Archive-name: Solaris2/x86/FAQ Posting-Frequency: monthly Last-modified: 2002/12/21 URL: http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ Version: 2.22 Copyright: Copyright ╘ 1997-2002 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved. Maintainer: Dan Anderson <dan@drydog.com>, San Diego, California, USA _________________________________________________________________ (6.25) Is IPv6 available for Solaris/x86? Yes, starting in Solaris 8. See http://www.Sun.COM/solaris/ipv6/. For general IPv6 information, see http://www.ipv6.org/. If you wish to connect to the 6bone, an experimental, mostly tunneled IPv6 network, see http://www.6bone.net/ _________________________________________________________________ (6.26) Is IPsec available for Solaris/x86? Yes, for Solaris 8. See volume 3 of the System Administrator's Guide at http://docs.Sun.COM/ for more configuration information. Solaris 8 IPSec supports AH (authentication) and ESP (encryption) headers, and "shared secrets" (manual keying), but not automatic (ISAKMP or IKE) keying. Solaris 9 supports IKE. Adam Barclay adds these comments: * The ESP portion is not installed by default. You have to download supplemental encryption packages (SUNWcry, SUNWcryr, etc) from Sun http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/encryption/ * ipseckey is broken under Solaris 8 10/00 and at this point there doesn't appear to be a patch. In the meantime, I use an earlier release. * ndd queries may give misleading results if ipseckey hasn't been run. As a reminder, some countries prohibit (e.g., France or Russia) the use or possession of encryption software. _________________________________________________________________ (6.27) Is Kerberos 5 available for Solaris/x86? Yes, for Solaris 8. See volume 3 of the System Administrator's Guide at http://docs.Sun.COM/ for more configuration information. The configuration files reside at /etc/krb5 and /var/krb5 and the binary files at /usr/krb5 and /usr/lib/krb5. Make sure you answer "y" to whether you want Kerberos during your Solaris install. Then, install SEAM (Sun Enterprise Authentication Mechanism, what Solaris calls Kerberos) from the Solaris 8 Admin Pack, freely downloadable from http://www.Sun.COM/software/solaris/easyaccess/sol8.html _________________________________________________________________ (6.28) Does Solaris x86 support multiple processors? Yes. Solaris x86 automatically detects multiple processors. The limit is at least 8 according to the HCL and by observation. The theoretical kernel limit (_ncp) is 21. Due to bus conflicts, there's diminishing returns as you increase the number of procs. psrinfo(1M) will print the status of your processors, mpstat(1M) will report the CPU usages, and psradm(1M) can be used to take processors offline. Some people have had problems with Solaris "seeing" the extra processors, with at least one type of motherboard (Compaq?). They had success with going into the BIOS utility and setting OS type to "other" for "Solaris". With most motherboards no special BIOS settings are required. [Thanks to John Groenveld, Juergen Keil, Bob Palowoda, Bruce Alder, and Michael VanLoon] _________________________________________________________________ (6.29) How do I uncompress a .gz file? With "gzip -d" (or gunzip, which is gzip linked to gzip). Solaris 8 has gzip. Solaris 7 or earlier does not come with gzip (it doesn't have zip either--only unzip). Gzip is available as a pre-compiled package from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ (use "pkgadd -d packageFileName" to install) and also as a tar file (to extract, type "uncompress gzip*Z; tar xvf gzip*.tar") at ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/unsupported/gnu/gzip-1.2.4.x86-sun-sol aris2.4.tar.Z _________________________________________________________________ (6.30) Why doesn't /usr/bin/cc work? Because it's just a front-end "stub" for the unbundled C compiler sold by Sun (SunPro C). You can also get the free GNU C compiler, gcc, in pkg add format from various locations, including the Solaris Software Companion CD and http://www.sunfreeware.com/. If you install gcc, I recommend that you rename or compress /usr/bin/cc and softlink (ln -s) /usr/local/bin/gcc (or /opt/sfw/bin/gcc or wherever it is) to /usr/bin/cc. By default, Solaris comes with support tools (such as make and libraries) in /usr/ccs/bin, /usr/ccs/lib and usr/include. If not, add the appropriate packages. For more information, see the "Software Development" section in Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ. _________________________________________________________________ (6.31) How do you get PGP 2.6.2 to compile on Solaris/x86? PGP, or Pretty-good Privacy, is strong-encryption software for encrypting, decrypting, and digitally-signing files and data. I would steer clear of PGP 5 as it has compatibility problems. First, check to see if your version of PGP 2.6.2 has a bug. In file src/crypto.c, function make_signature_certificate(), the line: "byte . outbuf[MAX_BYTE_PRECISION+2];" To compile, change file makefile, at around line 116, as follows: $(CPP) $(ASMDEF) 80386.S > _80386.s to $(CPP) $(ASMDEF) 80386.S | grep -v '^# ' > _80386.s (Don't forget the leading tab character, cntl-i). Next, type: cd rsaref/install/unix; make; cd ../../../src; make solx86gcc (if you're using the Sun WorkShop compilers, change "gcc" to "cc" and remove "-traditional-cpp" in file makefile). I recommend you consider using GPG instead of PGP. GPG, Gnu Privacy Guard, is actively being maintained and is compatible with PGP. See http://www.gnupg.org/ As a reminder, the US Government considers PGP, GPG, and other strong-encryption software a "munition" and prohibits the export of PGP software to countries other than the US and Canada without an export license. Certain other governments (e.g., France or Russia) even prohibit possession of encryption software. To use PGP, I hightly recommend Garfinkel's book, PGP: Pretty Good Privacy [Makefile patch from Joe Shamblin] _________________________________________________________________ (6.32) How do you connect Solaris to my cable modem? Grab this e-zine article "xDSL and cable modems" from: http://www.zdjournals.com/sun/9905/sun9951.htm (Inside Solaris, May 1999) The article covers instructions on enabling Solaris with a cable ISP. See also the next question on RoadRunner. At least for the the East Brunswick, NJ, servers, I had the easiest time with DHCP (not the static setup): /etc/hosts: 127.0.0.1 localhost CCxxxxx-A # where CCxxxxx-A is your hostname 24.x.x.x CCxxxxx-A loghost # where 24.x.x.x is your assigned I P /etc/nsswitch.conf: hosts: files dns /etc/resolv.conf domain ebnsk1.nj.home.com nameserver 24.3.196.33 nameserver 24.3.196.33 /etc/dhcp.elx0 (empty file) /etc/hostname.elxl0 (empty file) NOTE: replace "elxl0" with your NIC device name No /etc/defaultdomain, /etc/defaultrouter, or /etc/netmasks files are used. This info is handled by DHCP. Reboot and you're hooked up. Here's my (partially disguised) netstat -rn and ifconfig -a outputs: $ netstat -rn Routing Table: Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface -------------------- -------------------- ----- ----- ------ --------- 24.x.x.0 24.x.x.x U 3 2 elxl0 224.0.0.0 24.x.x.x U 3 0 elxl0 default 24.x.x.1 UG 0 44 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 UH 0 236 lo0 $ ifconfig -a lo0: flags=849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 8232 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 elxl0: flags=4843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,DHCP> mtu 1500 inet 24.x.x.x netmask ffffff00 broadcast 24.x.x.255 [Thanks to Alan Lucero.] _________________________________________________________________ (6.33) How do you setup Solaris to use RoadRunner's cable modem service? RoadRunner uses General Instrument's SURFboard or other cable modem hooked up to a coax cable on one side and a straight-through Ethernet cable on the other side. The real throughput is about 6-MB/sec. on downlinks and 768KB/sec. on uplinks. The cable modem looks like a router to your computer. RoadRunner configures home systems with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which provides the IP address, default route, and name servers. RoadRunner only supports Windows and Macs, but it works fine with Solaris (they just won't help you setup or diagnose Solaris DHCP). You need Solaris 2.6 or higher for DHCP. To set it up for Solaris, follow these steps, as root: 1. "touch /etc/dhcp.iprb0" (replace the ".iprb0" with whatever the ethernet interface for your system might be, as shown by "ifconfig -a") 2. "cp /dev/null /etc/hostname.iprb0". You need to make *SURE* that this file is EMPTY - otherwise, DHCP configuration won't work. 3. Make sure that /etc/inet/hosts only has one line in it, the one containing "127.0.0.1 localhost". Any other lines will be ignored, and any additional necessary lines will be added by the DHCP client at boot time. 4. "touch /etc/notrouter" - this creates a file to tell Solaris that your system will not be performing routing or packet-forwarding duties (if that's the case in your situation). If it already exists, good. Leave it be. 8-) 5. "cp /dev/null /etc/defaultrouter" - since the DHCP client software will automatically put the needed entries in this file, we just need to make sure that it exists as an empty file. If it already exists, rename it and create the empty file in its place. 6. "cp /dev/null /etc/resolv.conf" - again, the necessary entries will be added by the DHCP client. If you already have this file, rename it and create an empty file in its place. 7. Edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf, and look at the "hosts:" line. By default, it reads "files"; change it to read "hosts: files dns". This will enable your machine to resolve addresses using DNS, the Domain Name System. Once you've performed these steps, your machine is ready to get its networking information via DHCP. The easiest way to do this is to reboot your machine. You will see status messages during boot about the DHCP client, this is normal. Once the machine is booted type the "ifconfig -a" command. You will see output similar to this: $ ifconfig -a lo0: flags=849 mtu 8232 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000 iprb0: flags=4843 mtu 1500 inet 24.93.53.4 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 24.93.53.255 ether 8:0:20:1b:1:72 The entry we're concerned about is iprb0 (lo0 is the dummy loopback interface); just make sure that its configured via DHCP, and that an IP address and broadcast address was assigned. You can also check the /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/defaultrouter files to make sure they were configured by the DHCP client. Type "nslookup sun.drydog.com" to test that /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/resolv.conf are setup correctly for DNS lookups. If not, they may need to be hand-edited with values provided by your ISP. These files are documented in nsswitch.conf(4) and resolv.conf(4). The resolv.conf needs to have "domain" and "nameserver" lines. Type "netstat -rn" to see if there's a "default" destination configured in /etc/defaultrouter and type "ping sun.drydog.com" to verify routing is OK. Use "traceroute sun.drydog.com" to diagnose routing problems. Type "hostname" to see if it says "unknown." If so, DHCP did not provide a hostname. One workaround is to edit /etc/init.d/network and replace all occurrences of "unknown" with your real hostname. This information is adapted from a web page by Bill Bradford at http://home.austin.rr.com/sunhelp/rr/solarisrr.html. Some (older) RoadRunner setups may still require a RoadRunner login program. This is explained in that link. RoadRunner information is at http://www.rr.com/ and help is at http://help.rr.com/ The Unofficial RR FAQ is at http://members.tripod.com/~tlarrow/rrfaq.htm For generic cable modem information, see the e-zine article "xDSL and cable modems" referenced in the previous question on @Home service. The article covers instructions on enabling Solaris with a cable ISP. _________________________________________________________________ (6.34) How do I force the speed and/or duplex of my network interfaces (ndd(1M) doesn't work)? No x86 driver can be interfaced via ndd(1M). The only way to set speed/duplex is via the NIC's driver.conf(4). iprb(7D) on Solaris 8 suggests that you can specify speed/duplex for multiple instances via ForceSpeedDuplex option. For other drivers, you'll need to specify each instance per driver.conf(4). Finally, for most people, auto-negotiating works as expected. Having to hard-code values may indicate cabling or switch problems. _________________________________________________________________ (6.35) Why can't I create a home directory under /home? For Solaris, /home is not an on-disk file system, it is a file system under the control of the automounter, and only the automounter can create directories/files in it. If you don't want the automounter to manage /home, then remove the "/home" entry from /etc/auto_master (and issue the command "automount -v" to force the file to be reread, or reboot). However, the typical setup for Solaris is to locate user's home directories in /export/home. /home is intended to be where all users' home directories appear regardless of which machine they are really located on--by virtue of the automounter and auto_home map. This makes your home directory always appear in the same place regardless of which machine you login to, and regardless of which server the sysadmin decides to move your home directory. If you are not part of a network with workstations and servers, this may look strange. If you want to, as a demonstration, you can set up a standalone workstation to operate this way, as follows. (I'm assuming you still have the default setup of /home under the control of the automounter.) Create a user with a home directory in /export/home, say, /export/home/andrew, so that the directory is correctly created with .profile, .login, etc in it. Put the following line in /etc/auto_home: andrew cucumber:/export/home/andrew (substitute your user name for 'andrew' and your hostname for 'cucumber'). If there is an "+auto_home" entry in there, comment it out. Make the automounter reread the files: "automount -v". You should now be able to "ls /home/andrew" and see the files there which are in /export/home/andrew. If you issue the command "/usr/sbin/mount -p", you will see that /export/home/andrew has been mounted on /home/andrew (by the automounter). Normally this would be an NFS mount to a remote server, but in this case the system has spotted that is it attempting to NFS mount itself and