Installing Solaris
Express on an Acer Ferrari
4000 Laptop
Richard Friedman Sun
Microsystems
http://blogs.sun.com/rchrd/
The plan was to install Solaris keeping WIndows/XP in the first
partition and add bootable disk partitions for Linux (Ubuntu) and
Solaris.
15GB for W/XP
15GB for Linux
rest (65+GB) for Solaris
Preparation
It's a good idea to look at some of the writeups on installing Solaris
x86 on laptops. Here's a handful to look at:
Downoad Solaris Express
Before you begin, download Solaris Express from the Sun Download
Center. Do this under Windows/XP. I started from the Downloads page on
opensolaris.org. There is a link to the Sun Download Center to obtain
the Solaris
Express Community Release. You need to register at the
download center to obtain a login id and password. I strongly suggest
first downloading the Sun
Download Manager (SDM). This app makes downloading the large CD
images very easy.
Launch SDM and copy paste each of the URLS for the 4 Solaris Express CD
images into the SDM Add File panel. Then start the download process.
This may take a number of hours (like 8) if you're on a standard DSL
line. I ran the download overnight. SDM will expand the compressed
download files into separate CD images.
When the downloads are complete, burn each file onto a CD. If you use
the CD burning software app included in the Acer Windows/XP
installation, be sure to choose File->Burn from CD Image rather than
just burning the file as regular data. If you don't the CD won't be
usable.
Gather Stuff
Once Solaris Express is installed you will need to install some extra
software drivers to make it all work. It's best to gather these up
under the working Windows/XP system and write them onto a USB flash
memory stick. Most important are the ethernet drivers from Broadcomm
(Get the Solaris x86/x64 drivers from here
.) You will also need the OpenSolaris "frkit"
that contains a number of tweaks and bits that you will use. Save
these files on the USB memory stick.
Backup W/XP
Now backup the W/XP system. Luckily the W/XP system installed on the
Ferrari laptop includes a version of eRecovery (Symantec GHOST). So I
saved everything to a self-contained bootable DVD, just in case I need
to reload it. This is very important if you plan to retain Windows/XP
after installing Solaris. If the repartitioning goes right, it should
retain all the W/XP bits in its now shrunken partition. But things
could go wrong, leaving you without a working W/XP, unless you are able
to create a bootable recovery disk. (If you're not running on a system
that already has GHOST installed, I would suggest finding software to
create a recovery disk before you attempt repartitioning and installing
other systems.)
Keeping W/XP on your system, in a reduced partition, is useful in case
you need to do some tasks not easily done with Solaris. These may be
hardware maintenance upgrades (like BIOS upgrades) that are usually
distributed under W/XP. But it you keep W/XP, remove MS Office,
Outlook, and Internet Explorer and replace them with W/XP versions of
Star Office, Firefox, and Thunderbird. Also, always make sure your
virus protection and firewall software is up to date and enabled.
Partition the Disk
Now we need to create the disk partitions for Linux and Solaris, and
reduce the W/XP partition size.
A not-free commercial product like Partition Magic could be used
for
this. But I discovered that QtParted, a Linux clone of
Partition Magic, is included in the System Rescue CD. The System
Rescue CD is Linux-on-a-CD. You can download it, write it to a
CD, boot it off the CD, and run QtParted
to do the deed. It worked perfectly.
The scheme I chose was
Partition
Name Size
01
hda-1 7.81 MB (hidden
partition apparently needed by Windows. I wasn't sure about this so I
left it there)
02
hda 1 15
GB
FAT32 W/XP
03
hda 2 15
GB ext for Linux
04
hda 3 60 GB
FAT32 for Solaris (FAT32 format not significant)
05
free space 3.3 GB
Running QtParted took 2 hours to partition and format the disk. And to
my surprise W/XP was preserved in its partition and rebooted without
any problems.
Install Solaris Express
Now start the install of Solaris Express. But you have to be able to
boot from a CD. The Acer Ferrari low level boot record should still be
operational. Boot the system by logging out of Windows and choosing
Restart. But when it restarts, hold down the F2 key. This puts you into
the Acer miniboot program. Read the on-screen instructions and navigate
to the boot menu. Make sure the list of boot-from targets has the CD on top, Hard Disk next. Insert the Solaris
CD 1. Then save and exit (F10). The system should reboot now from
the CD.
Follow all the instructions for installing. There should be no need to
alter the disk partitions.
Be careful tho of the installation from the first CD. Choose not to
automatically reboot after installs. But then after the first CD is
installed you MUST REMOVE the CD manually, otherwise the installation
will start over again with the first CD. The installer will ask for the
additional CDs as they are needed.
