Some comments and awards from our fans

Another excellent site is the Sunfreeware site at sunfreeware.com, run by Steven M. Christensen. Christensen is involved in numerous projects, but the Sunfreeware site has arguably had the greatest impact in Solaris administrators and users to date. Just now, Sun Microsystems is finally ramping up with an admin-oriented site called BigAdmin at www.sun.com/bigadmin. While the site has existed for about two years, it really wasn't a great resource for administrators until that last seven or eight months. Interestingly, Sun links BigAdmin to Sunfreeware's site.

Christensen's site takes first honors in terms of locating software for most current revisions of Solaris (from 2.5 to 8), and for both the Sparc and Intel platform versions. Sunfreeware.com boasts a wide range of precompiled applications for Solaris in standard Solaris package and Web Start formats. Also included are the source code files for this software, in case the compile-time defaults are not what you want them to be. One of the parts of Sunfreeware.com that I found most useful was the information on making your own packages for pre-compiled binary files. Solaris packages are a great way to distribute software, but are often something of a mystery to most administrators. Christensen's excellent toturial, along with the follow-up detail provided by several Sunfreeware customers, is a great starting point for learning how to make, verity and distribute packages. Of course. being ever security conscious, the site provides a good selection of security-related software and a complete list of MD5 checksums for verification of file integrity.

A SunWorld article is on the the CNN Interactive site!

- the cover article Installing GNU tools the easy way featuring sunfreeware.com appears in their August 1999 printed issue.

This is an awesome site!!! :)

Just wanted to let you know that I think that this is the most useful web site on the entire Internet!

Dear Sir, or should I call you UNIX GOD !?

Thank you very much for helping us non c programmers to use the available software. Yall, have saved my butt !

I just have to add my compliments -

Your site is incredible. Not only do you have one of the best implementations of frames I have ever seen (and generally I really hate frames) but you also have some of the most useful content to a Solaris admin on the web. I find myself recommending your site to all the other admins here at the university. We think it is the best ever, and a real life-saver for all the researchers, analysts, professors, and staff who suddenly find themselves in the terrifying position of system administrator.

Thanks for the generous amounts of time and effort you have put into the SunFreeWare site.

This site is absolutely invaluable to us here -- we use SPARCs for all our high-end servers, and whenever I need to get a package for Solaris, you guys are the first place I go.

I've watched the Solaris 2.6 section of Sunfreeware grow from the beginning.. Damn impressive, if you ask me.. Especially the new site layout.. blink wow :)

It is rare, in this day and age, to find an individual contributor/editor with the intelligence, interest and commitment who creates and maintains a supremely useful, up-to-date, accurate WEB site. Untold hours have been added to my life by finding what I wanted right here. Thank you, Steve, for the care and time that you and (I presume) your helpers lavish on sunfreeware.com.

It is the best site of it's kind on the net bar none!

I've just been struggling for the last 3 hours trying to install gcc 2.8.1, groff 1.1 etc... I was getting nowhere fast mainly due to my own ineptitude. From the first look at your site I think it may have just saved my day......... Great work, keep it up!!

First I would like to congratulate you on (probably) the most useful resource on the internet!

I am a new sysadm, so new in fact I am loath to call myself that but, I am and therefore I must! The hardware setups (main system is Enterprise 450 w/2proc and 46Gig of disk also an Enterprise 2, w/2proc and 18Gig. for development work). I have gone through hardware install, WDS loads, the Oracle 7.3.3 loads and the Oracle 8.0 (needed for training) load all in 30 days. My world has been spinning fast and unforgiving. Having precompiled and ready to pkgadd tools out there is a godsend. I encourage you to keep up the service for all of us out there under the gun and looking for a little cover. You're hard work is appreciated and I hope I (we) the benefiting public can repay you in kind someday...

Steve:

Just a quick note: I wanted to thank you for responding so quickly to my question. Most of the time whenever I send an inquiry over email I never get an answer. And not only was it fast, it was helpful, too! (Another rarity for me...)

Thanks for the help.

Thanks for making the life of a Solaris SysAdmin Initiate (SSI) much easier. If it weren't for your efforts, I'd have wondered whether the server (Ultra 5) purchase was worth it. I hope I can return 1/10 as much to the community.

>Where can I find a completely compiled gcc for Solaris 2.5.1 (using an >old SPARC 5).

Go to Steve Christensen's most excellent site on the web:
smc.vnet.net
and pick up the gcc package. It installs quite easily.

Great! I finally have a top running on SunOS 5.6!

God sent. Thanks for the site on SPARC and X86. Sun should make you guys saints.

Subject: you saved my life...

Maybe not my life, but certainly my next pay rise ;)

I was kinda getting fed up trying to build perl with a bootstrapped gcc.

Keep up the good work.

One coolest site ever !!! :-)

Great site. Thanks a lot for putting it together. It has helped a lot, not only us at Sun Brazil, but also our customers and partners, in several ways.

Thanks!

Thanks a lot for your help.

Folks like you are the reason that the web is such a great place.

Let me know if I can help in any way.

This a very useful site here, and I've used it plenty for Solaris 2.5. Keep up the good work.

I found your site for Solaris 2.6/SPARC binaries and really appreciate your taking the time to do this. I was beginning to wonder how I was going to install gcc 2.7.2.3, as I have no compiler on my newly configured box... I was on the verge of attempting to build a cross-compiler, but thanks to you, I don't have too! ;-) Keep up the great work!

As you seem to be a major catalyst in the evolution and growth of Sun systems, particularly freeware, and you also seem to have a talent for web design, I thought you'd be the one to ask...

What's the best HTML/CGI editor for Solaris?

Thanks A LOT for creating such a complete and trouble free archive. People like you should be honored for doing such a great job and continuing it...

Keep up the good work,

You've got a great collection of software.

Cheers and all the best and thanks for putting these Solaris 2.6 packages up on the web.

You have a great collection of freeware for Solaris. It's WONDERFUL! Keep up with the good work!

I really appreciate all the work you folks are doing. Please keep up the good work.

Your freeware tools are very helpful for stressed administrators. They save a lot of time.

I wish I'd found your page several months ago (I realize it didn't exist then), before I had to go through the same hair-pulling exercise.

My boss told me this afternoon that our financial auditors where going to ask us for our password file and check it for secure passwords on Thursday.

He wanted me to take a machine out of the box and set it up to run Crack and check the password files. I HAD TWO DAYS! Install the OS, GUNZIP, GCC, CRACK and run it!

Thank goodness for Solaris 2.5 Freeware For SPARC!

I had Crack compiled and running within two hours.

This Buds for you!

Thanks,

> Anyone know where I might find gcc for Solaris 2.6. I have the GNUcc > pkg but pkgadd wants the OS to be 5.5.1.

http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.6.html

2 versions, one installs in /opt, the other in /usr/local. Take your pick.

There are some differences in the libraries in 2.5.1 and 2.6 that mean you really need this new version on the new OS. Installed fine on my machine, and works well.

Steve -- FYI. Your pkg instructions were very helpful! For instance I struggled for a long time trying to do a "pkgmk" only to find that first line needed "i pkginfo", I never would have been able to figure this out from SUN on-line doc. Also, your tip about changing everything to bin as very helpful. Thanks again.

First, thank you very much for having this site available to us. I get almost all my stuff from there because it's so easy to install and I'm off.

/usr/local packages are outstanding!!!

THANK YOU!!!

I would like to thank you very much for your "http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.6.html" page.

I recently had the opportunity to move our Intranet server off a 486 running BSD to a SPARC 20 that I have loaded Solaris 2.6 on. Your packages for perl and gcc have saved me a lot of time.