uses the loop-back filesystem instead (lofs) which avoids the NFS overhead when the filesystem is on the same machine. Finally, to complete the use of /home, you should change Andrew's entry in the /etc/passwd file such that the home directory is /home/andrew. In a networked environment, you also need to add /export/home to the /etc/dfs/dfstab file so that it is available for other clients to mount. Also, the /etc/passwd file and /etc/auto_master file (and much more besides) would be obtained using naming services from a single networked copy, so you would only need to set this up once whatever the size of your network, not once per workstation. [Thanks to Andrew Gabriel] _________________________________________________________________ (6.36) Is Veritas file system available for Solaris Intel? Only through NCR Corporation. [Thanks to Bob Palowoda] _________________________________________________________________ (6.37) How to I use Zip and Jazz Drives for Solaris Intel? Iomega's Zip and Jazz Drives are supported by the Solaris 8 volume manager. For example, with a ATAPI Zip100 or Zip250 drive, run "volcheck" and it gets mounted as /rmdisk/zip0 If that doesn't work, see if you can mount it manually (if DOS formatted). For example: # Master on second ATAPI controller: /usr/sbin/mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c1t0d0p0:c /mnt # Slave on first ATAPI controller: /usr/sbin/mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0:d /mnt For Solaris 7 and older, Iomega has instructions on how to install and use them at http://www.iomega.com/support/documents/2019.html The hardware installation is the same as for MS DOS/Windows systems. Once installed, use the "mount" command to access the drives. See the question below on mounting DOS filesystems. Note that external drives with the parallel port connection are not supported. This requires a specialized driver. [Thanks to Chase for the s8 update] _________________________________________________________________ (6.38) How to I use Linux NIC drivers for Solaris Intel? Sun has released (9/2000) a free network driver porting kit to port Linux PCI-based network drivers to Solaris Intel. The kit includes, as examples, ported Linux drivers for the Intel EEPro100 and the Digital "Tulip" 2104x/2114x chip (a reliable chip used by the Netgear FA-310-TX, SMC EtherPower, Kingston EtherX, D-Link DFE, and other lower-cost cards) For further information, see http://www.sun.com/solaris/ndpkit.html _________________________________________________________________ (6.39) How to I add color to "ls" or "vi"? For "ls" you need the GNU "fileutils" version of ls. Obtain the binary from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ or compile it yourself from source from http://www.gnu.org/ I only use "ls" out of all the utilities in the package and install it in /usr/local/bin/ls. I then use this alias: alias ls='/usr/local/bin/ls --color=auto' (remove the "=" for *csh shells). For vi, I use vim (or gvim for X Windows). It is also available from http://www.sunfreeware.com/ or directly from http://www.vim.org/. You may need to add "syntax on" in your $HOME/.vimrc file to enable syntax coloring. If color output still doesn't appear, for either of these, make sure your terminal emulator supports color (e.g., dtterm) and that your $TERM is set correctly. To verify you can display color, copy, paste, and execute this line in your shell prompt (you should see the letters "blue" highlighted in blue): /bin/echo '\033[0m\033[01;34mblue\033[0m' _________________________________________________________________ (6.40) How to I move the disk containing Solaris from the ATAPI primary master controller to the secondary controller or slave connector (or both)? * Move the disk with Solaris to the new location (secondary master controller or primary or secondary slave controller). * Boot from the "1 of 2" Solaris installation CDROM * mount the root boot partition at /mnt * Reconfigure the device tree: drvconfig -r /mnt/devices devlinks -r /mnt disks -r /mnt Verify that the links /dev/dsk/c1d0s* to ../../devices/* exist. * Type "rm /etc/path_to_install" (or remove all lines but comments in this file) * Edit file /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc. For example if you're moving from the primary master to secondary master, change "ide@0" to "ide@1": setprop bootpath '/pci@0,0/pci-ide@4,1/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a' to setprop bootpath '/pci@0,0/pci-ide@4,1/ide@1/cmdk@0,0:a' * Remove the CDROM and /usr/sbin/reboot (if you removed /etc/path_to_install then, at the booting Solaris prompt, type "b -a") Once Solaris is on the secondary master, you must enable booting to it. Here's three methods: * Change the BIOS settings to boot to D: (the secondary master) * Boot from the DCA diskette on A: and choose the secondary master device. * If you have Linux LILO on the primary master, you can add an entry to /etc/lilo.conf similar to the following (and type /sbin/lilo on Linux to re-read the new lilo.conf file): # Solaris 2.7 in secondary master booted by Linux Red Hat 6.1 # /boot/chain.b simply starts the boot sector on the specified partition. # /dev/hdc1 is the first partition on the third (hdc) disk. other = /dev/hdc1 loader = /boot/chain.b label = solaris [Thanks to Michael Wang and Alexander Yu] _________________________________________________________________ (6.41) I've installed Solaris using Sun's brain dead disk slice defaults. How do I modify my slices? You don't. It's too late now, but you should have read the recommendations on disk partitions and sizes in section 4 of this FAQ. Solaris (unless you're running under Veritas) doesn't support modifying slices without destroying data on the entire slice. Your options are (in order of ease): * Reinstall and choose your own custom layout. * Create softlinks or local mounts to filesystems with more free space and move the files. E.g. for /opt: "mv opt/export/home" and "mount localhost:/export/home/opt /opt" or "ln -s /export/home/opt /opt * Backup, boot install media, and run format, newfs, & restore [Thanks to John D. Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (6.42) How do I mirror root with Disksuite when /boot is a separate fdisk partition? You don't. Disksuite only supports mirroring ufs filesystems, so in order to mirror /boot, it should be part of the root (/) slice inside Sun's fdisk partition. Sun's default install will create a separate 10MB "x86 Boot" fdisk partition which is mounted as pcfs. If you already have Disksuite running the solution is as follows: Start with all the mirrors in place except for the :boot partition and had identical layouts on both disks. 1. Back up all my important stuff. 2. Use metadb to delete the state db's on the Disk 1 and Disk 2 ( I have Disk 3 and Disk 4 for the time being). 3. Get a tar backup of /boot directory and save it in / (root) 4. metadetach and metaclear all the Submirror's from the Disksuite db's on disk 2. 5. Recreate Disk 2 Partition table (using fdisk) to be 100% Solaris and rebuild Solaris Partition(Slice) table (using prtvtoc/fmthard) 6. Re-mirror Disk 2 So it's almost identical to how it was at the beginning, except the x86 partition table is now one big Solaris partition. I.e., starting at the very beginning of the disk. This is very important, otherwise the bootblock installation won't work. 7. Untar the boot directory tar file so now i've /boot ufs mirror under the / mount. 8. Do step 4 on Disk 1. 9. Do step 5 on Disk 1. ambiguous on this, but the Sunsolve doc says it must be run on slice 2 [it's obvious if you think about it]). the / fs. [Thanks to "Nick" via John D. Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (6.43) Is ISDN supported for Solaris x86? ISDN is hard to setup and slow compared to cable-modem service or even DSL. However, ISDN is popular and available in Europe. Some old SPARCstations had ISDN support built in. However, there are no Sun-supplied drivers other than for these machines. There are third-party drivers for Solaris x86 from: * Brooktrout Technology, http://www.brooktrout.com, for it's T1/E1 WAN Controller * http://www.teles.de/, Teles for its ISDN cards. * Digi has ISDN drivers for its DataFire Sync 570i. I'm sure other drivers exist. Before buying ISDN hardware, check if they have a driver for Solaris first. _________________________________________________________________ (6.44) Is there a substitute available for PRNG /dev/random for Solaris x86? Yes. /dev/random and /dev/random are pseudo-random number generators (PRNG). /dev/random will wait if the entropy pool of random bits is empty until more bits are available. /dev/urandom will not wait and may repeat bits. PRNGs are used to implement encryption software, such as GPG, OpenSSL, and OpenSSH. The /dev/*random pseudo-devices are available with Solaris 9, or, for Solaris 8, with patch 112439-01 for Intel Solaris. This patch is free and is part of the recommended patch cluster. Free PRNG substitutes include egd and prngd. Enthropy Gathering Daemon (egd), a /dev/random replacement, outputs randomness to a socket at ~/.gnupg/entropy. Pseudo Random Number Generator Daemon (prngd), a /dev/urandom replacement, outputs randomness to a socket at /var/run/egd-pool. Source and binary packages for these are available at http://www.sunfreeware.com/ _________________________________________________________________ (6.45) What are some good, easy-to-use printing solutions for Solaris? A writeup by Carl Ehorn, below, provides a good summary. It originally November 2001 appeared at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/26467 I don't know if anyone has the same problems I did, but I recently went looking for a good printing solution that didn't require that I roll my own using Ghostscript and a bunch of scripts. I've done that before, and it gets old fairly quickly. I have a HP Deskjet 1220C, which is a color wide-carriage printer with fairly high resolution capabilities. It can print at 600x600 DPI color in normal modes, and can support up to 2400x2400 DPI color with HP software. However, that software only works on Win machines, and I don't really need that high a resolution in Solaris, as I do my graphics processing on Win machines anyway. My printer is hanging on an ethernet print-server box, which allows it to be shared by any machine on the network. This works very well, and has always worked in text modes from Solaris. But I was looking for a Postscript solution, so that I could print PDF files, Postscript files, and take advantage of some of the advanced formatting capabilities that Postscript provides. It's also nice to be able to print from a browser. So I took a look at what's available on the web. Of course, there is Ghostscript, Gimp-print, and other similar packages, but they require a fair amount of work to make a seamless print solution (at least on Solaris). So I also looked at Vividata's P-Shop, CUPS, and ESP Print Pro. These last three are fairly low-cost solutions for a single server, and I felt that the prices they charge would be acceptable to me, considering the time and effort they would save. Vividata I tried the Vividata package, and while it works fine, it did not support any of the higher resolution modes the printer was capable of. I should point out that Vividata is the only package I found that had Color profile management available as an option. I didn't try this, but it would be important if you were doing pre-press graphics work. Vividata had a generic driver for my printer, but had not updated it in some years, and does not seem to be interested in providing further development for the more recent printers that have been made. They seem to feel that if a generic PCL driver works, that's good enough. Vividata provides Postscript Level 2 support. CUPS I then tried the CUPS package, which is free on the web. There is a lot of support for this system from the internet community, including driver generators from the Gimp project. The Gimp drivers have been reported to provide very high quality output compared to the standard drivers, but require that you build and install a lot of dependent packages in order to make use of these better drivers. Again, this was looking like a lot of work to get a good package working, and I wanted to avoid that. The standard CUPS package had very disappointing output, and a generic install using the recommended driver resulted in solid black pages. Using an older, lower quality driver, I was able to obtain 300 DPI 8-bit output. While this is OK, it's not good. 8-bit color results in a very noticeable dither in both color and grayscale output, and while the 300 DPI text output was fine, I found that some PDF files did not print text very well. There were artifacts, and some aliasing in the outlines of letters. Enabling debug output from the driver resulted in some very confusing data. It appeared that the PS-2-raster conversion was done at 100 DPI, then the raster to PCL was scaled up to 300 DPI. While the support staff for CUPS says that's impossible, it sure looks that way from the debug output, and would also explain the poor text quality from some applications. CUPS is supported by the newsgroups and some of the same folks who make ESP Print Pro. It supports Postscript Level 3 output. ESP Print Pro Last of all, I tried the ESP Print Pro package. This is an enhanced product based on CUPS, but has considerably more printer-specific drivers available, including one for my printer. It installs just like CUPS, and also like CUPS, is a replacement for the LP print system that comes with Solaris and other UNIX variants. While I had some misgivings about replacing the LP system, both CUPS and ESP Print Pro installed easily, and with no problems. I'm pleased to say the ESP Print Pro worked the best of all these packages for me. I was able to set the defaults to 600x600 DPI, using CMYK color modes, and got a very noticeable increase in the print quality. Text is crisp as any 600 DPI laser, and I printed a 24-bit color scan of a photograph that resulted in a very nice print. On plain paper, the colors are not true, but are perfectly acceptable for a draft print. Note that Windows also is unable to print accurate colors on plain paper. This is not a fault of the software, but a limit in the printer technology. Printing to coated photo paper would probably provide a much more accurate print, but I did not bother to test the ESP package in this mode, as I do photo work on Windows. HP-supplied drivers work very well in Windows, and has full support for the 2400 DPI mode. With ESP Print Pro at 600 DPI, and using the CMKY color model, the supplied Postscript test page