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(EN) Dual Boot of Solaris Express(Nevada) and OpenSolaris(Indiana)

Solaris installers allow only one Solaris partition exists in one HDD. In this situation, even if you want to install OpenSolaris(Indiana) into HDD which had already installed Solaris Express(Nevada), you have to destroy or clear existing Solaris partition.

This contents is how to install two Solaris OSes (Solaris Express/nevada and OpenSolaris/indiana) into one HDD.

I already installed Solaris Express(nevada) into my pc. My envirnments(HDD partitions) are as follows.

• 0 : Windows XP
• 1 : Solaris Express (Nevada)
• 2 : FAT32 ( Shared disk for all OSes, for data exchange)
• 3 : OpenSolaris (Indiana) <- new partition for Indiana

All partitions are basic partition, because Solaris requires partition for Solaris is basic partition.
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Additional Information: Four basic partitions can be made into one HDD when extended partitions does not exists. ( Three basic partitions can be made into one HDD when extended partitions exists. ) And, If you already made extended partition, you cannot create new basic partition into you HDD.
***

The following image is a screenshot of OpenSolaris installer. In default, OpenSolaris installer display warning messages, and installer does not go to next step.
Installer recognize that two Solaris partitions exists in same HDD.

Sorry, comments of image are written in Japanese.



In this case, to install OpenSolaris, you have to give up to make new partition for OpenSolaris and permit to overwrite existing Solaris partition by installer, or you have to destroy existing Solaris Express partition and make new OpenSolaris partition....
However, you can install two Solaris OSes into one HDD by deceiving the installer.
The trick is changing partition number of existing Solaris Express partition while installing OpenSolaris into other partition of same HDD.
I used "Acronis PertitionExpert" to change existing Solaris Express(nevada) partition number. I changed Solaris Express partition number from 0xbf to 0xbd . After that, OpenSolaris installer recognizes Solaris Express partition to "Unknown Partition", so OpenSolaris installer recognizes No.4 partition is only one Solaris partition in the HDD.

Sorry, the characters in the following image are Japanese.



After Installed OpenSolaris, change Solaris Express partition number to original number "0xbf". When partition number is different, grub cannot read grub second stage menu. It means Solaris in this partition cannot boot.

To switch Solaris Express and OpenSolaris, grub second menus are in each partition. Because, Solaris partition, you want to boot, requires that target partition status is "active" when boot kernel/OSes. To use makeactive command of Grub can be change patition status to active, but, grub read grub second menu from active partition, so, when you want to boot Solaris Express, grub have to read second menu in Solaris Express partition and grub requires second menu in OpenSolaris partiotion if you want to boot OpenSolaris.

The way to switch Grub menu between Solaris Express grub second menu and OpenSolaris grub second menu are as follows.
This way requires to change Solaris Express grub second menu and OpenSolaris grub second menu.

This additional part is for Solaris Express grub second menu. (Add followings to /boot/gurb/menu.lst in Solaris Express partition. )

title Switch to OpenSolaris(Indiana) Grub Menu
  root (hd0,3)
  makeactive
  chainloader +1

It's for OpenSolaris grub second menu, add the followings to /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst in OpenSolaris partition.

title Switch to Solaris Express(Nevada) Grub Menu 
  root (hd0,1)
  makeactive
  chainloader +1

Posted at 03:45午後 5 26, 2008 by Yasuhiro Fujitsuki in Linux & Solaris(EN)  |