Thank you for your site I recommend frequently to my customers.

Nice site; great project.

Bless you! I've been doing this for years, and get tired of trying to compile stuff on Suns. I probably could have gotten everything going with just source, but working 60 hrs/week, I don't have time.

Well I just got this URL off one of these newsgroups a day or so ago: http://sunfreeware.com/pkgadd.html

I've followed the directions and it works very well!

Steve. The Freeware page is awesome, don't ever let it go! Keeping it real brother!

Do you know how many hours of net-surfing you've saved me (with your 2.6 page)? You should get a Nobel Price for Productivity Enhancement - no - to jargony - I'll think of a better one.

Thank you very much for all the useful stuff on your website - I just got a new Ultra30 and have been installing all sorts of stuff. Your "pkgadd" formatted files were for the most part very simple to install.

I found that the installations were quite painless. And so thank you again for such a nicely laid out site! An impressive piece of work. Hope to find it still up and running next time I go look for some of this stuff.

Your site is great and has helped me countless times in the past.

Your project to prepare into package format, and make available for use, the tools on your web page smc.vnet.net is a wonderful project, and has helped me VERY much.

Since I have Solaris 2.5.1 on my desktop, I have NO c compiler. This severely limits what I can pull down from the web and use, because most things MUST be compiled. Therefore, I have been working with sometimes-available NFS exported versions of some tools, some of them being VERY out-of-date.

Because of your web site and the pre-packaged tools, I now have PERL 5.03 on my workstation, and will be getting and using GCC in the near future. Also, the LSOF and other tools I will be getting from you.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH for doing this!

Subject: pkgmk instructions

I've found them very helpful indeed. The most complex package I've constructed so far installs Apache. Then the user just needs to run the boot script (or reboot) and the machine is a web server.

Thanks for help. I've been able to while away a few otherwise boring hours in the lab this way.

Finding this resource was like hitting the lottery !

Thanks a bundle

A Sun SSE turned me on to your site. It is GREAT! I occasionally thought about trying to put apps in pkgadd format, but like most S.A.'s I never had time to look into it. Thanks for posting the directions!

I just wanted to mention how informative and helpful your site is. It is nice to have a place to get so many helpful utilities FOR FREE! Your installation instructions where great as well. Again I would like to thank you.

I am relative novice at UNIX... most of what I learn is through school of hard knocks, man pages, www stuff like yours.. thank you a mint.

I just upgraded several systems from Solaris 1.1 to Solaris 2.5.1, SPARC 20 to Ultra 1s.. these systems were our primary and secondary dns servers and the email servers for the domain...

Your utilities precompiled and built with pkg installation really saved me a lot of time and troubleshoot...

Thanks a great bunch..

I found some very helpful information about pkg at http://smc.vnet.net/pkgadd.html.

Thank you very much for providing this resource.

First, thanks for allowing get such important software. I've got gcc and g++ for Solaris 2.5 SPARCstations and I can tell you that really works.

I just wanted to say that your new site (haven't been here for a while) is exquisite. It made it very easy to find the software I was looking for.

Well Done.

Thanks for doing a nice job for all of us; it's great having all this stuff precompiled, especially getting that first copy of gcc going...

Solaris-freeware its a great collection congratulation for your job.

I am the a lead sysadmin at a site with 4 SPARC Ultra 5000/6000 machines. Your supplying software, in particular a compiler, has made my job much easier. I have been able to write a needed as root like routine saving me from giving the root password to a large number of people. We are in the process of buying C, but this takes so long that your site has been a godsend.

Great Site :-)

As a Solaris user who did not have budget for the C compiler, it was essential that I find a GCC binary for Solaris 2.5 to get started. Thank you for the hard work in maintaining your archive.

First I want give congratulations to you. Your Solaris 2.5 home-page is very cool.

I really appreciate the binaries!

all complements you want for your binary archive. It save us days (if not weeks) of work and gave us a better system, because we have now Software which we would not have compiled, if we had to do it by hand.

Your site is really very helpful.

You have an excellent site...If I had not found it, my life would be considerably more difficult...

Thanks for putting together such a great site...

Everything you have here has helped moving Solaris so much easier :-)

I just got a SPARC 1+ and I installed GCC 2.7.2.1. WOW, very nice package (I come from a Linux background so... FREE software is a MUST).

First of all, thanx for having all the cool stuff on this site! i'm guessing there are more than a few people such as myself who find themselves in the position of defacto sysad but who do not have much of a background ( read: none ) in c programming. the precompiled versions enable me to be able to use perl, for example, without having the arcane knowledge of how to edit a confige.h or make file.

I checked out sunfreeware.com.

The only freeware site anyone will ever need.

Thanks a lot Steve!!!!, You saved my life...

As for the praise - keep up the good work on the set of pages at the freeware site ;)

first of all thanks for the great job your doing with the Free Solaris Software Site.

Your input will definitely help us saving thousands of tree's which might be brought down to match the printing paper demand of our organization. Thanks...

I appreciate greatly the efforts you have made to make these very useful packages available.

Hey, I think this is great stuff!

As I am not a savvy internet software person, having to compile this stuff myself is a real pain because there always seems to be some 'problem' that I don't understand, and it takes too long to figure it out. Then I don't have a high degree of confidence in the program.

Thank you VERY MUCH for the Sunsite pre-packaged, pre-compiled free software available on the . We have been using the packages with much success.

Thanks again for all your hard work. It really helps!!

Your pre-built package site just solved a couple problems for us... like getting G++ compiled on a machine with no shipped compiler. Thanks again.

I just wanted to write you and tell you that your site has saved my life at least once. If not for these precompiled binaries, some of my projects would not have made it out he door. I have gcc, but I can never get anything to compile on my machine ( I have tried everything ). I am glad that someone out there is brave enough to do the compiling and get the software in usable form. ( Like the other platforms out there )

I have nearly no experience with software development for UNIX. I'm hardly able to read make files.

That's why I'm VERY glad that I can download so much software in package format. The only time I had to do something like compiling software on my own (sendmail) I didn't really succeed......

Thank you very much for your pkgadd info. It was very very useful.

I just had to say, this site is the greatest place I have seen. It took me all of 30 minutes to download gcc and gzip and get them installed on my SPARC 10. You are a major time saver. Thanks a bunch!

This is the best site I've seen. It really saves my time and efforts with Solaris. Thank You!

Thanks for all your effort. No awards would be sufficient to match what you deserve for this incredibly useful service.

I just want to thank you for making GNU's software MUCH easier to install and configure! Since I'm not big on programming as yet, and not that familiar with the compilation of GNU software, you've made my software installation life a whole lot easier! Thanx again Steve, cheers to YOU and your group!

Go on this marvelous site:
http://smc.vnet.net
You won't be disappointed

Thanks a lot by your invaluable work. I'm new on Solaris and I don't know too much about C, then when I can't compile a new daemon or something like that I visit your page. You save me too much time and to my university since I the only one who put new software on the system servers.

Thanks a lot and keep working!

Your site is an invaluable one to anyone bringing Solaris machines onto their network for the first time. We just installed a number of firewalls that run on Solaris (Gauntlet), which was not too hard since the firewall installs easily from CD. Then we tried to convert two of our websites to Solaris on UltraSPARCs. Without your site I would have lost 3 extra days or more as I didn't have a compiler. Your site also provided our web development team with the essential tools for their jobs in minutes. Considering the normal cycle of compile, adjust makefile, compile, adjust makefile, ... install that many of these tools normally require I figure that I owe you at least 3 days of time plus the cost of keeping our consultant idle but still billing as I am madly trying to install tools.

