Sunday January 13, 2008 
Recent Entries
- test
- Solaris x86 for the beginner: Videos
- I'm it!
- Running BIND server 'named' as a different user on Solaris 10
- BIND 9.3.4-P1 available with Solaris 10
- Live Upgrade over VPN
- Fun Family Camping in the Netherlands
- Default beep be gone - more xorg.conf
- Solaris x86 for the beginner: Xorg
- Solaris x86 for the beginner: Initial tweaks
Today's Page Hits: 179
Sunday January 13, 2008 ublog test
Friday October 05, 2007 Today I came across the OpenSolaris Project: Starter Kit which includes links to OpenSolaris Screencasts (videos).
In particular I like the reference to the backup tool "g4u" to backup my Windows partition(s). It would be neat if I could use the same trick to backup the Solaris partition too.
Thursday September 27, 2007 Peter tagged me! I'm like the school boy who, while lining up in the
playground to play one game, is suddenly rushed upon and touched in a
fleeting moment to the cheer of "tag" as the ascendant races off. I
liked playing tag, though I always preferred
"Stuck in the mud" (apparently known as Freeze Tag in some places).
So, five things you may not already know about me....
Thinking that I may have had a very minor dairy intolerance I gave up eating dairy produce in my early twenties. Obviously this means no Milk, Cheese or Chocolate. But that's only the half of it. Wey solids and powder are found in an amazing host of foods like biscuits, cakes and crackers. And all those really nice things like cakes (did I say that already), custard, pastries, and a whole lot more.... I'm not sure the diet had much effect on my Asthma, but I sure did put on the pounds once I came off of it (I have subsequently lost that weight, with help from the Hackers Diet) and my bicycles. I was certainly glad to no longer be having water on my morning cereal.
This may not be so surprising to those paying close attention to my blog... OK, so its a surprise to you all! I used to be cleaner at Express Dairies. It helped me save up for the road "racing" bicycle that I still ride to this day. My section included a small hall with a free milk dispenser which was always in a real slimy and smelly state come the evening (people, be considerate with your unwanted beverages). I still remember with joy the first time I used the floor polishing machine. It whizzed around taking me with it and wrapping me around with the power cord. Took a few times to tame it, but it was always fun.
Somewhat like Clingan at school I was interested in long distance running. I used to take part in the cross country race each year and for sports day entered the 1500m and 5km race. Though I never took it seriously, I just seemed to have a lot of stamina. These days I really don't enjoy running and much prefer to be on my bike where my stamina still sees me through..
I was in a Secondary School (high-school) production of "My Fair Lady". I was in the chorus and several non-speaking parts including a chimney sweep and ballroom dancer. I enjoyed every moment of it, especially learning the waltz (shame I don't remember it now). I dare say it's those memories why I encourage my girls to take up the thespian joys that they have. Mind, they can sing unlike myself.
On the theme of Musicals, my favorites all time is the film "The Slipper and the Rose", staring Richard Chamberlain and Gemma Craven. It is in my opinion the best adaptation of the Cinderella Story. My favorite bit is when the fairy god mother, played by Annette Crosbie, exclaims "I know, I'll borrow time!" (or something to that effect) which for me explained why the magic had to be withdrawn at midnight. So why don't the slippers disappear? Well that magic clearly wasn't borrowed
So, Jonathan, your it!
Stace
Tuesday September 18, 2007 The named process is started by root and thus inherits roots privileges, as were traditionally needed, to access the DNS communication channel (port 53). BIND administrators know the named command accepts a -u username option which causes the process to switch user attributes after opening privileged interfaces. The idea being that should the service be compromised the effective user is not all powerful.
In the Solaris 10 Operating Environment the process privilege model, privileges(5), allows for a more fine-grained control. Coupled with the Service Management Facility, smf(5), services may inherit less privileges and alternative user process and group identities at start-up. Therefore under the Solaris 10 OE named may be configured at start to run with an alternative user identity making the -u option superfluous.
