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FAQs, Patches, & Other Information [A-M] [N-R] [S] Sun [T-Z]

[Last updated November 3, 2000] The Recommended: means we've tried the item, liked it, and recommend it. See our web policy.

Sun Microsystems FAQs, Patches, & Other Information:

Disabling BREAK on Sun console serial ports Sun FAQs Updated Software for Suns & Solaris x86 Performance Tuning, Security & Process Mgmt Solaris Patch Mgmt
Sun Keyboards Using non-Sun monitors Solaris x86 specific info 386i (Roadrunner) FAQs Other Sun info, sites, tools...

Disabling BREAK on Sun console serial ports:

When a Sun receives a BREAK signal on the console serial port, it normally drops to the prom monitor prompt, just as if you had pressed the Sun keyboard's <STOP><A>. If you have a terminal plugged into the console serial port, you will often get the BREAK when you remove the terminal's serial cable or power off the terminal. But, that's not what you usually want to happen. (You can't send a BREAK via the normal Hyperterminal on Windows NT4. We suggest using the free Teraterm and an SSH extension, TTSSH.) You can change the Sun's serial port BREAK behavior, and we'll tell you how. But first.....

What's a BREAK? (This excellent description was lifted from Greg Andrews)
The break signal is where the terminal (or terminal server) sets its transmit data line to a steady positive voltage for a period of time. Normally, the transmit line is not at a steady positive voltage. The stop bit in each character transmitted would interrupt any positive voltage and send it negative. In order to be accepted as a break signal (and not merely a glitch), the signal would need to be positive for longer than it takes to receive 3 characters.

Suns usually listen on their RS232 console ports at 9600 bps, or 960 characters per second (8 data + 1 start + 1 stop = 10 bits per character). That's roughly one character per millisecond. So, the transmit line would have to be steadily positive for 3-4 milliseconds for the Sun to think it was a break signal. Suns can accept RS423 (+/- 5V) signals as well as RS232 (+/- 12V) signals. The voltage threshold for an RS423 signal is around 3.5 Volts.

So, a signal glitch that stays above +3.5 Volts for 4 milliseconds can make the Sun think someone's sending a break signal. If the terminal or terminal server is not careful to clamp its outputs when the power supplies are charging up (power on) or discharging (power off), such a glitch would be easy to generate.

Under certain conditions of cable capacitance and/or inductance, just unplugging the RS232 cable can also produce a glitch on the Sun's receive pin that looks like a break signal.

How to keep BREAK from sending a Sun to the PROM monitor prompt:

  • Power-switch key method:
    • Recommended: On Enterprise-type Suns, the power switch has four positions: off, on, diagnostic and secure. With the power switch in the secure position, the system ignores breaks generated by keyboard reconnect, serial terminal loss, Stop-a or a serial terminal break key.
  • Patch method:
    • Recommended: Sun has released patches to address the issue of BREAK on console serial ports. These patches are available only to Sun contract customers from sunsolve.sun.com. Solaris 2.6 requires patch 105924-10 or higher. Solaris 2.7 requires patch 107589-02 or higher. The fix is integrated in Solaris 2.8. Unlike previous fixes, it retains the ability to force a hanging system to halt when required, without allowing random or spurious BREAKs to cause an unintentional stop. The new sequence to stop the system is <RETURN><TIDLE><CONTROL B> There must be more than 0.5 seconds between characters, and the string must be entered in less than 5 seconds. Unfortunately, this patch doesn't work on the Netra T105.
  • Command method:
    • Solaris 2.6 and higher: In /etc/default/kbd, add the variable KEYBOARD_ABORT=disable then use the command kbd -i which reads /etc/default/kbd and disables keyboard abort. You can also toggle between enable and disabled using kbd -a disable and kbd -a enable. See the kbd man page for more detail. This method works on the Netra T105, too.
  • External device method:
    • A model NUD4273 "non-aborting serial console adapter" from NUData will prevent the BREAK signal from ever reaching the console port. The devices cost about $89 USD each. They can be purchaed through Micro Warehouse.
  • Resistor/soldering iron hack method:
    • This solution may not work for all devices. If you tie a 4.7K resistor (1/4 Watt) between pins 3 and 25 of the ttya port, you electrically prevent a BREAK signal either from the key or from disconnecting or powering down the terminal. This prevents intentional halts except by removing the resistor, but does allow recabling.