printed well, and all signs of dithering were gone, in both color and grayscale areas of the page. Note that CUPS uses the same test page, so these can be compared directly to see the differences between the packages. I found that the native Imagetool program supplied with Solaris crashed when trying to print my 24-bit TIFF test image, but when I loaded the image into StarOffice's drawing program, it printed perfectly, scaled exactly as it should have been. StarOffice sees the new printing system with no problems, and will print to the default printer without any required setup. While I have not done much testing with StarOffice, I'd be surprised if it had trouble, since the TIFF image printed correctly. As the TIFF image was a 70MB file, this certainly is one of the more stressful ways to test, and I encountered no problems at all. Both CUPS and ESP Print Pro provide printer and class management using graphic interfaces. CUPS uses Netscape, or any GUI browser, and all administration tasks can be done from the browser, except for editing the daemon config files. ESP uses a supplied program that presents a GUI interface in a compact, simple to understand way, and is also easy to use. Like CUPS (which it is based on), it does require manual editing of the daemon config files. Any text editor will work fine for either package. Both CUPS and ESP Print Pro provide replacements for 'lpstat' and associated programs, which would very much like the old ones, but tie into the new driver system. Vividata's P-Shop uses the standard lp system, and does not replace the existing native programs. Vividata is the only package that I found that supports printing through SCSI interfaces, so if you have a SCSI printer, you should certainly look at their product first. They also support SCSI scanners, which neither CUPS or ESP Print Pro provide. Vividata, CUPS, and ESP Print Pro all provide "try & buy" downloads from the web, so you can check out any package you are interested in for a trial period at no cost. Vividata allowed me to download and install their package twice, which was nice of them. They also provide students will the package for free, but don't provide support on the free version. CUPS is also free for download, and support has been handed off to the community through a number of newsgroups. ESP provides support for a fee, which can get expensive in a corporate environment, but is probably in line with any other commercial package that provides similar features. Each of these packages has it's strong points, but for me the ESP package seems to be the best match with my needs. Your mileage may vary, based on your needs, the interface your printer uses, and the drivers available for your specific printer. I hope this information will save you time and trouble, and if you have not already installed some kind of printing solution, will encourage you to take advantage of these products. There seems to be something for every budget, and the free packages available, while not perfect, will at least get your printer functioning under Solaris. _________________________________________________________________ (6.46) What is the Solaris 9 Data Encryption Supplement? It contains kernel modules to support more flavoers of encryption for IPsec and Kerberos. Currently, this is AES and Blowfish for IPSec and GSS-API for Kerberos. A writeup by Carl Ehorn, below, provides a good summary. This is available for both SPARC and Intel. It can be exported anywhere except Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, plus all the parties listed on the "Denied Parties List." Copyright ╘ 1997 - 2002 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved. http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ _________________________________________________________________ (7.0) TROUBLESHOOTING (7.1) What can I do if Solaris won't boot? You need to boot from your install CD. Insert the Solaris Software CD in your CDROM drive. If your CDROM drive/bios isn't bootable, first insert the "Device Configuration Assistant" (DCA) diskette. At the "Boot Solaris" menu, choose "CD." At the "Type of Installation: Interactive or Jumpstart" menu, type "b -s" Or, after the video configuration, network, time and date you'll notice one of the menu's has a button: [Exit] Select Exit and, when it asks you again "do you want to exit?," just say yes. Once you're at the UNIX root prompt #, you can mount the boot drive with "mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /mnt"" and view anything wrong with the boot drive (omit the "t0" for ATAPI). [Modified from Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ] _________________________________________________________________ (7.2) How do I restore the Solaris boot block without reinstalling? This may happen when installing a boot manager that comes with another operating system (such as LILO from Linux) or an after-market multi-OS boot manager. These sometimes trample's active partition, which in our case is Solaris. Also, moving the Solaris partition with a partition manager program such as Partition Magic requires reinstalling the Solaris boot block. Before taking these steps, first verify the Solaris partition is active. If it isn't, just make the Solaris partition active and reboot. Otherwise follow the steps below. previous question, 7.1. is /dev/rdsk/c?t?d?p? where ? is the controller #, target ID, and disk #, and partition #. Omit "t?" for ATAPI E.g., /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 This is VERY important; if it's wrong, you you may hose another partition: prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 (omit "t0" for ATAPI, always use p0, which means the "entire drive"). The prtvtoc prints out the map for the Solaris partition on the hard drive, if found. The partitions shown on the output are actually "slices" within the Solaris partition. /sbin/fdisk -b /usr/lib/fs/ufs/mboot (raw disk dev) E.g., for SCSI it might be: /sbin/fdisk -b /usr/lib/fs/ufs/mboot /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 (omit "t0" for ATAPI) The Solaris Multiple Device Boot Menu should appear after rebooting. If not, you can always to an upgrade (re-)install. Note: This procedure does NOT make your Solaris partition active again (sometimes needed after installing another operating system, such as Windows, on the same disk), it just writes to your bootblock IN your Solaris partition. To learn more about the Solaris boot process, read the boot(1M) man page. _________________________________________________________________ (7.3) What can I do during the Solaris/x86 booting sequence? Step #1: Boot loader If you have multiple partitions, the boot loader in the Solaris partition will come up and ask you which partition you want to boot. This partition must be the active partition, or at least be marked active by a third-party boot manager before this boot loader receives control (not all boot managers have this feature). If you don't answer in so many seconds, it boots Solaris. This boot manager is pretty basic. It has no customization. You can't change the default boot partition to one other than Solaris, you can't change the timeout value, and you can't change the partition descriptions. But it gets the job done. Step #2: Device Configuration Assistant (DCA) This will ask you to press ESC if you want to change stuff. This is to make up for the fact that x86 machines don't have a nice OpenBOOT chip to sort out REAL "Plug and Play". Basically, in Solaris x86, the Device Assistant seems to set up certain things in /boot/solaris. This is so the "real" OS has some common format to examine for devices, instead of having lots of nasty x86 hardware specific stuff. That way, Sun can keep the main OS somewhat hardware independent, and keep it very close to the Sparc version. The "Assistant" can actually been of assistance. If you select "partial scan", then "Device tasks", and then "View/Edit Devices", it will tell you what Solaris THINKS your devices are, and where they are at. Quite useful, when Solaris gets completely lost, and you're wondering if it's your fault, or what. Otherwise, it can give you a warm fuzzy feeling, if you select "Full Scan", and you see all your devices properly recognized. Step #3: OS Boot Well, actually, the "Boot Assistant". The interface is similar, but not identical, to SPARC Solaris' OpenBoot 'boot' command. The main differences I notice are: * It's "b -r", not "boot -r", if you want to force reconfiguration. Why would you want to do that? Well sometimes, if your devices have changed a LITTLE, you might want to do this. You can also invoke it with a "touch /reconfigure" as root before rebooting. * You don't have nice device aliases like you do with Sparc hardware. That being said, if you do nothing, it should autoboot into the actual OS in a few seconds. Or you can type something quickly within 5 seconds, and force a "reconfiguration boot", as mentioned earlier. * The "Driver Assistant" or whatever, really looks for major changes, like adding or removing a card. However, if, say, you add another disk drive, you'll probably want to just do "b -r". Note that the Device Assistant will itself trigger a "b -r", after it has autodetected hardware changes. Step #4: The Main OS: Solaris You made it (I hope)!. Hopefully, you should now see a line with "SunOS5.8" or similar in it, and a little twirly text character spinner starting. You are now really in the classic Solaris environment. From here on in, your experience is almost identical to your brethren who work with SPARC Sun equipment. To learn more about the the Solaris boot process, read the boot(1M) man page. [Thanks to Phil at http://www.bolthole.com/solaris/] _________________________________________________________________ (7.4) How do I logon as root if the password doesn't work anymore? Regaining control of a Solaris x86 system where the root password has been lost can be accomplished by the following steps. Note that any savvy user can do this with the proper CD-ROM and diskette. Therefore, of course, physical security of a system is important for machines containing sensitive data. 1. Insert installation boot diskette and installation CD-ROM for Solaris x86. 2. Boot system from the installation floppy and select the CD-ROM as the boot device. 3. Type "b -s" (instead of typing 1 or 2 from the menu) and it'll drop you straight to a root shell, #, (and you'll be in single-user mode). 4. At the root prompt, #, key in the following commands, which will create a directory called hdrive under the /tmp directory and then mount the root hard drive partition under this temporary directory. mkdir /tmp/hdrive mount /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /tmp/hdrive #SCSI; for ATAPI, omit "t0" 5. To use the vi editor, the TERM variable must be defined. Key in the following commands. TERM=at386 export TERM 6. Start vi (or some other editor) and load /tmp/hdrive/etc/shadow file: vi /tmp/hdrive/etc/shadow 7. Change the first line of the shadow file that has the root entry to: root::6445:::::: 8. Write and quit the vi editor with the "!" override command: :wq! 9. Halt the system, remove the floppy installation diskette, and reboot the system: halt from the Console Login: as root with no password. Just hit enter for the password. root password and secure the system. [Thanks to Lynn R. Francis, Texas State Technical College] _________________________________________________________________ (7.5) My licensed software fails because the host ID is 0. What's wrong? Intel processor machines don't have an IDPROM, so Sun generates a serial number, hostid command or sysinfo()'s SI_HW_SERIAL, pseudo-randomly during installation. The number is stored in /kernel/misc/sysinit, whose only function, it appears, is to provide the serial number. If serialization information is tampered or sysinit fails to load, the host ID will be 0. If you reinstall Solaris, sysinit will be regenerated and your host ID will change. So be careful about reinstalling Solaris if you have licensed software that depends on your host ID. Backup your sysinit file. To preserve the same ID (and therefore licenses), copy file /kernel/misc/sysinit to the replacement system. I understand the Sun Workshop Manual says this is allowed twice per calendar year (please verify this yourself). For more information, see the Sun NVRAM/hostid FAQ, available at http://www.squirrel.com/squirrel/sun-nvram-hostid.faq.html and elsewhere. This also has tools to fake hostids. _________________________________________________________________ (7.6) How can I fix Netscape Communicator to render fonts correctly on S/x86? This problem occurs with Solaris 2.6 and Netscape Communicator 4.0x, and has since been fixed. Apply patch 106248, which I'm told fixes this problem. A workaround is to add the following two lines to your ~/.xinitrc file: xset +fp /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/ xset fp rehash Another workaround, if you don't have these fonts, is to go into Netscape Preferences and change the font faces. [Thank's to Alan Orndorff, Jeffrey Cook, and John Riddoch] _________________________________________________________________ (7.7) Why doesn't Netscape run as root? This is a bug in Netscape. Due to a Netscape 4.x bug (it thrashes the $HOME environment variable) the X11 library cannot find root's .Xauthority file in the root dir unless your current directory is /. Large, complex programs (especially those taking input from & to the Internet) should not be run as root. Experienced users and Administrators run as root only for essential sysadmin tasks. If you must run as root, try one of these tricks: * Make sure you run Netscape with a current directory of / (so that the relative pathname '.Xauthority' works) * Or start Netscape with HOME="/." (so that Netscape doesn't thrash the $HOME variable) * Or start Netscape with an environment variable XAUTHORITY="/.Xauthority" [Thanks to Juergen Keil via John Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (7.8) I moved my PCI host adapter to another slot and the system won't boot! Don't move the adapter. It isn't a supported feature in Solaris and isn't easy to recover from. If you have any choice in the matter, move the controller back to it original slot. The PCI device number is part of the device's basic ID, including its child disks. If you change slots, you've effectively removed that controller and its disks, and added an unrelated controller and disks. You need to fix up all of the references to the old disks to point to the new disks. I've never come up with any strategy better than "boot, observe failure, fix failure, reboot" for recovering from this kind of change. For