To have the BIND server named start with an alternative user identity and group under the Solaris 10 OE simply modify the following service properties:
# svccfg
svc:> select svc:/network/dns/server:default
svc:/network/dns/server:default> setprop start/user = dnsadmin
svc:/network/dns/server:default> setprop start/group = dnsadmin
svc:/network/dns/server:default> exit
# svcadm refresh svc:/network/dns/server:default
# svcadm restart svc:/network/dns/server:default
In addition you will also have to specify an alternative location for the pid-file as only root has write access to create the default pid-file; /var/run/named.pid. For Example:
# mkdir /var/named/tmp
# chown dnsadmin /var/named/tmp # head /etc/named.conf
options {
directory "/var/named";
pid-file "/var/named/tmp/named.pid";
};
zone "0.0.127.in-addr.arpa" in {
type master;
file "db.127.0.0";
};
#
Monday September 10, 2007 An upgrade to BIND 9.3.4-P1 is available for Solaris 10 Operating Environment by installing patch 119783-05 for SPARC or 119784-05 for x86 architectures.
BIND 9.3.4 provided a number of new features over BIND 8 which was supplied with the Solaris 8 and 9 Operating Environments. Additionally BIND 9.3.4 provides a number of compatibility features not available in BIND 9.2.4 (the FCS version of BIND in Solaris 10 OE). For details of all the changes refer to the migration notes.
Summary of Differences between BIND 9.3 from BIND 9.2
BIND 9.3 has a number of new features over 9.2 including:
DNSSEC is now Delegation Signer (DS) based, RFC4033, RFC4034 and RFC4035. This collection of RFCs is otherwise known as DNSSEC-bis.
DNSSEC Look-aside Validation (DLV) (experimental), RFC4431
check-names is now implemented.
rrset-order is more complete.
IPv4/IPv6 transition support, "dual-stack-servers".
IXFR deltas can now be generated when loading master files, "ixfr-from-differences".
It is now possible to specify the size of a journal, "max-journal-size".
It is now possible to define a named set of master servers to be used in masters clause, "masters".
The advertised EDNS UDP size can now be set, "edns-udp-size".
New Name Server SMF properties. With the introduction of BIND 9.3.4 new Name Server smf(1) properties have been introduced to provide an SMF compliant method for setting BIND 9.3.4 command line options. Changing the "start method" property of the BIND 9 service is no longer recommended.
Thursday August 23, 2007 My friend and Colleague Isamu just asked me how I live-upgrade my home machines. Here's how:
Tunnel the NFS TCP port over ssh
Thanks to Chris Gerhard for this tip.
$ ssh -fNCL 6049:enospc:2049 enoexec
where 'enospc' is the name of the nfs server that exports the install images and 'enoexec' is the name of a host that can access the nfs server which has AllowTcpForwarding set to "yes" in its /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.
Using nfs URLs mount the file system
# mount nfs://localhost:6049/export/install /mnt
Remove Current lu packaging and add new packages, i.e.:
# yes y | pkgrm SUNWluu SUNWlur SUNWlucfg .... # ls /mnt/i86pc/os/nv/ 69 68 70 # luv=70 # cd /mnt/i86pc/os/nv/$luv/Solaris_11/Product # yes y | pkgadd -d . SUNWlucfg SUNWlur SUNWluu .... # cd /
Upgrade
Firstly, get name of my current lu partitions using lustatus:
# lustatus ....
Rename the one I'm replacing so that I know which version it is for now.
# lurename -n snv_$luv -e ‹old BE›
Next use lumake to update older image with changes made in newer image, thanks to Brent Paulson for this tip. Obviously you can miss this step if you just created the image. This takes some time, it sends an email when its complete. Alternatively use lustatus to see when its done.
# lumake -n snv_$luv -t now -m mail-address@domain
Finally, do the upgrade.
# luupgrade -u -n ‹new BE› -s /mnt/i86pc/os/nv/$luv
Activate the new environment
Use luactivate and 'init 6' to reboot solairs, the reboot command will not suffice.
# luactivate snv_$luv .... # umount /mnt # init 6
Stace
Thursday February 01, 2007 My Brother phoned me earlier asking where it was that I went on Vacation last year, the place that was on a fun park, with a pool and zoo? Where it was really good for young families?
Well, it was one of two places: one has a Safari park on site and the other claimed to have the longest water slide within its multi fun-pool complex in Europe. We went to both places with Eurocamp, which is very easy to get to from the South of England in the car.
Hilvarenbeek Beekse Berg.
Also known as Speelland where we have been twice.
