As mentioned, I have a minimal install for my OpenSolaris test machines. Evidently I am missing something quite important for getting a host network up and running:

# ./vnic_setup.sh 0:1:4a:f2:31:34
./vnic_setup.sh: line 42: /usr/lib/vna: No such file or directory

Hmm, I can either load the iso and get the real files or learn how to work with the NAT mode.So either I do a complete reinstall or I figure how to get just a couple of files over. Sounds like I should learn about NAT anyway.

With two machines and NAT, they are both getting the same address. I could use the Internal Network option, but I'm still going to have to reinstall. Hmm, when I do a machine, I select Core Configure and add the following:

BIND DNS Name server and tools
BIND Name server Manifest
Filebench
Freeware Compression Tools
Perl-Compatible Regular Expressions
Freeware shells
Freeware Other Utilities
GLIB
XCU4 Utilities
GNU Autotools
Secure Shell
GNU which
gcmn - Common GNU package
gdb
ggrep
gtar
Lint Libraries (root)
Lint Libraries (usr)
GNU binutils
GNU diffutils
Perl 5.6.1 (core)
Perl 5.6.1 (non-core)
GNU textinfo
Libevent
Get all of System and Network Admin
Live Upgrade Software
MDB (root)
Programming Tools
resource pool (root)
Resource Pools in core software for resource pools
Solaris Zones
Vi IMproved
autoconf
bcc
coreutils
rsync
ROCSEC_GSS
Kerberos V5 KDC (root)
Kerberos V5 Master KDC (root)
Kerberos Version 5 support (kernel)
NIS Server for Solaris (root)
NIS Server for Solaris (usr)
Interprocess Communication

Time to find what I need to add. First we need to look in the ISO image:

[tdh@warlock ~]> sudo lofiadm -a /zoo/isos/x86/snv85/solarisdvd.iso 
/dev/lofi/1
[tdh@warlock ~]> sudo mount -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt
[tdh@warlock Product]> cd /mnt/Solaris_11/Product/
[tdh@warlock Product]> grep lib/vna */pkgmap
SUNWcsu/pkgmap:1 f none usr/lib/vna 0555 root bin 12592 13767 1204942578

Hmm, wait, I need to find that on my host system and not the guest machine. D'Oh!

[tdh@warlock lib]> uname -a
SunOS warlock 5.11 snv_73 i86pc i386 i86pc
[tdh@warlock lib]> sudo lofiadm -d /zoo/isos/x86/snv7
snv79/ 

I have the DVD, but 73 is ancient! But I'll check:

[tdh@warlock Product]> grep lib/vna SUNWcsu/pkgmap
[tdh@warlock Product]> 

Ugh, the biggest hassle is that I use this machine as a Sun Ray Server. Okay, time for a reinstall!

RTFM - at least the one which comes with the distribution. I think the online one does not have OpenSolaris support. And, I am right it does not.

Anyway, you do not need to retrieve the qt libraries and build, as I just did, it is supplied for you.

cd /opt/VirtualBox
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/VirtualBox:/opt/VirtualBox/qtgcc/lib:. ./VirtualBox

Downloading and installing VirtualBox on my OpenSolaris box was a snap. Running and installing on it was a bit harder. First off, you need qt installed. Easy instructions are at VirtualBox on OpenSolaris. Then you need to tell it that something other than Right-Ctrl is your host key - you need to do this because Sun keyboards do not have that key . I chose my Right-Meta key. Imagine VirtualBox has your mouse and keyboard, your screensaver kicks in, and you can't get the system to understand you want to bring it to life.

Telling the tool how to load my OpenSolaris iso image was a bit counterintuitive. But the biggest problem I ended up having was only giving 8M to my graphics card. The Developer's install seemed okay with that, but the normal graphical install would puke on it. I was able to do a text install, until the point the install decided I was doing a NFS install and did not like the path I was giving. It also would not see the attached iso as a cdrom.

