On Wed, 25 Mar 2009 02:09:08 -0700 Vivek Ayer <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi guys, > > I realize openbsd/sparc64 is probably the best port of any OS to the > sparc64 architecture, however I work in an environment where > matlab/mathematica are greatly needed. I know openbsd/i386 has linux > binary emulation, which would do the trick, but I want to use these 2 > awesome Sun blade machines that have loads of RAM waiting to be used > (8 GB in all just dying to be used). Do you all have any suggestions > on how I can matlab/mathematica to possibly use this much memory even > though they probably won't be on those systems? Is there some > memcached-like solution for this. I have a linux computer on the > network which has matlab/mathematica installed. Is there anyway I can > generically donate memory from openbsd to linux to make linux think it > more? Or some VM solution? I don't know. > > Help appreciated, > Vivek As for matlab, you might want to look into octave (in ports) http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/ The above could be a simple "drop-in" replacement for Matlab since octave is supposedly compatible. As for Mathematica, an alternative *might* be Maxima (in ports). http://maxima.sourceforge.net/ I doubt a transition from Mathematica to Maxima would be simple, but if Maxima fits your needs, you could save yourself $2,500 per seat in yearly licensing costs. As for the actual question of getting Mathematica and/or Matlab to run on your sparc64 under OpenBSD, what about using SysV-R4 emulation with the available Solaris binaries? At least with Mathematica, linux binaries are only available for x86 (32 and 64 bit), but they do provide 64 bit UltraSPARC executables. It's been quite some time since I've brought up a sparc64 machine with OpenBSD, and I've never tried emulation on one, so I could be *way* wrong. If you take a quick look at your /etc/sysctl.conf on your sparc64 box, you should see if emulation of svr4 is even possible. I'm not sure if it is. -- J.C. Roberts