Situated on a Safari park and children's amusement park. Has small swimming pool and large lake with boats and several petting zoos, a very large site that is lovely to cycle about. In the evening we cycled up to a little known vieing point and watched the Zebras and Giraffes. It's also affiliated with a fun-pool in town (not far away).
Dunrell - Wassenaar
Dunrell is also situated on an amusement park. We likened it to Thorpe park here. This park would perhaps suit older children as it has some additional activities (High ropes, toboggan and age limit rides). But it also has lots for the younger members of the family, including a playground with the equipment playgrounds had when we were kids. Like the Witches Hat, Two storey high slides,large swings, Helter-skelter; all of which we no longer seem to have in the UK these days
. But every day you just have to go to the fun pool which is nice and warm and has so many fun slides... It might just be the best in Europe. I believe our fees covered entry for 2 hours in the pool (at 11am) when we were there.
Both places are not far from Efteling (though Speelland is nearest) which the girls loved.
Check it out... Stace
Monday January 29, 2007 Just a quick note. One other modification that I made to my xorg.conf file, which has possibly saved my marriage, was to have Xorg use the audio device for the default beep, nee bell. This is accomplished by simply adding the following to the InputDevice section:
Option "BellDevice" "/dev/audio"
Thanks goes to "Ramblings" and to Alan Coopersmith for this handy tip.
Friday January 26, 2007 Well as I commented previously the Window system, keyboard, USB mouse and integrated touch pad just worked on the Ferrari 4000 laptop without me changing a thing. The additional frkit enabled me to use the Multimedia keyboard and of particular note the four way scroll button.
Initially plugging in an external display caused my LCD screen to be switched off. Remembering that the BIOS had a "Power on Display" option I changed this from the default of "Auto" to "both" this then caused the LCD output to be duplicated on the external display. Great for running a projector or driving a second display at a more comfortable height and saving my back. But having two displays I would rather them display different information.
As before I started by looking to Google for xorg dual monitor
Very quickly it became apparent that I needed to know a few things about the hardware I was using. Thus I imagine that the details below are particular to the the Ferrari 4000, or at least computers with the same graphics card. But I hope to share with you some discoveries that may be of interest.
What graphics card?
The first issue then is "What graphics card does the laptop have?" I tried prtconf(1) initially before stumbling across scanpci(1M) which I happened to see Jon use:
# /usr/X11/bin/scanpci | grep X700 ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE) #
I've used grep above for brevity, the actual list I got was much longer. I then used Google to find out what each component listed was.
xorg.conf configuration
Having established that the laptop has an ATI card I add that to my Google search and, some hours later, I find what looks rather promising in a ubuntu forum entry by Ziox:
I thus made some minor changes to that to suit my configuration, the full section ended up as:
# from http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=301961 # System Requirements: #ONE Dual-Output ATI or Matrox Graphics card. #A recent version of the free Xorg, without any binary graphics driver installed. Section "Device" Option "MonitorLayout" "LVDS,CRT" Option "MergedFB" "true" Option "OverlayOnCRTC2" "true" # Physical location of secondary monitor in relationship to primary monitor # Values of LeftOf, RightOf, Above, Below or Clone (as used for single screen). Option "CRT2Position" "Above" # Option "CRT2Position" "Clone" # MetaModes: list primary-secondary monitor resolutions: # switchable with Ctrl-Alt-num-Plus and Ctrl-Alt-num-Minus. # Home 19-inch LCD (GH19PS) resolution is 1280x1024: # The office 24inch monitor can display upto 1920x1200, alas # that does not seem possible here. The best seems to be 1680x1050 # The first entry is the default. Option "MetaModes" "1680x1050-1280x1024 1680x1050-1680x1050 1400x1050-1280x1024 1280x1024-1024x768 1024x768-1024x768" # As The LCD is always present, while the CRT is not, the LCD is the primary. Option "MergedXineramaCRT2IsScreen0" "false" Identifier "Card0" Driver "ati" VendorName "ATI Technologies Inc" BoardName "Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE)" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection
Interestingly several of the options used above are not currently listed in the xorg.conf(4) manual page installed on my system. A Google search for the options didn't turn up much either. I presume the manual changes are still in the works. FYI, the manual pages for X11 commands are in /usr/X11/man so add that to your MANPATH or specify the -M option to man, for example "man -M /usr/X11/man xorg.conf".
