OpenSolaris

Sun's Predicament

I've been working with Unix for a fairly long time now- about 13 years.

I'll admit that I started with Linux and thought it was light years ahead of SunOS 4.x running on those old SPARC machines- I mean who had heard of SPARC processors? I remember my boss trying to explain to me that even an older SPARC processor was more powerful than a newer Intel Pentium processor. I didn't really believe him. In time, I convinced them to get rid of most of their SPARC/Solaris in favor of the hip, free, and cheap Intel/Linux combination.

Now I see that I couldn't have been more wrong. I realize that SunOS 4.x probably still has features which I don't know how to use properly. When I look at Solaris 10, ZFS, Zones, LDOMS, DTrace, etc. I not really sure you could pay me to work with Linux (that would be soo depressing). That isn't even mentioning the SPARC hardware it runs on- Can any Intel server compare to a T5140???

Sparc Solaris 10 Jumpstart Flar DVD - Part 1

The Solaris Flash installation feature enables you to use a single reference installation of the Solaris OS on a system, which is called the master system. Then, you can replicate that installation on a number of systems, which are called clone systems. You can replicate clone systems with a Solaris Flash initial installation that overwrites all files on the system or with a Solaris Flash update that only includes the differences between two system images. A differential update changes only the files that are specified and is restricted to systems that contain software consistent with the old master image.

I ran into several issues trying to create such a DVD when following the standard Google results so I thought I'd summarize my experiences. This is a work in progress- I might hit a brick wall at some point, but I hope not.

Solaris 10 doesn't find network card

I recently installed Solaris 10 06/06 x86 on my desktop machine, a Compaq Evo with an onboard Intel 10/100 network card.

At first the Solaris installation seemed to hang while trying to find a network configuration from a nonexistent RPC boot server. In retrospect, I think the problem was that Solaris didn't find an appropriate driver for the card but after waiting a long time, the installation continued skipping the network configuration.