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Two Platform Groups, One Installation of the Solaris OS

Craig S. Bell, April 2007

Background

My shop has machines running both sun4u and sun4v platform groups, so we maintain two customized Flash images for the Solaris 10 Operating System. Aside from the platform group, these builds are practically identical. When we refresh the system image, every modification must be applied (and tested) twice.

There are clear advantages to merging the separate images into a single UltraSPARC build. In an attempt to prove the concept, I generated a hybrid image of the Solaris 10 OS that installs and runs on both platform groups. Using a single build on both platform groups is not currently supported by Sun; however, it seems to work.

Sun provides a single Solaris 10 miniroot for the SPARC platform. The same DVD boots on both sun4u and sun4v machines. This situation is a special case, but it suggests that unification should be possible.

Note: Much of the credit for the following procedure goes to the various authors of this OpenSolaris install discussion thread.

How to Build a Unified Image for the Solaris 10 OS for SPARC Platforms

1. Insert the Solaris 10 Update 3 for SPARC DVD into a sun4u machine (my source is a Sun Fire V490 server), and start a typical installation:

ok boot cdrom - install

2. After system configuration, perform an initial installation of metacluster SUNWCXall ("Everything plus OEM"). A single 5 GB slice ought to hold everything. Don't eject the DVD yet. Reboot.

3. On the newly created system, install the sun4v packages (there are 12) from the same Solaris 10 Update 3 for SPARC DVD. All the packages should install cleanly:

# cd /cdrom/sol_10_1106_sparc/s0/Solaris_10/Product
# pkgadd -d . *.v*

4. Add the second platform group to /var/sadm/system/admin/.platform. The flar tools check this location when generating archive header data. Here's the result (you might see additional lines):

# cat /var/sadm/system/admin/.platform
PLATFORM_GROUP=sun4u
INST_ARCH=sparc
PLATFORM_GROUP=sun4v

5. When the system is configured to your satisfaction, create a Flash archive. Both platform groups should be listed in the archive header, as follows:

# flar create <options> <path_to_hybrid>.flar
# flar -i <path_to_hybrid>.flar | grep content_architectures

content_architectures=sun4u,sun4v

6. Extract the unified Flash archive onto a sun4v host (my target is a Sun Fire T2000 server). The host should boot and run normally. Imagine what you're going to do with all of your newly found free time.

7. Finally, check smf(5) for the state of any platform- or group-specific services. In my case, there is a service that is common to all sun4v hosts:

# svcs -o state,fmri,desc *sun4v*
STATE     FMRI                              DESC
online    svc:/platform/sun4v/drd:default   logical domain
   dynamic reconfiguration

# ls -l /var/svc/profile/platform.xml
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          18 Feb  1 11:29
   /var/svc/profile/platform.xml -> platform_sun4v.xml

Summary

It appears that you can easily merge the sun4u and sun4v platform groups for the Solaris OS on SPARC platforms using a typical disk installation. My result is not future-proofed; it's rather likely that more steps are necessary to survive an upgrade or to otherwise reach a supportable configuration.

In that vein, I wonder whether Sun plans to:

1. Support the Solaris 10 OS with both SPARC platform groups simultaneously installed
2. Enhance the Solaris 10 installation tools for explicit platform group selection

I look forward to the time when we can merge our two UltraSPARC system images and instantly halve our maintenance tasks.

About the Author

Craig Bell (cbell [at] standard.com) is a Solaris system administrator from Portland, Oregon who cannot decide whether he is a Roy or a Moss. OK, he's definitely a Roy.

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