One of the really cool features of QEMU (Quick Emulator) is that it can emulate CPU architectures other than x86-64, such as PowerPC, AArch64, and SPARC. In my experimentation with Solaris, I’ve really wanted to try the SPARC and SPARC64 emulators with Solaris, and do something similar to this article: Build your own SPARC workstation with QEMU and Solaris. However, I really wanted to do this with Solaris 8/9/10, as 2.6 is more limited in what you can do with it. In particular, I wanted to run Solaris 8 in this, as installing 8 in VirtualBox is a hassle, with barely-functional graphics. In the end, I was only able to run Solaris in the 32-bit emulator, which emulates a SPARCstation 5 by default. The SPARC64 emulator can only run BSD and Linux variants, and not Solaris. In the future, I intend on writing another post on the SPARC64 emulator.
Category Archives: Linux
Installing AlmaLinux 9 on a DL360 G7 and other stuff
Recently I borrowed a pair of HP DL360 G7 servers from the office that had been decommissioned and are eventually destined for the e-waste bin. The servers are from 2011 and have little practical use in 2025, either in production or as lab systems, as they are slow and power-hungry. Still, I thought they would be fun to tinker with at home for at least a little while.
The top server has two CPUs and 72GB of RAM, while the bottom one has one CPU and only 4GB of RAM. The top one has a bunch of old laptop SATA drives in it (two of which are dead), while the bottom one has HP Enterprise SAS drives, all of which still function, in a RAID 1+0 array. I started with the bottom one.