Sun

Hi guys,

Solaris n00b here, so please don't tut too hard I do have a lot of experience building software packages, but not without a C compiler, make util etc...
I'm a bit confused here - I'd like to install GNU etc al software on my Solaris 7 based Ultra 5 but I can't seem to find a sensible place to source it.
I tried sunfreeware but that appears to be commercial only now.

I tried tgcware but there were no instructions about how to install the packages (which are built for Solaris 2.6) in http://jupiterrise.com/tgcware/sunos5.6_sparc/stable/ - certainly pkgadd wasn't interested.

Could anyone enlighten me please? Solaris 7 was pre-installed so I don't have access to the Solaris CC compiler.

I believe there might have been a companion CD containing enough GNU software to start building OSS applications but I don't have that as no media was supplied with the box.
I also believe that the NetBSD pkgsrc system supports Solaris http://www.netbsd.org/docs/software/pac ... #platforms but again I believe I need at least the core GNU utils and compiler, make, autoconf etc. to get started.

Regards, Mark.

I eventually found the ibilio set of binary packages here: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/packages/solaris/sparc/
Was able to get enough installed (gcc, make, m4, autoconf etc) to allow me to build newer versions. I'm going to upload a tar of my /usr/local when done so that hopefully others wishing to explore Solaris 7 won't have quite the pain I've had!

Mark

Wasn't there some basic tools included included in the installation media..?
I think at least 2.8 had gcc as an optional install... maybe from memory 2.6 and 2.5 as well ... I was doing development work on Solaris in those times and never recalled problems getting access to a build chain.

R.

IIRC, Sun started including the open source Companion CD with Solaris 8.

For Solaris 2.5, 2.6, and Solaris 7, most folks who didn't have access to the proprietary Sun compilers went to the old sunfreeware.com site to get started.

By the way, although the sunfreeware.com site no longer maintains packages for Solaris 9 and earlier, there are still a few mirrors online that provide access to the old packages (like gcc 2.8 through gcc 3.4.x) at no charge to end users. The mirrors should be more than enough to allow bootstrapping to current package versions.

Thanks for the info. Any links to mirrors still providing access to Solaris 7 binary packages would be most welcome - I didn't find any in my trauling, but maybe I wasn't using the most appropriate search term!

There might be some GNU utilities provided in a disk distro for Solaris 7 but my Ultra 5 came pre-installed. I believe there is a trail version of Sun Studio on one of the disks which might just about get you started, but that's pure speculation on my part!

Cheers, Mark

I think this might be what you're looking for.... Freeware List for Solaris 7 - SPARC The link is pointed at gcc, but if I got the wrong Solaris version there's a list of sunfreeware mirrors for other Processors/OSs on this page.

I searched google for the words "sunfreeware" and "mirror", and several ftp sites appeared on the first page of results .

Just gunzip and use pkgadd -d.
If you don't have gunzip then install the 'gzip' package first, which is left uncompressed for that very reason.
I wouldn't have thought it necessary to explain it since they are standard SVR4 packages and can be installed like any other package on Solaris.

Since I built the packages and have used them myself on Solaris 7, 8 and 9 I know they work just fine.

-tgc

I ended up removing the IDE drive that Solaris 7 was on and installing a 68 pin SCSI drive via a SYM22801 which is a dual channel Ultra SCSI card (and was available for small change off eBay). I had a copy of Solaris 9 shipped with the box and following a recommendation from a fellow retrochallenger I installed OpenCSW http://www.opencsw.org/about/ which is about as close to linux based package management as I have seen on Solaris. Works a treat!

I've been told the two deficiencies of the Ultra 5 are the IDE hard disk and the PGX8 graphics. I got a PGX32 card off eBay again for around GBP5 wich supports 1280x1024x24 and is much faster apparently. In theory it supports 1920x1200x8 but I couldn't get it working reliably at that resolution.

Here are some images of the Ultra 5 (there are more here http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/rc2012sc/2012/07/04/sun-ultra-5/ )

Beautiful machine!