Sparc/Sun hardware compatibility list

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This hardware compatibility list details different Sun SPARC64 systems and Linux kernel combinations that have been tested by the developer and user community with their known caveats.

About this document

This document provides a listing of different Sun SPARC64 machine models and their compatibility with different Linux kernel versions.

This document does not guarantee that you will have similar results with the same hardware, but simply documents the experiences of others. Please keep this in mind if you are thinking of making purchasing decisions based on this document.

Note
Unless otherwise stated the Net, Sound and Framebuffer columns are specifying builtin devices.

Recommended kernel versions

We currently recommend 2.6-series kernels since 2.4-series are being phased out for Gentoo/SPARC and don't support the latest hardware like UltraSPARC-T1 processors. Usually the latest stable is preferred.

Hardware compatibility reports

2.4 series kernels

Model Kernel Stability OBP Net Sound Framebuffer Submitter Comments
E250 2.4.32-sparc-r4 Excellent 3.22.0 YES N/A Permedia 2 (PCI) gustavoz Permedia for console only using PROM_CONSOLE, RSC isn't supported at all
E4000 2.4.32-sparc-r2 Excellent N/A YES N/A Turbo GX Afsin Taskiran Used as firewall with 9 ethernet interfaces
E420R 2.4.32-sparc-r1 Excellent 3.23.0 YES N/A ATI Rage (PCI) gustavoz 4x450 mhz
E6500 2.4.33.3-sparc Excellent 3.2.30 YES N/A N/A alunduil 7x400mhz
Ultra 2 2.4.32-sparc-r1 Excellent 3.25.0 YES YES Creator3D Series 1 Weeve 2x300MHz
Ultra 5/10 2.4.32-sparc-r4 Excellent 3.31.0 YES YES Onboard ATI (PCI) gustavoz None
Netra X1 2.4.32-sparc-r5 Excellent N/A YES N/A N/A tomric 400/500 mhz IIe

