My Experience Installing Solaris Express Developer

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By
Robert Eckstein
, January 2008


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Join Bob Eckstein, senior SDN writer, as he takes SXDE out for a spin.
Contents

• 
  Author's Note
  
• 
  Types of Installations I Tried
  
• 
  Stand-Alone Installation on a Sun Ultra 20 System
  
• 
  Installing Solaris Express Developer Edition Using VMWare
  
• 
  Dual Booting With SXDE on a Custom-Built Server
  
• 
  Conclusion
  
• 
  For More Information
  

Author's Note

Recently, I was asked to try out the new Solaris Express Developer
Edition (SXDE) 09/07 and write an article on my installation
experience. I was originally apprehensive, as I'm more of a Java
programmer than an IT administrator, but I do have plenty of experience
installing and re-installing operating systems-shredding plenty of
master-boot-records in the process-so I figured that I would give it a
try. I did, however, promise that I would run it through the gauntlet
to see if it actually performed as well as I was told it would. I was
pleasantly surprised by the results.
Types of Installations I Tried

Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) 09/07 includes a new
installation procedure that rivals the simplicity and ease of use in
Linux installations, a bonus for those looking to install or upgrade to
the OpenSolaris operating system. SXDE is
downloadable
as a three-part DVD .ISO file or VMWare Virtual Machine. In addition, you can choose to have a free DVD mailed to you.
I performed a number of installations of Solaris Express Developer Edition.
This article documents my experience installing SXDE 09/07 on the following:

• A Sun Ultra 20 stand-alone system
• A VMWare Virtual Machine running on Mac OS X
• A dual-boot with another operating system on a custom-built server

Stand-Alone Installation on a Sun Ultra 20 System

Because this was Sun hardware, I encountered no issues at all.
However, I'll cover the basics of the installation process so that you
will be familiar with them on the other types of installations. When
the DVD first booted, I was presented with the standard GNU GRUB screen
shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The GNU GRUB Screen for the Solaris 09/07 Installation
Click
here
for a larger image.


What If My System Doesn't Boot the Solaris Installation DVD?
This is what happened to me initially on the Ultra 20 system, and it
turned out it was because the computer's BIOS settings are telling it
to boot initially from the primary hard drive. If this is the case with
your system, reboot your machine and go into the BIOS before the system
starts. Instructions shown briefly on the BIOS startup screen will
often tell you how to do this (common methods include pressing F2 or
Delete or Escape). Once inside the BIOS setup, change the boot order
options to ensure that the DVD drive is listed before the primary hard
drive.

After I started the Solaris Express Developer Edition installation
program, I chose the first of the three menu options, as shown in
Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Solaris DVD Installation Menu
Click
here
for a larger image.

After a quick keyboard detection, the X Windowing system started.
Because X Windows forms the basis for the GNOME Desktop Environment
that the installation process uses, the Solaris installation program
attempts to start a baseline X Windows session on the system to test if
the settings are correct before going any farther. The Solaris OS then
presented me with a simple window and asked me to press the Enter key,
as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: X Windows Initialization Screen
Click
here
for a larger image.

This was an important step in the installation process. If X Windows
didn't work, I would have had to back down to a text-based installation
and hope for the best. However, X Windows is very robust, and
everything went smoothly. After the X Windows system finished
initializing, I was presented with the main installation screen, as
shown in Figure 4.


Figure 4: The Solaris Disk and Partition Selection Screen
Click
here
for a larger image.

From here, it was fairly easy to walk through the dialogs to install
the operating system. I've included several of them here in figures 5,
6, and 7 so that you will be familiar with them as you try various
installations.

Figure 5: Setting the Installation Time With SXDE
Click
here
for a larger image.



Figure 6: Setting the OS Language With SXDE
Click
here
for a larger image.



Figure 7: Creating Users With the SDXE Installation Program
Click
here
for a larger image.

At this point, I reviewed my installation settings, accepted the
Solaris license agreement, and started the installation procedure. A
full installation can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, with
helpful information being shown on the screen throughout. On my Ultra
20 system, it took 34 minutes.
When the Solaris Express Developer Edition installation was
complete, a link to the installation log was presented, where I could
review the results. I simply clicked the Reboot button and ejected the
SXDE installation DVD from my DVD drive. Installation was now complete,
and I could log in to the Solaris OS using my new user ID.
Installing Solaris Express Developer Edition Using VMWare

Next, I tried to install SXDE using VMWare. My test system was my primary development computer:

• Quad-core 3GHz Intel Xeon Mac Pro
• 4 GB 667 Mhz DDR2
• Dual DVD Burners
• Mac OS X 10.4.9
• VMWare Fusion 1.0

There are two ways to install SXDE using VMWare. The first is to
download a pre-configured VMWare Virtual Machine from the SXDE download
page. If you want to experiment with the Solaris OS without having to
configure any settings, this is the best approach. Visit the SXDE
installation page and follow the instructions for your VMWare tool to
install it.
If, however, you would like to change the system settings, such as
the amount of virtual hard drive space that the Solaris OS uses, it's
better to create a new virtual machine using the settings that support
Solaris 10, as I did in Figure 8. Be sure to tell VMWare to use the
64-bit version of Solaris 10, if available.