Sun FAQs:
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Software for Suns & Solaris x86:
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  • Large Archive Sites:
    • Recommended: sunfreeware.com Solaris Software for SPARC and x86 is a shareware site of pre-compiled Solaris 2.x software, containing lots of applications that Solaris admins have been looking for, like top, emacs, tin, gzip, emacs, gcc, perl5, proctool and more. Many HPC and scientific programs optimized for UltraSPARC. All software is ready to install via pkgadd. Nicely presented page.
    • Recommended: SunSITE is Sun's worldwide information exchange. Check here for public domain software and other Sun information at SunSITEs around the world.
      • Recommended: SunSITE UNC Utilities includes the famous whatami.sh, anonymous FTP setup scripts, nfs and tape exercisers and more. Spend a little time and wander around SunSITE UNC for all sorts of useful tools.
    • Recommended: Solaris 2.5 Free Software for Intel Processors
    • Recommended: Solaris x86 binary archive contains 100s of public-domain software programs ported to Solaris x86. Lots of goodies like Amanda, GNU tools, BIND, Elm, Ghostview, lsof, perl5, Samba, wu-ftpd, and more. Don't miss their Solaris 2.6 x86 binary archive.
    • Recommended: Sun download center always has free software to download. Also see Sun Promotions, Downloads and Upgrades. You never know what you'll find in either place, but there are often some gems.
    • Recommended: ftp://opcom.sun.ca/pub/freeware/x86 contains lots of extremely-useful Solaris x86 software.
    • Binaries.org contains a few Sun binaries. Add more and help the site grow.
    • The Depot Archive from the University of Florda has a huge number of software packages, precompiled and ready to install, for Solaris 2.5, 2.6, and Irix 6.2. Well-presented archive.
    • freeware4Sun.com has pre-compiled binaries for Solaris 2.5.1 - Solaris 7, including x86 and 64 bit packages. Site includes software, patches, gnome, kde, games, docs, and more.
    • ftp.patriots.net has a large collection of software, precompiled and pkgadd-ready for Solaris 7 Sparc and x86, and Solaris 8.
    • RiddleWare's Solaris X86 Links & Archives includes sw, mailing lists, archive sites, and Java stuff for Solaris x86.
    • The "ready-to-go" Solaris Helpers Page has pre-compiled Netscape Navigator helpers for SPARC and Solaris x86. Contains browser utilities, audio and video players, image and document viewers, VRML browsers, plugins for MIDI, Tcl/Tk, conferencing, screen lockers, and more. Source included. Nicely organized page!
    • Solaris Package Archive from MetaLab UNC contains many GNU tools and other essential, free Solaris software for Intel and SPARC, Solaris 2.3 to Solaris 7, pre-compiled and ready to install easily.
    • Sun BigAdmin Software & Downloads is filled with Sun Software, freeware, WebStart Wizards and more.
    • SunScreen 3.1 Lite is available free from Sun. It's a firewall product designed to protect individual servers or very small workgroups. It is built from the same code as the full SunScreen 3.1 product, providing high-speed, dynamic stateful packet screening, with a few exceptions.
    • Works Great, Costs Less: Freeware for Solaris is a SunWorld Online article about freeware for Solaris, including lots of places to get it.
    • Youri's Solaris-x86 Archive contains many public-domain tools in source with binaries pre-compiled for Solaris x86 2.6/2.5.1/2.5
    • More Sun software is available at Shareware & Public Domain Software for Unix.
  • Individual Tool/Packages Sites:
    • Hardwr lists the hardware found on your Unix machine. Writen in csh and runs on at least Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Digital Unix, Ultrix, Irix, SCO, Linux, Nextstep. From Stephan Garnaud, sgarnaud@club-internet.fr.
    • memconf lists the size and location of each SIMM in a Sun SPARC, along with the machine architecture and machine. memconf is a free program which runs on all SPARCs running Solaris 2.x. From Tom Schmidt (tschmidt@micron.com)
    • PC File Viewer is free software from Sun. It lets you view Microsoft-format files like Word, Excel, Lotus, Powerboint and others on Solaris 2.6 CDE machines. It's not great, but it's a start.
    • ShowMeTV is a free multimedia player for Solaris. It's used to view local digital video and audio and to transmit and receive video over a corporate network.
    • Solaris 2 Migration Products, from Sun, has SunSoft Print Client (previously LPLite), NSKit 1.2, Cross-Compilers.
    • Solaris Resource Manager is a tool from Sun for enabling resource availability for users, groups, and applications. Can control and allocate CPU time, processes, virtual memory, connect time, and logins on a fine-grained basis. White papers: Solaris Resource Manager 1.0, Controlling system Resources Effectively, and Solaris Resource Manager for Solaris Enterprise Server.
    • Solstice Enterprise Agents Toolkit from Sun is a toolkit used to build SNMP and DMI agents on Solaris.
    • Sun PCI products/drivers/info:
      • Sun I/O Technology/PCI and Sun PCI Network Cards from Sun's Web site.
      • Open Sound System is a commercial product that supports Sound Blaster or Windows Sound System compatible sound cards in Unix workstations supporting ISA or PCI bus. Many Unix versions and cards supported. From 4Front Technologies.
    • More Sun software is available at Shareware & Public Domain Software for Unix.