2.6 series kernels

Model Kernel Stability OBP Net Sound Framebuffer Submitter Comments
Blade 100 2.6.16-rc1 Excellent 4.17.1 YES YES Onboard ATI Rage XL (PCI) Weeve 500MHz, works great with Sun compatible Symbios PCI SCSI controller and drives.
Blade 1000 2.6.15.1 Very good 4.16.4 YES YES XVR-100 (PCI) Weeve 2x750MHz, BBC_I2C driver impacts system performance, using in kernel ALSA drivers for onboard CS4231 and Hercules Game Theater XP sound devices.
Blade 1000 2.6.25-gentoo-r6 Excellent 4.13.0 YES YES Elite3D m3 fmccor 1x900MHz+1x750MHz, using kernel ALSA sound driver for snd_ens1371 (PCI card).
E3000 2.6.22-gentoo-r9 Excellent 3.2.20 YES N/A None brendan 4x336mhz, 4MB cache, 4GB ram, Sun FC-AL
E420R 2.6.15-gentoo-r1 Very good 3.23.0 YES N/A ATI Rage (PCI) gustavoz 4x450mhz
E420R 2.6.25-gentoo-r6 Very stable 3.31.0 YES N/A None Sebastian Sitaru 4x450mhz, 4096MB
Netra T1-105 2.6.15-gentoo-r7 Very good 3.10.24 YES N/A N/A the_eye 360Mhz
Netra T1-105 2.6.17-gentoo-r9 Very good 3.10.27 YES N/A N/A gablau 440Mhz, 1GB ram, 2x18GB SCSI RAID1 software, SILO 1.4.13
Ultra 2 2.6.15.1 Very good 3.25.0 YES YES Creator3D Series 1 Weeve 2x300MHz, using kernel provided ALSA drivers, high I/O loads on rare occasion cause a lockup (just seems to be when I'm intentionally trying to do this these days)
Ultra 2 2.6.20-gentoo-r7 Excellent 3.19.0 YES N/A Creator3D Series 3 fmccor 2x400MHz, Up 124 days now without any failures at all. Old problems are fixed.
Ultra 2 2.6.17-gentoo-r8 Excellent 3.25.0 YES YES CG6 alexbuell 2x300Mhz, 2GB, no lockups, CG6 does console right but fails with xorg 7.1.1
Ultra 5/10 2.6.20-gentoo-r4 Excellent 3.31.0 YES YES Onboard ATI (PCI) gustavoz snd-sun-cs4231 for alsa audio.
Ultra 60 2.6.16-rc2 Excellent 3.31.0 YES YES Creator3D Series 3 Weeve 1x450MHz, Haven't tested X on this particular machine, but this framebuffer and system combination known to work for others
Ultra 60 2.6.15-gentoo-r4 Excellent 3.29.0 YES NO Elite3D m3 fmccor 2x450MHz, X (X-modular = xorg-x11-7.0-r1) on this system is fine.
Ultra 80 2.6.16-rc2 Very good 3.23.0 YES Untested Elite3D Etaoin Shrdlu 4x450Mhz, server tasks, no X
T2000 2.6.17-rc2 Unknown 4.19.0 YES N/A N/A pkessler,Pyretic Needs silo 1.4.11+, vanilla-sources-2.6.17-rc2+ and the latest experimental 2.6 livecd to install.
T2000 2.6.20-gentoo-r4 Very good 4.25.0 YES N/A N/A gustavoz Install with 2006.1 or newer media
Fire 280R 2.6.15-gentoo-r8 Very good 4.16.4 YES N/A N/A gustavoz 2x900Mhz Cu, BBC_I2C is b0rked as in Blade 1000/2000
Fire V100 2.6.16-gentoo-r3 Very good 4.0.18 YES N/A N/A gustavoz Using tulip driver for net, ports are somewhat sensitive to bad cabling
Fire V120 2.6.17-gentoo-r8 Very good 4.0.12 YES N/A N/A Weeve Onboard interfaces work perfectly via sungem driver. PCI addon board with Sun Cassini interface causes a lockup when the driver is loaded however.
Fire V210 2.6.20-gentoo-r4 Very good 4.22.23 YES N/A N/A gustavoz Installed using 2006.1 media, uniprocessor @ 1ghz.
Fire V240 2.6.17-gentoo Very good 4.17.1 YES N/A N/A gustavoz Needs silo 1.4.10+ for 2.6 kernels.
Fire V250 2.6.16-gentoo-r9 Very good 4.17.1 YES N/A N/A Chris Cosby Using silo 1.4.11+ and experimental 2.6 LiveCD
Fire V880 2.6.17-gentoo-r9 Excellent 4.5.6 YES N/A 3D Rage XL Rui Pimenta 2x750MHz, silo 1.4.13, Eth0+1: Sun GEM, QLogic QLA22xx, Xorg 7.1.1 + gnome

4.0 series kernels

Model Kernel Stability OBP Net Sound Framebuffer Submitter Comments
Fire T5140 4.0.5-gentoo Excellent 4.28.8 4x 10Gbps Sun Neptune N/A Sun XVR300x8/FireMv 2200 x8 128M panics with 3.14 kernel James McMechan 64x1.2GHz -- auto build iso panics due to 3.14 kernel, silo 1.4.14_git20120819_p1 wants zImage not image, netboot requires make tftpboot.img
Fire T5120 4.5.0-gentoo Very Good 4.33.6.f 1x 1G Sun VNET N/A N/A Malcolm Staudinger SILO 1.4.14_git20120819_p1. Built in LDOM. Bootstrapped from Oracle Linux for Sparc 1.0 image (recent gentoo minimal livecd hung on hwraid initialization)

This page is based on a document formerly found on our main website gentoo.org.
The following people contributed to the original document: Gustavo Zacarias
They are listed here because wiki history does not allow for any external attribution. If you edit the wiki article, please do not add yourself here; your contributions are recorded on each article's associated history page.