From owner-freebsd-sparc64@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Dec 8 13:25:49 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7FF5716A4CF; Mon, 8 Dec 2003 13:25:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from 82-41-27-17.cable.ubr04.edin.blueyonder.co.uk (82-41-27-17.cable.ubr04.edin.blueyonder.co.uk [82.41.27.17]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5044A43D29; Mon, 8 Dec 2003 13:25:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from andrew@cream.org) Received: from cream.org (unknown [192.168.0.2]) by myriad.flat (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19BB985; Mon, 8 Dec 2003 20:15:40 +0000 (GMT) Message-ID: <3FD4ECDC.5070807@cream.org> Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:27:56 +0000 From: Andrew Boothman User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6b) Gecko/20031205 Thunderbird/0.4 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Chris Shenton References: <3FD24741.5000100@crowncollege.edu> <3FD258B5.3030101@cream.org> <86fzfvxnaj.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> In-Reply-To: <86fzfvxnaj.fsf@PECTOPAH.shenton.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG cc: cloper cc: freebsd-sparc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: SUNRays X-BeenThere: freebsd-sparc64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the Sparc List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2003 21:25:49 -0000 [CCed to -sparc: Can SunRay boxes be made to work with FreeBSD?] Chris Shenton wrote: > Andrew Boothman writes: > > >>They are *really* thin clients that really only consist of a >>monitor, mouse and keyboard and rely on their host server for >>everything else. That's not an architecture that you're going to get >>FreeBSD to run under I wouldn't think. > > I suspect that if the SunRays do a PXE boot then they can be given > addresses by DHCP, boot files via TFTP, and filesystems via NFS -- > just like any other diskless client. There's the thing - I don't think that the Rays are capable of doing something like that. If you look at http://wwws.sun.com/sunray/sunray150/features.html which is a list of features for the most 'advanced' SunRay that is available - you'll see that, "All computing is performed on the server". In other words, there is no local processor - nothing to run a local FreeBSD kernel (or anything else) on. The rays depend entirely on their host server for all computation, I don't think they even have any local memory so they are not simply a diskless box in the usual sense - as they would normally have local CPU and memory. However, like I said before if they can be made to understand a normal X session then perhaps they could just act as X-servers or something similar? Do a google for "sunray linux" and see what Linux-type people have done, although from https://listman.redhat.com/archives/k12osn/2003-April/msg00797.html it doesn't look too hopeful that anyone has it working yet... Andrew