simple cases (single controller, in particular) it can be helpful to clear /dev/dsk/* and /dev/rdsk/* and run "disks", but that is perilous too. Incidentally, changing motherboards is likely to trip exactly this problem, because motherboards generally number their slots differently. To conclude, it's difficult and dangerous, and the general guidelines involves fixing: 1. /etc/vfstab or /dev or both 2. /devices to match one another 3. possibly removing lines from /etc/path_to_inst in order to make the right /devices nodes show up The ultimate goal is to get back the same controller numbers as before. [Sun FAQ 2576-02 at http://access1.Sun.COM/cgi-bin/rinfo2html?257602.faq] _________________________________________________________________ (7.9) Why is Solaris always booting into the Device Configuration Assistant (DCA)? This is usually caused by one of the following: * You installed Solaris onto a disk other than the primary boot disk. * You didn't remove your DCA boot diskette or if you didn't remove your installation CD-ROM if it's in a bootable CD-ROM drive. * File /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc is corrupt or truncated, usually after a hard reboot or reset. This file is setup and used by DCA. It should contain several lines. To change or set your default boot device, See Sun FAQ 2271-02 at http://access1.Sun.COM/cgi-bin/rinfo2html?227102.faq for instructions. To summarize: * From the "Boot Solaris" screen, press F4 (Boot Tasks). * On the "Boot Tasks" screen, press Enter to place an "X" in front of "View/Edit Autoboot Settings." * In the "View/Edit Autoboot Settings" screen, note that the Default Boot Device will not be set to any valid device. Place an "X" in front of Set Default Boot Device and press F2 (Continue). * On the Set Default Boot Device screen, place an X in front of the correct disk and press F2 (Continue). * Arrow up to the Accept Settings and press Enter to mark with an "X". Press F2 (Continue) to return to the Boot Tasks screen. * Press F3 (Back). It will load appropriate drivers after which you will be at the Boot Solaris screen. Press F2 (Continue) to continue booting. _________________________________________________________________ (7.10) What is the equivalent of STOP-A for Solaris Intel? >I don't think so, because Stop-A allow you to go into open boot prom of >the SUN and on a x86 it's a different thing (BIOS) Unlike Solaris on Sparc (where STOP-A gets you the OpenBoot prompt), there is no PROM firmware to drop into on x86. You can boot your system under kadb and then use a similar keystroke to drop into kadb and obtain debugging information. To boot under kadb, type eeprom boot-file=kadb and then: * Prior to Solaris 8, type CTRL-ALT-d to jump into kadb * On Solaris 8 or later, type F1-a to jump into kadb * At the Solaris Intel Boot Assistant prompt type "b kadb" You can then type, for example: $<systemdump to force your system to panic and generate a crash dump (the equivalent of "sync" at the ok prompt on SPARC). The Device Configuration Assistant (DCA) portion of the Intel boot process can be interrupted by hitting escape (when prompted). This (I feel) is the Intel version of the Boot Prom Monitor. Of course, all the commands cannot be equated apples to apples because of the hardware differences! If your console is a terminal, you can type "shift-break" or "ctrl-break" or "ctrl-\" (ctrl-backslash) or "<enter>" followed by "~" and "ctrl-break" on Solaris Sparc, but this, too, is not available for Solaris Intel. With Solaris 8 SPARC (but not Intel), there's a new feature to allow keyboard sequences to generate a break (bug 4147705). The 3-character sequence is <RETURN>, ~ (tilde), ^b. Each character must be entered between 0.5 to 2 seconds. This is enabled with the "kbd -a alternate" command. Similarly a soft reset is <RETURN>, ~ (tilde), cntl-shift-R, XIR is <RETURN>, ~ (tilde), cntl-shift-X, and Power Cycle is <RETURN>, ~ (tilde), cntl-shift-P, I believe these commands are also available only on SPARC. [Thanks to Ramit Luthra and Mike Shapiro] _________________________________________________________________ (7.11) How can I reboot Solaris x86 without it asking me to to "press a key" before rebooting? This works for me, become root and type: "shutdown -i6 -g0 -y". Or: "init 6 This is most useful when the system is remote with no console keyboard access. [Thanks to Charles J. Fisher] _________________________________________________________________ (7.12) Help! I'm stuck in the "Boot Assistant" and can't boot. What do I do? If you get a message similar to: Run Error: File not found. could not run s You probably typed "reboot -- -s" or "reboot -- -r" or similar. This works for Solaris SPARC, but not for Solaris on Intel--it's disastrous. It changes your "boot-file" eeprom variable to "-s", which errors out and puts you in an endless loop in B oot Assistant. To undo this, type the following at the Boot Assistant prompt: "b kernel/unix" This boots with file /platform/i86/kernel/unix. If this doesn't help, your filesystem may be hosed. In that case, you have to reinstall. But make sure this is the case first. _________________________________________________________________ (7.13) Help! I get error 2 or error 8 while applying patches. What do I do? Don't do anything. Error 2 means you already have the same or newer code. Error 8 means you can't patch some optional packages that haven't been installed, even if you did "everything plus OEM" during the original installation. Other errors, usually from lack of disk space, are explained in the patchadd(1M) man page. [Thanks to Paul Karagianis] _________________________________________________________________ (7.14) How do I prevent kdmconfig from running on boot up when I know my keyboard, display, and mouse configuration has not changed? Mike of Sun has this response (9/2002): I recognized this as a bug that was fixed a while back, for one instance with older ATI cards. I mentioned it to the video developer that fixed the ATI bug and he mentioned that there is a workaround if you see this: This problem occurs with certain hardware (keyboards, mice, video devices). During booting, a checksum is calculated based on some info obtained for each device. The checksum is compared to a checksum recorded in the OWconfig file. If the checksums don't match, kdmconfig thinks the device may have changed, and asks the user to check it. On systems that exhibit this problem, the device info that is checksummed seems to change from boot to boot even though no hardware has changed. I've seen this happen with some old ATI video cards and some keyboards. The easy workaround for the problem is to run kdmconfig and test and accept the desired configuration by clicking on the "Yes" button of the test display. Then edit the last line of the OWconfig file in /etc/openwin/server/etc. Change the "1" to "2", so that is says: TestedByUser="2"; This will cause kdmconfig to ignore checksum differences. [Thanks to Mike Riley] _________________________________________________________________ (7.15) I get this error message: "can't get local host's domain name" or "The local host's domain name hasn't been set." What do I do? This is a NIS message. The easiest way to fix it is to type the following as root: domainname abc.com; domainname >/etc/defaultdomain (replace abc.com with your NIS domain name, which is usually the same as the DNS domain name). Copyright ╘ 1997 - 2002 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved. http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ _________________________________________________________________ (8.0) X Windows (8.1) How do I find a Solaris video driver for my graphics card? First look in the HCL for your release of Solaris to see if your graphics card is supported. If it's not listed, look for a driver from these sources: * http://soldc.sun.com/downloads/drivers/ may have newer drivers for your release or point to 3rd-party sources. * Some video drivers are bundled (hidden) with Recommended Update Patches. For example, NVideo video driver, which supports everything from TNT's to GeF4's, is in the Solaris 8 Recommended Updates. * Consider 3rd party drivers from XiGraphics, http://www.xig.com/, especially recommended if you have a laptop. * As an alternative, you can also use the XFree86 Video Drivers Porting Kit, which is actually easier to use than you may think. See the question below on the video drivers and porting kit. * Finally, if all else fails, see the question below on installing XFree86 on Solaris. Personally, it's a lot easier to use a card supported by Xsun than to install XFree86. During installation, if you have a unsupported video card, be sure to bypass kdmconfig with the F4 key. Also, install with the "1 of 2" CD instead of the Webstart CD. [Thanks to Paul Karagianis for NVida info] _________________________________________________________________ (8.2)How can I use a XFree86 video driver with XSun? You can download the Solaris XFree86 Video Drivers and Porting Kit from Sun at http://SolDC.Sun.COM/developer/support/driver/tools/video/video-i ndex.html The porting kit allows you to use XFree86 video drivers for Sun's standard XSun server for Solaris x86. The porting kit is not supported by Sun. How easy is it to use the porting kit? I haven't had the need to use it, but here's a quote from Johanna Doran's email to me: I just want to offer another EASIER alternative solution for getting XFree86 to work with Solaris: the Sun Video Drivers and Porting Kit. I was a complete newbie when I went and installed Solaris on my Intel box, only to find my monitor was not supported. I made SEVERAL unsuccessful attempts to install the XFree86 drivers. Finally I ran into someone who worked at Sun who said to try the porting kit. Got it on the FIRST try. You download, un-zip the files, install two patches and two packages, go to kdmconfig and voila! all the XFree drivers appear. If none of the drivers are for your card, select the VESA option and it works for MOST common monitors. If I had seen this Porting Kit before and knew how EASY it was to install, I wouldn't have gone through having to re-install Solaris. I mean EASY. _________________________________________________________________ (8.3) How do I install XFree86 on Solaris? Why would you want to? Usually because the standard XSun server doesn't support your graphics board or doesn't support the color depth or resolution you wish to have or you may want OpenGL support (available only with the Sparc version of XSun). If board support is the only problem, please see the question above on video drivers. Here's some notes for installing XFree86 on Solaris x86. http://www.xfree86.org/3.3.6/SOLX86.html As a final hint, get and read the HOWTOs and books that were written for XFree86 on Linux. Starting with Solaris 2.6, Sun changed the way X client communicates with X server when both the client and X server are on the local machine (DISPLAY variable is set to ":0"). In short, instead of using /tmp/.X11-unix, the client connects to the X server using /tmp/.X11-pipe. Since XFree86 doesn't support /tmp/.X11-pipe, CDE will not work out-of-the-box on the local display under the XFree86 server. If you added virtual terminals (mentioned elsewhere in this FAQ and only possible with Solaris 2.4 to 7), you must leave one VT open (usually VT07); otherwise XFree86 will not run. To install and configure XFree86: * Download binaries for Solaris (Intel platform) from ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/ * Check your platform and OS: sh Xinstall.sh -check * Install XFree86 with: sh Xinstall.sh * After the installation is complete, create your own XF86Config file: XFree86 -configure * Remove or rename your old X server: cd /usr/openwin/bin; mv X X.old * Link to your new X server: ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/X /usr/openwin/bin/X * Copy the default dt configuration: mkdir -p /etc/dt/config; cp /usr/dt/config/Xservers /etc/dt/config * Edit /etc/dt/config/Xservers to cause dtlogin to start XFree86 instead of Xsun next time it loads. CDE will still run with XFree86: # :0 Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner unix:0 Local local_uid@console root /usr/X11R6/bin/X :0 -depth 16 For 24-bit displays, "-depth 16" should be changed to "-depth 24". For 8-bit displays, omit "-depth 16". Use "unix:0" to cause dtlogin to set the DISPLAY variable to local sessions instead of ":0.0" and CDE will be able to connect to the local X server. For older XFree 3.x, use "-bpp" instead of "-depth" (which is used for 4.x). * Edit /XF86Config.new and change /dev/mouse to /dev/kdmouse and "auto" to "PS/2" (if appropriate): under section "Pointer" (or "InputDevice"): Section "InputDevice" # Older versions of XFree86 use "Pointer" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "PS/2" # "auto" for PNP mice Option "Device" "/dev/kdmouse" # or "/dev/mouse" EndSection For USB mice, use something similar to the following: Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse1" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "VUID" # For USB mice Option "Device" "/dev/mouse" EndSection * To test the server , run XFree86 -xf86config XF86Config.new * If it works: cd /etc/X11; mv XF86Config XF86Config.old; cp XF86Config.new XF86Config * After X server configuration is done, /usr/sbin/reboot. This verifies startup works OK. Optional step. Once the above is working, you may add fonts from the /usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/ directory to the default font path for XFree86 server. Edit /etc/XF86Config file and add this to section "Files": FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/F3bitmaps/" FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/" FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/" FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/misc/" FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/" FontPath "/usr/openwin/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/" Aliases for CDE fonts are in the F3bitmaps directory, so you'll need at least this line. [Warning: I have a report that adding the Openwin fonts to the XFree86 server, as recommended here, could cause dtlogin to fail.] For those that use S3 Virge cards, it seems that SVGA server (the default server for Virge cards) has problems with some chipsets. Try using an old S3V server instead. Also, the problem with returning from graphics to text mode seems to be present on all three servers I tried (Xsun, SVGA and S3V). [Thanks to Aleksandar Milivojevic, Jimmy Chang, Philip Brown, and Joerg Niethammer] _________________________________________________________________ (8.4) How do I configure 64K