Hi all,

I recently aquired a RaQ3 and a RaQ4 from my office as they no longer needed them. I'm after a little help/advice as to how I might get them integrated into my home network to use as a backup/music streaming box (NAS).

I am completely new to rack computers, although I am reasonably experienced with home and small office networking. I know linux well as I have my own ubuntu box which I use as a programming sandbox and testing server and music streaming and backup and lots of other things. Its a standard tower computer that has ubuntu installed. I know a bit of bash to get me by.

I have not idea what is on these racks but I have tried turning them on. Here is what happened:

RaQ3:

Switched on fine, both hard disks spun up and it sounded like they read boot sectors ok.
Sat there for a while and the display on the front showed the top line of the dot matrixes all lit up like square blocks.
It didn't do anything else, no status lights on the front and no NIC lights at the rear.
The router's corresponding lights for the ports used also didnt light up, so def no network connection.
All other hardware (fans etc) seem to be in full working order.RaQ4:

Switched on and made a horrible noise, paniced and turned it off. Thought I may as well find out what is exactly wrong if it is buggered so I can rescue other working parts. A second power up with my ear at the ready told me it was just the bearings on the CPU fan, so nothing huge to worry about.
Front display showed cobalt logo and went through a boot sequence. Loading kernel. Checking disk.
A single star appeared under "checking disk" on the right hand side but then nothing happened. I thought it was too long for the rack to be on with a faulty cpu fan so I didn't wait any longer.
In the mean time, network connections seemed to be better than the RaQ3, NIC status was ticked and sent and recieved packets ok. Same for corresponding lights on router.
Front status lights: Rx/Tx flickered as one might expect, disk and 100m also lit but the others not.Any suggestions on what I should do to get at least one of them working?
I mean how would I get into them - is there some kind of set-up mode where I can set the ip address etc?
Presumably I would have to ssh into the rack to administer it. Bum I don't know the password.

Any pointers/help appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

> Any suggestions on what I should do to get at least one of them working?

I would recommend to use the original Sun restore CD (available on the Internet as an ISO image; look for offers here in this forum or on the official Sun website). Maybe it is even included with your package ;-)

So by reloading the original system you can test the hardware to ensure that there are no problems. Later you may wish to upgrade both to the RaQ550 OS or an alternative one (requires a BIOS ROM update).

> I mean how would I get into them - is there some kind of set-up mode where I can
> set the ip address etc?

Usually after the startup you can use the buttons to determine the primary IP and other network settings.

Since you don't come to this state, you should do the restore using the CD. This requires you to have the following:

A PC with a compatible network card (see restore CD documentation) that can boot from a CD.

A hub/switch and an Ethernet cable to connect the RaQ with the computer OR a cross-over Ethernet cable for a direct connection without a switch.

Some luck to make anything work ;-)

Alternatively if you just want to watch the boot messages, you need a console software on your PC; so you simply connect a serial cable to the first RS-232 adapter and see what happens during the startup procedure.

> Presumably I would have to ssh into the rack to administer it. Bum I don't know
> the password.

The default admin password is "admin" (at least this is the original value by Sun). Some early software versions have kept the password field empty, as I got told, but not sure.

If you don't know the password, there is a hole near the logo where you can "poke" to reset the admin password.

But usually loud noises are due to spoiling fans so it should not be a problem.

Just to correct tobi, you need a Null Modem cable, not a serial cable.

As for the restore disk use the RaQ4 one for both and if you can't find them, let me know and I will open up my archive for you to download.

@galacnet: Yes, you are right, of course :-) Sorry for the mistake.

Regarding the noise: The fans are loud, indeed. However if you feel that one of them generates too much noise, I strongly recommend to replace it. Especially the fan cooling the processor should be always in good working order.

On some places you may read that the RaQ3/4 could even run without fans, but I feel that this is only a valid statement when having them in a well air conditioned (cooled) rack.