Thank-you, your name and site is one I will always remember.

You RULE! :)

Sometimes I question my chosen career, especially when things become confusing for a long time.

Finding a site like this with explanations that are at an extremely easy to comprehend level, gives me back the confidence I need on the basis that I am not completely stupid and that you too must have encountered the same problems at some point to have ever bothered explaining things so well.

Thank you for making it all worth while.

My company has about six consultants that work with Solaris. We recommend this platform to our clients when the opportunity arises.

The trend of *not* bundling a bootstrap compiler has made life miserable for those of us installing new machines.

One shining light has helped to reduce this fatigue. That is the precompiled GNU libraries of Steve Christensen found at http://smc.vnet.net/ I tried to offer him a "donation" for this valiant effort, but he declined. I found out that he is, in part, supported by a grant from Sun Microsystems.

In order to make Solaris more popular and usable, *PLEASE* continue to support his efforts. His archive of precompiled software has proven invaluable to us, and I'm sure thousands of others as well.

Finally, I would like to thank you for a WONDERFUL service you are providing the users of Sun. This requires some dedication and a lot of work, I know how difficult it can be to compile software (I came from formerly using AIX). I am also currently compiling software in a new lab.

I just wanted to express my appreciation for making all the freeware so easily available. It saved me several days work setting up my new Ultra.

Service like this from Sun goes a long way towards making using Sun equipment a positive experience.

I just wanted to thank you for the work you have done in putting together an excellent repository of SPARC freeware.

Let me take a moment to tell you just how important your site has been to me.

We are a local telephone company in the Texas Panhandle. We are also an ISP. We have been using a P166 running FreeBSD as our mail/web/etc server. We recently invested in 2 U.S. Robotics Total Control Hubs. The software from USR is only compiled for HPUX, and Solaris SPARC. So, we started researching the SPARC class machines to see how feasible a move to that platform would be. I searched on the web for a place to get SPARC versions of software we already use, such as emacs,apache,less,bash,gcc,perl,etc. After I found your site I made the recommendation to go ahead with a move to the SPARC platform, knowing that most of the software I already used would be easy to get running on the SPARC.

We are now the proud owner of an Ultra/1 170. The machine is beautiful, I have been very impressed. I have found the transition to Solaris to be very easy. Your site has played a very large part in making this transition easy, and worthwhile. I plan to switch the Ultra to production next weekend.

Sorry to get so wordy, I am sure you get lots of email, but I wanted you to know how useful your site has been to me.

Keep up the good work! And, thanks for supporting the SPARC platform.

You're providing a most valuable resource and one that allowed me to standardize on a cool way to distribute software on our internal machines. No longer do all of our internal machines get a mis-match of every piece of software we run, we can tailor each machine with very little hassle. Due to the timescales imposed, it was impossible to package up every piece of software that we use and so your site, and the mirrors, was extremely useful to us.

Once again, thanks for a very worthwhile project.

Congratulations on the Solaris 2 pkg-format freeware site. I have used something similar for Irix in the past, and it's really nice to see the same thing for Suns.

Thanks for all your good work.

I wanted to express my most sincere appreciation to those who make this effort, not just for providing binaries/source, but doing just a darn good job of it. I rarely feel comfortable using precompiled stuff, but these packages look so professional and installed better than many commercial packages (including Sun's workshop stuff, and powerchute software).

I have to say I was a little nervous at first about downloading precompiled (read: possibly virus/trojan horse-infected) software from the Internet, but I _really_ needed gcc (since it's tough to compile things without a compiler) so I took the plunge. I can't get over how great your packages are! Many, many vendors could learn about ease-of-install from you. Now I find I don't really need gcc that much at all, since most of what I wanted to compile is already ready already, and in pkginst form to boot!

Thank you very much for your time and effort on behalf of the Solaris community!!!

I think this site is a really great time saver, please keep up the good work.

First off, let me say thanks. For someone in my shoes, just building a new machine, this is a fairly invaluable tool.

My friends highly recommended this site to install software and so I thought I will make a start here.

Anyway, the reason I am writing is to say HOW DARNED HELPFUL these pages were for me tonight. Instead of spending anywhere from 1-5 hours building programs like elm, perl, and gcc, I installed all three in less time than it would have taken me to build one. I hope this helps this useful project get funding. Thank you so much for your Solaris 2.5 porting project!!!!!

I'd just like to tell the creators of the http://sunfreeware.com page that it has helped me immensely! Keep up the good work.

I would like to say how much we appreciate the Solaris 2.5 binaries that you have made available. It is assisting us greatly in the move to Solaris2.

Thanks and I want to say that this is a terrific site for Sun users.

Great website Steve.

I often visit your home page, and your Solaris software collection has made life very easy on Solaris. I really appreciate that.

Just wanted to say many thanks for all of your work which has saved me heaps of time and energy.

First, many thanks to you, Mike and any other helpers for making this archive available. It is invaluable.

You have an excellent site here. I am really impressed.

I am an avid Solaris user.. work at Sun etc... and I think it is great that you are providing these packages for others use.

When I discovered all the pre-packaged Solaris software, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.

Thanks for the nice work you've done.

I really like the way you have this site organized. It's simple and easy to use.

Just found your site and it's a great help. I have recently had to rebuild an IPX after selling my old SPARC 1+. The old machine already had all of the GNU tools and it wasn't until I got this new machine that I realised how much of a bind it is to rebuild all of the packages. After getting gcc, libg++ and a few other tools built I found your site so am currently downloading a load of the package files to just do a straight install.

Having all of these programs available in package format certainly makes life easier especially for subsequent machine rebuilds.

Keep up the good work.

Nothing but THANK'S !!!

Brilliant site - this has saved me many hours of kludging. Keep up the good works and Sun should slip you a few quid for keeping their customers happy !!

I owe you many many hours of my life. A million thanks! Good luck, and keep up the outstanding work!

It's really a great site.

This is a brilliant site - I was dreading assembling a working TeX suite and trying to work out how to build gcc, but the packages you've assembled made it completely painless.

Thanks for the good work!

I think this is very useful site!

I would like to thank you for all of the excellent Solaris 2.5 freeware that you have on smc.vnet.net. It has been a great help to me.

Great site Steve! A lifesaver for those of us whose management is too cheap to buy compilers.

I also would like to complement you on your outstanding attempt! I have been scouring the net looking for S2.5 software, and ran across your archive.

I only can join the other people thanking you for your work. Since I am new to UNIX, it is a great help to me, if I do not have to hassle with trying to build software. Thanks.

Your site has been a tremendous help. Thanks!

This site is a life saver for me. I picked up a couple of things my SPARC was missing. Everything ran smoothly and efficiently. Thanks to you and your partners for the fine work.

I also would like to complement you on your outstanding attempt! I have been scouring the net looking for S2.5 software, and ran across your archive. Thanks a lot!

Thanks very much for the ports that you have done - 'top' is one that I just could not build. Also I have to setup TeX which is a daunting prospect - so I may snaffle this too.

Hi!

I am one of the people who have benefited greatly from your Solaris site. I have downloaded several packages, and yours is really very helpful, and a great contribution to the international community. We owe you a lot! Keep it up.

Kindly accept my sincere thanks and appreciation for your good job.

Thanks for all of your hard work.

From a Comp.UNIX.Solaris posting

I don't know how/where to get this pkginfo file. I can't find in any of the other man pages how to create one. anyone know what I'm doing wrong? please respond via email.