colors for CDE? Solaris' kdmconfig offers only a choice of 256 or 16M colors for your graphics board. To configure Xsun to use 16-bit color, configure using kdmconfig for the desired resolution in 256 color mode. Note the board line from file /etc/openwin/server/etc/OWconfig. Look in the referenced file in directory /usr/openwin/share/etc/devdata/SUNWaccel/boards to see if there is support for 16-bit color mode for your card. If your board is listed, edit file /etc/openwin/server/etc/OWconfig and change defdepth="8" to defdepth="16" in it. Also, values for MaxPClk for some cards are way too low in 16-bit and 24-bit modes in file /usr/openwin/share/etc/devdata/SUNWaccel/boards. But if you want to change this, you are doing it on your own risk. Some applications hang on 16-bit colors. The CDE logo that is displayed after one logs in is a bit-mapped grayscale image(?!), but everything else should work just fine. [Thanks to Aleksandar Milivojevic, by way of John Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (8.5) How do I Add Gnome, KDE or other non-CDE Window Mangers to the dtlogin screen? The easiest way is to add substitute KDE for CDE is to add an "exec /path/to/kde" statement in your $HOME/.dtprofile file. To add a KDE selection to the dtlogin screen (in addition to the usual command-line, OpenWindows, or CDE choices), follow one or both of these links: * http://www.tiem.utk.edu/~peek/solaris/ written by Michael Peek * http://twirl.mcc.ac.uk/~zzassgl/wm.html written by Geoff Lane The instructions are for fvwm, but apply to any window manager, such as KDE, AfterStep, WindowMaker, or Enlightenment. Be aware that these new WMs usually take a bigger memory footprint. _________________________________________________________________ (8.6) Where can I get GNOME or KDE packages for Solaris/x86? GNOME (and KDE) are available with the Companion CD for the 10/00 update of Solaris 8. For information about GNOME on Solaris or for a free download, see http://www.sun.com/gnome/ Another source for (separately built) packages for GNOME and GNOME extras is at http://myweb.clark.net/pub/bent/Solaris8-X86/GNOME/ For information on GNOME, see http://www.gnome.org/ For general KDE information, see http://www.kde.org/ Binaries are at ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/stable/latest/distribution/pkg/Solaris/ 8.0/x86 and at mirrors elsewhere (see http://www.kde.org/mirrors.html). When installing KDE, make sure to install the QT library first, which is required by KDE. Which is better? "Religious" wars could be fought over this question. KDE has a more familiar M$ windows-like interface, and I used to use it. I use GNOME now since it's most easily available on both Solaris and Linux. KDE is more mature than GNOME and more tightly integrated, but some say GNOME is catching up. GNOME and Mozilla both use the GTK library. The QT library, required by KDE, used to have stricter licensing restrictions, but now it's licensed under GPL (not LGPL). KDE is endorsed and supported by IBM, Caldera, and SuSE. GNOME is endorsed and supported by Sun (and RedHat and HP). I recommend installing and trying out both GNOME and KDE for a test drive. You can have both installed at the same time and select which one to use with dtlogin. You can also run KDE apps under GNOME and vice versa. Sun picked GNOME over KDE because of Qt licensing issues, CORBRA in GNOME, and because GNOME uses C and KDE uses C++ (the latter causes name mangling problems which prevents using different C++ compilers). _________________________________________________________________ (8.7) Are TrueType fonts supported in Solaris? Yes, Xsun supports them. Use the Font Administrator GUI, /usr/dt/bin/sdtfontadm, to add them to the server's list of fonts. [Thanks to Tran Tran] _________________________________________________________________ (8.8) How do I make XFree86 version 3.x- or XiG Xaccel 5.0.3- work with Solaris 8? You can't. X servers for previous versions of Solaris rely on /dev/vt* virtual terminals, which have been of end-of-life-ed in Solaris 8 (see an earlier question). You'll get an error message similar to: xf86OpenConsole: Cannot determine current VT. You must upgrade to XFree86 version 4.x or better which is currently (7/2000) available only in source. XiG released 5.0.4 as a binary patch for its commercial X server. See http://www.xfree86.org/ and http://www.xig.com/ [Thanks to John Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (8.9) How do I disable CDE auto-start upon booting multi-user? Boot single-user and run dtconfig(1). That is, at the booting Solaris prompt, type "b -s" After entering your root password, mount /usr and run "/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d" [Thanks to John Groenveld] _________________________________________________________________ (8.10) How do I su(1) to another user and run an X application? You need to set your $DISPLAY and allow others to use your console. If you don't, you get a message like "Can't open display". By default, only the user who logged in on console can connect to the display. To allow another user to connect there are two ways - one easy and one secure (unfortunately, you can't have both): Easy: As user logged in on console run "xhost +LOCAL:" (This gives permission to connect to the display to anyone logged in on the machine - this includes being able to open windows, read your keystrokes, send keystrokes, etc. Obviously not a good idea if you have other users on the system you don't trust completely.) As any other user logged in on the box, run "setenv DISPLAY :0" or "DISPLAY=:0; export DISPLAY", depending on your shell type. This all assumes you're connecting from the same host, for a remote host, change to "xhost +other-hostname" and "setenv DISPLAY PutYourHostnameHere:0" Safe: As user logged in on console run "xauth list" Look for the line for your hostname followed by ":0" and copy it. As the user you want to grant access to run "xauth" and at the xauth> prompt type "add " and paste the line you copied. Now "setenv DISPLAY hostname:0", making sure you match the way it was listed in the line you copied and pasted. Easier variation of safe method for special cases: If the other user you want to access your screen is root, and your home directory is either local or on an NFS filesystem exported with root permissions, just have root do this: setenv XAUTHORITY /home/myuserid/.Xauthority ; setenv DISPLAY :0 (replace "/home/myuserid" with your actual home directory). [Thanks to Alan Coopersmith] _________________________________________________________________ (8.11) Does Solaris Intel support multiple heads? No. A commercial X server from Xi graphics, http://www.xig.com/ supports multiple heads. Dual-headed monitors will be built-in Solaris 8's Xsun (Xinerama, X11R6.4), but that works on Sparc only, not Intel. XFree86 does not currently support multiple heads, though the feature is on the wish list for XFree86-4. [Thanks to John Groenveld, Alan Coopersmith] _________________________________________________________________ (8.12) How do I get my 2-button mouse to emulate 3 buttons? In Solaris 8, "kdmconfig" will autodetect a two-button PS/2 mouse, so you may never look in the "change pointing device" section. You need to go in there, and change it from "PS/2 Mouse (2 Button)" to "PS/2 Mouse (2 Button+100ms 3 Button Emulation)" [Thanks to Philip Brown] _________________________________________________________________ (8.13) How do I make the NumLock key go on automatically when I log in? Add xset led 2 to your CDE startup file, $HOME/.dtprofile. To turn it off, use xset -led 2 Similarly, for CapsLock, use xset led 4 To make settings apply to all users, add to file /etc/dt/config/.dtprofile _________________________________________________________________ (8.14)How do I get admintool(1M) and some other Solaris GUI's to run with XFree86? Some applications are configured to use Sun's proprietary F3 fonts. The work-around is to run Sun font server, xfs(1), and to prefix XFree86's FontPath with it. Copyright ╘ 1997 - 2002 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved. http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ _________________________________________________________________ (9.0) INTEROPERABILITY WITH OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS (9.1) Can I install Solaris x86 on a system that already has MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP (among other systems)? When you run the 2.6 install program, it will ask you which partition you wish to use. On disk1, all you need to do is to create another partition on your existing disk. You can use Solaris boot manager to boot Solaris x86, and MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP (among other systems). To shrink an existing MS-DOS/MS Windows partition, if you need to make room, use something like Partition Magic. Problems have been reported inter-working with OS/2, however. Reportedly, the order in which you install things is very important. Solaris doesn't "share" computers and partitions really well. If you have problems, you may need to install Solaris first, on a partition towards the end, reinstall the boot manager and add the partition. Other options for booting is to use System Commander (see question below), IBM's Boot Manager (bundled with Partition Magic or OS/2), FreeBSD's OS-BS (see question below), System Selector, or OS-BootSelect (open source), instead of the Solaris' Boot Manager. Mariusz Zynel has a detailed information on booting Solaris with other operating systems at http://math.uwb.edu.pl/~mariusz/multiboot/ [Thanks to Barry Katz, Brandon Hume, Joseph A. Faracchio, Joelle Nebbe, Eugeny Kuzakov, and Sean M. Kelley] _________________________________________________________________ (9.2) How can I use MS Windows' NT/2K Loader to boot Solaris/x86? The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root Solaris/x86 partition into a file in the DOS/MS Windows NT/2K partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.sun (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos) you can edit file c:\boot.ini (after saving boot.ini to boot.old): to come up with something like this: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Windows NT" multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)C:\BOOTSECT.SUN="Solaris/x86" C:\="DOS" The "multi(0)" means that it's an ATAPI drive and so for the ATAPI drives, the "disk(0)" is ignored. The "rdisk(1)partition(1)" means Solaris is on the first partition of the second drive on the first IDE channel. This procedure assumes that DOS and NT have been installed onto the first ATAPI disk and Solaris/x86 or whatever have been onto the second disk (use scsi(0) and place the SCSI ID in disk(x) for SCSI drives). Note that in order to use the Windows NT boot loader, the NT partition must be the active boot partition. Solaris/x86 must also be the active boot partition, so must reside on another disk (This may be another reason to use a commercial product, System Commander--see question below). In Solaris, mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted C: to NTFS, which isn't readable from Solaris/x86) or a HD FAT partition (see question below), under, say, /mnt. Type: dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 of=/mnt/bootsect.sun bs=512 count=1 # (Note: The above is for ATAPI; use /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 for SCSI.) If the Solaris partition is on a separate drive (as in this example), you need to modify file bootsect.sun to tell it the boot drive. The instructions below are for Solaris 7 or earlier The bootsect.sun code assumes the drive ID is preloaded into the x86 DL register before the bootsect.sun is executed. This is done by the BIOS, but not the NT loader. The easiest way to fix this is to modify the bootsect.sun code with a binary file editor. The first instruction is a jump over the next 4 bytes, the ASCII version ID ("P2.0" in this case). Use a binary editor to overwrite this with a "MOV DL,0x81" instruction and some NOPs. I.e., I changed the first six bytes in my bootsect.sun from "eb 04 50 32 2e 30" to "b2 81 90 90 90 90" (in hex) and saved it in file bootsect.sun. Another person's bootsector began with eb 79 . . . and he changed the first 4 bytes to b2 81 eb 77 to get it to work. Some useful drive IDs are: 0x00 for the floppy drive, 0x80 for the 1st hard drive, and 0x81 for the 2nd hard drive. Reboot into NT. Copy the bootsect.sun file from the floppy to C:\, if you haven't done so yet. Modify the DOS/NT attributes (permissions) on boot.ini with: attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example boot.ini above, and restore the system and read-only file attributes: attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini An alternative to the Solaris "dd" command above is to use the "postcard-ware" program BootPart 2.2 from http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm. E.g., the following displays the partitions, then creates a boot sector file bootsect.sun and adds "Solaris" to the NT loader menu. Edit bootsect.sun as above. C:> bootpart.exe C:> bootpart.exe 1 bootsect.sun Solaris [Thanks to Krejcarek Brian Grant, Louis Lam, Matt Gillen, and Indego Thorn] _________________________________________________________________ (9.3) How can I use the Solaris boot manager to boot Windows NT? 1. Create 3 PRIMARY partitions on the disk in the following order 1. DOS FAT 2. DOS FAT (to become NTFS) 3. empty (to become Solaris) 2. install DOS (or MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP) on Partition 1 3. Then install NT on partition 2, converting to NTFS while installing 4. Finally, install Solaris 2.6 on partition 3 using Solaris interactive. Solaris boot manager will be the master boot controller, but then choose partition 1 to boot NT (yes that is right, not 2). Then the NT boot manager will come to life, allowing you to select either DOS (partition 1) or NT (partition 2). Note that Solaris must be the active partition when its booting. [Thanks to Claude Dumas] _________________________________________________________________ (9.4) How can I use System Commander to boot Solaris/x86 and other systems? To use System Commander to dual boot both Win NT and Solaris, make these two configuration changes to System Commander: all other partitions from NT and Solaris (so they can't see each other's partitions). 1. From main System Commander menu pick ALT-S. 2. select "Global Settings" but *DO NOT* press enter. 3. press "ALT-F9" which brings up an internal configuration menu. 4. Change the "Clear Items" menu choice from "MEMORY" to "NO" or "NONE". 