Kicking both tyres together - VirtualBox and Indiana was very helpful for this issue, Alan casually mentions you need 32M of Video Ram. I gave the system that and could then do the graphical install. And it correctly identified the iso as a cdrom. I'll bring that value down once I finish the install. I'm not going to install a GUI on this machine.

I got a pNFS community and client to run under VMWare on a XP box. Okay, so I made sure to make independent clones of the same machine as before. And this time I went from 512M to 1G of available RAM. The other thing I changed is that when building the cthon tests, I changed the config a bit.

I went from 512M to 1G because the archive updates were taking forever on the clones with 512M but went fast on the one with about 2G:

updating /platform/i86pc/boot_archive
updating /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive

I'm talking 45 minutes or more. Once I pushed the memory up, these updated much faster.

I used the following configuration for using gcc on a 64bit OpenSolaris:

[tdh@m-client cthon04]> diff tests.init ~/cthon04/tests.init
57c57
< PATH=/opt/SUNWspro/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/etc:.
---
> #PATH=/opt/SUNWspro/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/etc:.
61c61
< #PATH=/opt/gnu/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/etc:.
---
> PATH=/usr/sfw/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb:/etc:.
133c133
< CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc
---
> #CC=/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc
135c135
< #CC=/opt/gnu/bin/gcc
---
> CC=/usr/sfw/bin/gcc
138c138
< CFLAGS=`echo -DSVR4 -DMMAP -DSOLARIS2X -DSTDARG`
---
> #CFLAGS=`echo -DSVR4 -DMMAP -DSOLARIS2X -DSTDARG`
145c145
< #CFLAGS=`echo -DSVR4 -DMMAP -DSOLARIS2X -DSTDARG -m64`
---
> CFLAGS=`echo -DSVR4 -DMMAP -DSOLARIS2X -DSTDARG -m64 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE`
150c150
< LOCKTESTS=`echo tlocklfs tlock64`
---
> #LOCKTESTS=`echo tlocklfs tlock64`
152c152
< #LOCKTESTS=`echo tlocklfs`
---
> LOCKTESTS=`echo tlocklfs`

In the previous run, I hadn't set -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE and I didn't fix LOCKTESTS correctly. While the -D_LARGEFILE64_SOURCE might have been what was killing me, I don't think so.

The DS hung during the write/read of the 30 MB file. It was unresponsive on the console. I heard the disk chugging, I killed off Thunderbird and Firefox. And it did come back. My guess is that the 512M on the earlier systems was insufficient. I've had problems in the past with virtual machines that were trying large IO. (A real machine wrote a 50G file to a NFS simulator and they complained about the speed. They shut up when I had them go against the real box.)

So the experiment works. I'm working on VirtualBox on the side still.

I'm trying to get a NFSv4.1 (aka pNFS) DS, MDS, and client all running as VMWare machines on my XP box. I took a base nevada 85 system (with a Core Custom load - which only eats up 1.4G of disk space) and loaded the on-pnfs-draft19-onnv85-bfu-20080324.i386.tar.bz2 bfu bits (check out our pNFS Download page in OpenSolaris: http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/nfsv41/downloads/).

I then cloned the resulting system into m-client, m-ds, and m-mds. I was able to configure everything up okay, but system is locking up during the NFS Cthon tests:

write/read 30 MB file

After some investigation, I don't think this is a pNFS issue. The m-ds machine is hanging, consistently. It will hang even if I don't run the test. It isn't dropping into kmdb and is totally unresponsive on the console.

Either I didn't clone the original machine correctly or I'm running out of resources. I've had at least 3 machines running concurrently in the past, so I doubt it is resources. Also, the machines each are limited to 512M of memory.

I may play with this a bit more or try VirtualBox, which can be hosted under Solaris and OpenSolaris. I can run it on my w2100z. It now has a whopping 16G of RAM and should be able to handle plenty of virtual machines.