The only resource I've seen for explaining packages is:

http://smc.vnet.net/pkgadd.html

I am a newly 'appointed' administrator of our new Sun Ultra I workstation. First of all, I like to thank you for setting up the freeware site. It surely helped me a lot in getting me started and I have been installing a number of the packages such as, gcc, xv, ... etc to our new machine.

Hi Steve. I think it is great that Solaris now has a site that will allow you to grab premade binaries of programs. This could save lots of time in setting up the machine and finding libraries etc, especially useful if you are not root.

Thanks again for a terrific service.

Simply a fantastic resource for me and my server.

Almost everything I needed was there.

Thanks bunches.

I guess I now owe you a few days of my life. :)

Thanks very much for putting up the site! It has helped tremendously to keep me sane! =)

Just wanted to say thanks for putting the Sol 2.6 GCC bins online. Saved me a bunch of time.

I just wanted to say thanx for maintaining such a fantastic page.... I have looked a really long time for a site like this.

What I --especially-- --really-- --appreciate-- is that these are in the pkgadd formats... it makes life so --much-- easier...

(sorry for all the 'dashes'... I am just really excited about your page :)..

First off, Bravo for your work on this site.

Great site. Gzip isn't even gzipped! This was a huge timesaver.

Congratulation for the HTML page.

Thanks so much for the great software site. Couldn't live without it.

I love you,
I use the packages quite a lot to put in quite a many machines and they really help me a lot. Thank you :).

First, THANK YOU for maintaining the site with all these compiled binaries.

You hit the nail on the head.

Thank you so much for your help - I've learned quite a bit through our exchanges. I owe you a beer or two for your time.

The Solaris 2.5 site is by far the best location to find Solaris "packaged" software/utilities!

Just wanted to comment on this FANTASTIC page. I honestly know where I would be without it.

THANKS!!!!!!

I know a lot of times if you do good work it goes unnoticed! Well this site (http://smc.vnet.net/Solaris_2.5.html) is GREAT!!

THANKS FOR ALL THE HARD WORK!

You've saved me A LOT of TIME!!!

Again thanks.

Thanks for supporting this awesome site!

BTW, I am very happy with the stuff I have been pulling off your site. It is great to see so much of the good PD software not only ported to Solaris 2 but so easily installable as well. A real sign of the quality of PD software and the effort put into it by PD S/W supporters and developers!!!

Your work on Solaris 2.5 packages is simply WONDERFUL. I want to thank you for making my life easier.

Thank you for your Solaris GNU binaries.

I was being given a SPARC for development from home. I had the option of using SunOS or Solaris 2.5. I debated which one I should take. I knew that there were tons of SunOS code, but how much had made it to Solaris 2.5 was unknown. If I took Solaris, what was I going to do about a compiler; debugger? When I saw your web page, my decision was made for me. Having everything in one place really was reassuring that code was available for Solaris.

Keep up the excellent work.

I have used Suns and other UNIX boxes for years. Then about two years ago, I started using Linux. Linux was great because it opened up access to UNIX computers to thousands of people/programmer all over the world. This produced a source of great little utilities, most of which are free (GPLed). I never had the time to port some of these great tools over (to Solaris) myself. Now I find that some one did it for me. It's amazing how such little things like virtual consoles, scroll back command line, tool/task-bars in X, gzip aware tar, etc, etc, make one so much more productive.

Then you have to use a box without them. Can't tell you how many times i've said 'Damn, I wish I had that tool on this machine' Hey! Now I do.

Thanks loads!

From comp.sys.sun.apps:

> Get gcc precompiled and packaged from
>
> http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html
>
> and you should have what you need.
>

Thanks!

I successfully downloaded a gcc binary from the above link before hearing from anyone. I stumbled upon it, and got it installed. And it actually works too--which surprised me. I was about ready to install Linux over Solaris, but everything compiled smoothly.

Thanks!

:-)

Thanks for all of your help,

Thanks for the excellent service.

Best thing on the net so far!!!

With the ported free software we will never regret we migrated to Solaris 2.5. We were running SunOS 4.1.3 before, and the transition to Solaris 2.5 was extremely easy with the ported software!

Keep up the good work!!

This site is very useful to download internet s/w for Solaris. Already I use this site... Thank for your page.

Thank-you very much
Thank-you very much

If you go to Spain you have a birra .

I'm sure you must be getting tired of all these people saying:

Thank you!!!!! I owe you days and years of my life!!!

(and then falling all over your feet, kissing them, anointing your head with oil, and providing free quantities of intoxicating liquors)

But allow me to add my heartfelt and humble thanks for your activities. As a fledgling sysadmin, your provision of compiled binaries allows me to install the needed tools, and then learn how to use them, rather than to experience the tremendous frustration of trying to learn how to get the tools one needs.

Therefore, if you're ever in the Raleigh, NC area, drop me an email, and I will arrange for a quantity of intoxicating liquors (or other non-controlled substances) to be at your disposal.

Hi, great stuff, that archive!

I can only say thanks a million times! Your server has saved me a week of my life!

Your archive is really great. I recently spent some time downloading some of your tools.

Let me first express my great appreciation for your efforts in providing easy-to install PD software for Solaris.

I have spent a lot of time compiling PD software; if I'd come across your page before, that would have saved me much of it, I guess.

Let me echo the statements of your fans. You are doing a great service.

Your freeware archive is just the dog's biscuit, it serves me a lot and we save a lot of time not having to compile the stuff. I wish there were one for HP-UX10 too.

It was really stupid for SUN not to include a C complier with Solaris. Without the binaries for some other C compiler I would be stuck forever. It took me a long time to find this site which is odd as it offers a service which I have been unable to find elsewhere.

Thanks a lot. Now I've got GCC, I can't help but pick up a few other odds and ends... this and that need updating...

Hours of fun. (-8

First I want to thank you for your wonderful web site. This is one of the best and excellent sites I have ever seen on the web. I don't know what I would have done without this site.

I wish to thank you again for your wonderful effort and keep up the good work.

Thanks for the archive - it's wonderful!

Great page. Using pkgadd under Solaris 2.5 is great. Sure beats having to manually compile programs.

Best of success to you!

:-)

Thanks!

I just discovered http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5_nof.html tonight. I'm so thrilled! I was just resolving to stop doing other more pressing things to sit down and build about 50% of these packages over a weekend or something.

Thank you in advance! I'm going to grab some disk and get myself a real UNIX box out of my fairly virgin Solaris machine.

I have some friends at work who are going to start loving my system even more now, too!

You have a really great site. I just got Solaris x86, and the precompiled binaries of gcc will get me going very quickly.

Thanks for responding, and so quickly!

Your help is appreciated very much,

Thank you _very_much_!!!! I'd spent about 3 hours doing various searches on the Internet (AltaVista, Excite!, etc) as well as various Usenet searches too.

Thank you so much for supplying these to the Sun/internet community!

I find them an invaluable time-saver, I can't say that I don't enjoy working through the compile and install issues around freeware, but the hours it chews up on my schedule are sometimes enormous (ever built and installed INN?).

Anyway, THANKS A BUNCH!

Thanks for providing the Solaris Freeware Archive.

thanks very much.... that solved alot of port problems for us..

Thanks for the prompt response! By the way, the site is great - a genuinely useful resource.

You have my undying gratitude. Well thanx.

Wonderful site, btw. It has been infinitely useful!

I gotta say it...I love it. I have a Sun Netra. Getting things is such a pain...

I like it so much that if it works I will offer you a mirror site.

I LOVE the service you are providing!!! It is most helpful.

