[ProgSoc] Solaris on Marvin

James Andrewartha jamesa at daa.com.au
Tue Aug 5 16:45:14 EST 2008


John Elliot wrote:
 > I just wanted to take some time to talk about what I'm trying to do with
 > Marvin (the 1U sparc box in the rack). What I'd really like to be able
 > to do is to set up an environment where I can stage Solaris builds on to
 > it. I've been trying to make progress with it for many weeks now, but
 > it's *slow*. I got an OS installed on the box from CDs at one point, but
 > bollocksed the partition sizes, and am planning to rebuild it. In doing
 > the rebuild I want to set up a system whereby I can rebuild it quickly
 > again and again, with a view to being able (maybe one day, hah!) to grab
 > the recent open source bits and compile and test them on that box.
 > There's just such a tremendous amount to learn.

Are you using Sol 10 or SXCE? Recent builds of SXCE (b90 and above) can 
install onto ZFS http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/boot/ which 
means much less fucking around with partitions.
The other option is OpenSolaris, but that's not available for SPARC although 
it's planned for the 2008.11 release.

 > Anyway, I'm going to be in the room again this Thursday plugging away on
 > it, and if anyone knows anything about doing network-based installs, or
 > has any time to help figure out how we can make that work on the ProgSoc
 > network, then I'd be happy to have some company.

It's easiest to install if you've got another solaris machine to work from, 
but if not, here's some things you need to do:

Share the install DVD via nfs (read-only is fine).
You can then choose to either use bootparamd/rarpd, or DHCPD. For 
bootparamd/rarpd, add the machine to /etc/ethers, and the following to 
/etc/bootparams:
marvin root=130.95.13.60:/stuffs/install/Solaris_11/Tools/Boot 
install=130.95.13.60:/stuffs/install boottype=:in rootopts=:rsize=8192
where 130.95.13.60 is the nfs server sharing the install DVD, and 
/stuffs/install is the path to it.

For DHCPD, 
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.solaris/2005-09/0664.html and 
following should cover the settings.

-- 
James Andrewartha


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