Solaris 2.0 only ran on desktop SPARCstations and a few other Sunmachines.
Solaris 2.1 and 2.4 and later come in two flavors, SPARC and "x86".
Solaris 2.1 (and 2.2, ...) for SPARC run on all SPARCstations andclones, as well as all models of the Sun-4 family. The old FPUon the 4/110 and 4/2x0 is not supported, so floating pointwill be SLOW, but it does work.
Starting with 2.5 support for machines with kernel architecture"sun4" is dropped. I.e., the machines on which "uname -m" and"arch -k" return "sun4"; not the machines on which those commandsreturn sun4c, sun4m, sun4u or sun4d. The unsupported machineinclude the sun4/110 (not to be confused with the SS4 @110MHz),sun4/2xx, sun4/3xx and sun4/4xx. These are all VME baseddeskside/server configurations.
All version of the SPARC PROMs should work under Solaris 2.x,but you can run into the following problems:
1) No part of the boot partition may be offset more than 1 GBinto the disk, unless you have a PROM with rev 2.6 or better.Note that the number behind the point is not a fraction, it'san integer. Hence 3.0 > 2.25 > 2.10 > 2.9 > 2.1 > 2.0 > 1.6.
2) If booting diskless, you need a link in the /tftpbootdirectory, "tftpboot -> .". Admintool will make thatlink automatically.
A Solaris port for the PowerPC has been completed, and has been released,effective Solaris 2.5.1. But support for it was dropped almostimmediately as it went nowhere.
Solaris 2.1, 2.4 and above for x86 have been released to end users.It runs on a wide range of high-end PC-architecture machines."High-end" means: 16MB of RAM and an 80486 (or 33MHz or faster80386DX). It will not run on your 4 MB 16MHz 386SX, so don'tbother trying! Also, floating point hardware (80387-style) isabsolutely required in 2.1. Starting with Solaris 2.4 forx86, a fp CO-processor is no-longer required, though stillrecommended. With the world moving to PCI, MCA supportis now gone and ISA support is dwindling.
The following OS revision chart maps the major Solaris releases.Not all HW releases have been included as some are relativelyunimportant.
Solaris SunOS OpenWin Comments1.0 4.1.1B 2.0 4.1.1_U1 2.0 sun3 EOL release (not named Solaris)1.0.1 4.1.2 2.0 6[379]0-1[24]0 MP1.1 4.1.3 3.0 SP Viking support1.1C 4.1.3C 3.0 Classic/LX1.1.1 4.1.3_U1 3.0_U1 4.1.3 + fixes + Classic/LX support1.1.1 B 4.1.3_U1B 3.0_U1 1.1.1B + SS5/SS20 support1.1.2 4.1.4 3_414 The "final" 4.x release (SS20 HS11)2.0 5.0 3.0.1 sun4c only2.1SPARC 5.1 3.1 Dec '922.1 x86 5.1 3.1 May '932.2SPARC 5.2 3.2 May '932.3SPARC 5.3 3.3 Nov '93 OpenWin 3.3 is X11R5 based: Display PostScript instead of NeWS, no SunView. It is still primarily OPEN LOOK. The Spring 1995 OpenWin will be Motif and COSE-based. Statically linked BCP support2.3 edition II SPARC Special Solaris 2.3 distribution for Voyager and SparcStation 52.3 HW 8/94 SPARC Supports S24 (24 bits color for SS5), POSIX 1003.2, Energy Start power management and SunFastEthernet + patches.2.4 5.4 3.4 From this moment on, the SPARC and x86 releases are in sync. Q3 '94 Adds motif runtime and headers (not mwm).2.4 HW 11/94 First SMCC release of 2.42.4 HW 3/95 Second SMCC release of 2.4 (includes support for booting from SSA)2.5 5.5 3.5 UltraSPARC support, PCI support. NFS V3, NFS/TCP, ACLs, CDE, Sendmail V8 name service cache, dynamic PPP Posix threads, doors (new IPC mechanism) many "BSD" type functions back in libc, many "BSD" programs back in /usr/bin. mixed mode BCP support (e.g., apps only dynamically linked against libdl.so)2.5 HW 1/96 Creator3D support (Creator3D/FFB+ is not supported in 2.5 11/95, though the files are present but of unsupported, "mostly works", beta quality)2.5.1 Ultra-2 support, Sun Enterprise server support. Large (32bit UID) support. 