5. press ESC to return to main menu. _________________________________________________________________ (9.5) Can I install Linux and Solaris on the same drive? Yes, with certain precautions. Be especially careful with RedHat Linux 6.1 (see below) Unfortunately, both Solaris/x86 and Linux swap partitions use the same ID, 0x82. So if you install Solaris on a drive with a Linux swap partition already on it, it will install on the Linux swap partition. You have two choices: swap partition if you have enough memory). latter, the install program will probably ask if you want to format what it thinks is your Linux swap partition (and is actually your Solaris partition) as a swap file. Be sure to not do this! Red Hat Linux 6.1 (October 1999) Red Hat Linux 6.1's installer automatically uses all Linux swap partitions on all drives. Since Solaris/x86 uses the same ID, the installer overwrites it too! This is not a problem with older versions of RedHat Linux (as long as Linux and Solaris were on separate drives). Personally I don't use the installer to upgrade (I just install individual RPMs). Here's the summary from Red Hat Gotchas, http://www.redhat.com/support/docs/gotchas/6.1/gotchas-6.1-4.html#ss4. 12 Problem: Installation of Red Hat Linux 6.1 can overwrite Solaris. If you have Solaris Intel on your machine, you will have problems with Red Hat Linux 6.1 Fix: Solaris partitions use the same type as Linux swap partitions. The installer will use all found swap partitions. Currently, there are several possible work-arounds to this problem. If Solaris is on a separate drive from the drive you wish to install Red Hat Linux 6.1 on, please disconnect this drive. The other workaround is to change the "Partition type" of the Solaris partition. Before you install Red Hat Linux to another type, install Red Hat Linux, and then change the type back to another type. This can be accomplished by going using expert mode and choosing fdisk over disk druid. # fdisk /dev/hda Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 784 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 345 2771181 83 Linux /dev/hda2 346 784 3526267+ 5 Extended /dev/hda5 346 751 3261163+ 83 Linux /dev/hda6 752 784 265041 82 Linux swap Command (m for help): t Partition number (1-6): 6 Hex code (type L to list codes): 08 Command (m for help): w After the install you can change the partition type to back 0x82 so that Solaris will boot. This "gotcha" was removed from the RedHat 6.2 list, so hopefully the problem doesn't occur with newer versions of RedHat Linux. For more information, see the Linux HOWTOs and LILO User Guide. For information on installing Solaris/x86 on your second hard drive, see below. _________________________________________________________________ (9.6) How can I use LILO to boot Solaris/x86 on the primary slave ATAPI? Basically, the Linux LILO boot loader is used to fool Solaris into thinking the slave is the master and vice versa by remapping the BIOS drive numbers (with the map-drive and to lines) Here's an example entry in a /etc/lilo.conf file: # /etc/lilo.conf boot=/dev/hda map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=50 other=/dev/hdb1 label=Solaris table=/dev/hdb map-drive=0x80 to=0x81 map-drive=0x81 to=0x80 (use /dev/hdc instead of /dev/hdb if your second drive is the secondary ATAPI master instead of the primary ATAPI slave drive) For more information, see the Linux HOWTOs and LILO User Guide. [Thanks to David Uhring and Loran Marjanski] _________________________________________________________________ (9.7) How can I use OS-BS or System Selector to boot Solaris/x86? Grab OS-BS [a free boot manager distributed with FreeBSD] from: ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/tools/osbs135.exe Or (newer) from: http://www.prz.tu-berlin.de/~wolf/os-bs.html Assuming you've already got Linux installed and enough free space for Solaris, go ahead and install the latter. Solaris then becomes the Active partition. Follow that installation with OS-BS and configure to "set startup id", which changes the Active partition on-the-fly. OS-BS comes in a newer, commercial version, that I use, called System Selector in the US, De'marreur in France, and Boot Manager elsewhere. See http://www.BootManager.com/ System Selector needs a small FAT or FAT32 partition to install on. You also need to either boot a version of DOS or Windows to read the install files on the CD-ROM drive. Note that this partition doesn't need to be bootable or active--it is only used to hold files used by System Selector. System Selector replaces the previous boot block in the MFT and boots directly from the drive's MFT. When System Selector's installation menu comes up, you won't see Solaris listed among the selections under the "System" tab, as you most other systems that may be on your system, such as Windows or Linux. Instead, go to the "Partitions" tab and select the partition marked "Linux Swap." This is actually the Solaris Partition (both Solaris and Linux Swap partitions share the same code, 83 hex). Select it and under the "Properties" tab make sure you check "Assign active ID to this system [partition] before booting." Update: An open-source solution, GAG, http://raster.cibermillennium.com/gageng.htm provides a graphical boot menu which works with Solaris Intel and other Intel-based operating systems. _________________________________________________________________ (9.8) How can I boot both Solaris/x86 and Win NT on the same disk? Here's one way of doing it. Solaris/x86 requires it's partition to be active and uses it's own boot manager with it hard-coded to boot to Solaris on timeouts. If you want to use NT's boot manager or default to another operating system, it usually requires installing both operating systems on separate disks or using a third-party product, such as System Commander, that makes the partition "Active" on the fly This solution, described here by Andrew Mickish, is to make a boot floppy: Although the Solaris x86 installation manual makes it sound like all you have to do is partition your disks to get multiple operating systems to work, I found that this was not the case. To get a dual boot of Solaris and NT on the same hard drive, without using the Solaris default boot manager, you have to use a floppy boot disk to help start one of the OSes. Here is how I got NT and Solaris working on the same disk. The following fdisk partitioning causes Solaris to boot from the hard drive, yet allows you to boot to NT if you insert a floppy disk with the NT boot loader: +--------------------------------------------------+ | Solaris [Active, for Solaris] | | C: PRI-DOS (FAT) [Active, for NT] | | D: EXT-DOS (FAT) | +--------------------------------------------------+ Partitioning: The Solaris partition should be created during the Solaris installation, using Solaris's FDISK. The remaining partitions should be created during installation of NT. Active partition: You must set the Solaris partition to be ACTIVE in order to make it boot to Solaris. NT does not have to be active to boot. Use a DOS boot disk with FDISK to quickly change which partition is active. Boot disk: After setting the NT partition to be active, you still need the NT boot loader on a floppy disk in order to direct the PC to the second partition. (Usually the boot loader is on the primary partition of the hard drive, but that partition is Solaris and unreadable to NT.) Your floppy directs the boot process to the right partition by using a BOOT.INI file that says where the NT kernel can be found: [boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00" multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Workstation Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos Note: The numbering of partitions is one-based, so the C: partition in the diagram above is in partition #2. Please send comments and suggestions to mickish@cmu.edu [Thanks to Andrew Mickish] _________________________________________________________________ (9.9) How do I mount a DOS partition from the hard drive? mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0:1 /mnt # SCSI mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p0:1 /mnt # ATAPI Where c0 is the controller number. t0 is the target (SCSI ID number) (omit for ATAPI) d0 is always 0 for SCSI, the drive # for ATAPI p0 is the partition (p0 is the entire disk, or p1 - p4) /mnt is the mount point :1 is the logical drive (c - z or 1 - 24) You can use the normal UNIX commands to copy files, 'cp', etc., after that to move the data. DOS filenames are in the old 8.3 format (lower case) for Solaris 2.5.1, in long filename format (lower case) for Solaris 2.6, and in long filename format (mixed case, with optional lower case only) for Solaris 7. Note: The "mount -F pcfs . . ." command won't mount a FAT16 partition if it was fdisk-ed and format-ted with MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP (at least for Solaris 2.6 and earlier. Any reports with Solaris 7/8?). Use DOS 6.x. HPFS (OS/2), FAT64 (Win NT), or NTFS (Win NT/2K/XP) partitions are not mountable under Solaris at all. FAT32 (Win 9x/ME/2K) are mountable with Solaris 7. There's some reports of not being able to mount FAT32 partitions if it's not the first partition. To mount the partitions automatically, put something like this in /etc/vfstab: #device device mount FS fsck mount #to mount to fsck point type pass at boot /dev/dsk/c0d0p0:1 - /c pcfs - yes - /dev/dsk/c0d1p0:1 - /d pcfs - yes - This mounts the DOS partitions (assuming it's the first partition) on /c and /d, respectively, on startup. For more info, see "man pcfs" [From Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ] Note: p0 refers to the first primary partition and p1, p2, . . . refers to the logical DOS partitions found in the extended DOS partition. Solaris/x86 does NOT support DOS directly in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th primary partition of a disk. See BugID 1170107. Furthermore, Solaris/x86 does NOT support more than one Solaris fdisk partition on a physical disk nor more than 8 Solaris "slices" on a Solaris fdisk partition. [Thanks to Randy J. Parker, Norma Adamson, Rob Duarte, and Danny Huynh] _________________________________________________________________ (9.10) Does PartitionMagic and BootMagic understand Solaris partitions? Yes and no. BootMagic can be setup to boot Solaris partitions, since it dynamically marks the partition as active. The setup, however, doesn't automatically recognize these partitions as Solaris (but as Linux Swap partitions). PowerQuest's PartitionMagic can copy and move Solaris Partitions, with a low-level sector-by-sector copy. It cannot enlarge or shrink the Solaris Partition, which actually contain multiple "slices" of various Solaris ufs file systems. Furthermore, after a partition copy, the boot block needs to be restored. See the question elsewhere in this FAQ "How do I restore the Solaris boot block without reinstalling?" Grant Chivers provides these instructions to install Solaris on a Windows/Linux system with the PowerQuest Partition Editor: * Before installing Solaris use Ptedit, that comes with PowerQuest's Partition Magic, to write out a copy of all the data about the existing partitions because a Solaris install will change all this. * If there are Linux partitions (type 83) I change them to "Hidden ext2 partitions" (type 93), then reverse this after Solaris installation completed. * If installing Solaris to free disk space, I suggest you first create a partition (any type, such as OS/2) on the free disk space to get the hard disk data settings that will be used for the Solaris partition. Then delete the partition to regain free disk space (or use the Solaris fdisk when it prompts during install). * Install Solaris. Ensure that Solaris fdisk chooses the correct partition to format. * Reboot to Solaris again to finish setup, etc. * Reboot to DOS and run Ptedit again and adjust to previous configuration with the new Solaris partition being type 82. * Change the Linux partition back to 83 if it was changed previously. * Exit System commander and use DOS fdisk to check the origional active partition is regained. * Configure your bootloader. * I use V-Com's System Commander as a boot menu (lilo or Ntloader could be used instead but they require a little more configuration). * Reboot and it all should work. * Similarly, if installing Linux with an existing Solaris partition, change the partition type to another type (e.g., OS/2), install Linux and then change the Solaris partition back to type 83. _________________________________________________________________ (9.11) How do I access a DOS-format diskette from Solaris? Using volume management, type "volcheck". This forces Solaris to poll the diskette drive (and other drives). The diskette drive isn't polled automatically (unlike the CD-ROM), as it would quickly wear it out. You should see something like this typing "mount": /floppy/unnamed_floppy on /vol/dev/diskette0/unnamed_floppy read/write on Wed Jan 20 09:05:44 1999 To unmount using volume management, type "eject". After a message, you can manually eject the floppy safely. You can also mount the diskette in a similar way to hard drive partitions without using volume management (the old way): mount -F pcfs /dev/diskette /mnt Don't forget to turn of the volume management before you try to do this from the command line or you'll get a "device busy" message. "/etc/init.d/volmgt stop" will stop the volume manager. To restart the volume manager, "/etc/init.d/volmgt start". [From Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ and Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ] The GNU mtools package allows access of DOS diskettes without being root. The diskette isn't mounted, but instead special commands with the prefix m, such as mcopy, mdir, mdel, etc. are available. _________________________________________________________________ (9.12) Does Solaris mount and recognize MS Windows 9x/ME/2K/XP partitions with long file names (VFAT)? Solaris 2.6 and above uses the "long" (VFAT) file names, but earlier versions of Solaris use the "short" (DOS/FAT/8.3) file name (for example, "progra~1"). Solaris 2.6 recognizes the case (e.g. "Program Files/"), which may be optionally folded to lower case ("program files") with the foldcase mount option. Earlier "Solari" folds DOS file names to lower case only. VFAT refers to the file naming convention and is completely separate from FAT16/FAT32 (see a earlier question for that). [Thanks to Nelson Chan] _________________________________________________________________ (9.13) How can I make my Solaris files easily available to MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP on a network? Solaris PC NetLink provides "a