Solaris安装历险记

I have installed a couple of times Solaris 10 on some workstations, it was pretty straightforward and found it to be relatively easy for a UNIX system. I expect OpenSolaris to be even more intuitive so I did not worry too much about it. I prepared an empty partition on my laptop, around 15 GB in size, I converted the other one from NTFS to FAT32 (so it would be accessible from both Windows and Solaris) and the one with Windows installed on it I left it as it was. So I have now a NTFS partition with windows on it, a FAT32 partition with docs, music, movies, etc and an empty 15 GB space left where I plan to install my Solaris.

If you are careful you should not have any problems having 2 operating systems on the same computer; the only thing you must take care of is not overriding the Windows partition during installation. OpenSolaris comes with GRUB, a boot loader that would give you the option of choosing the operating system to be loaded just after you start your computer; in this way after each restart you can opt for Windows or OpenSolaris.

Make sure you have your DVD or CDs ready and, in your boot sequence the CD/DVD Drive has higher priority than your hard disk (you can change this in BIOS or using some F-Key - usually F12 - immediately after you start up your system). Having all this prepared, I loaded my DVD in my Optical Drive and (re)booted the system. Immediately after the start up I chose Solaris Express as my installation type and using the Interactive Setup I was prepared for the list of questions that OpenSolaris will probably ask me to set up correctly all the necessary settings. What I wasn’t prepared for was some obscure warning:

WARNING: Device /pci@0,0/pci10cf,1387@1f,2/disk0,0 failed to power up

Hmm, that doesn’t sound good. It looks like either my DVD Drive or my HDD failed to be powered up; I should not be able to install OpenSolaris is this is the case. I am actually using the DVD Drive (I just booted from it) so I’m afraid that’s my HDD which causes problems. I decided to go on but after a few more steps I’m faced with the cruel reality: “No Disks Found. Check to make sure disks are cabled and powered up.” Solaris cannot see my HDD because it wasn’t able to power it up and so cannot continue the installation. There is not much to be done but find some alternative solutions or some workarounds.

One idea would be to change the S-ATA controller’s BIOS setup configuration to emulate standard legacy P-ATA IDE controller, this should work fine but unfortunately I don’t have this option in my BIOS. The second thing that came into my mind was to use the latest OpenSolaris build, maybe the problem had been solved. I was trying to install Solaris Express Developer Edition which, as you know, is released quarterly and does not have all the “on-the-edge” features. As per this writting this edition is Solaris build 64 so maybe in the Solaris Express Community Edition, which is Solaris build 67, I would not face the same problem. I download it, burn it on one DVD and restart the installation. Bad luck, I still have the same error.

It looks like a dead-end, I tried both editions and it still didn’t see my hard disk, I searched on the net but no one could help me out. I had another option though: install OpenSolaris on my external HDD. I checked my BIOS and I’ve seen that it was able to boot from USB, which is great! If this hadn’t been true, I would have had to come with some workarounds to make the system boot from my HDD, such as making a boot CD with GRUB installed and configured to see both my Windows and my OpenSolaris, or maybe to install on my local disk some boot loader which would be able to see the other OS on my USB disk and boot it from there. I don’t even know if such solutions exist, but I don’t care too much since I have the boot from USB option in my BIOS.

I have a Toshiba USB HDD with 120GB capacity; I created some free space on it and start once again the installation. The error still appears but I don’t care that much because I know I have another HDD to install on. Not long after I started the installation I have to face some options and answer some questions. They normally are pretty straight forward and easy to answer and they depend from system to system. These are my choices:

• hostname: RO1CV5UC - this is the name you give your system; don’t ask me why I chose this one :-)
• Use the NFSv4 domain derived by the system
• Geographic Continent/Country/Region - Romania/Bucharest
• Root Password: 2Bsafe!! - this is not my real password but it’s a good example how it should look like
• Specify Media: CD/DVD
• Select type of install: Default Install
• Select Software Locations - none
• Select Solaris Software Group - Entire Group Plus OEM (4169 MB)
• Disk Selection: c0t0d1 (bootdisk) - this is my external disk, that’s the only one recognized since the one internal could not be powered up

As you can see I haven’t been asked anything about my LAN settings; that’s because, as I said in my previous post, my network card isn’t recognized by Solaris, I will have to install the drivers and make it work all by myself.

And now we get to a point where we have to be very careful. We have now to chose the partition where we want OpenSolaris to be installed on and the filesystem(s) structure. By default the unused space on your HDD will be automatically selected for OpenSolaris. By unused space I mean the space which is not allocated for any partition and not the free space within a partition! In this ideal case you’ll see a Solaris type partition, and right next to it the size in MB. On the other hand, if you already have a partition which you want to replace or overwrite chose carefully that one instead. (it will probably be displayed as Unknown). Double and triple check that you don’t touch your Windows partition (if you have one) as you will loose it once the installation starts! You select your desired partition or unused space by choosing Solaris from the drop-down menu.

Next is the filesystem layout. By default Solaris will create 3 filesystems for you: swap, /export/home and / (root). If you are familiar with UNIX filesystems you can add/remove/modify them; if you are not, then leave only your swap with it’s default size (usually 512 MB) and the / with the rest of the space (in other words remove your /export/home filesystem, which is created separately by default, and allocate all the left the space to /). This is probably the safest solutions of all when you don’t know exactly how much space will you later require for different programs you will install, for the big logs that might be written, for the different user usage, etc.

From here on there is nothing much left to do, just click Install now and wait for approximately 1 hour until all the packages are copied and installed on your HDD. If you are installing from CDs you will be prompted to insert them one by one when the appropriate time comes. At the end you only have to eject your CD or DVD and reboot your system (you will be instructed to do so when necessary).

After restart I was in for another suprise: my Toshiba external HDD could not be seen my my BIOS and therefore I could not boot from it. :-( I tried everything but nothing worked. You could imagine my disappointment. Toshiba HDDs are different, they first emulate a CD-ROM and only after you enter your password you can actually see the HDD and it’s content. This feature can be useful but it can also be annoying. You can disable the password protection but you cannot disable the CD-ROM emulation. It turns out that this is way I couldn’t boot from it and there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn’t going to give up so I bought a new hard disk (Fujitsu) and after repeating all the installation procedure from beginning I was ready to boot and get the first impression.