[rescue] Replacing Solaris Express

[Joshua Boyd]

On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 09:37:29AM -0700, Bart wrote:

> I thought they were going to finish the graphical installer with  
> opensolaris so that it worked on SPARC hardware.
>
> The problem with OS on SPARC is Xorg support for any of the good video  
> cards (XVR600/1000/1200).  I think the only thing supported with any  
> sort of acceleration is the XVR-100 on pci and the XVR-300 on pci-e.

Well, in my case I'm particularly interested in sticking it on a server
anyway.  However, I guess I'll have to start looking for a new video
card for the U80 if I want to ever upgrade it.

> As for net booting, I tried unsuccessfully for a week to netboot a SXCE  
> image with no luck.  I had to wait until my DVD showed up before I could  
> successfully install it.  I must say, I do like it however, and even my  
> SunPCI III software still works (with a small modification).  And the  
> desktop stuff is indeed nicer in many ways.

Netbooting SXCE has always been trivial for me, since I bit the bullet
to actually do it.  I just followed this guide:
http://www.sunmanagers.org/pipermail/summaries/2005-March/006223.html
The main difference for me is that I loop back mount the DVD to install
rather than actually stick CDs in the CD drive.

I believe that OpenSolaris doesn't netboot in the same manner though.
OpenSolaris will only WAN boot, and older OBPs can't do a WAN boot
(apparently WAN boot is not the same as the netboot method used by these
machines). 

Actually, now that I'm regoogling instead of going from memory, perhaps
I could do OpenSolaris 9.06 on SPARC if I would just buy a scsi DVD
drive.
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=9549
http://sstallion.blogspot.com/2009/07/installing-opensolaris-200906-on-sparc.html
Those two pages say that I can do a wanboot from DVD, meaning I can
stick a SXCE DVD into the machine and then do:
boot cdrom -F wanboot -o dhcp
Eventually it will fail, and then I will have to log in in single user
mode, run a few commands, then log out to allow it to resume the
install. 

I wonder if at that point, it wouldn't just be simpler to do the full
OpenSolaris install from DVD?

> Glad I'm not the only person try to keep their blade alive :)

I don't actually own any blades, so I'm not actually trying to keep a
blade alive, I'm just trying to keep a U80 and E420 (among others) going.