Rave Computer Support
Tech Tips

Following are various tech tips some of which were featured in Bits & Bytes, which is part of Rave's quarterly newsletter, The Rave Review. The Rave Review is available free of charge. Please let us know if you'd like to receive our quarterly newsletter.

Need a bootable Windows 98 Floppy disk and have no floppy drive?

Even in today's high-tech world there are still a few tasks that require a bootable floppy disk to complete. With onboard floppy support being almost non existent on newer platforms, this makes it difficult to accomplish these tasks. Here is a quick and easy way to create a Windows 98 bootable USB thumb drive. This tool was written by Hewlett-Packard and modified by Rave Computer.

Procedure:

  • Back up the contents of the USB thumb drive you plan on using. Creating the boot disk will erase all contents.
  • Download the USBBoot.zip file and extract the contents to a folder of your choice.
  • Navigate to the folder where you extracted the files, double click USBBOOT.exe this will open the USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
  • Plug your USB thumb drive into the system. You should see your USB drive listed in the Device field.
  • Leave the file system set to FAT, and put what ever you like for the Volume label.
  • Check the box for Create a DOS startup disk.
  • Click the button to the right of the "using DOS system files located at:" field.
  • Browse to and select the "USB Boot Files" folder that you extracted earlier and select OK.
  • Click start and follow the instructions.
  • You now have a Windows 98 bootable thumb drive.

Common scenarios:
Updating firmware on hardware. (RAID controllers, disk drive firmware, etc.)
Updating MB BIOS

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LDom for an UltraSPARC T1 (T1000) Niagara

This is a quick reference sheet to create an LDom for an UltraSPARC T1 (T1000) Niagara based server.

  1. # ldm stop -a
  2. # ldm unbind ldg1
  3. # ldm destroy -a # this eliminates all ldom's
  4. # ldm rm-spconfig initial
  5. # ldm rm-config ldg1_12cpu_1900M
  6. # init 5
  7. sc> resetsc -y
  8. # zfs create rpool/ldg1
  9. # mkfile 8G /rpool/ldg1/bootdisk
  10. # ldm add-vds primary-vds0 primary
  11. # ldm add-vsw net-dev=bge2 primary-vsw0 primary
  12. # ldm add-vcc port-range=5000-5100 primary-vcc0 primary
  13. # ldm set-mau 1 primary
  14. # ldm set-vcpu 12 primary
  15. # ldm set-memory 2G primary
  16. # ldm add-config initial
  17. # ldm set-spconfig initial
  18. # shutdown -y -g0 -i5
  19. sc> resetsc -y # is this step necessary?
  20. sc> poweron
  21. # ifconfig -a
  22. # ifconfig vsw0 plumb
  23. # ifconfig bge2 down unplumb
  24. # ifconfig vsw0 192.168.130.95 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast + up
  25. # svcadm enable vntsd
  26. # ldm add-dom ldg1
  27. # ldm add-vcpu 12 ldg1
  28. # ldm add-mem 1900M ldg1
  29. # ldm add-vnet vnet1 primary-vsw0 ldg1
  30. # ldm add-vdsdev /rpool/ldg1/bootdisk vol1@primary-vds0
  31. # ldm add-vdisk vdisk1 vol1@primary-vds0 ldg1
  32. # ldm set-var auto-boot?=true ldg1
  33. # ldm set-var boot-device=vdisk1 ldg1
  34. # ldm bind-dom ldg1
  35. # ldm ls-constraints -x ldg1 > ldg1.xml
  36. # ldm add-config ldg1_12cpu_1900M
  37. # ldm start-dom ldg1
  38. LDom ldg1 started
  39. # telnet localhost 5000
  40. {ok} boot net # run this from ldg1
  41. after solaris has been installed but before 1st reboot clone os image
  42. # zfs snapshot rpool/ldg1@initial
  43. # zfs clone rpool/ldg1@initial rpool/ldg2
  44. # zfs clone rpool/ldg1@initial rpool/ldg3
  45. # zfs list

Don't forget to set your profile

  1. PATH=/usr/bin:/etc:/opt/SUNWldm/bin:/usr/ucb:.
  2. export PATH
  3. MANPATH="/usr/share/man:/opt/SUNWldm/man:${MANPATH}"
  4. export MANPATH


* No warranty express or implied is made for any information provided.