NOTE: No CD-ROM was harmed in this exercise. I shall waste no plastic before its time.
Warning: I am testing a Preview product on top of a beta product using virtulization on MacOS. You results may vary.
This is just what I could get on the blog the first day. More to come.... First I must prioritize my day job activities!
Wow! Project Indiana is available today in a developer preview. I had to have it to see if everything they told us at the recent OS Amb preview was true. My system:
- MacBook Pro 2.4 Ghz with 2 GB RAM
- VMware Fusion 1.1RC1 beta
What is Project Indiana?
It is intended to be a binary distribution of the OpenSolaris code provided by and supported by Sun. This developer preview is the first step to a released product expected in March 2008. It includes the latest technologies and will have a faster changing and shorter life cycle than Solaris 10. More detail is available at the Project Indiana FAQ.
Who should use project Indiana?
At this time it is intended for developers and testers only. When it becomes a supported product in 2008, we anticipate it will be used by a wide variety of customers inproduction who required the advanced features of OpenSolaris and can tolerate the shorter life cycle support model.
How did it go?
First I downloaded it and read some of the release notes and caveats including important points such as:
- Live CD format provide (yes that's CD not DVD)
- X86 version ONLY today (the liveCD uses the 32-bit kernel but will install both 32 and 64-bit capability)
- ZFS as the native root file system
- Network Automagic included
- No custom disk partitioning.
With the ISO on my Mac, I created a VM for it to live in with 1 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk space. The ISO booted perfectly into "Live CD mode." NWAM automatically detected my network address. I wasted no time in clicking the Installer. After a few questions about time zone, root password and initial non-root user, the installation started and took about 22 minutes to complete. After installations was complete, I clicked the Reboot button and the system started up from the virtual HD. The installation experience was quite easy and fast.
At this time, VMware Fusion 1.1RC1 has a bug that causes the 64-bit kernel to "hang" for about 1-2 minutes during the early boot process. Changing the Grub menu to boot the 32-bit kernel is a workaround for this issues.
Once I logged into the new Gnome 2.20 interface, I attempted to install the Vmware tools. This is necessary for the proper screen displays and file sharing. Unfortunately, I received the error that it could not copy a file to /usr/dt/config/Xsession.d/9999.autostart-vmware.user.sh Manually creating the Xsession.d directory allowed the VMware tools to complete. Although the installation of tools complete, it caused a problem with login where my keyboard was mapped wrong. I could NOT log into Gnome because of this issue and didn't have time to workaround it.
What's different for the user?
- Default shell is bash
- Java Desktop System is not installed by default. This means that there is no "Launch" menu in the lower left. Menus are in the upper right. Panels are enabled at the top and bottom.
- /usr/gnu/bin is at the beginning of the user's path
- There is a minimal set of software loaded. The pkg command can be used to get additional components from the software repository.
- The grub menu is now in /zpl_slim/boot/grub/menu.lst rather than /boot/grub/menu.lst
Interesting bug/oddities
The file browser lists a "Documents" in the Favorites sidebar, but clicking on it produces an error because it doesn't exist.
Dave Miner has published instructions on how to place Indiana in a USB drive.
Why should you care?
If you are interested in testing, developing and contributing to the future of Solaris, this preview will give you a taste of where we want Solaris to go and the opportunity to joint the community.
well, i had a totally different experience..
my internet from router was not detected. maybe the network card..
no internet. no network automagic, and no no-config command available.
thats sucks. i like solaris 10, but this opensolaris needs more work. Looks like ubuntu but misses the thing.
no partition manager...this suks.
Sun, better watch your work again.
Debian guy, open your eyes, this is not the way
Posted by cripto on November 03, 2007 at 02:50 PM EDT #
Cripto,
I'm not quite sure from your description exactly what the problem was. I have installed Solaris 10, Nevada build 75a and "Indiana" all several times on Fusion and had not problem with network being seen automagically. I have used both the NAT and the Bridged mode just fine.
Please supply more information and don't be afraid to post specific bugs at defect.opensolaris.org.
Posted by Jim Laurent on November 03, 2007 at 03:47 PM EDT #
I've just tried to install Open Solaris "Indiana Preview" on a PC with VMWare Workstation (it's not exactly like your configuration, but as far as I know Virtual Machines should work in a similar way).
I've used VMWare with a lot of Linux Live CDs and network configuration was ok every time, but I wasn't able to let OpenSolaris/NWAM to detect my network: I've tried both Bridged and NAT but I always see loopback interface.
I'm not a VMWare Fusion user, I don't know if you have to define the "Guest OS" when you're creating the Virtual Machine as in VMWare workstation, but I've also tried different Guest OSs, like Windows, Linux and "Other".
Do you have any hints about that?
Thanks in advance, Luca
Posted by Luca Pecchi on November 03, 2007 at 08:56 PM EDT #
I'm not sure why it's not working for you. ifconfig -a shows that E1000g0 has an IP address. I didn't have to do anything in Solaris. In the Fusion Settings dialog I just checked the "Connected" box and the "NAT" box.
