On 12.06.03, 08:03:49, Anthony Watters wrote:
> newbie questions
> 
> I recently picked up a Sparc Station 5-170 (turbo sparc). currently it has a
> Plextor CDROM, 256 MB of ram, and a additional 10/100 Ethernet card.
> 
> I am interested in running linux and setting it up as a firewall.
> 
> With that in mind, could someone recommend a specific linux distribution
> that works on a SS5-170? Maybe something with a friendly user interface
> perhaps?
> 
> I was thinking of possibly debian or openBSD or something else along those
> lines. Any installation advice would also be appreciated.

We will of course recommend NetBSD and stress the point that

  _NetBSD_is_not_Linux_at_all!_

Neither is OpenBSD.

These are completely seperate Unix-like operating systems.


NetBSD works very well on older sparc machines, and on 170MHz
TurboSPARC with 256MB it will fly.

There is a lot of installation advice contained in the NetBSD/sparc
distribution that can be downloaded from ftp.netbsd.org or any of its
mirrors. Most mirrors also carry an iso CD image for a bootable
installation CD-ROM.

The base distribution includes an Xserver and all the X11 binaries and
libraries, additional software can be installed easily with the pkg
system.

NetBSD is very well suited as a firewall, and for basic packet filtering
and Network address translation you do not need any additional software
at all.

> 
> In addition, since I have multiple sparcs here,  I would also be interested
> in recommendations for an adapter that I can use to convert my moniter ,
> mouse/keyboard for use with a VGA moniter, ps2 mouse & standard 101
> keyboard?

For the monitor, adapters can be found for cheap on ebay, for the mouse
and keyboard, I don't know.

Please read the documentation on http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/
before asking any more questions, thank you :)

> 
> Thanks
> 
> tw
> 

Welcome to the world of NetBSD.

My guess is that not one person on this mailing list will recommend
Linux for a SPARCstation.


-- 
Bernd Sieker

NetBSD: I Wanna Be Sedated
		-- Curt Sampson