Loud loud Sun Ultra 45 SPARC

Came in to work this morning, at around 2 or 3 cubicles away from my desk. I heard a huge huge humming noise (sounds like somebody was vacumning.) Immediately I was afraid it's my machine and changed my mind next second because I thought it was just too loud. But unfortunately, it IS my machine. It was toally intolerable. I shut it down right away.

After around 10 minutes, I booted it up again. Thought the noise was getting better. But when I came back from the restroom, the huge humming started again. Googling "loud ultra 45" returned this link. Forget about the cables + fanctl suggestion. I tried the second suggestion.

It worked! But the noise still seems to cycle from quite to medieum loud especially I started to work on something after a long rest. Well, at least it doesn't look like it's due to refurbishment since other people had the same problem as well.

Steps:

1. Change to root
2. # vi /etc/power.conf

Add the following lines:

cpupm enable
cpu-threshold 15s

3. # pmconfig

DHCP in Solaris 10

# Setup DHCP client in Solaris 10

find the interface name.e.g. /etc/hostname.eri0

touch dhcp.eri0

Reboot

Quadruple boot with OpenSolaris, openSUSE, Fedora and Ubuntu

Hello, obsessive nuts (meaning myself). I just had to do it to see if quadruple boot is possible...

1. Install OpenSolaris

2. Install openSUSE. Create the boot USB drive using UNetBootIn (Let it download from the net, do not use the pre-downloaded iso) . Use the USB to boot, choose the network http installation.

http address: http://opensuse.cs.utah.edu
Directory: /distribution/11.1/repo/oss/

Delete all the LVM group thing, create a new ext3 partition and mount it to /. And create a swap area which is double of the ram size (4GB in my case)

3. Install Fedora 10, create a new ext parition and mount it to / again. And it will use the swap created in the previous step.

4. Install Ubuntu 8.10.

Triple Boot with OpenSolaris, Fedora and Ubuntu

After too many trial-n-errors, finally I was able to put these three OSes in one harddisk. They have to be installed in the following order:

OpenSolaris - Has to be the first partition. Don't know if it's due to the fact that the boot loader has to be under 1024-cylinder limit thing. The installation never stated what the real problem is, it only says it couldn't create the partition or worse, it let you install the system but it won't boot after your're done.

Fedora 10 - It's pretty uneventful to install this. Create a partition to mount to / and swap area (double the RAM size). Just to be safe, after installation, save /boot/grub/menu.lst file in another machine (ftp, vsftp setup on Fedora is another topic, not straightford at all)

Ubuntu 8.10 - Create a partition in the remaining free space and mount it to /. It will ask if you want o import Fedora. Tick that to agree.

After installing Ubuntu, go to System -> Administration to unlock root. Double click on root to change the password. After that,

su
password: xxxx
vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

The Fedora boot entry should already be included. Add the following to include OpenSolaris's boot menu:

title OpenSolaris
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

Also remember to change timeout from 10 to 20 or more.

Reboot Ubuntu.