By Martin Wendler in Sun —

Flashback: Sun SPARCstation 20 running OpenBSD as mail server

Flashback: Sun SPARCstation 20 running OpenBSD as mail server
OpenBSD blowfish logo

En the early 2000s, when I was in education, I had to complete a project by my own. As I somehow got a Sun SPARCstation 20, with a few GB of disk and - as I remember - 256 MB of RAM. The CPU was a SPARC 32bit.

I decided to use this as a mail server, using these specifications:

  • Operating system: OpenBSD 3 (I don't remember which spcific version it was)
  • Postfix as SMTP server
  • Cyrus IMAP/POP server

OpenBSD was chosen because it is known for very high security and very few security holes. Additionally, at this time, I wanted to do everything different from what other people did.

I burnt OpenBSD to CD-Rom and installed it to the disk - unfortunately, I don't remember how the CD drive was connected. Maybe using SCSI?

Front and back view of a SPARCstation20. Very used state... (Copyright: Wikipedia)

After that, I had to download and install the packages for Postfix and Cyrus, and installed them. Some configurations later, I had created some users and was able to send and receive mails.

I'm quite sure that today, I would prefer Linux over OpenBSD - not because I don't like OpenBSD any more, but because Linux has become much more comfortable to install and use. Also updating on Linux is easier - updating OS and packages is as easy as executing dnf update or apt update && apt upgrade.

And I wouldn't use a SPARCstation any more. It's very slow and loud, needs a lot of energy, and every old laptop I own has more power and a larger disk than this.