Any thoughts on having a European mirror of your great site. The Imperial College SUNSITE in London seems the obvious place to suggest.

Keep up the good work.

We are working on a number of worldwide SunSITE mirrors. A few, like Imperial College's SunSITE already exist. See Mirrors --- smc

Thanks for all the hard work you've done. It has been a god send.

Thank you for your time and effort you've put to ease our lives!

I like your site, and the purpose behind it.

Thanks man. I got it compiled and running without problem. Nice page btw.

Your freeware package site is just great, and will save countless hours by so many who are in the position of needing to install freeware from source.

I looked at your site for a new TeX distribution, our installation is several years old now and no one dared look at upgrading it as it is a very time consuming task.

Just to say thank you for precompile the GCC for Solaris 2.5.

I downloaded and installed both FSFgcc and FSFlibg++ and was able to run Hello World in C++ without any difficulties.

It's a great site.

Thanks for this incredible service. Sun ought to gold plate your mice.

I think you are doing a great job. This is real service in the tradition of FSF.

Having a Netra (cutdown Solaris) to administer, you can't believe how happy I was to find your site of packages for Solaris.

Now I finally may be able to compile and use the expensive machine for more than a simple mail server.

from comp.unix.solaris:

How about a pre-compiled gcc for Solaris 2.5.1 from

http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html

I installed gcc within less than 10 minutes!

PS You need gzip, which you can also get -- pre-compiled, but not zipped! -- from the same site as above.

Wow, I came looking for a gcc compiler for Solaris, and wound up grabbing a couple of other goodies. Thanks for a great site!

Thanks again for your hard work putting together the web site!

The web site is cool; very useful collection of stuff.

hey, I think what you guys are doing is wonderful, lord knows it's saved me some work..

Very impressive. I wish I'd known about your site the first time I spent hours upon hours getting gcc to build on a virgin (no C) 2.x system. It's great to see that the spirit of sharing in so strong with you. More of us are needed ;-)

Kudos for the work porting software to the Solaris 2.5 environment.

Thanks for setting up such a cool site. It is very helpful to have this software precompiled.

Try downloading the gcc 2.7.2 binaries in package format; very easy to install!

http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html

Two very good sites for Sun/GNU SW are:

pkg & src:
http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html

Source:
ftp://nce.sun.ca/pub/freeware/SOURCES/

This is a great service for Sun users. It has cut the amount of time I have expended on getting extras put up on my machines. This has helped with a number of projects I am trying to get underway. For example, LaTeX2HTML installs a good deal easier with the PERL I got from you. Also, the GNU C compilers have been great. I used this to install the netpbm package. Things just work easier with your stuff. The two packages mentioned above would be a nice addition to the packages you have listed. You need netpbm for the LaTeX2HTML package. Thanks again for the effort.

Keep up the good work.

Your site is a blessing.

Thanks for providing all of the Solaris binaries you do. It has definitely saved me time.

You guys deserve the UNIX administrators Medal of Valor!! (if such a thing exists.) Thank you very much for your service. I will more than likely visit you information/file store again in the near future.

Hi Steve. I am currently bringing up a new UltraSPARC and am busily downloading and installing many of the packages from your site. Grabbing precompiled code is saving me tremendous amounts of time - thanks for all the great work.

I wanted to say thanks for the great page for Solaris packages.

I've spent too much time looking at other pages for package info so in the future I'm going to your page first.

I just *LOVE* your PD sw site for Solaris. Thanx.

Great project.

I'm the Network Admin at SegaSoft, and we got two new servers in, and thanks to a plethora of FSF software in Solaris packages, I can get through the obligatory 'cram-software-I-need-on-this-box' stage and on to my real work!

Thanks! I'll add that one to my hotlist.

I just stumbled across smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html, had a look at it, and I'm really impressed! You've done a great job there!

This stuff *works*. It enabled me to get most of a comfortable development environment up on a new machine in a couple of hours. I'm impressed.

Your site is a God-send! Thank you! Thank you!

The easiest install, the BEST!!! Thanks so much.

I'd like to say thank you for the effort you have put into your site.

Great software site. Very handy place to get replacement programs!

I came across at your site by pure accident. It looks great!

I got a new SPARC5 and UNIX admin has decided to install Solaris 2.5. I was a hardcore 4.1.3 user, but - what the heck - you have to move _eventually_ to system 5 anyway, so why not now. And then I ran into a problem - I had to get a traceroute, and couldn't find it for Solaris anywhere, neither I could find a cc. And I know too well how long would it take to install gcc (and the whole gnu environment). So once again by pure accident I came across at your site, got a traceroute, ran pkgadd, and here we go!

A great source for administrators without time! Many thanks!

Your precompiled packages for Solaris 2.5 are very useful. Thanks for the work you put in this project.

Praise for porting!!!!! praise!!

Just wanted to say thanks for hosting the Solaris 2.5 freeware archives! It saves me alot of time compiling! :)

First, kudos on your efforts!!! I have had all sorts of problems trying to get programs to compile on my Solaris machine.

When someone told me about your web site, I said, 'Thank god!!!'

I have download alot of your programs and all have worked flawlessly. Thank you for saving me alot of time.

First off, great site! I just found it, and it's something that in my opinion should have been done long ago!

I am pretty new to the world of Solaris, and UNIX in general. That's one reason that I'm happy to find packages!

Hey Steve. Watch out! Highly Complementary email below!

Thank you very much for your work on the Solaris 2.5 Freeware site. It's been invaluable in the build-up of our first SPARC.

Steve, You are the Man!

Thanks for all the Solaris ports, you have no idea how much time you saved me.

First some highly complimentary praise:

Your making life a lot easier for thousands of Solaris administrators, including myself.

I've said it before, and I'll say it a thousand times - You guys are AWESOME!!

Keep up the good work!

Thank you for your site -- it was extremaly helpful for bootstrapping development environment on the Solaris machines without SunSoft compiler.

I had completely forgot about your site, but picked it up in a newsgroup not five minutes ago.

Thanx very much for the site. If only I'd remembered your URL three weeks ago, it would have been brilliant.

I need the resources again RSN, so THANX ALOT for your time in putting the page together.

Great site! I just got my first SPARC, an ancient IPC with no software on it, and this has *really* gotten it going!

Thanks for a great resource!

Hooray!!

What a joy - I tried perl first - *ping* and there it was installed! - man pages and all.

We have already spent many unhappy hours building and installing many of the packages you offer but upgrades will now be trivial.

I have not enjoyed the transition from SunOS to Solaris but these pre-compiled binaries make life much easier.

Many thanks.

Absolutely brilliant idea a Solaris 2.5 site - God Bless YOU!!

I have found the freeware site for Solaris 2.5 to be excellent.

I appreciate your efforts in providing pre-compiled binaries for Solaris. there is a great deal of good things being done with Solaris out there and such little time to spend compiling. Anyway, I hope to contribute one of these days. Til then, keep up the good work....

Thanks for the excellent work. Much appreciated.

Everything else looks great and I know it takes time and volunteer effort to put all this together.

Thanks for an essential job.

I love this site! I had to hunt a little for it...

I've had a lot of success using your Freeware page. I got my current job (Senior Information Management Specialist) based on good Netware and Internet skills and basic working knowledge of Linux. They had their web server running on two Linux boxes. They had purchased a Sun SPARC 20, but since nobody was here that knew how to run it, they got as far as giving it an IP address and were using it as a kind of personal storage facility.

