaku.net.

Can you tell me how noisy the V120 is? Noisier than your Octane, perhaps? And how much noise does a Fuel make? Did you get your Fuel off eBay?

Titox said...

How noisy is the V120? A LOT, A LOT AND A LOT!!!!! Impossible to stay behind the server more than 5 minutes... And with the StorEdge array is more noisy. I think the rear fans of the server and the StorEdge ones are easy to change for slower ones but the CPU fan is very difficult. It's 15mm deep and I can't find a suitable replacement. No screws, just some pressure to stay in position.

A lot of time without powering up the Octane. The Octane is modded with low noise fans but If I remember well it was noisy but supportable. The old Seagate hd did more noise that the fans.

The Fuel is also a bit noisy but you can stay working without problem. When I power up the Fuel you can hear the noise in every part of my home but it's a loud sound and does not bother. It's OK

Yes I bought the Fuel from a french eBay seller, 92 € plus shipping (without CD as you can see). With IRIX 6.5.29 installed (now 6.5.30).

I like your blog too. Added to my list. I was thinking to exchange my V120 for a Blade 150. There is a lot and cheap in eBay now. I like more the IBM Power you have. Maybe in a few months.....

randomshinichi said...

Hey thanks for the fast reply and add. I've been looking around for SGI Fuels for some time now and I guess a SGI Fuel for ~100EURs or so is really hard to find!

The Intellistation POWER 275 is a heavy beast. I've actually grown quite tired of it - I sold the good one off for a 60GB PS3, and haven't looked back since. After all, it's still a PowerPC :D The worst thing about it is that it weighs 40kg, and the plastic door is very fragile, plus AIX is a pain in the ass to use, no software at all for the user looking to use it as a desktop. I would have run Linux, but I need a graphics card that would embarass the rest of the system, so what's the point?

The plastic door in particular infuriates me. The whole case reeks of bad design, a design that was probably made to win some Rube Goldberg contest for case design. In order to get a single damn plastic door to work on the machine, you have to first: screw on the plastic thing on top with the triangle, which provides the top hole for the plastic door's nub to plug into; plug a plastic grill onto the metal front, which contains the bottom triangular part for the plastic door's bottom nub, then, taking care not to break the plastic (the bottom hinge is in particular fragile, so is the plastic grill), squeeze the door in there somehow. And then you realize that the tabs that keep the door shut actually overshoot the holes they're supposed to go into so each time you close the door you have to bend them in. After a month they both break off and you just don't care anymore.

Compare this with the SGI Octane, and you can see where this is going. I have another one left that was damaged during shipping, it still powers up via serial (haven't tried in months) but the cable that connects the operator panel to the media bay, which in turn plugs into the motherboard (do they seriously have to make it this complicated? damn IBM) is broken at one end (it's fragile). I'm gonna sell the parts on eBay, I'll make more money that way.

And I STILL can't find a GXT135P for under 100EURs. And people ask me why I don't like my Intellistation.

randomshinichi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
randomshinichi said...

Oh, I forgot to add. The two really small, thin plastic tabs that connect the top triangular hinge to the metal case for the plastic door are REALLY fragile.

And the damn thing is so heavy, I picked it up once, dropped it from a height of 10cm, and the metal bent. Seriously. I couldn't put in the damn plastic grill (and thus the plastic door) anymore because of one small dent in the steel. Now I'm not a muscular guy, but I can certainly lift my Octane, and I swear that is as heavy as I will go with my RISC workstations. It's just too easy to screw up the plastic on the Intellistation. Because it's still got a door, I sold it for a higher price on eBay, which itself says a lot.

Titox said...

Sad to know. From a lot of time I wanted to have an IntelliStation 170p, if I recall, was what I was looking for. But in that time an Spanish seller strated to sell a lot of Octane2 for less than 100EUR (3 years ago?). I bought the Octane and forget the IBM.

Another machine I want is a HP PA workstation but later machines are really expensive.

And outside Sun and SGI, it's very difficult to find software.