Saloni Arya: unleash the POWER of OpenSource with SUN!!!

Okay..so since the last many days..I had been wanting to try out the latest release of Solaris i.e., OpenSolaris 2008.05 (project Indiana as SUN calls it). I tried out the live CD and I must say was damn impressed by the impressive GUI. I wanted to install it but already have Soalris 10 on my computer. That was when the idea of using VirtualBox came to my mind.

Here I will give a detailed overview of VirtualBox telling how to get OpenSolaris 2008.05 running as a guest OS on a Solaris 10 host.

INSTALLING VIRTUALBOX

You can get binaries for all platforms from the site below.The site also contains a user manual which is more than sufficient to get you through the initial installation procedure.

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

 For installing VirtualBox on a Solaris x86 host, first download the appropriate package. The installation must be performed as root and from the global zone because the VirtualBox installer has to load kernel drivers which cannot be done from a non global zone. After that, run the following command from terminal.

gunzip -cd VirtualBox-1.6.2-SunOS-x86.tar.gz | tar xvf -

After this, you will have two packages: VirtualBox-1.6.2-SunOS-x86-r31466.pkg and VirtualBoxKern-1.6.2-SunOS-r31466.pkg. The second package is the VirtualBox kernel interface (vbi). The purpose of this module is to shield the VirtualBox kernel driver from changes to the SunOS kernel. If you do not have vbi already installed (check for the existence of the file /platform/i86pc/kernel/misc/vbi) install it by executing the command:

pkgadd -G -d VirtualBoxKern-1.6.2-SunOS-r31466.pkg

After that install VirtualBox by executing the command:

pkgadd -d VirtualBox-1.6.2-SunOS-x86-r31466.pkg

This completes the installation procedure. Virtualbox will be installed in /opt/VirtualBox.

RUNNING VIRTUALBOX

To run VirtualBox, simply type VirtuaBox in your terminal. Alternatively, you can also run it from Applications -> System Tools -> Sun xVM VirtualBox. This should bring up a window like the one shown below on your desktop.

Since I already have a Virtual Machines with OpenSolaris 2008.05 guest created in my VirtualBox, it is showing it in the list of Virtual Machines on the left hand side. For a freshly installed VirtualBox instance, the left hand side will be empty. Now I will tell you how to create a new Virtual Machine instance.

CREATING A NEW VIRTUAL MACHINE INSTANCE

Click on the New option on the Left hand side in the above window. This will bring up the "Create New Virtual Machine" window. 

In this window, click on next. You will be prompted to enter a name for your Virtual Machine. Although you can enter anything here, it will be better to have something sensible so that when the number of VM's increase, it is easy to distinguish a VM by its name. Here since I was installing OpenSolaris 2008.05 inside my VM, I gave it the name OpenSoalris 2008.05.

 Select the OS type as OpenSolaris and click next. In the next window, you have to select the RAm for your VM. This means that when your VM is running, this much amount of RAM will be taken away from your host and will be provided to your guest VM. Select this carefully, it should be enough for your guest VM to run properly and your host should be left with enough to perform its functions. Here, I have selected 512 MB as my total RAM is 1024 MB.

Next, you have to select your virtual hard disk. Since yours will be a freshly installed VirtualBox, there won't be any existing Virtual Disk Images (.vdi). If you have a vdi, you can go to the existing option and select the vdi from there. Else, you can create a new vdi by clicking on 'New'. This will bring up the "Create New Virtual Hard Disk" wizard. Click on next, this will bring you to the window where you have to select the type of image you want to create. There are two options here:

• A dynamically expanding file will only grow in size when the guest actually stores data on its virtual hard disk. It will therefore initially be small on the host hard drive and only later grow to the size specified as it is filled with data.
  
• A fixed-size file will immediately occupy the file specified, even if only a fraction of the virtual hard disk space is actually in use. While occupying much more space, a fixed-size file incurs less overhead and is therefore slightly faster than a dynamically expanding file.

After selecting the type of image, click on next. Now, select a size for your vdi. This should be enough for your the contents of your guest OS and the applications you want to install. I selected 10 GB here. You can also specify a name for the image and the location where it gets stored. Next, it will confirm the details and clicking on finish creates the new vdi.

 After having created the vdi, select that from the existing ones and proceed. The next window shows all the details for the VM. Check them and click on finish. This creates a new VM with the given specifications. Note that all these settings can be changed after the  VM has been created from the settings tab.

Now the left hand side should be showing your newly created VM.

This VM is empty at present. In order to install a guest OS in it, you have two options:

• In order to install from an actual CD or DVD, you should put the media in your host 's CD or DVD drive and then in the settings tab, go to the CD/DVD ROM option. There check the mount CD/DVD drive option and select host CD/DVD drive.
• You can also install your guest OS from an ISO image. In order to do that, select the ISO image file option in the CD/DVD ROM option in the settings tab. From there, browse to the iso image file.

Now, you should start the VM from the 'Start' button on the top. This will bring up your VM and the installation will start from whatever media you provided. After the installation is complete, you can use your VM normally.

Below is a screenshot of OpenSolaris 2008.05 running inside the Vm on a Solaris x86 host.