Rolf Kersten's Weblog

Multi-Booting Sun Java Workstations

Freitag Aug 27, 2004


As I have written in my last blog, you can do a lot of interesting things with a Sun Java Workstation. One of these things certainly is installing and running a lot of different operating systems: Solaris (soon to be 64bit), Linux in 32bit and 64bit flavours, and Windows. Setting up a multi-boot system for all these operating systems needs careful planning regarding bootloader configuration and order of OS installation.

I wanted to have these operating systems side by side:



After going through lot of installing and re-installing, the following outline worked for me:

  • Start with empty disk

  • Install Windows XP 64-bit on a primary partition (the installer allows you to create one) - Important: Format the partition with FAT32 filesystem, not NTFS!!!

  • Insert Sun Java Desktop System CD, use expert partitioner and create:

    • a second primary partition (for later Solaris installation), with no filesystem

    • a third primary partition (spared for later use), with no filesystem

    • an extented partition covering the rest of the disk, inside that one these logical partitions:

      • one /boot partition for Java Desktop System and the GRUB bootloader

      • one swap partition

      • a root partition with ext3 filesystem (not reiser, RHEL cannot read it)

    • Then install Sun Java Desktop System. It recognizes the Windows FAT32 partition and installs GRUB into the MBR. If the Windows filesystem would have been NTFS, it would be damaged now - FAT32 is OK

    • Now you have dual boot

    • Insert Solaris Express boot CD. It will offer the first empty primary partition as installation target

    • After installation, GRUB is gone and replaced with the Solaris boot manager which only knows primary partitions (and so the Sun Java Desktop System partition is hidden)

    • So re-run Sun Java Desktop System install CD, select update. Update updates no packages, but reinstalls GRUB

    • Boot Sun Java Desktop System, edit „/boot/grub/menu.lst“ to include Solaris again. The easiest way to do that is to copy the Windows part which is already there and change the device path accordingly („root (hd0,2)“, for example. See GRUB documentation)

    • Redhat installation follows the same schema. Boot with RedHat CD, create and install in a (newly created) extended partition and DO NOT let RedHat install its own GRUB

    • After Redhat installation, Sun Java Desktop System GRUB again starts, with Redhat hidden. So boot Sun Java Desktop System, modify menu.lst again. This time it's trickier, you have to find out the kernel name (Sun Java Desktop System just uses /boot/linuz, Redhat uses /boot/linuz-<kernel version>)

    • This can be repeated until the disk is full

    • Backup all partitions with System Rescue CD (unfortunately not yet available for Solaris partitions)



[2] Kommentare
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Posted at 09:11AM Aug 27, 2004 by rolfk in Sun Stuff
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so the question remains...what does Java have to do with any of this? Afterall, its a Sun JAVA Workstation...

Gesendet von Unknown am August 27, 2004 at 02:52 PM CEST #

Thanks for posting the information about multi-booting the new w1100z. I usually only use RS/6000 and x series IBM machines, but I got this Sun w1100z machine for work in hopes that I can do my data analysis on it. My data analysis programs only run on linux now, so I'll be putting Linux SuSE9.1 on it. I'll let you know how it works and whether or not I can manage to have Solaris as a boot option next to SuSE.

Gesendet von Andy am September 01, 2004 at 10:25 PM CEST #

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