You can disable NWAM by typing:
svcadm disable nwam.
Then use the System > Administration > network panel to configure the network. I just did this on my system *running in Fusion) and got an IP address using DHCP with no problem.
Posted by Jim Laurent on November 03, 2007 at 09:24 PM EDT #
yeah, i did similiar to what Luca did.
I tried the live cd in 2 computers. no Internet. Magic network didnt worked.
Solaris 10 recognized internet from router but this indiana dont.
I also tried in my VMWare Workstation.
Didnt work either. Then i installed on hd (on vmware). Same result. Im kinda disapointed, since, with no network, theres no use using solaris/opensolaris.. :(
Posted by Cripto on November 03, 2007 at 10:07 PM EDT #
Thanks for your answers.
I think the problem is exactly that OpenSolaris does not recognize the virtual ethernet card: I don't see E1000g0 with ipconfig, and, even disabling NWAM, I don't see any ethernet card in the Network Panel.
I'm afraid it's there'se also something else that doesn't work: I've also tried to burn a "real" cd and to start with it on my Toshiba notebook, but in that case OpenSolaris starts with a Gnome login prompt (with VWWare I get directly the Gnome desktop, no questions are asked, maybe because system does not get the network adapter), and I'm not able to login, root is disabled and I don't know what user/password to use.
Posted by Luca Pecchi on November 04, 2007 at 09:01 AM EST #
Thanks for all your comments. I seriously suggest that you post this on defect.opensolaris.org. I am not part of Solaris engineering but if you post a bug, it will get the attention it deserves. I will also suggest that you post a comment on Marc Hamilton's blog. He is the VP of Solaris product marketing.
I'm not making this up. When I booted the live CD in Fusion 1.1RC1 on my Mac, it showed an IP address and networking worked. After installing , it also worked first time.
Posted by Jim Laurent on November 04, 2007 at 09:41 AM EST #
Thanks, Jim.
I've just posted a comment on Marc Hamilton's blog and I've submitted the bug on defect.opensolaris.org.
I'll post a comment here if they will help me to find a solution.
Posted by Luca Pecchi on November 04, 2007 at 05:08 PM EST #
Luca, you generally will need to tell VMware to emulate a "e1000" interface instead of the usual PCnet interface is tries to be. Under Fusion and I believe other VMware products, you need to edit the VM's configuration file and add the following line after the one starting with "ethernet0.present"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000g"
Posted by David Comay on November 04, 2007 at 08:11 PM EST #
Sorry, VMware calls the interace just "e1000" without the trailing 'g' character to the last line should be
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
Posted by David Comay on November 04, 2007 at 08:14 PM EST #
Mine worked "out of the box" for Solaris 10 08/07, NV 75a as well as Indiana preview.
e1000g0: flags=1004843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,DHCP,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
inet 192.168.1.7 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
The .vmx file has:
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
ethernet0.connectionType = "bridged"
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
ethernet0.wakeOnPcktRcv = "FALSE"
Posted by 68.100.231.27 on November 04, 2007 at 08:30 PM EST #
Thanks to David and to the other anonymous user: now everything works fine also with VMWare Workstation under Windows XP.
I've still some little troubles using Live Cd stand-alone, but maybe it's due to some hardware conflict on my notebook or something like that, anyway I'm able to use OpenSolaris even starting from CD.
Thanks again, Luca
Posted by Luca Pecchi on November 05, 2007 at 01:25 PM EST #
Glad to hear it.
Can you let us in on the final solution that worked for you?
Posted by Jim Laurent on November 05, 2007 at 01:28 PM EST #
I've simply edited with a text editor the .vmx file adding, as David Comay suggested,
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
and now OpenSolaris is able to auto-configure the network using nwam.
As I've mentioned before, I've still some problems trying to configure manually the network (i.e. disabling nwam), but it happens also if I use the stand-alone Live CD, maybe there'se something wrong in my notebook.
Posted by Luca Pecchi on November 06, 2007 at 06:13 AM EST #
Where is located the .vmx file?
Please, give the entire location...I am not a geek, and a find for .vmx did not give me the answer...
Posted by 70.231.152.108 on November 10, 2007 at 01:51 PM EST #
Right-click ( or control-click) on you VM file.
Choose "Show Package Contents" from the contextual menu
There you will find a collection of files, one of them ends in .vmx.
Right click on that file and choose Open with.... Other.
Select Textedit in the /Applications folder.
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
Posted by Jim Laurent on November 10, 2007 at 04:29 PM EST #
Thanks to Brian Cameron of Sun for providing this answer.....
The best way to do this is to modify the GDM Init script so that it
launches a dialog. If you launch the dialog with "&" then the dialog
will display with the login screen. If you don't launch with "&", then
the user will need to exit the dialog (perhaps by hitting a confirmation
button) before the login screen will display.
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