To restore GRUB (and be able to boot Solaris) when @## someone/something has scratched it, do:

• boot from the install CD of Solaris
• select “6” for a prompt, single user mode
• restore the boot loader:

installgrub -m /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0d0s0

NB. installboot is now obsolete.

See more information on BigAdmin.

Solaris cuts partition into slices. Those slices are numbered 0 to 7 and they correspond to the 's' of the device (c0t0d0s3 refers to slice number 3). Slice number 2 is reserved and refers to the entire disk by convention.

Slices of a given partition may be listed with format.

On Solaris 10, use the command 'print' to show the current layout of a given disk.

partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 39691 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0 unassigned    wm       0 - 27046       13.00GB    (27047/0/0) 27263376
  1 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 39690       19.08GB    (39691/0/0) 40008528
  3 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  4 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  5 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  6 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  7 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

partition> 3

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
3 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

Enter partition id tag[unassigned]: 
Enter partition permission flags[wm]: 
Enter new starting cyl[0]: 27047
Enter partition size[0b, 0c, 27047e, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 39690e
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 39691 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0 unassigned    wm       0 - 27046       13.00GB    (27047/0/0) 27263376
  1 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 39690       19.08GB    (39691/0/0) 40008528
  3 unassigned    wm   27047 - 39690        6.08GB    (12644/0/0) 12745152
  4 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

  5 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  6 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  7 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

partition> label
Ready to label disk, continue? yes

partition> quit

format> volname
Enter 8-character volume name (remember quotes)[""]:secondar
Ready to label disk, continue? yes

On OpenSolaris, use verify.

axelle@boureautic:~# format
Searching for disks...done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c3d0 <DEFAULT cyl 6373 alt 2 hd 255 sec 63>
          /pci@0,0/pci-ide@12/ide@0/cmdk@0,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 0
[...]
format> verify
Primary label contents:

Volume name = <        >
ascii name  = <DEFAULT cyl 6373 alt 2 hd 255 sec 63>
pcyl        = 6375
ncyl        = 6373
acyl        =    2
bcyl        =    0
nhead       =  255
nsect       =   63
Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders        Size            Blocks
  0       root    wm       1 - 6371       48.80GB    (6371/0/0) 102350115
  1 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 6372       48.82GB    (6373/0/0) 102382245
  3 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  4 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  5 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  6 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  7 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0
  8       boot    wu       0 -    0        7.84MB    (1/0/0)        16065
  9 unassigned    wm       0               0         (0/0/0)            0

The good news about ZFS is that it's as great as expected. Storage units may span over partitions: several disks, devices, partitions and even files can be gathered in a single zfs pool, and then, from that pool virtual disk spaces can be provided the way you want.

zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0d0s7

Devices can easily be set for mirroring or RAIDZ. It's as simple as adding a keyword to the command. However, make sure mirroring or raidz is what you need. For instance, my c0d0s6 slice has 15G and c0d0s7 has 17G. If I mirror them, I basically “lose” 2G in the second array. That's not something I want at home (at work, the answer might be different).

zpool create -f pool raidz c0d0s6 c0d0s7
zfs list
NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool    87K  15,3G  24,5K  /pool
zfs destroy pool
zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0d0s7
zfs list
NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool    87K  32,5G  24,5K  /pool

It's very easy to set compression, quotas

zfs set compression=on pool

This is the configuration I use:

# zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0dàs7
# zfs create pool/axelle
# zfs create pool/opt
# zfs set mountpoint=/opt pool/opt
# zfs set compression=on pool
# zfs set mountpoint=/export/home/axelle pool/axelle
# zfs list
NAME          USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool          197K  37.3G  24.5K  /pool
pool/axelle  24.5K  37.3G  24.5K  /export/home/axelle
pool/opt     24.5K  37.3G  24.5K  /opt

Note before creating the pool, the two slices c0d0s6 & c0d0s7 should be backuped, unmounted and removed from /etc/vsftab. Then, once the pool is created, the original content can be restored. Also, mountpoints are acceptable only if they exist: make sure /export/home/axelle exists first.

• Setting up snapshots: time-slider-setup
• Mounting a ZFS pool:

zfs import -r <poolname>

• Listing snapshots in a given pool:

zfs list -t snapshot

• Restoring a given snapshot:

zfs rollback -rRf <name>

To mount existing partitions:

• UFS: default file system for Solaris, no need to specify file system type: mount /dev/dsk/… /mountpoint
• FAT: use 'pcfs' file system type. If the partition is located in a primary partition (number N - for PCs between 1 and 4), you can simply mount that partition:

mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0pN /mountpoint

However, there's another way to mount that partition: c0d0p0:<letter or number>. The letter ranges from c to z, and the number starts at 1. To select the first FAT partition: c0d0p0:1 or c0d0p0:c will do the trick. To select the second partition: c0d0p0:2 or c0d0p0:d. Note it's always p0. Beware: the letter won't always match the Windows unit drive. If your first unit drive (C:\) is a NTFS, then D:\ is FAT and E:\ is FAT, the first FAT partition is D:\ … but to mount it in Solaris use c0d0p0:1 or c0d0p0:c !

This method is particularly useful to mount partitions located within extended partition, because there's no way to address the partition directly with a c0d0pN.

• NTFS: not supported by Solaris

For automatic mounting, add an entry to /etc/vfstab:

/dev/dsk/c0d0p3 /dev/rdsk/c0d0p3        /mnt/win_e      pcfs    3       yes

To mount a file as a filesystem, use lofiadm (loopback file driver). I haven't tried that yet, but see instructions here.

• Samba: this is a nice solution to mount remote Windows shares.

pfexec mount -f smbfs //host/share /mntpoint

To do so, the samba client service must be started:

pfexec svcadm enable svc:/network/smb/client:default

Plug it in, and then check where it has been mounted using df -h. My mobile phone is mounted in /rmdisk/noname .

Plug it in. It automatically mounts in /media/IOMEGA_HDD on my system.

My husband's installed a Solaris Zone containing Linux.

TODO Linux Zone