The catch
When I shutdown and unplug the external monitor Xorg does not at the next boot compensate for the fact that it's not there any more. Meaning when I next switch the laptop on without the second monitor Xorg may still open windows out of sight. Looking at the Gnome Workspace Switcher applet one can see a representation of your new window, you just cant see it. the most recent window is likely to have focus (the window is selected and thus input and or X commands affect it) and you can thus use 'Alt-F7' to provoke "Move Window" and slide it in to view. Or indeed use 'Alt-Tab' to select the window and then 'Alt-F7' to drag it in to view. However as I'm not certain this will always work, and that I find it rather disconcerting I'd like to Xorg to reconfigure to a single display.
As Xorg does not currently seem to reconfigure itself in this scenario, I need to reconfigure xorg.conf myself for the single screen, logout and login. And all is well; Xorg restarts it's self when I log out and hence reads the new configuration.
Now as I currently use x11-ssh-askpass to read my Secure Shell password during login before any other windows are opened it makes sense, to me at least, to modify it to provide two extra buttons so that during login, when I would normally enter my SSH password, I can instead, if needs be, switch configurations and simply re-login again.
As a prof-of-concept I knocked up xchoice in dtksh and added it to my dtlogin(1X) config file $HOME/.dtprofile:
DTSOURCEPROFILE=true
# Concept. Background it as X must start to show it.
$HOME/tools/sh/xchoice&
#
# Start SSH agent
#
if [ "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" = "" -a -x /usr/bin/ssh-agent ]; then
# pkill -u $LOGNAME ssh-agent
eval `/usr/bin/ssh-agent`
if [ -x $HOME/x11-ssh-askpass-1.2.4.1/x11-ssh-askpass ]; then
SSH_ASKPASS=$HOME/x11-ssh-askpass-1.2.4.1/x11-ssh-askpass ssh-add < /dev/null
else
/usr/openwin/bin/xterm -geom +0-0 -e ssh-add
fi
fi
It works well,
but dtksh requires more than basic X support that does not seem to be available when x11-ssh-askpass is run, and thus the window does not appear until later when
the full windowing system is up. Hence the requirement for something
else. And this way I can provide two functions in one.
Having done all that I'm still interested to know if their is some other way to accomplish this without reconfiguration so please do comment if you know.
One final issue:
The external LCD not being of equal size pans left and right, which is fine, but it also pans the whole desktop up and down. I'd like to stop that if possible and thus prevent the Gnome panel (launch bar) from sliding of the bottom off the bottom of LCD.
Stace
Saturday January 20, 2007 So after the initial install I made the following initial tweaks to the installation.
- 1. Create user account.
- 2. Modify /etc/autohome
- 3. Change machine name (hostname)
- 4. Configure for UK keyboard
- 5. Add frkit
- 6. Add inetmenu (Internet Menu)
- 7. Update GNOME preferences and create (copy) user environment
I'm sure I'll be making some more in the near future but for now as
this is a Developer release I have all the compilers and tools
installed already which includes a recent enough version of XEmacs
21.4 to keep me happy for a while
Create user account.
Simply use the GUI as provided when root logged in or if you prefer use useradd(1M).
Modify /etc/autohome
As I'm used to using /home for the location of my home directory it makes sense for me to configure this. See automount(1M) for more information on this.
Change machine name (hostname)
solaris-devx is a nice name, but its time I re-awoke Scully.
Interesting point here was that previously to change the machine name there were several files that needed to be modified. Not so now, it seems all I have to do is change nodename(4) (that's /etc/nodename) and run uname(1M), or vice-versa:
uname -S scully uname -n > /etc/nodenameNOTE: I'm not sure what affect, if any, that may have on your running services. Thus to be honest I simply set nodename and the name came into effect when I rebooted.
Note that if your DHCP server gives your machine a name then nodename is ignored (effectively running 'uname -S' for you on the name supplied by the DHCP server).
Configure for UK keyboard
A UK keyboard typically has a sterling pound sign (£) above the number while a US keyboard has what I call a hash or number sign, but what I have heard my American friends (and Audix) refer to as the "pound sign"! Initially I created an xmodmap(1) to map the correct keys but as Chris Gerhard points out I simply need to set an eeprom value:
# eeprom keyboard-layout=UK-English
However as I don't think that comes into effect until you reboot here is the xmodmap file and command to use it. Remember to backup the original first just in case!
