This is actually a good question. Why use Solaris, when you can have Linux? Solaris is a commercial system, the hardware support is scarce. But if you are reading this you have probably already decided on using Solaris. If not, here are some reasons:
This HOWTO tries to help you install Solaris 7 or 8 on an x86 computer already running Linux. The main targets are
The reference versions used while creating this document where:
Please back up any data before messing with your system! A lot of the things described in this document may result in excessive data loss! I am not responsible for any data loss! See also section Legal stuff
To Prepare your hard-drive for Solaris, you need to know about standard PC partition tables and about Solaris disk slices. In this HOWTO I talk about single-disk systems only, but all the information should also apply to a multi-disk environment.
The standard partition-table has only 4 entries. The entries important for us are the following:
Takes up one entry, and contains exactly one partition. A waste of resources, but the only partition you can boot from!
Takes up one entry, but can contain multiple DOS, Linux, and other partitions
Takes up one entry, but can contain multiple Solaris Partitions
fdisk program. Partitions numbers 1 to 4
(hda1..4, sda1..4, ...) are the ones
in your partition table.
Solaris has its own partitioning scheme. It uses one entry in the partition table, and this entry is and acts as this partition would be the entire disk.
This virtual disk is then divided in up to 8 slices. The third slice, s2, covers the whole virtual disk, so you actually have up to 7 slices for Solaris.
Unfortunately, the Solaris partition entry has the same type as a Linux Swap partition (82). Therefore, you should not have any Linux swap partitions as primary partitions. Linux doesn't care about this, but who knows what Solaris does?
Although the Linux fdisk program has some ``Sun disklabel'' support, this doesn't seem to help any.
Of course, Solaris needs disk space. The minimum installation of Solaris 8 is about 300 MB. For the normal tools its about 700 MB, and for a ``developer-system'' about 1 GB.
But this is only the space required for the base installation. You might want to add a lot of GNU-Tools, and other stuff. And if you want to share data between Solaris and Linux, this has to happen on the Solaris partitions.
You might even think of sharing your home directories between Solaris and Linux. As the time of this writing: Forget it! I messed up my home directory doing so and I was very happy about my backup. See also section sharing data
Here's the quick check list. Make sure you:
Some people donīt like building a custom kernel. For those of you: you must build your own kernel if you want to share data between Solaris and Linux on one hard disk. If, however, you do not want to share data, you are safe with your old kernel.
Here are your kernel options for ``Solaris compatibility'':
code maturity:
Prompt for development driversUnfortunately UFS writing is still experimental.
file systems:
UFS file system supportUFS is the Solaris file system
UFS file system
write supportThe only way to pass data to Solaris
partition types / Solaris
(x86) partition table supportIs needed for the slices within your Solaris partition to be found.
Before messing with your boot loader, please make sure that you have an emergency disk ready which enables you to boot your old system.
Unfortunately the Solaris install overwrites the master boot record (MBR) and overwrites your old boot manager.
Fortunately, the Solaris boot manager is able to chain-boot. For this to work you have to put your old boot loader (e.g. lilo) into the boot sector of one primary Linux partition.
For lilo this means: look at your
/etc/lilo.conf. Look for the boot=
line. If it is something like boot=/dev/hda1
everything is fine. But if itīs something like
boot=/dev/hda it points to the MBR. Please change
it to point to a primary Linux partition
(e.g. boot=/dev/hda1)
A way to check if your boot-loader is chain-loadable is installing lilo in to the MBR and trying to chain load your other boot-manager. I used the following file called lilo.conf.mbr for this:
#lilo.conf.mbr #Lilo in Master Boot Record doing nothing but chain-loading another lilo boot=/dev/hda root=/dev/hda5 install=/boot/boot.b map=/boot/map vga=ask delay=50 other=/dev/hda1 label=lilochain
lilo -C lilo.conf.mbr to install lilo into your
MBR. And donīt forget to run lilo to have lilo in
the boot sector of your hard-drive.
