I guess if the biggest complaint I have is that the server is in Broomfield, CO, then that isn't too bad. I'm not complaining about response time, I'm upset that the clock displays Mountain instead of Central times. While it could be a good thing to know what time my manager thinks it is, the truth is that I have too many coworkers in too many timezones and I change timezones too much when I travel. I.e., I tend to trust what a 'local' time source tells me.

Other than that, I like having the Sun Ray 1G as a work tool. There is absolutely no configuration on my part, which is a blessing. I like to tinker too much. Right now I'm reimaging my w2100z, it had a corrupt disk and I'm no longer dependant on it as much. But, I don't have that type of problem with the Sun Ray 1G. You know, perhaps it bugs me that I haven't named it yet. But it isn't in any of my local DNS maps. It doesn't matter what I call it, I can't change anything.

I thought I was screwed earlier, some sort of outage made the box reboot several times. I had a build going on and I was afraid I had lost it. I thought, you know, if I had just used my smart card, my session would be saved. Well, it turns out my session was saved on the remote server. I hadn't lost my work. I loved that. Almost an instant off site backup, with no configuration or work on my part.

And the thing is dead quiet - no fans and no hard drives.

Out at Connectathon 2006, I had an Ultra 20 (amd64, not sparc) and it got plugged into a Sun Ray 170. You can select whether the Sun Ray 170 is a thin client or a monitor for a VGA connection. I would love this to remove a monitor from my desk.

Okay, I'm having a dialog with sr (sysadmin friend from NetApp days) about the serial ports. I find a bunch of extra db25 connectors (I gave gobs to my sister for her hardware lab) and I'm about to try them out. First though, I think about a cable I have with DB9 and DB25 on one end and the same on the other. A wierd item, but I got it somewhere. I'm looking for it and instead I find a DB9-DB25 null modem cable. What the heck, I plug it into warlock (w2100z) and into darkness (portmaster) and it works:

[tdh@adept ~]> telnet darkness 6021
Trying 192.168.2.222...
Connected to darkness.
Escape character is '^]'.

#

I really want to get some new DB25 and DB9 kits to do this correctly. I want to stash adept (my Shutttle SS51G) back there in the closet as well. But, I don't know about the combination of it and warlock heatwise.

Getting my w2100z headless has been a pain. First problem, which of the two serial ports is the console or 'a' device?

Answer, trial and error shows it is the bottom one. They are not labeled:

We will ignore how long it took me to isolate that issue. You have to couple it with the other problems.

Okay, I tried my standard DB9 to RJ45 connectors which I have had forever and which just work on connecting PCs to my Livingston Portmaster. No joy.

I went ahead and reconfigured grub to dump things out to the console port:

[tdh@warlock grub]> pwd
/boot/grub
[tdh@warlock grub]> ls -la menu.lst
-rw-r--r--   1 root     sys         1714 Mar  7 22:22 menu.lst
...
# To enable grub serial console to ttya uncomment the following lines
# and comment out the splashimage line below
# WARNING: don't enable grub serial console when BIOS console serial
#       redirection is active!!!
   serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
   terminal serial
#
# Uncomment the following line to enable GRUB splashimage on console
#splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
...
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title Solaris Nevada snv_31 X86
kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot -B console=ttya
module /platform/i86pc/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------

Even though it says do not edit, I did. I added the '-B console=ttya'. You could also do this via eeprom. I also flipped the commented lines to get grub to splash to the console port.

Still no luck on getting either console to work. Although at the end, I was seeing garbage on the lower port.

So I pulled out a NULL modem cable I have which does DB9 to DB9. I hooked it up to an old laptop running WinXP (last thing loaded and it was available). I waited 5 minutes for the thing to boot and try to install updates, connect to a printer, etc. I said it was old. Anyway, I was able to get a message about X not loading, but I couldn't do any input. At this point, I was basically done.

I decided to disable X altogether:

[tdh@warlock grub]> sudo /usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d
[tdh@warlock grub]> 

Reboot and the disk was screaming bloody murder at me. By the way, I hate that the w2100z does not have a power switch - if the machine gets locked up tight, you have to pull the cord.

Anyway, reboot again, wait for the prompt. It was there, but no input. Okay, I decided to play with HyperTerminal. I went from 9600 8N1 Hardware to 9600 8N1 Xon/Xoff. And Houston, we have liftoff. I still need to get warlock on darkness (Portmaster) such that I can work it over my LAN.