Device Detection Tool for 2008.11 Released
If you've been wondering whether or not OpenSolaris 2008.11 will run on your hardware, you can now find out by running the Sun Device Detection Tool. The tool itself is not new, however it has just been updated for OpenSolaris 2008.11. The application is written in Java and starts via Web Start, so as long as you have the JRE, you can run this version on any system, without installing anything. There's even an option to submit your configuration to the Solaris Hardware Compatability List.
I've never understood why this is a separate app from the Device Driver Utility that ships with OpenSolaris, when it could just as well be a different mode of the same app.
Both tools look at your hardware, show you which of your devices have available Solaris drivers, and allow you to submit your hardware profile to a Sun database. Sure, DDT lets you do a couple of extra things as well, but essentially they're just doing the same job on different platforms.
Posted by 192.18.8.1 on January 15, 2009 at 05:44 PM GMT #
One reason they're different is that the DDU on the CD requires a lot less resources to run; if a Java VM were required for it, we don't believe it would run in the 512 MB minimum memory we're supporting on the distro. On the other hand, the JVM is a good option for the DDT since Python runtimes aren't generally executable from a web browser.
Posted by Dave Miner on January 15, 2009 at 11:23 PM GMT #
Sun Device Detection Tool runs on a lot of platforms including Solaris 10, OpenSolaris, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2000, all Linux 2.6 kernel distributions, Mac OS X and FreeBSD 6 system.
Unlike Device driver Utility, this tool is a Java handy tool. It is launched by simply clicking a link on a web page instead of downloading a iso file, burning a CD and reboot the system.
Posted by JuliaL on January 16, 2009 at 03:51 AM GMT #
I tried the " Start Sun Device Detection Tool 2.2" link at the bigadmin link that you posted and all I got was a JavaWS application that then proceeded to download the device detection application JNLP file and never gave me a way to run it. What's up with that?
Posted by Anonymous on January 17, 2009 at 12:17 AM GMT #
The prerequisite of starting Sun Device Detection Tool is to install JRE 1.5+. If you don't install any Java Virtual Machine, please get a JRE free download from Sun web site (http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp) first. This question in FAQ section (http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/hcts/device_detect.jsp#jnlp) would be helpful to you.
Posted by JuliaL on January 19, 2009 at 04:08 AM GMT #
Posted by helpful on January 20, 2009 at 08:03 AM GMT #