Solaris

Hello All,

I am not a sun expert, but in my network administration job I had to deal with SUN servers. We've to replace a faulty motherboard of SF V880. As per my understanding, host id of machines is programmed in PROM. So will host ID be changed with the replacement of V880 motherboard? Because in this case we'll have to get new licenses.

Thanks in advance if someone comes with prompt response.
Also it'd be great if someone explains the location of host IDs of V880, V490..

BR

Hostid is stored in the IDprom of each of those server types. You have two options:
1. Get new licenses
2. Pull the IDprom from the old server and replace the one in the new server with it.

there used to be a tool called hid2 basically the usage is

hid2 <hostid>

it runs once from rc2.d in a script during system boot-up it will change your system hostid to something else that you want. And once it's changed you can use whatever license, volume manager, vxfs, works like a charm.

tho not sure where to find it these days maybe search goggle or something.

Useful tools for Sun workstations and Solaris

I think the mods should consider having a file repository at unix.com for people to upload useful stuff

That is not something that we could do, for a number of reasons, not least of which would be the issue of legal liabilty in the case of abuse.

Hello sparcguy & reborg,
Thanks for ur valuable comments,
while searching on net I found that this IDProm is located on IO board of v880. So now my question is
If host ID is programmed in IDProm and this IDProm is located on I/O Board, then should host ID change with change of Motherboard (P/N 501-4300)??
What you experts say on this point?

I found the above info on following sun page
Sun Fire V880 - Full Components List

Thanks in advance...

Hallo Charagh,

it looks like yours ID should be not canged. As I remember, it is usually the same like a part of an internal ethernet MAC-address. And the MAC-address is connected to IOboard.

The short answer is Yes normally if you change motherboard the idprom will change.

But usually it is almost SOP and automatic that whoever's doing that field replacement will also transfer the IDprom for you.

Of course we cannot always assume so usually we will tell them all the same before hand that we have such and such software license tied to the old hostid and want the chip transferred and the field engineer will do it for you.