Sun Workstation Hardware - Is it broken?

UNIX Solaris
1

Hi everyone!

I have an odd question - If a sun workstation (Blade 2000) boots up into a login prompt, is there any chance that it could have hardware issues? Or once it gets that far is it 100% working.

I cant play with it before buying, so was interested to see if anyone could shed some light on the issue.

Thanks!

2

Are you saying it boots to a character based login prompt not a graphical login screen?

If that is the case it is far more likely that either:

  1. dtlogin(1M) needs enabling.

  2. You are being put into single user mode because of an OS/filesystem problem (you usually get a message telling you why you are staying in single user/maintenance mode ).

  3. The /etc/inittab file has a line setting the default run level to a lower level than that for the GUI to run, the line concerned should read (for Solaris 8 & 9):

is:3:initdefault:
3

Thank you for your reply. I will make a note of this!

However, I do not own the computer so I cant try your advice yet (and dont have access to it).

But in your opinion, if it boots either into single user mode, or the graphical login would this suggest that the hardware is most likely fully functional?

Thanks again.

4

Booting into single user mode could possibly be caused by a hardware fault but it is more likely to an OS or filesystem issue.
Booting into graphical mode would indicate that most hardware is functional, a run of "/usr/platform/`arch -k`/sbin/prtdiag -v" (can be run in command line mode) would be a better test of hardware and installing and running SUNvts would be an even better test of the hardware.

5

Ask for the output of /usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag -v. This should show any hardware issues.