Hi!

I recently bought a Sun UltraSparc5 at a secondhand computer shop for 15 euros, but the dude had no keyboard and does't have a clue about the password to access the solaris os.

Broadly, i'd like to install a BSD system on it , without keyboard. I also would like some advices about wich BSD system to choose. I know openBSD is focused on security, but which BSD got the best port for ultrasparc 64bit processors???

I guess i'd have to do it through serial port. i know you can do it with debian and redhat. But i don't want to use any system5.

I don't know yet for what purpose i'd use this machine. Broadly, i just finished my IT and system studies and just finished a training job in a SSII and noticed some bugs in their network concept.
exemple : we made up a thinclient network. the Xserver run onto RedHat9 and we need to send a technicien once a week cause the network's down. RH 9 is overbugged, filled up with experimental stuff that should never be done on a distrib that is adressed to entreprises. In the same network i'm speaking about, there is 3 Ultrasparc that run proxy, samba and progiciel servers : one brittish dude (i'm french) came and built these Unix servers during the 90's and never came again (he just takes remote control once in a while to monitor everything is ok).

So, i would like to test how open Unix system would work onto proprietary hardware. As i use slackware at home, i might not be completely lost... But by doing it WITHOUT KEYBOARD, i'm not choosing the easiest way!!!!

to sum it up :
- which is the best BSD for ultrasparc architecture
- how to install without keyboard (serial, network....)

right, thanks for helping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

guillaume

Well, to my knowledge the FreeBSD port for SPARC64 is pretty weak. FreeBSD focuses mostly on PC architectures, like i386 and amd64.

Both NetBSD and OpenBSD should run very well on that platform. Right now I'm negotiating with my employer to buy 3 of their excess UltraSPARC 5s for me to run OpenBSD on. I already have a SPARCstation 5 running OpenBSD and it works great (better than Solaris 9 did).

I run my SS5 "headless" and I installed it via serial console as well. If my memory serves me, the OpenBSD SPARC installation document tells you exactly how to do this (I seem to remember that the SPARC PROM might automatically export console to serial if it doesn't detect a monitor).

So any way, you'll want either NetBSD or OpenBSD and just read the installation documents to see how to do it via serial console.