Well wanted to play around with dtrace to take a peek at why things under Gnome seem to have become somewhat bloated aka the clock applet, but that's another story that I'll be blogging on. So thought why not install Solaris 10 under VMware.
Why not indeed - well all went reasonably well but had a few hicups that cost me a little time. So here are my notes to help others coming after me so to speak 
Started with VMWare 4.5.2 running on JDS 3 for Linux on a Sony Vaio laptop setup to use VPN.
* Grabbed the 4 Solaris 10 GA iso's
* Created new Solaris 10 Virtual Machine
* Choose NAT for networking: makes life a lot easier if your host machine is on a VPN (bridged caused all sorts of problems).
* Disk size set to 10 Gig [full install is around 4 Gig's so choosing the default here screws things up later 
]
* Edit Virtual Machine settings: Hardware DVD/Cdrom, Use ISO image, browse to first Solaris Iso.
* Starup Virtual Machine and follow instructions:
* Video Settings: Edit settings and choose XSun server. I went for 1280x1024 and 65k colors [note running kdmconfig from the console will let you tweak the settings later on if you want]. [If you choose XOrg you will be restricted to 640x480 in the Virtual Machine. I tried the XOrg server initially and failed miserably to change these settings, even after running xorgconfig to setup a xorg.conf file, choosing #29 for the vmware driver and so on. If anyone can tell me what to do here that would be great, till then I'll stick with the XSun server]. For another approach that I didn't try see:
"Article on setting up Solaris in VMware using Solaris XFree86 video driver and porting kit binary":http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9338/sam0410j/0410j.htm
* Setup to use DNS for name resolution, along with my host box /etc/resolv.conf settings for domain and server.
* Stuck with IPv4: IPv6 can cause some host to virutal machine network issues apparently.
* Continued with install just choose defaults: when prompted for next cd changed ISO, just go to top level menu VM/ Removable Devices/ idE/ Edit and browse to the next Iso.
* Booting: comes up to console prompt, then it can take a long time to come up with the dtlogin screen so be patient, good time to go make a coffee [for me about 4 minutes]. Logon, choose JDS 3 and off you go.
* Followed "Jans guidelines":http://jan.exss.de/en/vms_install_ia3.html for post boot config [bit out of date now but still useful].
Using this setup now have Solaris 10 running, can ssh into the Virtual machine from my host [just need to setup a user to login as as opposed to root] and even do a XNest login if I want to play around with the display geometry a bit [$ XNest virtual_machine name_or_IP :1 ]. Setting up NAT sorted this all out for me, I'd chosen bridge intially and had nothing but trouble trying to access the Virtual Machine remotely, from ssh or XNest.
Now off to read my "dtrace manual":http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace
Started with VMWare 4.5.2 running on JDS 3 for Linux on a Sony Vaio laptop setup to use VPN.
* Grabbed the 4 Solaris 10 GA iso's
* Created new Solaris 10 Virtual Machine
* Choose NAT for networking: makes life a lot easier if your host machine is on a VPN (bridged caused all sorts of problems).
* Disk size set to 10 Gig [full install is around 4 Gig's so choosing the default here screws things up later ]
* Edit Virtual Machine settings: Hardware DVD/Cdrom, Use ISO image, browse to first Solaris Iso.
* Starup Virtual Machine and follow instructions:
* Video Settings: Edit settings and choose XSun server. I went for 1280x1024 and 65k colors [note running kdmconfig from the console will let you tweak the settings later on if you want]. [If you choose XOrg you will be restricted to 640x480 in the Virtual Machine. I tried the XOrg server initially and failed miserably to change these settings, even after running xorgconfig to setup a xorg.conf file, choosing #29 for the vmware driver and so on. If anyone can tell me what to do here that would be great, till then I'll stick with the XSun server]. For another approach that I didn't try see:
"Article on setting up Solaris in VMware using Solaris XFree86 video driver and porting kit binary":http://www.samag.com/documents/s=9338/sam0410j/0410j.htm
* Setup to use DNS for name resolution, along with my host box /etc/resolv.conf settings for domain and server.
* Stuck with IPv4: IPv6 can cause some host to virutal machine network issues apparently.
* Continued with install just choose defaults: when prompted for next cd changed ISO, just go to top level menu VM/ Removable Devices/ idE/ Edit and browse to the next Iso.
* Booting: comes up to console prompt, then it can take a long time to come up with the dtlogin screen so be patient, good time to go make a coffee [for me about 4 minutes]. Logon, choose JDS 3 and off you go.
* Followed "Jans guidelines":http://jan.exss.de/en/vms_install_ia3.html for post boot config [bit out of date now but still useful].
Using this setup now have Solaris 10 running, can ssh into the Virtual machine from my host [just need to setup a user to login as as opposed to root] and even do a XNest login if I want to play around with the display geometry a bit [$ XNest virtual_machine name_or_IP :1 ]. Setting up NAT sorted this all out for me, I'd chosen bridge intially and had nothing but trouble trying to access the Virtual Machine remotely, from ssh or XNest.
Now off to read my "dtrace manual":http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace