Wednesday November 08, 2006
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Wednesday November 08, 2006 It's been a while since our Getting Started article on multi-boot disk configurations. The old Solaris bootloader is long gone, in favor of the more flexible (and multiboot friendly) GRUB. ZFS is now available in both Solaris and OpenSolaris. The Branded Zones and Xen OpenSolaris projects are getting more interesting. And in making the best of a difficult situation, a laptop disk failure has given me an opportunity to re-think the original layout.
In addition to the project goals in the original article, here are some new capabilities that I would like to explore.
Before we proceed we need to make sure that the file systems will be sized properly. With only 80GB to work with, we will have to be efficient in a few places (like sharing the Software Companion, Blastwave repository, and Staroffice 8), even at the cost of a bit of complexity.
Estimated disk requirements
Taking all of this into consideration, the new disk layout looks something like this.
Next time, a short example of using Live Upgrade to install a new version of Solaris Express while running the Solaris 10 daily driver.
Technocrati Tags: Laptop Solaris Linux Multiboot
In addition to the project goals in the original article, here are some new capabilities that I would like to explore.
- Zones - I want to build zones, and lots of them. Solaris as well as Linux zones.
- Leverage Live Upgrade so that I can upgrade my system while winging my way across the US
- Consolidate all of my home directories into a small but useful set
- Be able to build OpenSolaris on a more regular basis
- Find a more efficient way of sharing a large Open Source repository across multiple OS instances
- Start using ZFS for more than just simple demonstrations
- Reserve some space to play with Linux distributions such as Fedora Core and Ubuntu
- GNOME 2.16 development builds for OpenSolaris
Before we proceed we need to make sure that the file systems will be sized properly. With only 80GB to work with, we will have to be efficient in a few places (like sharing the Software Companion, Blastwave repository, and Staroffice 8), even at the cost of a bit of complexity.
Estimated disk requirements
| Component |
Size |
Notes |
| Solaris 10 Entire Software Group |
4GB |
The main boot environment will include Solaris 10, Staroffice 8, development tools, Software Companion, and Blastwave repository |
| Software Express (Nevada) Entire Software Group |
5GB |
Includes space for GNOME 2.16 development |
| OpenSolaris Nightly Build | 5GB |
BFU from Nevada or nightly build from source |
| Solaris 10 Software Companion |
2GB |
Installed in Solaris 10 /opt, shared in other installations |
| Staroffice 8 | 500MB |
Installed in Solaris 10 /opt, shared in other installations |
| Compilers | 1GB |
Installed in Solaris 10 /opt, shared in other installations |
| Blastwave Repository | 1GB |
Installed in Solaris 10 /opt, shared in other installations |
| Swap | 2GB |
Not really needed for Solaris, but will be shared with Linux |
Taking all of this into consideration, the new disk layout looks something like this.
| Partition |
Size |
Type |
Mount
Point |
Notes |
| 1 |
12GB |
NTFS |
Window XP C: /xp |
Read-only access under Linux
using Linux-ntfs kernel modules No access from Solaris |
| 2 |
44GB |
Solaris UFS |
s0 - S10 boot environment (8GB) s1 - swap s3 - Nevada boot environment (6GB) s4 - OpenSolaris boot environment (6GB) s5 - ZFS slice 1 (2GB) s6 - ZFS slice 2 (2GB) s7 - /export (16GB) |
Solaris swap partition is available to Linux as /dev/hda9 |
| 4 |
22GB |
Extended |
N/A |
|
| 5 |
4GB |
FAT32 |
Windows XP E: /pc on Solaris (pcfs) and Linux (vfat) |
Device name is /dev/hda5 in Linux and /dev/dsk/c0d0p0:1 in Solaris |
| 6 |
10GB |
Linux (ext3) |
/ |
Linux root (today Fedora Core, may soon be Ubuntu as Fedora Core 5 was a major disappointment) |
| 7 |
6GB |
Linux (ext3) |
/export |
Shared home directory that can quickly be reused for CentOS 3 (for testing BrandZ things) and Ubuntu releases. |
Next time, a short example of using Live Upgrade to install a new version of Solaris Express while running the Solaris 10 daily driver.
Technocrati Tags: Laptop Solaris Linux Multiboot
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/bobn/entry/updated_multi-boot_disk_layout
Post a Comment:
Posted by W. Wayne Liauh on November 08, 2006 at 02:41 AM CST #
As far as extended partitions, Solaris UFS doesn't understand them yet. The PCFS file system has some basic support and can sniff out a FAT32 logical partition.
For your other question, this is a feature of the IDE driver in Linux. When it enumerates the devices for each partition, it then swings around and if it finds a Solaris fdisk partition it will enumerate those as well. The pseudo-partition numbers start immediately after the last physical partition. These can be seen in /var/log/messages as
Note the slice number is followed by the new IDE device name.
One more hurdle though - to use it as Linux swap, it must be properly formatted. Run a mkswap from the Linux side to format the swap partition. Fortunately Solaris skips over the header so it won't get mangled.
If you have the UFS file system driver loaded you can also access your Solaris x86 UFS file systems. Most distributions include the driver compiled for read-only access. Just add something like
to your /etc/fstab.
Posted by Bob Netherton on November 08, 2006 at 11:58 AM CST #