Reviving Sun Ray: Setting Up on OpenIndiana Hipster

You’ve got a box of dusty Sun Ray clients, a lingering fondness for Solaris, and a hankering to make it all work on something modern. Welcome to the reality of setting up a Sun Ray server on OpenIndiana Hipster 2025.10. It’s a journey paved with good intentions, older software, and a surprising amount of manual intervention.

The Core Problem

The fundamental challenge is bringing a once-cutting-edge, now unsupported thin-client solution into the modern era. Oracle discontinued Sun Ray support in 2014, and while OpenIndiana Hipster has made strides in Sun Ray support, it’s far from a plug-and-play experience. You’re essentially resurrecting a proprietary, legacy system on an open-source, actively developed OS.

Technical Breakdown & Code Examples

Our foundation is a Proxmox Virtual Environment. Here’s a sensible starting point for your VM:

• Guest OS: “Solaris Kernel”
• Machine Type: q35
• Firmware: SeaBIOS
• Graphics: Standard VGA
• Disks: 60GB, VirtIO Block, write back cache, discard enabled.
• CPU: model host, 1 socket, 4 cores.
• Memory: 8GB.
• Network: VirtIO (paravirtualized).
• Additions: VirtIO RNG, enable vIOMMU.

Install OpenIndiana Hipster 2025.10 using the GUI Live DVD (OI-hipster-gui-20251026.iso). Once installed, the real fun begins: Sun Ray Server Software (SRSS).

You’ll need SRSS 5.4.0.0 (V37038-01.zip) for Solaris 11 i386. This is where things get murky. Since Oracle pulled official support, finding this can be a challenge. Assuming you’ve located it, you’ll need to manually set up a publisher:

# Assuming you've extracted the SRSS zip to /path/to/extracted/srs
pkg set-publisher -g <extractdirectory>/srs_5.4.5.0-Solaris_11plus.i386/IPS.i386/ sunray
pkg install SUNWut-srss SUNWut-srwc

However, pkg install will likely fail. The apply_patches script within SRSS is a good start, but it’s not enough. You’ll need manual overrides:

Patch 1: utprodinfo Edit /opt/SUNWut/lib/utprodinfo and change line 322: $ pkg list $2 to $ pkg info -q $2

Patch 2: utconfig Edit /opt/SUNWut/sbin/utconfig and change line 243: LCL_PACKAGE="SUNWlldap" to LCL_PACKAGE="ldap"

SRSS configuration on Hipster 2025.10 requires specific settings. The utpolicy command needs the -D flag (no hotdesking with -M on this version). Crucially, configure static DNS for sunray-servers and sunray-config-servers to point to your SRSS host. Ensure GNOME GDM is your display manager; the MATE desktop is for user sessions, not the server management interface.

Firmware Woes: SRSS 5.4.x officially needs Oracle support. This is a non-starter. You’ll need to scavenge firmware from older Linux packages, like SUNWutfw04.3-50.i386.rpm. Extract it using rpm2cpio and place it in /opt/SUNWutdfw/lib/firmware.

JRE Dependency: SRSS 5.4.x demands a 32-bit Sun/Oracle JRE 1.7. Install this to /opt/SUNWut/jre.

Ecosystem & Alternatives

The sentiment around running SRSS on OpenIndiana is mixed at best. While Hipster offers better Sun Ray support than its predecessors, it’s still a precarious setup. The technology itself was robust and secure, but its discontinuation means zero vendor support.

If you’re looking for a modern thin client solution, don’t walk, run towards VDI platforms. ThinLinc is a strong contender, offering broad OS support, native clients (no Java!), excellent graphical performance with VirtualGL, and active development. Older alternatives like LTSP or jOpenRay are largely historical footnotes.

The Critical Verdict

Setting up Sun Ray on OpenIndiana Hipster is a niche endeavor, bordering on the masochistic. This configuration is decidedly unsupported by both OpenIndiana and Oracle. Manual patching, workarounds for outdated components like the uttsc RDP client (seriously, it’s from the Windows Server 2003 era and is broken), and difficulty in sourcing essential software make this a project for the truly dedicated enthusiast, not for production environments.

You’ll be grappling with unsupported configurations, potentially difficult hotdesking setups without smartcards, and a desktop environment (MATE) that feels decidedly dated. If you need an officially supported, performant, and easily maintained thin client solution, look elsewhere. This path is for those who already possess Sun Ray hardware and are committed to running a legacy stack, purely for the challenge or historical curiosity. For everyone else, modern VDI solutions offer a far more sensible, supported, and functional experience.