Let the Sunshine In: Software support engineer in Tokyo

I have Solaris 10 x86 8/07 installed on Lenovo T60. I want to replace the OS. So, this is a good time to convert this to a virtual machine.

This is a sequel to my backing up Solaris x86 using Linux entry in which  I wrote about how VMware 5.5 behaved flaky on me. So, I tried on VMware 6 on another machine. Here are the steps.

1. Create same sized growable VMware virtual disk using vmware-vdiskmanager.
2. Create new Solaris 10 VMware guest. Choose 'Custom' and specify the disk created in step#1.
3. Specify 'g4l-0.24.iso' file for CD-ROM. Boot this new guest from CD-ROM.
   
4. Restoring 48GB of zipped(actually 'lzop') HDD image took about 6 hours.
   
   
5. In VMware setting, unchecked CD-ROM "g4l.iso" file so that it will boot from restored /dev/rdsk/c0d0s0. Rebooted VMware guest.
6. Tried to boot from default grub entry. Failed.
   
   
   
7. Reboot. Boot with grub 'FailSafe' archive.
8. Change device settings. I followed the procedure which I found on internal VirtualBox mailing list. Maybe there's BigAdmin article already. If  I can't find anywhere else, I can blog about it some day.
   
9. Here's /etc/path_to_inst difference before/after reconfiguration reboot. 'ahci' is Serial ATA. 'e1000g0' is network adapter.
   

   # sort path_to_inst.0 >/tmp/0
   # sort path_to_inst >/tmp/1
   # diff -w /tmp/[01]
   2a3,6
   > "/isa/asy@1,2f8" 1 "asy"
   > "/isa/asy@1,3f8" 0 "asy"
   > "/isa/fdc@1,3f0" 0 "fdc"
   > "/isa/fdc@1,3f0/fd@0,0" 0 "fd"
   9,37c13,28
   < "/pci@0,0" 0 "npe"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1" 0 "pci-ide"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0" 0 "ata"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0/sd@0,0" 1 "sd"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d" 0 "uhci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d,1" 1 "uhci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d,2" 2 "uhci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d,3" 3 "uhci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d,3/device@2" 0 "usb_mid"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d/device@1" 1 "usb_mid"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200a@1d/mouse@1" 0 "hid"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200b@1d,7" 0 "ehci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200b@1d,7/storage@1" 0 "scsa2usb"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200b@1d,7/storage@1/disk@0,0" 2 "sd"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200b@1d,7/storage@5" 1 "scsa2usb"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200b@1d,7/storage@5/disk@0,0" 3 "sd"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200d@1f,2" 0 "ahci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,200d@1f,2/disk@0,0" 0 "sd"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci17aa,2010@1b" 0 "audiohd"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,2448@1e" 0 "pci_pci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,2448@1e/pci17aa,2012@0" 0 "pcic"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,2448@1e/pci17aa,2012@0/pcs@0" 0 "pcs"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27a1@1" 0 "pcie_pci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27a1@1/display@0" 0 "vgatext"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27d0@1c" 1 "pcie_pci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27d0@1c/pci17aa,2001@0" 0 "e1000g"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27d2@1c,1" 2 "pcie_pci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27d4@1c,2" 3 "pcie_pci"
   < "/pci@0,0/pci8086,27d6@1c,3" 4 "pcie_pci"
   ---
   > "/pci@0,0" 0 "pci"
   > "/pci@0,0/display@f" 0 "vgatext"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1" 0 "pci-ide"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@0" 0 "ata"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@0/cmdk@0,0" 0 "cmdk"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@1" 1 "ata"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@1/sd@0,0" 1 "sd"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci1000,30@10" 0 "mpt"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,1976@7,2" 0 "uhci"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11" 1 "pci_pci"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11/pci1022,2000@0" 0 "pcn"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11/pci1274,1371@1" 0 "audioens"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11/pci15ad,770@2" 0 "ehci"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11/pci15ad,770@2/storage@1" 0 "scsa2usb"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci15ad,790@11/pci15ad,770@2/storage@1/disk@0,0" 0 "sd"
   > "/pci@0,0/pci8086,7191@1" 0 "pci_pci"
   39d29
   < "/ramdisk" 0 "ramdisk"
   

10. Install VMware tool inside guest. Now the mouse pointer behaves correct.

1. Does the network adapter work?
2. When the restore is done, total VMware guest file size was about 90GB. Way over my expectation. I use less than 40GB.
1. Can I shrink the disk now?
   
2. Had I zero filled unused disk before backup, would the backup file and vmware guest size be smaller?
   
3. If only a small fdisk partition is used for 'ufs' in physical machine, say 8GB, can I make less than 8GB virtual machine?