$ xmodmap -pke > .xmodmap.backup $ cat .xmodmap-ferrari4000 keycode 11 = 2 quotedbl keycode 12 = 3 sterling keycode 48 = apostrophe at keycode 49 = grave notsign brokenbar keycode 51 = numbersign asciitilde keycode 94 = backslash bar brokenbar $ xmodmap .xmodmap-ferrari4000
(the brokenbar and bar have been swapped around when compared to the physical keyboard, but believe me its better that way)
Update 25 Jan 2007: Use kbd(1) to set the keyboard (thanks to Alan Coopersmith for this tip).
Add frkit
The frkit , AKA the Ferrari kit (though it is not just for Ferrari's), adds some very useful extensions from the OpenSolaris laptop community:
- * acpidrv
Adds support for the power button and battery statistics.
- * gnome battery
A port of the GNOME battery meter
- * powernow
Juggles the CPU speed based on demand.
- * acerkb
Multimedia keyboard hack
- * gnome emifreq
GNOME applet that displays current CPU state.
Further information on all of these features is available by executing 'frkit -s readme'.
One tip, when running frkit remember to set your http proxy if necessary (or indeed, unset it!):
# frkit Could not download "http://opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/downloads/frkit" # http_proxy=webcache:8080 frkit Probing acpidrv ... installed and up to date. Probing gnome-battery ... installed and up to date. Probing powernow ... installed and up to date. Probing acerkb ... installed and up to date. Probing gnome-emifreq ... installed and up to date. No modules applicable to your system or none out of date. #
Add inetmenu (Internet Menu)
The inetmenu is a cool little package which provides a command-line interface (CLI) or GUI to select different network configurations. Thus when for example the laptop is at home I simply select the DHCP-noNIS profile, and when in the office I select DHCP. The application makes the necessary configuration changes for the network access point the system is using.
The package installation output gave me the impression that I had to create some profiles in /etc/inetmenu but this is not the case as the defaults suffice for me. I did have to reboot though before it worked. I presume I had not started some service or something? After-all I've never rebooted Solaris in the past quiet so often
One tip, rather than editing user_attr(4) to add the Ginetmenu profile to your UID use the usermod(1M) command, but be careful to list all your non-default profiles though!
Update GNOME preferences and create (copy) user environment
Added the battery meter to gnome-panel and assigned some of the multimedia keys to gnome applications and/or functions.
As an old Solaris user I copied most of my shell scripts, user environment customizations (aliases, .profile and the like) across from my Sparc system. Perhaps I'll tell you more about those another day...
What's next?
The next thing at the top of my to-do list is to get the external display working at the same time as the built in one so I can avoid the hunched-back.
Stace
Tag: x86 Solaris
Friday January 19, 2007 Once the Solaris OE installation had completed the install process installed Sun Studio 11 and relevant patches. No further intervention was required by me.
At the end of the installation Solaris ejected the DVD media and booted itself from the internal disk. I was then presented with a new GRUB menu allowing me too boot Windows or Solaris, the default. As Solaris began to boot after my first install there was a moment of doubt when the screen went blank and the following three lines were displayed:
SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_55 64-bit Copyright 1983-2006 SunMicrosystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms.
Then nothing for a while (around 1 to 2 minuets)... followed by a message indicating that the network interface had failed to allocate an address using DHCP! That's because I had not plugged in the RJ45 cable. I did not see this delay or get the warning message when I next booted with the cable attached.
Hostname: solaris-devx Configuring devices. Loading smf(5) service descriptions: 150/150 ... solaris-devx console login:
At this point the machine seemed to be waiting for me to login... But I know better and waited for the GUI login to appear... I waited... I'm sure I should wait... perhaps I need to choose X.Org or Xsun from some place? I wait some more. Some warning messages from sendmail and syslogd pollute my screen:
Jan 17 22:41:31 scully sendmail[1194]: [ID 702911 mail.crit] My unqualified host name (scully) unknown; sleeping for retry Jan 17 22:42:31 scully svc.startd[7]: [ID 122153 daemon.warning] svc:/network/smtp:sendmail: Method or service exit timed out. Killing contract 61. Jan 17 22:42:31 scully svc.startd[7]: [ID 636263 daemon.warning] svc:/network/smtp:sendmail: Method "/lib/svc/method/smtp-sendmail start" failed due to signal KILL. Jan 17 22:42:39 scully syslogd: line 45: WARNING: loghost could not be resolvedI know that I did not set a domain name and as such sendmail is not happy! I wait some more, around eight minutes in total. When my waiting is paid off when the login screen appears (I'll look into this and log a Change Request if necessary).