complete set of Windows NT Network Services," which includes SAMBA-type NT naming, file, print, directory, and security services for Windows 3.11/95/98/NT clients. It is based on Microsoft NT 4 code licensed via AT&T ("Advanced Server for Unix"). It used to be available for Solaris/x86, but is now available only for Sun Enterprise servers. In any case I prefer SAMBA, a robust, open source package that provides SMB services (aka MS Windows networking) from UNIX. This allows LAN-Manager-type browsing and "Connect Network Drive," and provides access to UNIX print servers. SAMBA can act as a file, print, browser master, and WINS servers, but not as a domain controller (that's in the works). SAMBA also serves files faster than NetLink (or Windows, for that matter). However, NetLink implements SMB better than SAMBA, since it uses Microsoft-licensed code, while SAMBA must reverse-engineer the code. For the Samba FAQ, sources, binaries, and other information, see the SAMBA web page at: http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/ Sun has a commercial product, Solstice LM Manager, that works (poorly) with MS LAN Manager/SMB and links in with NIS/DNS. _________________________________________________________________ (9.14) How can I make my Solaris files easily available to an Apple Macintosh on a network? Use CAP, an excellent open source AppleTalk server software for UNIX. The Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) implements the AppleTalk protocol stack on UNIX The main applications provide an AppleShare 2.1 compatible server (aufs), a LaserWriter Spooler (lwsrv) and a program to print to LaserWriters (papif). For more information, see: http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/appletalk/cap.html _________________________________________________________________ (9.15) How do I access a Mac diskette from Solaris? Use a emulator package like Mae from Apple (I understand Mae is not supported and has some MT-unsafe bugs). For "sneakernet," you can also use a DOS diskette, as both Solaris and Apple support these. _________________________________________________________________ (9.16) What is WABI? WABI is "Windows Application Binary Interface." WABI 2.2 (which ships with Solaris 2.5.1) runs old 16-bit native MS Windows 3.x programs. No support is planned for 32-bit MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP programs. Support for WABI has been dropped starting with Solaris 7. and is replaced by SunPCi (see the next question). [Adapted from Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ] _________________________________________________________________ (9.17) Can I use SunPCi on Solaris/x86? No. SunPCi is an add-on card and software for Solaris on SPARC only. SunPC emulates a PC with the card and Caldera's "DR-DOS" allowing Windows 3.1/9x to be installed on top of it. The card has a 300 MHz K6-2 AMD processor and RAM. It emulates hard and floppy drives, serial ports, SuperVGA, mouse, keyboard, etc. Generally, SunPCi or it's older cousin, SunPC, emulates the PC environment OK, although it performs more slowly than a straight PC (your mileage may vary). Software that requires a parallel port hardware key (dongle) won't work. _________________________________________________________________ (9.18) Will Linux programs run on Solaris 2/x86? The Lxrun program, originally written for SCO, is now available on Solaris/x86. The Lxrun emulator allows one to execute Linux binaries, both in ELF and a.out Linux formats. Linux ext2 read-only filesystem support from Solaris (mount/unmount) is included with ext2fs.tar.gz. To install, first install package SFWlxrun from the Solaris Software Companion CD. Setup or mount a ext2fs filesystem, say at /linux (as explained in a question below on ext2fs). To use, run programs or shells prefixed with lxrun. For example: $ uname -a SunOS dany.drydog.com 5.8 Generic_108529-06 i86pc i386 i86pc $ lxrun /linux/bin/rpm -q redhat-release redhat-release-6.2-1 $ lxrun /linux/bin/uname -a SunOS dany.drydog.com 5.8 Generic_108529-06 i86pc unknown To avoid prefixing linux filenames with "/linux/" (or wherever your ext2fs is mounted), and setup a PATHMAP file (to map Linux filenames to Solaris names). For Sun's SFWlxrun version of lxrun, type this, as root, to set it up: (cd /opt/sfw/lib; cp -p PATHMAP-style2 PATHMAP) For other builds of lxrun, PATHMAP may be at /usr/local/lxrun/PATHMAP. The file location can also be changed with environment variable $PATHMAP. For more information see the following links: * The Solaris Lxrun Technical Overview (FAQ) is at: http://SolDC.Sun.COM/articles/lxrun/ * And another Sun article is at: http://www.Sun.COM/linux/lxrun/ * The Lxrun home page is at http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~steven/lxrun/ _________________________________________________________________ (9.19) How can I get the DOS and UNIX clock to agree on Solaris/x86? After installation, run the command /usr/sbin/rtc -z $TZ, where $TZ is your timezone. The default root crontab runs /usr/sbin/rtc -c daily. That way your clock will give the proper time whether you boot Solaris or MS-DOS/MS Windows. If you're running Windows NT and find the clock "overadjusted" twice a year (that is, it gains or loses an extra hour), you should comment out (with a "#") the "rtc" line in file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root. [Adapted from Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ] _________________________________________________________________ (9.20) Is Solaris x86 able to execute Solaris SPARC applications? There's no way to run a SPARC binary on an x86 machine unless you wrote an emulator for the SPARC CPU and ran it. [Thanks to Doug McIntyre] _________________________________________________________________ (9.21) Will my old applications from SVR3 or SCO run on Solaris 2/x86? Solaris x86 has an emulation mode that should run the majority of well-behaved SVR3 (including SCO UNIX), and SCO Xenix binaries. Most SVR3 stuff appears to work under Solaris 2.4. Applications from any other vendor's standards-conforming 386/486 SVR4 should also run. The main standard being iBCS (Intel Binary Compatibility Standard). However, some vendors have made incompatible changes to their SVR4 release and programs linked on those versions may not work. Future versions of Solaris 2.x for Intel will address some/most of those incompatibilities. UNIXWare is one of the offenders. [From Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ] Linux binaries will run with the assistance of lxrun. _________________________________________________________________ (9.22) Will my application from Solaris/SPARC work on Solaris/x86? I have the source. Yes and no. Generally applications that don't make assumptions about computer architecture will work. That is, code shouldn't depend on structure or union alignments, or in what order a number appears in a word ("big endian" SPARC or "little endian" Intel). Don't use functions labeled SPARC or x86 only in the man pages. In other words, "well-behaved" C (or other language) programs should recompile fine. _________________________________________________________________ (9.23) Can I access Solaris/x86 partitions from Linux? Yes. Read-only access is available. You need to have Linux 2.1.x or greater. To see if your Linux kernel recognizes Solaris partitions, type the following on Linux: dmesg | grep solaris You should get something like this: hda: hda1 hda2 <solaris: [s0] hda5 [s1] hda6 [s2] hda7 [s3] hda8 [s5] hda9 [s6] hda10 [s7] hda11 > This says that Solaris lives in the 2nd partition (hda2), slices 0 to hda11. To mount a partition, type something like this: mount -r -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=sunx86 /dev/hda5 /mnt This will mount the root slice (s0) on /mnt read-only. Warning: Softlinks that are relative to root (e.g., /usr/local pointing to /local) will point to the wrong place. To avoid this problem, change these links in Solaris to relative soft-links (e.g., /usr/local to ../local). This can be automated with /etc/fstab. If you don't want the partitions mounted at boot, add ",noauto" after "defaults,ro" (no space). If you want non-root users to be able to mount partitions, add ",user" (careful!): # /etc/fstab # . . . #Device Mount FS Fsck Mount at #to mount point type Options pass boot # Slice /dev/hda5 /solaris ufs defaults,ro,ufstype=sun 0 0 # s0 /dev/hda8 /solaris/var ufs defaults,ro,ufstype=sun 0 0 # s6 /dev/hda9 /solaris/opt ufs defaults,ro,ufstype=sun 0 0 # s3 /dev/hda10 /solaris/usr ufs defaults,ro,ufstype=sun 0 0 # s5 /dev/hda11 /solaris/export/home ufs defaults,ro,ufstype=sun 0 0 # s7 # Note: slice s2, by convention, indicates the whole disk If, when you type "dmesg" above, you don't see Solaris partitions recognized, you might have to rebuild your Linux kernel. Be sure to specify "y" in /usr/src/linux/.config when you type "make config": CONFIG_UFS_FS=y CONFIG_SOLARIS_x86_PARTITION=y Linux 2.2 has experimental write support to Solaris partitions. If you get this message when mounting in read-write mode: "... ufs_read_super: fs needs fsck" then UFS function ufs_read_super somehow decided the fs isn't clean, and therefore set the RDONLY bit. Type something like this to re-mount in read/write mode (replace "hda5" with your file system): mount -o remount,rw /dev/hda5 There's another linux kernel configuration question, CONFIG_SMD_DISKLABEL, that applies only to Sparc Solaris disks, which are in yet another format. The answer to that question doesn't matter for Solaris/x86 filesystems. _________________________________________________________________ (9.24) Can I access Linux (ext2fs) partitions from Solaris? Yes. The Lxrun program (see the question elsewhere above on Lxrun) includes software for Linux ext2 read-only filesystem support from Solaris (mount/unmount) is in file ext2fs.tar.gz. 1. Obtain the ext2fs.tar.gz file. Make sure you have the version dated July 16, 2000 (115097 bytes). The earlier version dated April 23, 2000 (111226 bytes) never worked, at least for me (I use Solaris 8). You can obtain the latter (working) version from ftp://sun.drydog.com/pub/solaris/ext2fs.2000.7.16.tar.gz. If you get "ext2fs: undefined symbol 'vfs_devsearch'" messages in /var/adm/messages when you try and mount, you have the earlier (broken) version. 2. Untar file "gzcat ext2fs.tar.gz | tar xvf -", and either rebuild from source (preferred) or use the prebuilt binaries. 3. Become root and install the files under directory ext2fs/i386: cd ext2fs mkdir -p /usr/man/man7fs cp ext2fs.7fs /usr/man/man7fs cp mount_ext2fs.1m /usr/man/man1m cd i386 /usr/sbin/install -m 755 -u root:sys ext2fs /usr/kernel/fs/ /usr/sbin/install -m 755 -u root:sys -d /usr/lib/fs/ext2fs/ /usr/sbin/install -m 555 -u root:bin mount /usr/lib/fs/ext2fs/ /usr/sbin/modunload -i 0 # remove old ext2fs module, if present 4. Make your mount point: "mkdir /linux" 5. Find your Linux partition and try and mount it. For SCSI, mount it similar to this: /usr/sbin/mount -r -F ext2fs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p1 /linux For ATAPI, mount it similar to this (no "t0"): /usr/sbin/mount -r -F ext2fs /dev/dsk/c0d0p1 /linux "c0d0p1" indicates fdisk partition 1 (2nd partition) on disk 0 of ATAPI controller 0. See the question above on mounting DOS filesystems for decoding /dev/dsk/c* device names. 6. If you installed the ext2fs correctly and specified the correct partition, you should see something like this from mount, modinfo, and ls. (My linux partition is on the 2nd disk, 3rd partition.) # mount | grep /linux /linux on /dev/dsk/c0d1p2 read only/setuid/dev=1980052 on Sat Mar 31 14:57 2001 # modinfo | grep ext2fs 186 fe9688f1 5e98 19 1 ext2fs (Linux Second Extended Filesystem) # ls /linux bin etc lib proc sbin tmp boot home lost+found root var usr dev include mnt 7. Once you found and mounted the correct linux partition, add and add an entry to /etc/vfstab similar to one of the following. For SCSI, it might look like this: /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p1 - /linux ext2fs - no ro For ATAPI, it might look like this (no "t0"): /dev/dsk/c0d0p1 - /linux ext2fs - no ro (Use "yes" instead of "no" if you want it mounted automatically at boot). 8. Repeat for other linux filesystems, if desired. Once you mount a ext2fs filesystem, you can execute Linux programs using lxrun (see the question on lxrun, above). For further information, see the ext2fs(7fs) and mount_ext2fs(1m) man pages you installed above. _________________________________________________________________ (9.25) What are some books on Windows NT/Solaris integration? The best book is, IMHO: David Gunter, Steven Burnett, and Lola Gunter, Windows NT and UNIX Integration Guide (Osborne McGraw-Hill, 1997), ISBN 0-07882395-1, http://sun.drydog.com/bookstore/#0078823951 Also see the question above on SAMBA. _________________________________________________________________ (9.26) How can I view MS Word files in Solaris? Multiple applications support viewing MS Word files. None are perfect, as MS Word file format is a trade secret and changes constantly. StarOffice, produced by a German subsidiary of Sun, supports MS Word, basic PowerPoint, Excel files, and other formats. StarOffice 6 is available for US $75.95 (UK ё52.99) at computer stores and http://www.Sun.COM/staroffice/. StarOffice is my preferred word processor because it's available on multiple platforms (Solaris x86 & SPARC, Linux, MS Windows) and because it has a familiar MS Office-type interface. OpenOffice, an open-source spin-off from StarOffice, is free. It doesn't contain some components of StarOffice (such as some fonts and image libraries), but is perfectly acceptible for casual use. Solaris x86 binaries are available, as are SPARC, Windows, and Linux. Experimental "developer" Apple Mac OSx binaries are available. AbiWord is also available for Solaris Intel. AbiWord only does word processing, but I understand it has all the basic functionality. I have no personal experience with it however. It's available in source form only, so you have to build it yourself (download the gcc compiler). Good luck! If anyone has had success or experience with AbiWord on Solaris Intel, email me at <dan@drydog.com>. Corel WordPerfect 8, although getting a little "long in the tooth" (outdated), it is still available. WordPerfect for UNIX supports WordPerfect, Word (old and new), HTML, RTF, FrameMaker, Applix, and several other document formats. Price varies and it's not cheap. There's no Sparc Intel binary available, but some people run Linux Intel binary on Solaris using lxrun software (see elsewhere in this fax). See http://www.corel.com/wpunix/ The VistaSource's Applixware