Pradhap 's UNIX Corner

Monday August 25, 2008

VirtualBox Solaris / OpenSolaris Build 95 / 96

Installed Solaris Nevada build 96 . Then installed VirtualBox on top of it.  While starting VirtualBox from command line it hangs giving out "ERROR: 0 bytes read from child process"  . Found the work around . Follow the below procedure to fix it.

Move the VBoxSVC to VBoxSVC.real

#mv /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.real

Create a shell script for VBoxSVC and export the LD_NODIRECT and then exec the real VBoxSVC

#cat > /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC

#!/bin/sh
LD_NODIRECT=1
export LD_NODIRECT
exec /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC.real "$@"

End the script and make sure you chmod +x the script 

#chmod +x  /opt/VirtualBox/VBoxSVC

Looks like one could hit this issue with Solaris Nevada Build 95 too.

Thursday August 21, 2008

Prozilla download accelerator for Solaris / OpenSolaris

Solaris 10 or OpenSolaris by default ships /usr/sfw/bin/wget tool for downloading.  If you are trying to download largefile then its good to use download accelerator so that it can parallely fetch the file and it would reduce the waiting time considerably . I have ported Prozilla download accelerator for Solaris / OpenSolaris  .

Download x86 version

To install run the following command

#pkgadd -d SFEprozilla-2.0.4.i386.pkg

SPEC file is locate at http://pkgbuild.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/pkgbuild/spec-files-extra/trunk/

Tuesday August 19, 2008

Opensolaris 2008.05 root user

Its generally good practice to use non-root user and when you require certain commands to be run as root you can use pfexec command. Pfexec is somewhat similar to sudo but much powerful than sudo.

$pfexec bash

When you install OpenSolaris 2008.05 if you specify username during installation, then it permits login only for non-root user. Run the following command so that root can login as a user.

#rolemod -K type=normal root

For more info on this check out this.

Monday August 18, 2008

Solaris HP Proliant Server installation

Came across query regarding installation of Solaris 10 on HP Proliant Server DL 360 series machines. By default Solaris 10 doesn't ship drivers for HP Smart  Array  Controllers .  So during installation one would encounter disk unable to recognize or missing disk or no disk connected. Follow below procedure for Solaris 10 installation.

* Download the drivers from
 ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib2/software1/pubsw-windows/p1220948930/v46783/CPQary3-1.90-solaris10-i386.tar.gz
* Extract the tar.gz file using below command

# gzcat CPQary3-1.90-solaris10-i386.tar.gz | tar xvf -
* burn the iso CPQary3.iso which is located under CPQary3-1.90-solaris10-i386 directory by using favorite any of your cd burning software (cdrw, cdrecord, k3b ) . In Solaris one can use cdrw 

#cdrw -i CPQary3.iso

* Once the driver CD is ready . Now boot up the HP DL server with the Solaris 10 installation media and follow below instruction to get your disk recognized.

-----

a. Boot the Solaris installation to the following menu:

   1.    Solaris Interactive (default)
   2.    Custom JumpStart
   3.    Solaris Interactive Text (Desktop session)
   4.    Solaris Interactive Text (Console session)
   5.    Apply driver updates
   6.    Single user shell

   Enter the number of your choice.

b. Select option 5, "Apply driver updates".

c. At the following prompt:

     Insert media and enter media type:
             Floppy [f], CD/DVD [c] or End [e]

   insert the driver cd,  and choose  "c".  Solaris will extract the
   driver, and the following messages will indicate success:

     extracting software on cd
     installing driver update in the miniroot

d. Following driver application,  Solaris will return  to the  following
   prompt:

     Insert media and enter media type:
             Floppy [f], CD/DVD [c] or End [e]

   Choose "e", and Solaris will  continue with the installation.  Solaris
   will prompt for re-insertion of the Solaris media; complete this  step
   and proceed with the installation.
------

The driver disk support variety of HP Smart  Array  Controllers for Solaris 10
        *  Smart Array 5300 Controller
        *  Smart Array 5i Controller
        *  Smart Array 532 Controller
        *  Smart Array 5312 Controller
        *  Smart Array 641 Controller
        *  Smart Array 642 Controller
        *  Smart Array 6400 Controller
        *  Smart Array 6400EM Controller
        *  Smart Array 6i Controller
        *  Smart Array P600 Controller
        *  Smart Array E200 Controller
        *  Smart Array E200i Controller
        *  Smart Array E500 Controller
        *  Smart Array P400 Controller
        *  Smart Array P400i Controller
        *  Smart Array P800 Controller

You can upgrade and remove drivers by using pkgadd and pkgrm driver package CPQary3 found in CD .

Thanks for good readme.txt found at CPQary3.iso image. For more detail information checkout the readme.txt found in CD.