In the three months I've been here, I've turned this box into a working WWW, Mail, and FTP server, mostly using tools and information from your site (I got tar, gzip, gcc, traceroute, workman, Qpopper and Perl from there). It would have taken tons longer if I didn't have the premade packages and had to compile everything myself. I'm nowhere near guru on UNIX, and Solaris is its own beast.

I am a FAN of your site.

Great work on Solaris project. Many congratulations for this wonderful site where the software can be downloaded in SUN packages. Thousands of thanks.

As a UNIX/Solaris newbie, I can't begin to tell you how much I love your site! It has been a great help to me, and I will be sure to visit it many, many more times in the future!

Your Solaris package site is one of the most useful things I've found on the . The entire Solaris community owes you a debt of gratitude.

I'm a Solaris x86 user as well, so I'm glad to see that you're supporting that platform as well.

At last a page that has links to binaries of Solaris! Unfortunately to you I already found two sites in Europe (after two whole days digging in the net)...

Keep up the good job! Your page is bookmarked once again!

You are providing a great service to Sun Solaris community by providing us with binary versions of some of the free software.

I would like to thank you and all those who are helping you with spreading Solaris freeware. I was desperate for a C compiler that I could use on a SPARC-20 and I did not want ot have to purchase one. The GCC and its supporting components maintained by your site helped me out of this crisis.

The reason I needed a C compiler is that I am currently attempting to create a patch for extracting E-mail addresses from an SQL database and placing them on a page as hot links. I was able to create the tools necessary to do the job using the files ftp'd from your project.

Thanks for being there when one of the 'little guys' needed help.

Can't tell you how much I appreciate your putting these packages together. I recently setup four Ultra 2's, and the software build was a breeze thanks in part to your groups efforts.

My compliments on your site for freeware for Solaris 2.5.1! I am working on a new SPARC box and it was nice to have most of the necessary UNIX tools and utilities on one site.

I just wanted to drop a line and tell you what a great resource the Solaris 2.5 port page is! I download the latest and greatest precompiled and sources from the site quite often. This type of effort is LONG overdue! As we compare different UNIX vendors for large projects, the availability of tools is always a great plus for Sun. Keep up the great work!

The sun free software site (really great !!).

First of all I would like to congratulate about your site, it has been very useful for me....

First of all .... THANKS. You have done a great job with this site. You have definitely made my job easier.

I just now found the WWW-page of Sun's freeware. It's great!

Once again you have saved me many hours of valuable time. I needed to install Perl for use with a BSD lpd package I was compiling ( some of lp commands were really Perl scripts ). You have consistently maintained the best archive of Solaris 2.5 binaries I have found.

Thanks again,

I don't know where I would be without you, thanks for provide this quality software for Solaris 2.5. Without your software, I would be at a lost to do the strange this I like to do most of the OSes I run.

The resources you have provided are greatly appreciated! Thanks!

I want to thank you for making the installation of gcc and gdb a fast and pleasant experience. Having the packages readily available and in "pkgadd" format was invaluable. I zipped the software into the /opt directories faster than it took to ftp it over to my site. I had previously recommended you to someone looking for TEX, based solely on the feel of your web site. But now I can recommend you based on happy experience AND on the positive feel of your web site...

Thanks, again.

A very useful site. I normally love compiling ( :-) ), but with more commitments than I used to have, this site is already coming in handy.

Thanks!

Thanks for all your help and I've downloaded a lot of things from your site!!

Your site has already been a most valuable help.

We have installed many of the programs on our UltraSPARC1 and have greatly appreciated the work you have done ;-).

I work at a company that runs nothing but AIX (yuck! but it pays the bills until Sun calls) and I salvaged a Hyundai SPARC station to put on my desk. I did get a copy of Solaris2.5.1 from our R&D department who uses it to test FS compatibility with an SSA array. However, no compilers! So, I kept poking around on the net and found your page which helped me get gunzip and gcc so I could natively compile a gcc for my system and then compile the tons of other GNU software you have that I needed. Thanks for putting the effort out to do such. Without it, you could have left me with no choice but to use AIX! The horror! Again, thanks a bunch and I'll try to let you know if I can get some stuff to compile that you don't already have.

Keep up the good work.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, Thank You, the page is wonderful.

Thanks very much!

The Solaris 2.5 Freeware site is brilliant. I use it for all my GNU on Solaris downloads.

Once again thanks for a useful site.

Hi there, I picked up the Perl 5.003 package from your Solaris 2.5 freeware site. That is the coolest site, so useful.

Thank you! thank you! You've saved me hours of time. Your site is one of the most useful i've used.

Thanks a lot for your help. This URL is a mine for me. Call me if it is possible that I can help you!

I just wanted to say thanks for this service. I downloaded Perl 5.003 onto my Solaris 2.5 system. It installed as per directions with no problems. I made symlinks from /usr/local/bin to /opt/GNUperl5/bin, and it seems to work fine. Total elapsed time: about 30 minutes. Not bad.

Thanks again. real handy.

Thanks for a great site.

Your web page containing links to Solaris x86 stuff is great.

Thanks again for providing such a great resource for both x86 and SPARC software (I've used both quite a bit in the past 6 months).

Hello. I just wanted to say that your archive is a very welcom find in this world and that I've been making good use of it.

Thanks for you procedure for creating an SVR4 package.

Thanks a lot !!!

... if you need something from Portugal, just ask for it.

Thank you very very much, it helped me lot....

Thanks for the excellent documentation and software collection.

Your site is a wonderful help for overly busy network managers. Please urge Sun to continue and increase the work in this direction.

Thanks for all you great work.

The project on free software for Solaris is REALLY great. I already feared that I have to build things like gcc from scratch when I had a look at the /mirror directory of sunsite.cnlab-switch.ch. What a relief.

Thanks a lot!

Thanks for the Solaris Freeware site. It has saved me weeks of porting code for our first Solaris system, which by the way, is our first Ultra. I attended a two day Sun course in migration to Solaris, and recommended it to attendees there, and also recommended it to a fellow sysadmin on campus who is making the transition. He said that "I probably saved his neck" by referring him to the site.

Solaris is for the most part an easy transition. However, "It's the applications, stupid!". Having all these apps precompiled and packaged is a godsend, and without exaggeration, will make transitioning the rest of our workstations to Solaris that much easier, probably shortening that effort by 6 months or more.

Our workstations were donated to us by Sun Microsystems, and while we are moving along slowly with our tiny support budget, I also support some large research projects, who are buying new Suns, and are making the move to Solaris ahead of the general department computing facility.

I am pleased to have this resource available, since I think that future Sun software will greatly assist us both in research/teaching and office automation. Your efforts enable us to get there faster, and sometimes that's the difference between a nice networked solution and some homebrew solution that (sometimes) runs on a spreadsheet, is impossible to install and maintain, and usually gives erroneous results.

To the extent that I can get ahead of the curve, I can use the power of my network to solve problems before the spreadsheet jockeys make them worse. ( also meaning that this speeds deployment of Java based computing )

Begin Editorial

Sun ought to carve a wooden statue of you or your web site. ( Ha, that'll be a site for sore eyes.) I'll take the cigars if you don't care for them.

End editorial

First off, i wanted to say thanks for putting together a site of good free software for Solaris. it's a great resource!

Hey Steve... Your site: http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html is great!!! I love what you all have done. Especially with all the ports.

I like your site very much. I've gotten some very useful utilities.

I got gzip and emacs from your site, ready to be installed as a package. They installed very smoothly. Thank you. Installing them this way saved an enormous amount of time.

Thanks alot for the effort you put in to making these packages available for Solaris. It certainly makes my job alot easier....so thanks alot!!

Hi Steve I'm a Sun administrator from West Australia. I just thought Id drop you a note to say thanks for providing the service. It makes my day a lot simpler working with setup packages and providing a central point to which I typically find what Im looking for.

Keep up the good work.

Thanks for providing this service !!!!

I really like your site. It helps out to have access to this software and I hope your keeps on growing..

To all you Free-Software-Providing people (presumably including someone named 'Steve')...

Many thanks for your most wonderful archive. I'm setting up a new UltraSPARC system, and have saved days of compiling and configuration with your ready-to-eat microwavable packages.

First of all I really appreciate your setting up of a Solaris freeware site.

Thank you very much for all of your hard work. My English is too poor, so I can tell you only "Thanks so much !!!"

I can not tell how pleased i was to find this site of tools.

As a consultant I find myself using your site many times every week. I have found your site to be a "lifesaver" many times over. I have informed friends, co-workers, and customers about your site. The few people that did not already use your site, praised it when prompted. I also use the www.ugu.com service and I would rate your efforts higher within your chosen field.

Downloaded and running on my site. It has cured my debugging problems. Thank you once again for a brilliant download site.

I've downloaded the gcc-compiler and some other stuff, and what can I say except A MILLION THANKS! I can't believe that Sun isn't doing this themselves... (Sun does support this site generously. - smc)

Keep up the good work!

Really nice job on the website.... Having "pkgadd" compliant versions of these shareware tools, particularly the GNU stuff (c, emacs, perl, etc.) is really convenient. The ftp download was real easy too - with an intuitive click on the desired package automatically invoking Netscape's ftp facility. I am a Sun reseller, and as such, can use these tools is supporting our efforts in the Sun community. Thanks much!

This site is really nice... I've found a bunch of stuff here that has made my life much easier :)

Once again, great work!

Thanks a million - I've now set up 4 machines from your packages!

Thanks!

Great stuff your Freeware!!

Thank you, Steve. Your attention is appreciated. It is gratifying to know that the problems I am having *are* understood and that someone is working on them.

I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the effort you and your colleagues have made in porting these packages to the Solaris 2.5 OS. This contribution is priceless and will certainly save me a great deal of time and effort in porting these packages myself. It is a significant added value to the purchase of a SPARC system and has unbalanced the scales in favor of SPARC over RS/6000 in recent purchases by the City of Tucson.

A couple of months ago you helped me out extensively with the installation of gcc. Happy to report it's working fine and I've turned on a couple of my friends to your site.

I should add, that I was just looking over your website and it's looking very cool! Did you guys just change it or am I just enjoying my Netscape v.3?

Your site is great in providing us with useful tools and we have come to rely on it.

We've been spoiled by having lots of GNU tools around, and us or our software seem to depend on just about everything in your fine collection and then some, and we really do want and use at least one version all of the packages you have.

First off, thanks for the excellent site of Solaris stuff and the useful tips that come with it. I was beating my head for about 3 hours trying to get g++ working when I came across your URL on the GNU g++ FAQ. Found my problem in your FAQ and was up and running in 10 minutes :)

Just wanted to give you a thanks for saving me from having to pull an all-nighter to solve my problem :)

So thanks for the great page. Keep up the good work.

I'd like to thank you for providing so much great software for Solaris and, furthermore, my colleagues also appreciate your work.

Our research group work on intelligent tutoring systems (among other things) and for this and our daily work we use some SPARC 20 running Solaris 2.5.1, Apples and some Linux boxes. We try to stay away from Windows etc. but we don't always manage to :-).

So using your precompiled binaries saves a lot of our valuable time, as, according to my experience, most sources don't compile out of the box. Thanks again.

Very glad to locate this valuable resource.

Thanks for having your site available. Especially, the information on how to package for Solaris. Having just started developing on this platform its great to know and will look forward to porting and packaging opportunities.

I appreciate all of the help and wanted to let you know that I find the Freeware collection an invaluable resource.

Thanks very much for your help and your www.pages....

So simple. If only you know how. You have solved all my problems. Thank you VERY much. Just to quantify that. I have been trying to get things to work for about two days in vain. But now all is well.

It's all because the Netra seems to have nothing on it. Nothing that I'm familiar with anyway. But now I can set it up, as if it's a REAL UNIX machine. If you would like me to do a quick FAQ about netras it would be my pleasure.

I am thoroughly impressed with how much stuff you have there!!! Thanks again for maintaining such an invaluable resource!

What an incredibly useful site. (Did I just save a bunch of money for not buying the C compiler from Sun?)

Hi !

The information you gave us about where to find gunzip for Solaris was very helpful. We found the good stuff at the places you said.

( prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu
http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html
etc..
)

Thank you for your help, and may I help you one day too !!

Your http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.1.html site is what I've been looking for for awhile. It saves me a lot of time so I do not having to recompile code on my own.

First of all you have this great website, Thanks for having it.

Again you have an excellent website and thanks for all these goodies you have up there.

Love the Solaris 2.5 freeware page. It was a big help when we migrated from sunos 4.1.3_U1 to Solaris 2.5.1.

Great site! Thanks for all the goodies!

I love your site I have used it many times.

Thanks steve at least you were more help than my local reseller...

I think your site it excellent.

First of all I would like to thank you for your useful page (Solaris 2.5 Freeware)!

I have just recently found your site, and this is your "highly complimentary email" just to let you know that this site is going to save me possibly months of man work depending on what our future sysadmin software requirements are for the project I am working on.

Excellent job! Raises all around!

Was just reviewing your site (http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html). It's extremely useful, and I and other SE's often recommend it to customers.

Thanks for the great site, keep up the good work!

I was searching for documentation on creating Solaris packages and I saw a post on a newsgroup pointing to your page that steps through the process of creating one. The directions are great and work like a charm.

Thank you for setting up the Freeware site, you have no idea how valuable this is to me. The last time I set up Solaris, I started by compiling gcc and going from there. This way saves everyone a lot of time.

thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!! (i think you get the point now ) this is the most useful thing i have ever run across. i don't have the time to sit down and compile all these program (and try to figure out why they won't compile correctly) so this is an invaluable tool for me. thanks.

I think that sources for x86 that you guys collected are great.

Great site Steve.

Just another note of appreciation (to add to the many I read) for this site. It's a valuable resource for me and the packages have been very dependable. Good job and Thank you.

Just to say you have a very nice, and useful web page that I have used a few times now for downloading apps.

Thanks for a good description of how to make packages!

Excellent job! I really like your site and found it very useful.

Just to let you know that I read your "cook book" instructions and then successfully created a package ( it was the traceroute utility, small but you have to start somewhere ).

I'm glad that I found your article on the web - we had a UNIX admin contractor try and pass your work off as his own!

Steve, you're doing a great service with your Solaris page and tools.

Thank you very much for your great page which instructs how to create Solaris packages. It worked on the first try and I am now able to distribute my Modula-2 compiler in this form.

Your site is a lifesaver. For someone like me who was dumped into Sun systems administration it is indispensable. I can't even begin to tell you how helpful it has been. Great job!

First of all I want to thank you for all the time you saved for me! It's not minutes it's days!

Thanks for the service. I'm glad to hear that your packages will soon install to /usr/local.

I appreciate all the help you gave me, and the time you invested in my problem. You gave me some additional insights into Sun UNIX that I was lacking.

You have been a life saver to me. This site enabled me to find the SPARC and x86 binaries I needed to bootstrap a cc, plus a ton of other useful programs.

Many thanks again for maintaining your site and your time,

Nice site ..