Office suite can read Word files, among other formats, as above, and comes with a spreadsheet and other applications. I still prefer WordPerfect for word processing, but Applix Office offers a broader array of applications. Applix Office is also getting "long in the tooth." See http://www.vistasource.com/products/axware/ You can also try wv (free), which converts Word 8 (Office 97), but not older, Word files to HTML. WordView is available in source form (mostly Perl and some C) from http://www.wvWare.com/ For the above software, more complicated Word format files cannot be converted, especially those saved with "Quick Save" enabled. Be aware that these office suites seem to require systems with 128MB of memory or more to perform reasonably (in my experience). Finally, you CAN'T use Sun's PC File Viewer. It's available (and free) only for the SPARC-resident Solaris 2.6 PC File Viewer is Sun's relabeled version of Inso Corp.'s (http://www.inso.com/) QuickView Plus. See http://www.Sun.COM/desktop/products/software/pcviewer.html _________________________________________________________________ (9.27) I downloaded Internet Explorer (or Media Player) but it doesn't install. What's wrong? Microsoft Internet Explorer for Solaris or Microsoft Media Player for Solaris are available only for the SPARC architectures. You'll get this message if you try to install it with ie4setup: "unexpected ( on line one" or "syntax error at line 1: '('" See the next question on Netscape. _________________________________________________________________ (9.28) Where can I get Netscape or other web browsers for Solaris Intel? Netscape comes with Solaris 8. For Solaris 7 or earlier or for the "domestic" version with 128-bit (high) encryption, you can download it from ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/english/4.79/unix/support ed/sunos551_x86/ This address changes slightly for each language and version. Or try http://www.netscape.com/download/ Netscape is available in pkgadd/webstart formats from Sun (including 128-bit encryption) from http://www.Sun.COM/solaris/netscape/ This seems to be better integrated with Solaris (especially Java), although they are usually a point release or two behind. There's also a FAQ here. Mozilla. Mozilla is like Netscape 6, but more cutting-edge (and slightly more buggy), but I prefer it. Mozilla allows you to disable pop-up adds and it doesn't have the AOL add-on junk either. Mozilla is, however, missing a spell checker. Solaris x86 binaries are available at http://www.mozilla.org/releases/ Internet Explorer is available only for SPARC Solaris and will never be available for Solaris x86 (see the previous question). Opera Software will release "soon" (June 2001) a beta version of the Opera web browser for Solaris x86. It's faster and uses less memory than Netscape or Mozilla, When it's released, it will come in two versions, a (free) version with ads and a version without ads, but you pay money for it. See http://www.opera.com/ _________________________________________________________________ (9.29) Can I mount other ufs disks, say from BSDi/FreeBSD, and vice versa? Maybe. First, although Solaris, BSDi, FreeBSD, and NetBSD share a common-heritage file system, the Berkeley-style ufs, Solaris has made extensions. The 32-bit UID field has been modified in Solaris to be a pointer to a parallel "Shadow inode" with Solaris ACL information. Also, the superblock has an additional inode field in Solaris and 2 fields have different byte swappings. Reportedly, you can mount, say, zip disks from FreeBSD, on Solaris by doing a fsck on them before mounting. Fsck makes these fields Solaris- compatible. Your mileage may vary and you should test this (in both directions) before trying this on live data. _________________________________________________________________ (9.30) How can I use a disk partition on Solaris 2.x which was previously dedicated to MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP (or other OS) as dual boot? On Solaris 2.x, use fdisk to find your disk partition table. For example, on an ATAPI drive, # fdisk /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 would show something like the following: Total disk size is 524 cylinders Cylinder size is 16065 (512 byte) blocks Cylinders Partition Status Type Start End Length % ========= ====== ============ ===== === ====== === 1 Solaris 0 260 261 50 2 Active Solaris 261 522 262 50 Where "Partition 1" was used for Windows 95. It was deleted and recreated with "Solaris" type. Make a ufs filesystem on the partition. (You can not subdivide this fdisk partition into Solaris slices). For example, # mkfs -F ufs /dev/rdsk/c0d0p1 4192965 where number 4192965 = 261 * 16065 is the total number of blocks on this partition, calculated as the cylinder length on this partition (261 from the above partition table) times the cylinder size (16065 blocks as shown in the header of the partition table.) Mount the filesystem as usual. For example: # mount /dev/dsk/c0d0p1 /export/home [Thanks to Michael Wang. Reference: Sun Microsystems INFODOC ID: 13142] _________________________________________________________________ (9.31) How can I convert a DOS/Windows text file to a Unix text file? dos2unix <dosformatfile> <unixformatfile> unix2dos <unixformatfile> <dosformatfile> The former removes the ^M and ^Z characters and the latter adds them. See man dos2unix and man unix2dos for details. _________________________________________________________________ (9.32) Can VMware be used with Solaris x86? Yes. VMware is commercial software to allow one to boot and use multiple operating systems at the same time, such as Linux and Windows provides graphical (VGA/SVGA) and X display capabilities. For networking, VMware provides for a "virtual disk" for the client O/S. It also can provide access to the floppy, CD-ROM, a virtual NIC and a virtual sound blaster 16. Note, the CD-ROM is a "virtual" ATAPI CD-ROM. Networking can be either host-based (private IP space and TCP/IP + SMB between the host O/S and the client O/S), or bridged (client uses an address on the actual network, host's NIC is bound to two or more IP addresses). VMware doesn't have documentation on installing Solaris Intel, but you can use these notes instead: Please read the other HOWTOs on the VMware site, http://www.vmware.com/ before installing Solaris x86. My install of version 7 on the dual PII 300 took about 1 hour. I have tested Solaris x86 version 7 (11/99 release) with VMware 2.0.1 with a Linux host. The host is a dual PII/300 with 128 MB of RAM. Solaris under VMware seems stable (it has been up for days). The host was setup with Linux (RedHat 6.2, patches, and 2.2.16). VMware was installed and bridged networking was enabled. Bridged networking allows the virtual machine to appear as a host on the local LAN. The CDROM, Floppy and virtual NIC were enabled. 1. Create a virtual disk for Solaris using VMware. I used 1GB on a free partition. When creating a virtual machine, VMware will ask you to select the guest OS type. Since Solaris is not currently a selection, use Windows 98. That has seemed to work best for most folks.` 2. Insert the Solaris x86 boot floppy and boot CD-ROM in the host computer. Start vmware and "power on" the virtual machine. The virtual machine should boot from the floppy and run the Solaris hardware detection program. 3. Follow the normal Solaris install instructions. Let Solaris find the floppy, CDROM, and virtual NIC. Partition your virtual disk (I let Solaris do it for me). Install Solaris normally. 4. I am using my virtual Solaris as a test NISPLUS server so I enabled NISPLUS and set the server to point to this machine. Following install, I setup NISPLUS on the virtual Solaris and all seems functional. 5. Setup X as VGA. It appears to work fine. However, I typically use my virtual Solaris in text mode and export xterms to my base O/S (Linux). Someone suggested that you try a Linux or other XF86 server but I have not tried this. The vmware server for Linux may work. If anyone does this could they please mail me instructions on what they did? 6. Setup files in /etc including /etc/hosts, etc. For example I changed /etc/netmasks: 172.16.4.0 255.255.255.0 Problems and issues noted: 1. Sometimes the Solaris install is very unhappy with the VirtualFloppy drive. Just disable it for your Solaris config if it gives you grief. One of the symptoms of this may be a VMware panic dialog box during the install. 2. I recommend you either a) Setup Solaris with an FTP Server ASAP or b) Insure you have an FTP server on the same network. This is the quickest way to get files in and out of a virtual machine -- especially until you get DNS working properly. 3. Solaris x86 currently does not use the HLT instruction in the idle loop (a post indicated this will change in the future). This causes the virtual machine to try to use 100% of your CPU (or on an SMP machine, 100% of a single CPU as VMware only emulates an UP machine). This makes a virtual Solaris only really usable as a server on an SMP machine. 4. A "volcheck" followed by a "mount" resulted in a strange "unimplemented" error from VMware. However, the CDROM appeared to be properly mounted. 5. There are no VMware tools for Solaris x86. There is no VMware X server. 6. Since there are no VMware tools for Solaris, the best resolution/color combo you can get out of the box is 640x400, 16 colors. However, you can use remote access programs (VNC is highly recommended) to set up a console "server" that you can connect to with a remote "client". I have used VNC to access my Solaris VM at any resolution and a color depth of 32. Accessing the Virtual Machine via VNC not only looks better because of the color and resolution, it is faster than using Solaris the native way it comes out of the box. Earl Fernandez has posted an alternate solution using a third-party video driver by http://www.mostlysoftware.com/ His solution is posted at http://miataru.computing.net/solaris/wwwboard/forum/545.html [Thanks to W. Wade Hampton & additional notes from Patrick Allmond] _________________________________________________________________ (9.33) Is Solaris on Intel really "Slowaris"--slower than other Intel-based operating systems? By default, the other free OS's aren't SMP very capable out of the box--Solaris is. So, one single CPU system, Solaris has a fair amount on un-necessary overhead--which slows it down a bit. Because the other OSes don't have this capability, or at least don't use it to full advantage, they have a bit of a performance advantage on a single CPU machine. This advantage disappears when you start adding processors. So, I think Slowaris is a little bit too far, but it is at a bit of a performance disadvantage. But on an 800Mhz processor, who cares?! Odds are you'll just be idling very quickly! [Thanks to Rich Teer] _________________________________________________________________ (9.34) How can I remove (uninstall) Solaris from my hard drive? If you have another Operating System installed, boot into the other operating system (usually Windows or Linux). Select the current (non-Solaris) partition as the "Active" partition. Reboot. If the computer boots into the other operating system without the Solaris boot menu, you can safely delete the Solaris partition. If you have no other Operating System installed, simply install another operating system over Solaris on the hard drive. Select "Entire disk" or similar during the installation. _________________________________________________________________ (9.35) I can install Linux on a system with Solaris x86, but why can't I boot it? One possibility is because Linux kernels with UFS filesystem support will rearrange the numbering of the extended partitions in certain circumstances. Look at the following partition map reported by Linux during booting: Partition check: hda: hda1 hda2 <solaris: [s0] hda5 [s1] hda6 [s2] hda7 [s7] hda8 > hda3 hda4 < hda9 hda10 hda11 > Partition number 4 (hda4) is an "extended" partition, containing three logical partitions used by Linux. In this particular case, these logical partitions were created by the Red Hat Linux 7 installer, and they hold the Linux root filesystem, swap space, and a filesystem mounted on /home. The kernel used by the installer did not include UFS support, so it perceived /dev/hda4 to logically contain hda5, hda6, and hda7, and it recorded these settings with LILO and /etc/fstab. However, when the new Linux installation booted for the first time, it assigned hda5 to a Solaris partition, then tried to boot with it as the root filesystem. Under Red Hat Linux 7 with the 2.2.16 kernel, this generates the following error: Invalid session number or type of track Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on xx:xx To boot this system, provide LILO with something like "linux single root=/dev/hda9" to force the proper selection of the root filesystem (or you could also boot from the install CD with options like "linux single root=/dev/hda9 initrd="), then modify the root filesystem parameter in /etc/lilo.conf to reflect the change (and run the "lilo" command after modifying the file): image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22 label=linux read-only root=/dev/hda9 Under most Linux distributions, you must also modify /etc/fstab to reflect the new partition layout. Red Hat Linux 7 now uses "labels" in /etc/fstab (which are maintained with the "e2label" command), which obviates the need to adjust /etc/fstab in this case (you still may need to adjust the swap partition in /etc/fstab, though). If the extended partition has a lower number than the Solaris partition, this renumbering won't occur. [Thanks to Charles J. Fisher] _________________________________________________________________ (9.35) What hardware solutions are available for dual booting? Romtec makes "Trios," which allows for dual or triple booting off of multiple hard ATAPI disk drives. Trios fits into a 5.25" drive bay and comes with cables to connect the hard drives to it. An operating system may be installed on each hard drive. A button selects between which drive to boot off of. The other drives are not seen. See http://www.romtecusa.com/ for details. Copyright ╘ 1997 - 2002 Dan Anderson. All rights reserved. http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ This FAQ is provided "as is" in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. _________________________________________________________________ End of the Solaris on Intel - x86 FAQ. http://sun.drydog.com/faq/ Maintained by Dan Anderson, San Diego, California, USA. _________________________________________________________________
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