A father's journey into relevance. 21st Century Dad...

After disappearing from the Blogsphere for over a year, I thought it would be fitting to actually write something that is work-related. I even created a new category in my bloglist for it. So here goes...

I just received my brand new Toshiba Tecra M10 laptop. My plan is to keep Windows Vista on one partition for those occasions where it might be interesting or useful, but to keep the latest OpenSolaris OS installed for everyday work and home use. It's a win-win situation, since I get a new toy to play with while actually contributing to the testing and quality of a product related to my job.

Out-of-Box Experience

The first thing that I encountered when my system started up was a big red WARNING from the Toshiba Recovery Wizard. I haven't done anything other than plug it in and turn it on, and I already got a warning that all my data could be wiped out. After googling a bit, I found that it's apparently just the way Toshiba ships its "preinstalled" systems. So I proceeded, knowing that I have no data on this brand new system to lose. I was then given 3 choices for recovery:

• standard
• no changes to disk partitions
• specifying the size of the C drive

I knew I could change partition sizes later, so I went with the first choice. I didn't want to muck around with anything yet until I knew Vista was up and running as Toshiba intended. Next, it asked if I wanted the 32-bit or 64-bit version, with the caveat that not all 3rd-party software might run on a 64-bit system. I chose 64-bit. It proceeded to create the partition and install the software. It must have rebooted 4 or 5 times, and even after displaying a large "Installation Complete" message it continued to install all the peripheral software that it comes pre-shipped with. So after maybe an hour it was done and I could actually log onto Vista. I skimmed through read thoroughly the EULA, clicked "accept", and then got to choose a user and system name. This is actually the hardest part of installation. I wanted to choose something personal, yet full of deep meaning. I went through my various themes in my life (family, movies, interests, books) and settled on a user name of "Alan". I was more creative with my system name. Then after yet one more reboot, I was able to log in.

Preparing for OpenSolaris

Backup

Note that this was my first real experience with Vista. So I was not quite sure what to be prepared for. Well, the taskbar was overcrowded as usual with an OEM install, but the desktop only had 5 icons. But I did not want to start playing with Vista. First thing to do: make recovery disk! I found the Maintenance tab under "All Programs", and selected the Back Up Computer option. And that was my first experience with the annoying User Account Control pop-up. I popped in a DVD, let it to its backup, swapped in the 2nd DVD, and it was done. Now I felt safe that I could recover the Vista install if need be.

Partitioning

This is the scary part. Luckily I'm doing it on a brand new system so have nothing really to lose.

I then checked the Windows partition size, and sure enough it used almost the entire hard drive for the C partition. 18GB was used by the OEM install. With a 149GB hard drive, I planned on splitting it into 70GB for Vista, 15GB each for an OpenSolaris root partition, and the rest for OpenSolaris user area (/export/home). So after backing up the system, my next task was to repartition, following the instructions at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/documentation/reviews/Dual_Boot_Install_Doc_Plan/Dual-Booting-OpenSolaris-with-Vista/Creating-New-Partition/. Following the steps to get to the disk layout, I saw that I had 3 partitions:

• 1.46 GB EISA Configuration - No FS type specified
• 140.13GB System, Boot, etc. - NTFS
• 7.45GB Primary Partition - No FS type specified

Selecting the option to Shrink Volume, It showed me that the C partition was 143493MB, and Shrink Size available was 70791MB. This was actually perfect for what I wanted to do. A note at the bottom of the window stated that the size would be restricted by "snapshots or pagefiles" enabled on the volume. So it was telling me that the 18GB that was indicated as used was really 70GB. This didn't seem to make a difference as I later saw that I did actually have 50GB free on the Vista side.

The change resulted in a 69.13GB unallocated partition between the C drive and the small primary partition. I deleted the extra primary partition, which left me an unformated 76GB partition. I formated it with NTFS. The instructions from the link above said that OpenSolaris would be used for additional formatting prior to install. Following those instructions, I successfully created a Solaris partition that was recognized by the OpenSolaris install. It was definitely nice not to have to rely on GParted or some other utility to make the modification.

Installation

I then proceeded with the very familiar installation of OpenSolaris (Build 108). I popped in the LiveCD, and rebooted to the Toshiba "boot menu", a series of icons that you must act really fast to select before it goes to the default. I selected the CD icon, and it booted the LiveCD. As mentioned above the free partition was recognized as a partition on which OpenSolaris could be installed. I selected it and proceeded with the rest of the install dialog.

When the system rebooted, I was presented with a GRUB menu that included both Windows and OpenSolaris. I verified that the system could boot onto either one. 

Post-Installation

Once OpenSolaris was installed, I was able to run the Package Manager GUI, and select some of my favorite apps, including OpenOffice. For VirtualBox installation, I went to pkg.sun.com,  registered with my sun.com user name, and followed the documented process to install my certificate and keys. Then I set a second repository to https://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/extra and performed a pkg install on the two packages needed. I did the same for the Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox. Much simpler than the Solaris SVR4 package download/unzip/pkgadd.

Since the laptop has a built-in webcam, I also downloaded the Cheese utility from the developer repository. I tested it out and was very impressed by the quality and size of the image. 

Finally, what blew me away was the ease of restoring my personal environment. I simply copied my entire home directory from my SXCE system to my OpenSolaris system, and then logged out. When I logged back in, I was staring at the very familiar customized desktop I put together over the years. The ONLY modification that was needed was in finding the icons for a couple of my panel launchers.