Performance Tuning, Security & Process Management:
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  • Recommended: SE Performance Toolkit Release 3.0 by Adrian Cockroft is a major update that includes support for Solaris 2.6, 2.5.1, and 2.5. It's an extensive toolkit of performance tools and utilities and you can easily build in more. It's great for finding bottlenecks in Solaris 2.x performance. See the SunWorld Online article about the new release and Adrian Cockcroft's FAQ on Sun performance problems.
  • Recommended: Solaris Tunable Parameters Reference Manual from docs.sun.com covers tunable parameters in the kernel, for NFS, TCP/IP, System Facilities.
  • Recommended: Sun Web Server Performance: Watching your Web Server by Adrian Cockroft tells you how to monitor and improve your Sun Web server's performance.
  • Armoring Solaris is a good beginner's guide to armoring Solaris 2.6 to prepare it for a firewall. It's part of Whitepapers & Publications, good security and Solaris system information by Lance Spitzner, (lance@spitzner.net).
  • Solaris 2.x - tuning your TCP/IP stack and more by Jenns-S.Vockler, voeckler@rvs.uni-hannover.de.
  • Sun Performance Information includes benchmarks, performance papers and articles.
  • Unix Security Handbook provides good information on building a secure computing platform for Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, and 7.
  • YASSP - Yet Another Solaris Security Package freely available scripts and tool set for Solaris 2.6 - 8. The default behavior of yassp is to turn off most of the services, which is suitable for an external (exposed) server like a firewall, a web server or a ftp server. A single configuration file enables you to control most of yassp options. The OS security tuning is performed at various levels: turning off (networked) services, changing file owner/mode, enabling logging, tuning the network stack, changing the system parameters and also providing a coherent default environment so that people knows what they can expect and where.
  • More information on securing Solaris is available at our Firewalls & Unix Security page.