First Solaris Boot
The installer will boot the system and give you the GRUB menu, where
you can select to boot either Solaris, FailSafe Solaris, or Windows.
Choose Solaris. It may take awhile until you get a prompt, but when you
do enter root as the user name
and the password you assigned root during the installation.
You need to do this before the GUI starts, because if you let the GUI
startup it will result in a blank screen. You need to set the display
parameters first, and you have to do this from the console.
Setting Xorg Configuration File
The standard way to get the display configured properly is to
run
/bin/X11/Xorg -configure at the console prompt, edit the
generated xorg.conf
file, and move it to /etc/X11.
Only one line needs to be edited:
#Option
"MonitorLayout"
# [<str>]
should be changed to:
Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,CRT"
However, in my experience with this, Xorg hung
for some reason. So an alternative is to have a working xorg.conf
file on the USB memory stick and copy it to /etc/X11.
You can pickup my working xorg.conf
file here.
Be sure to put it on your memory stick before starting the
installation, just in case. When you at the Solaris console prompt you
should see the memory stick as /rmdisk/rmdisk0/
and the data should be copyable.
Installing Ethernet Drivers
Now is the time to install the ethernet (bcme) drivers you downloaded
from broadcom.com and put on the memory stick. Follow the instructions
in the readme. This should work: pkgadd -d
/rmdisk/rmdisk0/BRCMbcme.pkg, or copy BRCMbcme.pkg
to /tmp
and do the pkgadd
from there.
Now connect your ethernet cable to the laptop if it isn't already
connected.
Then run these commands at the console prompt:
#
ifconfig bcme0 plumb
#
ifconfig bcme0 dhcp start
# touch /etc/hostname.bcme0
# touch /etc/dhcp.bcme0
Install frkit
Now you should be able to install the 'frkit' from the memory stick. It
will gather stuff from the opensolaris.org download site using wget, and
install it on your system. To start, this should work:
/rmdisk/rmdisk0/frkit Now you should be able to
reboot. Just type reboot at the console prompt.
Rebooting
The reboot will probably come up with a warning message indicating that
the boot archive is now out of sync and needs to be resynced. The
message should ask if you want to rebuild the boot archive. You should
answer yes, and the boot process should continue without problems. You
may have to wait a long time while the system tries to make a DHCP
connection. Do not enter a user name/password when the login prompt
appears on the console screen. The desktop login GUI should eventually
appear.
If at this point the boot fails and then attempts to reboot itself,
fail again, and reboot again in a loop, it is probably because the boot
archive is corrupted and needs to be recreated. This can be done from
the failsafe system boot.
Failsafe Recovery Boot
The failsafe boot is one of the boot options in the GRUB menu. Choosing
Failsafe will start to boot the system, then ask you if you want to
mount the disk as /a. You
should enter yes.
When the console login prompt appears login as root. Now the disk is
available as /a. You do not have a full system operational, but you can
make changes to files in the full system under /a. In the case of
a corrupt boot archive, you can do the following:
First check to see if you have a boot archive, and if there is
one, remove it
# ls -l /a/platform/i86pc/boot_archive
# rm /a/platform/i86pc/boot_archive
Now regenerate it using bootadm:
# bootadm update-archive -R /a
You can now reboot using the reboot
command at the prompt. This time the boot process should run without
problems.
Next Steps
You should now be able to select either CDE or JDS as your desktop
system and log in (as root). And then you will probably want to create
a local user account for yourself. At a terminal prompt, start
the Solaris Management Console, SMC:
#
/usr/sbin/smc
and from the System Configuration menu, choose Users->User
Account. Documentation on SMC can be found on docs.sun.com.
The system should be functional at this point. It's worth looking at
the help menus, especially if you are using the Java Desktop and are
unfamiliar with how it works. You can startup the JDS Help Viewer from
the Launch menu.
Getting things like wireless to work are covered in some of the
resource articles listed at the top of this page.
You might also want to add a GRUB boot entry to boot in 32-bit mode
(the default is 64-bit mode).
To provide this, edit the grub boot menu file, /boot/grub/menu.lst
by adding the following lines to the menu:
#--------32-bit
title Solaris
Nevada snv_30 X86 32-bit
kernel
/platform/i86pc/multiboot kernel/unix
module
/platform/i86pc/boot_archive
Further Adventures
There are a number of websites you can go to for additional information
and downloads. Here are some:
And a number of Sun engineers are blogging about Solaris on laptops.