If you reboot
now, you should have a lilo-prompt. When you select other this
chain loads the old lilo, which in turn loads Linux.
Solaris Interactive is on the first CD. Boot it, select Solaris interactive
On the Solaris 8 CDs the interactive installer is on the first software CD. You don't need the install CD at all.
Please Note: If you abort during the Solaris installation, the MBR of your hard disk may already be overwritten and you may not be able to boot from the hard disk at all.
I couldn't get Web-Start to work at all. Please mail me if you have any experience using it.
However, once Solaris was installed, I had no problems adding web-start-packages
Solaris standard installation doesn't even have a
less command. Some people recommend getting the
Redhat Package Manager (RPM) for Solaris, but the standard
packaging tool will usually do it. You can find many nice
packages at
http://www.sunfreeware.com
The standard packages can be used with
pkgadd <package>, and the web-start
packages with
java <packagewithoutclassextension>
When booting, the Solaris boot manager gives you all 4 primary partitions for choosing which to boot from. If you had your boot loader installed on the boot sector of a primary partition, everything should be fine. Just boot from this partition, and Linux should come up.
Now you have lilo as a secondary boot loader, but you want
it to be your primary boot loader again? No Problem. Lilo
can easily chain boot Solaris. Just add the appropriate
other= lines to your lilo.conf
For testing, you should add the Solaris chain loading to the lilo in your boot sector first. Then try chain loading lilo, Solaris, lilo, Solaris, ... until you have enough of it. If this works, you should be able to put lilo back into the MBR again.
However, Solaris might have messed up your partition table. This has happened on my system after installation of Solaris 8. Lilo doesn't like the new partition, nor does fdisk. I had no problems with Solaris 7
Unfortunately, I have no experience with grub booting Solaris. If you do, please mail me!
If you have build your kernel with Sun disk label support and UFS support as mentioned in section building your new kernel, you are now able to mount your Solaris partitions. During boot up, you should get something similar to:
hda: [PTBL] [523/255/63] hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 hda7 hda8 > hda3 <Polaris: [s0] hda9 [s1] hda10 [s2] hda11 [s3] hda12 [s6] hda13 [s7] hda14 >Meaning (in this case): partition 3 (
hda3) is a
Solaris partition with 6 slices (s0,s1,s2,s3,s6,s7). They
are mapped to Linux devices hda9 to hda14.
Try mounting your Solaris
partitions. When mounting UFS partitions, you always have to
add an -oufstype= argument, in this case
-oufstype=sunx86. So the command to mount a
partition is something like:
mount -oufstype=sunx86 /dev/hda14 /mntNow, test your partition. Please note: The write support on UFS partitions is very experimental. Please don't trust any data you write on your UFS partitions!
If you want your Solaris partitions automatically mounted at boot time, you can add a line like
/dev/hda14 /solaris ufs ufstype=sunx86 0 0to your /etc/fstab
And, of course there are always other ways of sharing data:
I don't know which floppy disk file systems are supported by Solaris. Do you? Mail me.
Solaris knows NFS. Linux knows NFS. This might actually be the best way of sharing data
Is supposed to work using a program called ``lxrun''. I haven't got around to testing it yet. See the Solaris web site for more information.
Are as far as I know unsupported
Here are some URI that might help you:
Thanks to Marcel Meyer for beta testing this HOWTO while installing Solaris on his machine
Are always welcome. You can reach me via e-mail at max.berger@xslt.de
This document is copyrighted © by Max Berger. You may use and/or modify it according to the Linux Documentation Project License (LDPL) found at http://www.linuxdoc.org/COPYRIGHT.html.
According to the license you don't have to tell me, but I'd very much like to know when you modify and/or republish this document.
Although the information given in this document is believed to be correct, the author will accept no liability for the content of this document. Use the tips and examples given herein at your own risk.