Solaris Patch Management:
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  • Fastpatch, do-patch and fix-modes from Casper Dik. fastpatch.pl is a perl script which installs Solaris patches around 5-6x faster than installpatch (or 2.6 patchadd). Fix-modes will now also change the ownership of most files to root, and, perhaps most importantly, it has an "undo" switch.
  • patchdiag.xref and all the publicly-available Sun patches are directly available from ftp://sunsolve.sun.com/pub/patches/. patchdiag.xref is the patchdiag tool cross-reference file.
  • PatchReport, a freely available Perl tool, uses the Recommended patch list to compare your installed patches with the recommended set, retrieving what you need. It contains support for Casper Dik's Fastpatch, and has the ability to exclude certain patches based on patch ids. If you have a Sun contract, it will report using more patch lists on sunsolve.sun.com and install the ones you need.
  • Patchdiag to HTML takes patch reports from stdin and converts them to HTML, using Perl 5. Written by Kjetil T. Homme, kjetilho@ifi.uio.no
  • PatchDiag Tool, (login, go to Patches, then Diagnostic Tools) available only to Sun support customers, determines the patch levels of your system when compared against Sun's recommended and security patchlists. Can operate from input files and list all patches that pertain to packages installed on your system.
  • Download publicly-available Sun patches from this list of Sun Patch Sites.

Sun Keyboards:
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  • Keyboard, Monitor and Mouse Pinouts covers Sun, SGI, Macs, and PC. From Network Technologies Inc.
  • SunExpress PC keyboard adapter with Ergonomic PC keyboard of your choice (Sun P/N X465A for $75, Microsoft Natural keyboard for about $90)
  • Kinesis keyboard with ($275 for the keyboard, plus you need to order the adapter from SunExpress for $75) from Kinesis Corp (206-402-8100). Keyboard has a 30-day return guarantee if you don't like it. L1-A is "yank the kbd cable from sun, reinsert".
  • KeyTronic (509-928-8000) sells an IBM-compatible PC keyboard called Flex Pro which has flexibility to separate QWERTY section as well as flexibility to adjust tilt and slope.
  • Health Care Keyboard Company (414 536-2160) sells a Sun-compatible split keyboard. PN is BPA9902SPK. Retail price is $815. This keyboard can be split into three pieces and has multiple angular adjustability because of its large gears. It won various awards and was featured on national TV media. THIS DOES NOT NEED A SUN INTERFACE BOX.
  • A Sun Interface Compatible mechanical mouse (CP-1) is available as an x-option (X494 A) on SMCC price list.
  • SunExpress sells ITAC trackballs.
  • Typing Injuries Online has excellent information on Repetitive Strain Injuries.
  • Solaris Keyball is a Military-grade, rack-mountable Sun keyboard replacement with built-in trackball from Solaris Systems.

Using non-Sun monitors:
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You don't have to use a Sun monitor on a Sun SPARC workstation. You can use a high-quality VGA monitor which is capable of a high scan rate. (Warning, there are many low-end VGA monitors which can't handle the high rates of many Sun video systems.) Sun Frame Buffers' scan rates vary, but many go from 1024x768 @ 60 Hz to 1600x1280 @ 76Hz. See the Sun Frame Buffer FAQ for all the possible scan rates for your Frame Buffer and a description of what all this means.

Here are a few companies which sell inexpensive cable adapters (13W3 male to VGA HD15 female, about $15-$30) which will let you connect a non-Sun monitor to your Sun video port. But, these parts are getting common enough that you may be able to find them at any well-stocked computer and electronics store.

How to connect a Sun Premium (Sony) GDM-20D10 monitor to a PC with Windows 95/98/NT tells you how to use that fine monitor under Windoze.

Sun 386i (Roadrunner):
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  • Sun 386i FAQ maintained by Ralphe Neille (ran@dgs.monash.edu.au).
  • Sun 386i Archive includes the sales brochure (from 1989!), and archives of the Sun 386i mailing list.

Solaris x86-specific info:
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Other Sun info, sites, tools, & more...
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