I login as root providing the password that I was asked for during the
install and I choose gnome over CDE when asked for the windowing
environment to use and I'm in. 
The first thing to do is to add a local user. Thoughtfully the "User and Group " application has already been started for me.
added 19 Jan:
To prevent the messages above (but not necessarily cure the issue) I disabled sendmail (svcadm disable sendmail) and added 'loghost' to my loopback (127.0.0.1) entry in /etc/inet/hosts.
added 20 Jan:
I now find that the Ferrari can boot and provide me with the GUI login screen in less than 1 minute. So as suggested it might be that Solaris was simply busy updating bits in the background after the first few boots. After all I was installing different bits. As a brief test I re-enabled sendmail today but still find Solaris boots in less than 1 minute. Or perhaps its that I'm now using inetmenu?
Stace
Tag: x86 Solaris
Thursday January 18, 2007 Following the Inheritence tax petition I received some feed back from the Prime Ministers Office. I didn't expect that, wish I could say the same for the response.
Solaris x86 for the beginner: Solaris install
The DVD boots to an initial GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) menu where I'm prompted to select one of the following boot options:
1. Solaris Developer Express 2. Solaris Express 3. Solaris Express Serial console ttya 4. Solaris Express Serial console ttyb (fir lx50, v60x and v65x)The DVD spins some more and I'm presented with this menu
1. Solaris Interactive (default) 2. Apply driver updates 3. Single user shellAfter selecting option 1. Java is setup, a windowing system is extracted and system identification begins....Shortly after which I'm presented with a warning that I must pay attention now as the next screen requires input from me within 30 seconds or I will face a non-GUI install. The system pauses at this point waiting for me to press Return...
A windowing systems presents a single window, or text widget, with the following:
Press return if you can read this
I hit return. Then select my language, English. Select Continent and Country, Europe / Britain (UK). I get other questions like these... When I realise that I'm using the touch pad on a graphical display, fantastic! Well, it is for me, As said back at the start I'm used to simply watching the system install its self over the network and or pressing function keys.
A little while later I get to a "Customize Fdisk Partitions" screen and I can see my FAT32LBA partition and the, newly named, "Solaris" partition.
This is followed, as I hoped, by the "Lay Out File Systems" window where I can now create Solaris mount points or Virtual disks within the fdisk (as created by parted partition). The install has offered me some defaults which I could simply accept.
However as I want to use live upgrade I created the following layout:
| Slice | File System | Size | Comment | ||
| 0 | / | 10000mb | Initial root | ||
| 1 | /swap | 2048mb | I hope for sys-suspend | ||
| 2 | /root | 10000mb | alternative root | ||
| 6 | /opt | 5000mb | Optional packages | ||
| 7 | /export | 30140mb | home |
I only need half the space that I allocated to the root partitions and to /opt, but I'm being cautious. Incidentally I created a /opt as when I've live-upgraded my Sparc machine my /opt was getting left-out (or so I believe) But I'm not certain that I need it. No time to read up about that as I need to go and do other chores. Thus I set the install process off....
Stace
Tag: x86 Solaris
Wednesday January 17, 2007 The CD download was so fast I have not looked at anything else in Richard Friedman's Resources for Running Solaris OS on a Laptop.
Having burnt the System Rescue CD and restarting windows (he he, little does it know); I stopped the Acer from booting and entered the BIOS setup by pressing F2. in the BIOS I used the cursor keys to skip along the top tabs to enter the boot screen. Where I then used the up and down cursor to select (highlight) the CD/DVD ROM and pressed F6 a number of times to make it the primary selection. Saved the selection with F10 and Acer started to boot from the CD image...
