[TriLUG] sparc 4 hardware

[Tom 'spot' Callaway]

On Mon, 7 Oct 2002, Greg Brown wrote:

> Is a Sparc4 system with 32 megs of ram and a 500 meg scsi drive even worth 
> loading a Linux distro on?  I was thinking of using it as a firewall.  But 
> here's what I don't recall - the Sparc4 had two ethernet ports - one DIX/AUI 
> and one RJ-45.  Can I use both ports at the same time is it only one or the 
> other in use at one time?
> 
> Assuming that I can use both ethernet ports can I load Mandrake 9.0 with only 
> what is required to support routing and iptables and perhaps one or two other 
> goodies?   Given the vintage of the hardware is this totally pointless?

Mandrake boots a 2.2 kernel for sparc32 installs. Hence, no iptables. 
Aurora SPARC Linux is currently the only Linux distribution using a 2.4 
kernel for sparc32 (Debian is currently considering doing the same).

But I'm not sure you want it as a firewall. It'd be a hell of a network 
bottleneck, unless you only run at 10base.

~spot
---
Tom "spot" Callaway <tcallawa(a)redhat*com> Red Hat Sales Engineer
Sair Linux and GNU Certified Administrator (LCA)
Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
GPG: D786 8B22 D9DB 1F8B 4AB7  448E 3C5E 99AD 9305 4260

The words and opinions reflected in this message do not necessarily
reflect those of my employer, Red Hat, and belong solely to me.

"Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal." --- T. S. Eliot