[ILUG] Solaris installation

[Declan Moriarty]

Recently, Somebody Somewhere wrote these words
> 	Hello all,
> 
> I am attempting, and I stress attempting to install the latest
> version of Solaris. I've downloaded the DVD version from the Sun
> website and I've tried running through the installation.
> 
> I had someone who really hasn't a clue reading the screen for me
> and although I have gone through the installation a few times
> now I have still been unable to get past the first boot. The
> reasons for this are:

Just out of interest, where were you??
> 
> 1.  The first time it came back asking me to insert the DVD but
> it was checking the wrong drive.  Easiest solution at the time
> was to disconnect the problem drive and reboot. That didn't work
> so I tried reinstalling.
> 
> Next time I got an out of range error on my screen.  This
> happens with other distributions but I can run sax2 to fix it.
> Problem here is I can't change to a console using control alt
> F1. 
> 
> I'm very stuck and would appreciate some help.
> 
> Oh to make things worse, I seem to have deleted the windows
> partition as well. Some of you might look on that as a positive
> but I had a lot stored on it. This weekend is *Not* going well!

Tuesday is the weekend? I never knew that :-).

For my €0.02
Rescue windows first. Stop with Solaris. Get a separate hard disk
for it. The best way I have found for saving your a** from that
one is ndd /rebuild using Norton disk doctor. It will find dos
partitions and let you restore them.

Don't hanker for the way linux was in 1995 or 2000. It sucked big
time with the hardware I had at the time. To give you a few
examples, no install could handle some lousy SiS chipsets (There
were lousy ones!) or the SiS6326 video chip. Apparently there are
a number of modes that every video card (except the SiS6326) can
be relied on to reproduce. X could not handle the Avance Logic
video card of the day, because clocks were fixed, and you had to
compute back with a fixed dotclock (if you could find out what it
was fixed at). X also rounded the error messages :-((. RPM refused
to install i586 rpms on an Authentic amd '586 because it detected
a '486 etc. etc. etc.

I would start with a clean hard disk and the latest Solaris.
Borrow one from somewhere if need be. I feel sure you are
answering fundamental questions wrongly. You can get it gloriously
wrong with a clean disk, and learn. But just like unix always
seems to think it is at the centre of a multitasking universe,
solaris no doubt imagines itself as the only operating system on
this megacomputer, being handled by experts with long years of
experience, etc.etc.
-- 

	With best Regards,


	Declan Moriarty.