Debianize Sun!

If Ubuntu is officially supported by Sun on its Fire series servers, why not give a try at Debian? Afer all... ubuntu is an ancient african word meaning "can't install Debian" (nudge, nudge...)

Task list

---

Assemble hardware

DVD-ROM: open the box (unscrew the two green plugs on the back), Plug out the plastic stopper in the middle of the front panel, and slide in the laptop-type DVD drive: be careful with the IDE connector.
Hard disk: the machine came with a single SATA HDD, just slide out the dummy stopper in drive 0 bay, and slide in the HDD. Keep the stopper at hand, you'll need it to mount a second SATA HDD. The disk shipped with the machine is a Sun-branded 250GB 7500 rpm Seagate Barracuda.
Do some research on "el-cheapo" SATA drives to plug in...

---

Rack mount

Just look at the pictures on the top cover. For each rail, separate the inner and outer rail pieces: the unlock tab is grey instead of green and almost unnoticeable. The inner piece goes into place on three pins on the server case. Lock the inner rail in place with 3 Phillips included screws.
Check the right railing: there is something that blocks it, perhaps there's something misplaced.

---

Cabling

Video output is a standard VGA D-sub connector. There are no dedicated PS/2-style keyboard and mouse ports. You had to plug in USB mouse and keyboard, or get an active PS/2 to USB converter (not a simple adapter!) like this.
Be warned that an USB → PS/2 keyboard/mouse adapter could not be detected at boot. See this Filer Wiki page for information.
Power supply comes via an UPS. I choose an APC 100 VA Smart-UPS.

---

USB Console

Sun Fire hardware seems to have some problems with its USB keyboard/mouse attachements.
Tried plugging an USB keyboard directly to all USB ports (both the two on front panel and the four on the back) and it worked as expected.
Filer Wiki says that the most likely port is the top-left USB port on the rear panel. Trials on the X2200 M2 showed that, using an USB keyboard, the "most likely" ports are the two on the bottom row (back panel), and both ports on front panel.
Other trials with an USB → PS/2 active converter (from Matsuyama) confirmed that any USB port works, if the USB connector is removed and reinserted.
This is quite annoying, but as of firmware 3.20 the problem persists.
Find out a way to fix that, since the box is not accessible via its hardware console, i.e. via direct KVM switch. Anyway, eLOM access is a good friend...

---

Setup and test ILOM console

Using the "keyboard trick" above, the BIOS was configured to have a static IP address for the Remote Management Console.
The connection via web interface works, and IMHO is a tad slow.
The eLOM Remote Console seems ot work nicely: poit a browser (I used Iceweasel on my Debian laptop) tho the ILOM IP address, login, then go to Remote Control→Redirection and click "Launch redirection". A Java applet will be downloaded from the server and (after some minutes) youll'have a fully working console.

---

Check BIOS and upgrade firmware

The machine was shipped with BIOS v 3.20, the same present on 1.2 Diagnostics and Tools CDROM

---

Hardware details

Booting with the Diagnostics and Tools CDROM, the hardware has been tested here and there (motherboard tests, RAM i/o tests, etc.)
According to the diagnostic tools, the motherboard is an S39, revision 50, with firmware version 3.10 and BIOS date 10/06/2008.

---

Install Debian

Debian 5.0 setup is on its own section.

---

Configure the base system

We need the following services up and working:

• ssh access
• cifs andNFS exportsTODO
• something to monitor CPU load to check for parallel execution signs(figure out what, the lighter the better: top/atop? gkrellmd?) solution: top, just run it and press '1'
a suitable parallel/multicore computing environment (job scheduling, etc.) do some research... openMPI?

---

Install some "must-have" packages

vim, mc, psmisc, htop, add other basic packages here!

---

ssh

easy as a pie:

aptitude install openssh-server openssh-client
ssh-keygen -t rsa

---

cifs exports

TODO

---

NFS exports

I decided to use sshfs.FUSE instead of NFS. See here.

---

Install and configure specific packages

to be done
We need the following packages up and working:

• R: just aptitude install r-base. See here for currently installed packages.
• GRASSto be done
• Python?to be done