ESP Driver for Solaris x86

Release notes for version 3.14 of the ESP software for Solaris x86 and Solaris Sparc.

Installation

The driver package can be installed using the standard procedure for installing Solaris packages:

• pkgadd –d <datastream file location>

The pkgadd utility will fail if the espx package already exists. It must be removed using pkgrm before the pkdadd will succeed.

Components

The following are provided on the installation diskette:

• version 3.14 of the espx device driver
• versions 3.14 of the diagnostic utilities (esp, espcfg, espdiag and esptty)
• system man pages.

Installation From Equinox FTP Site

The following steps should be followed to update and configure the ESP driver on the UnixWare system.

1. Transfer the driver image to the Solaris system.

   This step is required only if you downloaded the file to a DOS system. You may skip this step if you downloaded directly to the Solaris system.

   1. Copy the archive file onto a high density DOS diskette.
      
      "copy esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313.Z a:"
   2. Remove the DOS diskette and insert into the Solaris system.
   3. Copy the file into the /tmp directory:
      
      "mcopy a:esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313.Z /tmp"

2. Uncompress the driver file from the download file.

   1. Change directory to /tmp:
      
      "cd /tmp"
   2. Uncompress the driver file in the /tmp directory:
      
      "uncompress esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313.Z"
      
      

      This will create a file with the same name as the download file without the extension .Z, i.e. “ esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313"

      This file is a pkgadd datastream file.

   3. Move the file to the /var/spool/pkg directory:
      
      “ mv esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313 /var/spool/pkg”

3. Install the Driver

   1. Remove existing driver

      “ pkgrm espx”

      Under some circumstances (if the drive is busy with open devices), a reboot may be necessary to complete the package removal. The pkgrm and pkgadd scripts will allow you to preserve the existing /etc/eqnx/esp.conf and /etc/eqnx/esp_ports.conf files in order to maintain the device mappings to existing ESPs.

   2. Install the driver using pkgadd utility.

      “pkgadd –d /var/spool/pkg/esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313” –or-

      “pkgadd –d esp_solaris_<sparc|x86>_313”

      The second form only works if the datastream file is in the default package directory (/var/spool/pkg).

4. Configure the ESPs

   Configure and enable the ESPs using the "espcfg" program. A man page is provided with the installation. You can check the status of the ESPs after they are configured using either the "esptty" utility or the "espdiag" utility. Man pages are provided for these utilities as well. There is also an overview man page named "esp".

   Please refer to the Solaris documentation for information on how to configure ports for login, printing, and other serial capabilities (i.e., cu).

   The device names in the file system space follow Solaris conventions.

   For example, ESP 1 will have names like /dev/cua/01e0 (the direct connect device) or /dev/term/01e0 (modem device).

   The "01" in the name reflects the ESP number assigned by espcfg and the ports range from 0 (zero) to f (Hexadecimal for 15). On ESPs with less than 16 ports the range of port numbers will match that of the ESP (e.g., 0 to 8 on an 8 port ESP, 0 to 1 on a 2 port ESP).

Differences between release 3.13 and 3.14:

• Added support for ESP-8 MI and ESP-16 MI models.
• Changes to support "Avocent" branding.
• Fix to espcfg to eliminate problem with clearing ARP cache after removing an ESP.

Differences between release 3.12 and 3.13:

• Added support for ESP-4 MI models.