Last, but not least, this is a FANTASTIC site!! Thanks!!

BTW, I found your page extremely useful. Keep it up.

Thanks so much for providing this site, and thanks to all the people who have provided the packages. Using SYSV4 packages is a truly class act and you've saved me countless hours of mucking with Solaris. It should make you feel darn good to think about the total amount of people's time you've saved by your project. This is the kind of thing the Internet USED to be about. Thanks!

This is a really cool site.

Good job

Just came across the site, relieved to see that there's help for the diehard still running a UNIX machine.

Congrats on the site, I just found it today and it was a great help in my education as a sys admin.

Thanks for your help. It worked!

Thanks again.

without any wonder (attention) to please you, I must say that your Project (Site) is simple ... great. Most of the UNIX freebies, and even in pkg format are simply ...something.

Swish works great. Thanks for the program...

I just found the Solaris 2.5 Freeware packages page, and love it. We put together a lot of temporary Solaris development systems here, and I'm mighty tired of unpacking gcc, bash, less, and the works just to get the system up and useful. These packages are going to save me heaps of time!

Thanks again for your help. Nice site!

;)

Your freeware site is really top-notch.

First let me thank you for maintaining this terrific sight - you make access to a wide variety of useful packages a snap - I'm sure it takes a lot of time and it appreciated.

Congratulations for this great site !!!

Your work saved a lot of time and with that money.

Thanks for your help! Your pages are great!

Hey, Steve. I just wanted to take a second and thank you for all of your help.

Thank you very much for your help. Everything is OK.

I would like to extend my warmest gratitude for your support. Indeed, your page have helped a lot in providing us with knowledge particularly on perl.

Great stuff. Wow you're doing wonders for Sun. Saves a lot of pain and time to system administrators like me.

Thanks for your tutorial on pkgadd

It works just like you said and has saved me some time!

Subject: Archive of free software for Solaris 2.5
Newsgroups: comp.unix.solaris,comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.sys.sun.hardware, comp.sys.sun.wanted

For anyone who hasn't heard about it yet, Steve Christensen of Steven M. Christensen & Associates, Inc. has a page with an archive of FREE SOFTWARE packages for the Solaris 2.5. Print out the site, it is eleven pages long with descriptions of each package.

The URL is: http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html

Well worth it for us Sun NUGS (new guys).

But to cut down your search time, try the excellent http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html - there is tons of stuff here, all ready compiled and made up for use with pkgadd. Utterly brilliant. And traceroute is one of the ones there.

Have fun playing with the new toys you find through this, =O)

Yes, your site is a boon. I have tired from hours/days compiling public software that thousands of others were also compiling. I particularly shunned compiling X-windows programs which required more hoops to jump.

This is GREAT! Just having GCC and LibG++ pre-compiled for the Solaris 2.5 environment is wonderful; this is what has been preventing me from upgrading to Solaris 2.5 was the lack of a GCC compiler. You folks have provided that, and now I have an upgrade path for Solaris.

THANK YOU!

Hi Steve,

Samba has worked very well for our department since day one, with the exception of Windows 3.11 clients. We have folks using Windows95 and WindowsNT4 accessing volumes on our Solaris server with no problems. It has worked very well. I upgraded our server to the latest version yesterday. No problems so far.

First of all, I would like to say that I really enjoy having access to Solaris binaries. I can't tell you how much time this has saved me! We have Solaris x86 on many of the machines here.

Thanx for your great website ...

I found nearly all i need ... It is not easy to find all that SPARC stuff in the ...

First of all I can not appreciate enough for all the work and efforts that is put together to build this page. I am a novice in the UNIX system administration and taking classes at UCB extension.

Thank you, Steve.

I just found your page recently, but they have already help me with a few webserver projects.

Esp. helpful is the gcc; that can be a pain to compile on a Solaris 2.5 system out of the box.

Thanks again.

Compliments... more compliments... high compliments

I like your work, and have used it extensively. It is critical to increased ease-of-maintenance of a Solaris workstation.

I'd like to say your site is great.

Thanks it is an excellent site.

Bully for someone! It's good to see rasmol on the site. It is used quite a bit here, and more apps like that would be welcomed.

Thanks for building this site. We use it often.

Thank you for your effort to help us to get the best packages for Solaris 2.5. I hope that you continue with your website (http://smc.vnet.net/solaris_2.5.html).

Congratulations.

Steve (and everyone else that has made this software available),

I just wanted to let you know how much I and CBU (Christian Brothers University) appreciated the work you have done with pre-compiled software for Solaris. It has made my life just a little bit easier.

Thanks for all your help, whether you knew you were helping me or not.

You have done a very nice job setting up you Solaris web archive. Please keep up the very fine work.

Firstly, let me compliment you on an excellent site.

Your site is wonderful. It makes it very easy for our admin to make our wishes a reality.

First I would like to congratulate you for the site. I find very important this world wide development of free software, and surely this site (sunfreeware.com) is a very good example of it.

First of all, thanks a lot for the service you provide.

Hey steve,

First I want to tell you I probably wouldn't have any software on my Sun SPARC if it wasn't for you putting these binaries up. I'm fairly new to UNIX and it's been a big help.

dittos dittos dittos

Hello Steve, first of all I would like to thank you for this wonderful site. It has really been of a great help

Your effort on compiling gnu for Solaris is applaudable.

Thanks for a great resource.

Congratulations for your site of Sun pkg's.

Your package of emacs really helped me out since the workstation I was using didn't Sun's optional language package (nothing for ucb/cc to use). This prevented me from installing emacs because I couldn't compile it. The package made installation a snap.

Finding your site was a godsend! I'm trying to put a new box up, and installing the gazillion new pieces is a pain the rump. Especially the first steps, when you don't buy the c compiler.

But pkgadd comes with the core distribution, and that's all I needed to get off to a running start thanks to your site. Thank you!!

Fantastic site!

You run a great service.

Firstly I must congratulate and thank you for making available these packages. So far I have grabbed samba, less, tcsh, screen, and gcc.

I estimate that you have saved me at least 50 hours of compilation/code "fixing" time; again my heartfelt thanks.

Thanks for porting so many software packages to Solaris. It mkes life much easier for us.

Your site helped me save a lot of time when I wanted the GNU packages installed for a customer project.

Thank you very much for this great service.

I just ran across your Sun Freeware page. Nice job. I'm sure I'll find many uses for it.

First of all, thank you very much for your fantastic site!!! Thanks to you, I was able to set up a pristine Solaris system in less than a day with all sorts of cool goodies!

Your site is a wonderful resource. It has been very helpful to our company and my team in a pinch when we've needed to reference check our own builds of public software / freeware in our development and production environments. You provide a standard which is exceptionally valuable....

Again, you have a marvelous resource. Thank you very much for your efforts and service to this community.

First I would like to commend you on the packages you have at your site. They have made life easier for myself having to travel to various clint sites. Most of these sites now have internet connectivity, you site makes it very quick and easy to install help packages to have in ones hip pocket so to speak.

Your web site is really great - it's saved me hours of compilation.

Thanks a lot.
You are really very helpful.

Hey, thanks a lot -- I had no idea I could use pkgadd to install all that stuff! Man, you made my day, in fact, my week. Of course, now I have to delete a bunch of stuff and redo it, but that's alright. It'll probably work now.

what you do is already fantastic!

Just love your Solaris 2.5 Freeware site. Great work! Keep it up, will you?

Thanx for the site!

I've found your site to be great :)

Love your site. Have downloaded a few bits and pieces for use under Solaris. Keep up the great work.

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This page was last updated on September 30, 2013