In next to no time, after selecting a UK keyboard from a list, I was presented with a root shell prompt above which was some useful information including this extract:
X.Org : You can use the graphical environment. Type startx. the graphical environment configuration is done automatically. X.Org comes with Window-Maker and you can use several graphical tools: - Partition manager:..gparted - Web browsers:.......firefox-2.0 and dillo - Text editors:.......gvim and leafpad
Note well that this version lists gparted and not QtParted. Without further-a-do I entered _startx_ and entered a big dark room! That is to say the screen went black. I gave it a short while and then held down the power key to reset everything (I tried control-c first to no effect).
At the next attempt I took the default keyboard (experience taught me to try defaults) but to no avail. I did see some warning messages fly up the screen but alas I could not make them out. I considered using a video camera to try and catch them but first I thought I would try parted (my assumption being that it may be a non graphical version).
(parted) print Disk /dev/hda: 100GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File System Flags 1 32.3kB 3150MB 3150MB primary fat32 2 3150MB 51.4GB 48.2GB primary fat32 boot, lba 3 51.4GB 100GB 48.6GB extended lba 5 51.4GB 100GB 48.6GB logical fat32 (parted) resize 2 3150MB 20GB (parted) rm 3 (parted) print Disk /dev/hda: 100GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File System Flags 1 32.3kB 3150MB 3150MB primary fat32 2 3150MB 20.0GB 16.9GB primary fat32 boot, lba
So far so good... But then I got cocky! The 'help' showed a command named 'mklabel' and 'help mklabel' showed "mklabel LABEL-TYPE : create a new disk label (partition tabel)" and "sun" was listed as a valid type. So I entered 'mklabel sun'. The net result was that my working msdos label was over-written with a new blank partition table! Thankfully there is also a rescue command so I entered 'mklabel msdos' and then used 'rescue' to recover (at least that is what I thought) my previous partitions using the information above.
But how then should I proceed now? It occurs to me that I don't really know what Solaris is expecting or indeed wants from the partition table. I assume that Solaris will allow me to create logical partitions within a partition that I create for it... I really want to ring-a-friend but then that isn't in my rules of engagement so I'm just going to assume thats the case. But before I do anything else I'm going to boot windows to make sure its still happy:
(parted) quit root % reboot ... F2 (and reconfigure BIOS to boot from disk) F10 (save config) ...
Nada, nothing, nil, except back-light blackness....
OK, so I'll have to start again... I rebooted with the System Rescue CD and setup the partition thus:
(parted) mkpartfs primary fat32 32.3kb 40GB (parted) mkpart primary sun-ufs 40GB 100% (parted) print Disk /dev/hda: 100GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File System Flags 1 32.3kB 40.0GB 40GB primary fat32 boot, lba 2 40.0GB 100GB 60GB primary (parted) quit root % reboot
And I insert the Acer recovery DVD! Well, I thought I'd give that a go. The laptop booted a windows shell and the Acer recovery DVD asked for confirmation to restore the factory settings which I opted for. Alas the system failed to come back. I booted from another Windows XP DVD that I own into the recovery console and used diskpart, chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr and exit... Ejected the DVD and Windows started its virgin voyage (it booted) Phew! Looking back I wonder if the rescue attempt before would have worked if I have tried fixmbr on that (as I believe that is what the problem was).
Next, I insert the Solaris DVD and reboot....
Stace
Tag: x86 SolarisSolaris x86 for the beginner: Discovery
So without to much looking I very quickly discover many notes from other folks that have trodden this path before. Notably a number on Acer machines (no that was not a surprise to me).
In no particular order then:
Interesting. I don't intend to use Linux at the moment, though I may try BrandZ later on. One thing I most certainly will do is provide an alternative Solaris partition so that I can continue to use live upgrade once the initial installation is complete. I also don't have Partition Magic and so intend to use an alternative product...
Same hardware. Same requirements and Same low-budget thoughts and link to System Rescue CD which includes QtParted; a Linux GUI disk partitioning tool.
Perhaps now is a good time to mention that currently Solaris does not include a non-Solaris disk partitioning tool (if you hadn't already guessed).
Richard has also put together a useful set of links on the BigAdmin site entitled Resources for Running Solaris OS on a Laptop. which I'm going to go and read now while the ISO image of System rescue CD v0.3.02 downloads...
Stace
Tag: x86 Solaris