This article gathers a few notes concerning installation of Solaris 10 (on Sparc or x86). It only discusses how to get the OS on your machine, not its configuration or tuning.
Solaris flavours
There are nearly as many flavours of Solaris as Linux distributions ! I'm kidding, but actually, there is at least:
- Solaris: the real, the original version distributed by Sun. Before, it was commercial, but no longer. I mean you can install and use for free (well, read conditions anyway). This OS is very stable, but you might find it difficult to install and use some peripherals, especially end-user peripherals. Looks like this version is rather targeting servers than desktop hosts. I used it at one with success for a long time and recently had to move to OpenSolaris because it wouldn't support my new 22'' wide screen.
: this version is less stable and hence more up-to-date. It can be seen as a developer version of Solaris, supporting newer hardware and software. It is easier to install and use on desktops than Solaris.
Nexenta OS, etc.
| Operating System | Installation | Stability | End-user community | End-user peripherals support | ZFS | Performance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solaris 10 | Ok | Very stable, but beware patches: I once got my system in a bad situation because a buggy patch would not install ! | Small, but people are helpful | Limited | ZFS is supported. ZFS boot is integrated in the install of Solaris 10 u6 | Fast and reliable |
| OpenSolaris 2008.11 | Easy | I have had no crash so far | Good and helpful | Good, though my Wacom tablet remains unsupported | ZFS and ZFS boot are integrated to OpenSolaris. ZFS snapshots are great | I encounter a few lags but I haven't found their origin yet |
Installing Solaris
On a Sparc
- on prompt 'ok' (stop-A to get there), type 'boot cdrom'… to boot the Solaris 10 CDs !
- check the compatibility list with Sun's Device Detection Tool: download the Sun Download Manager first, then launch the detection tool: javaws sddtool_20.jnlp &
- make sure all network interfaces (hme0, hme1…) are plugged to the local network
- for network configuration, beware that using DHCP means the network interfaces are expected to receive their IP address AND hostname from the DHCP server. If hostname is not sent, a script is mandatory to set it at each boot. Otherwise use static IP addresses, setting the gateway and the network mask.
- default install is okay to use. It creates 3 partitions
- c0t0d0s0 for / (5059 MB in my case)
- c0t0d0s1 for the swap (512 MB)
- c0t0d0s7 for /export/home (13885MB)
- for software installation, select the Entire Group of Solaris 10 Software. Companion Software (freeware utilities such as gcc, make, xpdf etc) are nice to have.
On x86
The first thing to do is check one's hardware is compatible with Solaris. Sun offers a Java based detection tool . It requires installation of a JRE 1.5. This tool worked fine on my host.
Then, the installation basically goes as follows.
Most of the time, default selects are appropriate and there are no changes to do. That's cool 
- GNU Grub install : select Solaris (default)
- Select Solaris interactive installation (default).
- Select English as language. Actually, I usually hate to chose any other language, because translations are so poor I have to 'reverse' back to English to hope to understand what's going on… My advice here is definitely, select English, unless you really don't understand English (but then, I wonder how you cope everyday as a computer science engineer).
- Set your hostname.
- Set timezone, and root password
- Ask for a Standard Installation (not Flash)
- Configure for automatic eject and reboot
- Then, select Locale: initial locale POSIX C looks fine
- select solaris software: entire distribution (4740 MB)
- select disks to install Solaris (they are labeled cXdY). It's possible to use fdisk to create a Solaris Partition.
Installing OpenSolaris
Download and burn the latest CD of OpenSolaris. The current release (2008.11) fits on a single CD. It is both an installation CD and a Live CD. Let OpenSolaris boot from the CD, then click on “Install OpenSolaris” to get the work started.
Upgrading Solaris 10
u4 to u5
You need the u5 DVD (available from Sun's website). The other alternative is to perform a live upgrade, but it seems somewhat complicated, you need a backup disk etc: try it for servers you can't stop.
With the u5 DVD, it's very simple:
- boot on the DVD
- the beginning is like a normal installation: set hostname, timezone, root password…
- specify this is an upgrade and not a full re-install. The upgrade procedure will remove your u4 patches and proceed with u5 installation.
- let the system install
- reboot (remove the DVD)
After reboot, the system failed to mount my ZFS partitions (/usr/sbin/zfs mount -a). It complained /opt wasn't empty: indeed, the installation procedure had put Star Office 8 in /opt, whereas I already have a ZFS /opt partition: so the ZFS /opt failed to mount. This has been easily fixed by temporarily moving Star Office to /, mounting the ZFS partition, and then moving back Star Office to the new ZFS /opt.
Apart from this slight problem, upgrade proceeded without any problem. It even kept my specific network driver, and of course did not overwrite any other partition than /.
u5 to u6
The nice thing with u6 is that it supports ZFS boot. If possible, do not use CDs but DVDs: there's a known bug on CD 2 that occurs from time to time.