Jesus, my life and computers

Jumpstarting Solaris with a linux server

Rolf Kersten, Product Marketing Manager for Volume Servers and Workstations from Sun Germany, read about my fauxpas with Solaris and contacted me. That is what I call excellent support. Getting support without even starting a support request - cool.

He told me that booting Solaris via network is possible. That is exactly what I am looking for in order to heal my fried Solaris installation on the T1000. So he sent me the complete "Solaris Enteprise System" DVD set (7 DVDs containing Solaris10 and all kinds of tools). For free. Very nice. He also pointed me to someone who succesfully used linux as a solaris jumpstart server.

If you have already setup everything to boot linux via network only few has to be done. You have to install bootparamd, and setup a file called /etc/bootparams.
For me this bootparams did the trick (with [t1000] the hostname of your t1000 and [server] the hostname of your linux machine):

[t1000] root=[server]:/tftpboot/jumpstart/install/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot rootopts=:rsize=8192,wsize=8192

Certainly Solaris has to be installed in your /tftpboot/jumpstart dir.

mkdir -p /tftpboot/jumpstart/install
mkdir /tftpboot/jumpstart/config
ln -s /bin/tar /bin/bar
ln -s /bin/sed /usr/bin/sed
ln -s /usr/bin/gdb /usr/bin/adb

Then add a little script /bin/mach (and don't forget to "chmod a+x" it):

#!/bin/bash
uname -m

Finally go to "Solaris_8/Tools" on the Solaris 10 DVD and start "./setup_install_server /home/jumpstart/install".

Now nfs export has to be prepared, so edit /etc/exports and add

/tftpboot/jumpstart 192.168.150.0/255.255.255.0(rw,no_root_squash,sync)

Then restart nfs "/etc/init.d/nfs-user-server restart" (nfs-kernel-server did not work for me).

On OpenBoot prompt enter "boot net" and you should see the following:

Boot device: /pci@7c0/pci@0/network@4 File and args:
100 Mbps FDX Link up
Requesting Internet Address for 0:14:4f:21:d8:b4
100 Mbps FDX Link up
SunOS Release 5.10 Version Generic_118822-25 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2005 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Configuring devices.
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Attempting to configure interface bge3...
Skipped interface bge3
Attempting to configure interface bge2...
Skipped interface bge2
Attempting to configure interface bge1...
Skipped interface bge1
Attempting to configure interface bge0...
Configured interface bge0
ERROR: bpgetfile unable to access network install information
# -

So we have a Solaris prompt now. Time to mount the T1000 hd.

mkdir mnt
mount -F ufs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /mnt
ls mnt

Fine. But how to fix the crle desaster? Don't know yet. Stay tuned.

posted by New Creation @ 1:00 PM