Figure 8: Creating a Virtual Machine for SXDE (VMWare Fusion Shown)
Click
here
for a larger image.

Also, I had to give the virtual machine at least 1 gigabyte of
memory, which is required for the Solaris OS, as shown in Figure 9.
Note that VMWare often sets the amount of memory for a virtualized
operating system at 512 MB by default. Once I set up the correct
parameters, I was able to install SXDE normally as shown here.

Figure 9: SDXE in VMWare Requires at Least 1 GB of Memory (VMWare Fusion Shown)
Click
here
for a larger image.


Dual Booting With SXDE on a Custom-Built Server

Finally, I tried to create a dual-boot system with Fedora Core 8.
This was the most challenging, as I also custom-built this server from
off-the-shelf parts:

• Asus P5GC-MX/1333 Motherboard
• 2.0 Ghz Intel Pentium Dual-Core With Fan
• 1 GB PC5300 DDR2 Memory
• 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
• Trendnet TEG-PCITXR Gigabit Ethernet Card

First, I installed Fedora 8 using the standard installation process.
However, I did perform a custom partitioning, pre-allocating a 60 GB
partition for the Solaris OS and giving it the partition type "bf".
Once I had Fedora 8 up and running, I installed the latest version of
the Java 6 platform on the system and ran the Sun Device Detection
Tool, a JNLP-enabled application that can help determine if your system
is capable of running the Solaris OS without specialized drivers or
configuration. The results are shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: The Sun Device Detection Tool
Click
here
for a larger image.

Because the hardware seemed to be compatible, I started configuring
for a dual-boot system. The good news: I found that it is possible to
dual-boot a machine with Solaris Express Developer Edition 09/07. If
you are using Windows, the installation program automatically installs
Solaris GRUB, which presents you with a menu at bootup asking which
operating system you would like to start.
If you are using Linux, and you wish to dual-boot SXDE, we recommend this procedure only for advanced
users that are familiar with GRUB and partitioning disks, as this is
currently unsupported by Sun Microsystems, Inc. However, if you wish to
create a dual-boot system, you will need a Rescue CD or equivalent
approach to log in to the Linux partition after the SXDE installation
is complete.
To create a dual-boot system:

Back up any important data on your Linux partition, in case things go wrong.

In Linux, use the fdisk tool to create a new partition
on your drive. Change the partition type to the identifier "bf", if it
is not that type already, and write out the new partition table. Also, make sure that any Linux swap partitions come after the Solaris partition on the drive. Otherwise, the Solaris GRUB will not recognize the correct Solaris partition. Note that this may require you to edit the /etc/fstab file on your Linux partition, so be sure that Linux works with its new swap partition before continuing.

Install Solaris Express Developer Edition as shown above. Ensure
that the Solaris partition that you just created is the installation
target for SXDE.

Use the Rescue CD to log in as root to your primary Linux partition. Create an entry in your grub.conf
file that is similar to the following (this assumes that the Solaris OS
is the second partition on hard drive 0), and return the "grub-install"
script on the drive that contains the master boot record (MBR).

title Solaris
     rootnoverify (hd0,1)
     chainloader +1


At this point, the Linux GRUB should start on boot and allow you to
choose the Solaris OS. Once chosen, Solaris displays its own GRUB that
allows you to run the OS or perform maintenance. Of course, it would be
optimal to have a single GRUB for both operating systems, but I was
unable to get this to work.
Conclusion

Solaris installation has come a long ways since the early days of
the Solaris x86 OS. There are a number of options that allow
administrators and developers to try out the Solaris OS on their own
systems, including dual-boot and VMWare options. In addition, I was
pleasantly surprised to discover just how functional Solaris Express
Developer Edition (SXDE) 09/07 was right out of the box, including
support for the Java platform, various enterprise servers, and the
NetBeans IDE.
For More Information

• Sun Solaris: See
  the home page for the Solaris OS.
  
• Solaris Developer Center: The
  Solaris Developer Center
  is great place for those who wish to do development on the Solaris OS,
  including advice on the NetBeans IDE, Sun Studio tools, and multi-core
  development.
• Sun Device Detection Tool 2.0: The
  device detection tool
  can tell if Solaris Express Developer Edition had the proper driver support for your system.
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE): See
  the home page for Solaris Express Developer Edition.
  
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) Download: You can
  download
  a three-part DVD ISO image or a VMWare Virtual Machine.
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) Support: The
  official support site
  for SXDE.
• VMWare Workstation (Windows) or Fusion (Mac OS X Intel):  Allows you to create a virtual machine for Solaris Express Developer Edition. You can
  download
  a 30-day trial.

About the Author

Robert Eckstein has worked with Java since its first release. In a
previous life, he has been a programmer and editor for O'Reilly Media,
Inc. and a programmer for Motorola's cellular technology division. He
has written or edited a number of books, including Java Swing,
Java Enterprise Best Practices, Using Samba, XML Pocket Reference, and Webmaster in a Nutshell.
In his spare time he has been known to tinker with filmmaking and
digital photography, as well as hacking with vintage video game
consoles.
               
               
               
               
               

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