solarisx86 custom partition
If you choose to custom partition file system slices while installing Solaris X86 be careful about not removing the overlap slice which exists by default. If you do so, Solaris will not be able to install bootloader in the MBR, consequently failing at installboot.
Solaris expects overlap slice to be of the slice of the complete Solaris disk partition.
e.g. if you have a physical disk and have created three partitions
1) NTFS
2) Solaris2
3) ext3
overlap should contain the complete size of Solaris2 partition. This can than be further split into various file systems such as root ("/"), swap ("/swap" ), export etc. overlap is always slice 3. It is identified as /dev/rdsk/c0d0s2.
installboot has been replaced with installgrub command.
If you have by mistake deleted the overlap slice, you can fix this without reinstallation. Go as follows
1) Boot the system in single user mode (by boot -s cdrom) or while booting from installtion disk choose single user mode.
2) mount the Solaris partition on /a. installation disk gives this option. Basically you mount the device /dev/rdsk/c0d0s0 (root file system). The same can be confirmed by running fdisk or format
fdisk /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 (dumps partition table)
or format -> partition -> print
3) df -kl should show the local file system along with root and swap.
4) from format -> fdisk create partition of type backup with size of complete solaris partition. This should create the slice overlap. Actually /dev/rdsk/c0d0s2.
5) Now run /a/sbin/installgrub /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0d0s0.
Now reboot. The system should boot.
If you see an error during installation installboot cannot stat/open file /dev/rdsk/c0d0s2. Above is the cause and fix.