64bit KAIO (aioread64/aiowrite64), 3.75 GB of virtual memory. Pentium/Pentium Pro optimizations. (upto 25% for certain database apps) Ultra ZX support. Initial and last PowerPC desktop release.2.5.1 HW 4/97 Support for Starfire (E10000) and Ultra-302.5.1 HW 8/97 Support for the Ultra-4502.5.1 HW 11/97 Support for Ultra-5, Ultra-10 and Ultra-60 as well as Elite3D2.6 5.6 3.6 Largefiles, JVM + JIT, Hotjava, X11R6, Web based answerbook, BOOTP/DHCP, SNMP agents, VLSM, in-kernel sockets, XNTP, PAM, CDE 1.2 as default desktop.2.6 HW 3/98 Support for Ultra-5, Ultra-10, Ultra-60 Elite3d and Starfire (E10K)2.6 HW 5/98 DR Support for Starfire7 5.7 3.6.1 64-bit OS support, logging UFS.7 HW 11/99 Added UDF filesystem, consadm, X11R6.4 server8 5.8 3.6.2 Dropped support for sun4c and Voyager; added IPv6, IPsec, modular debugger (mdb), high granularity interval timers, consadm, /dev/poll, MAP_ANON, forced unmount, extended memory for Intel, in-kernel mnttab, audio mixer, NFS server logging, Starfire Interdomain networking, Kerberos v5 client support, /proc tools core aware, prstat (like top), perl and other free utilities included, Apache, apptrace (symbolic library call traces), loopback file mounts (lofi), Intel CD boot, Intel large IDE disk support,8 06/008 10/00 Sun Blade 100 & Sun Blade 1000 support.8 01/018 04/01 Sun Fire server support, cdrw8 02/02 UltraSPARC III cu (aka UltraSPARC III+), Sun Blade 20008 HW 07/03 Sun Blade 1500 and 2500 support9 5.9 - Solaris 9; supports all hardware from the Solaris 8 HW releases. No Intel release at FCS OpenWindows applications removed. 1-1 thread library. iPlanet directory server IKE, SSH, secure LDAP client, bundled encryption, bundled Solaris Logical Volume Manager (formerly Disksuite), including support for upgrades of systems with DiskSuite, Live Upgrade 2.0, Multiple page size support, Solaris 9 resource manager, IPsec for Ipv6, bundled tcp wrappers, wu-ftpd based FTP server, Solaris PPP 4.0 (based on ANU PPP), Extended File Attributes, DNLC improvements, UFS snapshots, KDC, Netscape 6.2.1 X11 -nolisten and IPv6 support, Xnest/Xvfb, Freeware libraries, RSM, perl 5.6.1,909/02 IPQoS, RIPv2, tunneling over IPv6, Memory Placement Optimization, DISM, Netscape 6.2.3912/02 First Solaris 9 Intel release, LX50 Support Pluggable crypt() (Linux/BSD compatible longer password hashes, allowing for passwords over 8 characters long) UFS logging improvements. Sun ONE App server.9 04/03 Multiterabyte volume support in SVM and disk label support using EFI labels IPv6 6to4 router; IKE hardware acceleration libumem9 08/03 Live upgrade 2.1; bind 8.3.3; TCP Multidata Multi-terabyte UFS; GNOME 2.0; Ghostscript 7.059 12/03 WAN boot installation. Signed packages & patches NIS-to-LDAP transition service Resource capping daemon for physical memory control. SPARC: locality groups.9 04/04 Creating mirrors with Custom Jumpstart; USB 2.0 Feature/USB Dual Framework Sun Blade 1500 and 2500 support10 01/05 new features already available include: Privileges (no more all-or-nothing superuser), Zones (virtual, isolated OS instances), Dtrace (dynamic tracing, everything you ever wanted to know about your system but you couldn't ask; you can ask it now), SMF (service management framework), FMA (fault management architecture), Fire Engine (much improved TCP/IP performance), Cryptographic framework, 64-bit AMD64/EM64T support in Solaris for x86, Much improved Solaris/x86 support (Xfree86 X drivers included by default and the Xorg server and more), SSE/SSE2 support, and much, much, more; and even more to come! TheSolaris Express site has it all.SX Solaris Express The latest look into Sun's kitchen where new features show up before they're added to an update or before they appear in the next release
