UNIX System Information - SunOS

Introduction

Early versions of Sun's UNIX operating system were known as SunOS (Wikipedia), and were based on the Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) (Wikipedia). SunOS was used on the Motorolla 68000 based Sun workstations (Sun-1, Sun-2 & Sun-3) and most 32-bit SPARC based systems (Sun-4; architectures sun4, sun4c, sun4e and sun4m, but not sun4d or sun4u).

The 32-bit SPARC sun4d systems and 64-bit UltraSPARC sun4u systems where supported from Solaris 2.x, which reports itself as SunOS 5.x, for those and later systems see my previous post on UNIX System Information - Solaris.

While the first release of Solaris was being developed a decision was made to retroactively call the last SunOS 4.1.x releases Solaris 1.x. So the last SunOS 4 release in 1994, as identified as SunOS 4.1.4 or Solaris 1.1.2.

Since I don't have a physical SunOS 4 machine to hand, the following examples are from an emulated SPARCstation 5 running SunOS 4.1.4, thus there may be a few things that would appear slightly different on real hardware.

At some point I'll refresh this with output from a physical system for comparison.

uname

Operating system version information.

sun4qemu# uname -a
SunOS sun4qemu 4.1.4 2 sun4m

So this is SunOS release 4.1.4 version 2 on a Mbus based SPARC system (sun4m) named sun4qemu.

arch

Application and kernel architecture names. Intended for use in scripts, the arch command provides a means to distinguish between the Sun-3, Sun-4 and Sun-i386 architectures. When run with the -k option it gives information about the kernel architecture (this is equivalent to the machine information returned by uname), without the option it gives the application architecture.

sun4qemu# arch
sun4
sun4qemu# arch -k
sun4m

In this case the arch reports that the system will run binaries for sun4, so SunOS 4.x on 32-bit SPARC, and the kernel architecture is sun4m, as expected on an Mbus based SPARC system.

showrev

Machine and software revision information.

sun4qemu# showrev -a
***************  showrev version 1.15  *****************
* Hostname: "sun4qemu"
* Hostid: "80123456"
* Kernel Arch: "sun4m"
* Application Arch: "sun4"
* Kernel Revision:
  4.1.4 (GENERIC) #2: Fri Oct 14 11:09:47 PDT 1994
* Release: 4.1.4
* OpenWindows: OW
* SunView:
	/usr/lib/libsuntool	:0.54
	/usr/lib/libsunwindow	:0.55
	/usr/lib/libpixrect	:2.14
	/usr/lib/libdl		:1.0
	/usr/lib/libc		:1.9
* Patch:
  No patch information found.
*******************************************************

Various bits of information about the operating system are reported along with some information about the available desktop windowing systems.

devinfo

Device information

sun4qemu# devinfo
Node 'SUNW,SPARCstation-5', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'packages', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'options', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'aliases', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'openprom', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'iommu', unit #0
		Node 'sbus', unit #0
			Node 'espdma', unit #0
				Node 'esp', unit #0
					Node 'sd', unit #3
			Node 'SUNW,bpp', unit #0 (no driver)
			Node 'ledma', unit #0
				Node 'le', unit #0
			Node 'SUNW,CS4231', unit #0
			Node 'power-management', unit #0 (no driver)
			Node 'SUNW,tcx', unit #0
	Node 'obio', unit #0
		Node 'zs', unit #0
		Node 'zs', unit #1
		Node 'eeprom', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'slavioconfig', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'auxio', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'counter', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'interrupt', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'power', unit #0 (no driver)
		Node 'SUNW,fdtwo', unit #0
	Node 'memory', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'virtual-memory', unit #0 (no driver)
	Node 'FMI,MB86904', unit #0 (no driver)

The tree structure reflects the relationships between the various devices:

• System: SUNW,SPARCstation-5
• SCSI controller: esp
• Parallel port controller: SUNW,bpp
• Ethernet device: le
• Audio device: SUNW,CS4231
• Display controller: SUNW,tcx
• Floppy controller: SUNW,fdtwo
• CPU: FMI,MB86904

Some of the "no driver" messages likely reflect missing hardware, incomplete emulation of those devices, cases where a connection isn't active and cases where a driver is not required.

dmesg

System log messages

sun4qemu# dmesg
May 14 13:04
VAC ENABLED
SunOS Release 4.1.4 (GENERIC) #2: Fri Oct 14 11:09:47 PDT 1994
Copyright (c) 1983-1993, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
cpu = SUNW,SPARCstation-5
mod0 = FMI,MB86904 (mid = 0)
mem = 261836K (0xffb3000)
avail mem = 253947904
entering uniprocessor mode
Ethernet address = 52:54:0:12:34:56
espdma0 at  SBus slot 5 0x8400000
esp0 at  SBus slot 5 0x8800000 pri 4 (onboard)
sd3:    non-CCS device found at target 0 lun 0 on esp0
sd3 at esp0 target 0 lun 0
sd3: <SUN2.1G cyl 2733 alt 2 hd 19 sec 80>
Warning! System Clock freq out of range!
ledma0 at  SBus slot 5 0x8400010
le0 at  SBus slot 5 0x8c00000 pri 6 (onboard)
SUNW,CS42310 at  SBus slot 4 0xc000000 pri 9 (sbus level 5)
SUNW,tcx0 at  SBus slot 3 0x800000 and  SBus slot 3 0x2000000 and  SBus slot 3 0x4000000 and  SBus slot 3 0x6000000 and  SBus slot 3 0xa000000 and  SBus slot 3 0xc000000 and  SBus slot 3 0xe000000 and  SBus slot 3 0x701000 and  SBus slot 3 0x200000 and  SBus slot 3 0x300000 and  SBus slot 3 0x0 and  SBus slot 3 0x240000 and  SBus slot 3 0x280000 pri 9 (sbus level 5)
tcx0: revision 0, screen 1024x768
zs0 at  SBus slot 5 0x1100000 pri 12 (onboard)
zs1 at  SBus slot 5 0x1000000 pri 12 (onboard)
SUNW,fdtwo0 at  SBus slot 5 0x1400000 pri 11 (onboard)
fdintr: nobody sleeping
root on sd3a fstype 4.2
swap on sd3b fstype spec size 98800K
dump on sd3b fstype spec size 98788K
le0: AUI Ethernet

Lost of stuff in here including the reporting of the system type and the various devices. There is also a warning "Warning! System Clock freq out of range!" which is likely related to the emulation being a bit faster than the real hardware.

Sources

• Reference Manual Pages for SunOS 4.1.2 [PDF]