Q: How do I configure the default route when installing the Solaris 8 OE? I never get prompted, and cannot configure my DNS server without it.
A:
In Solaris 8 Update 4 (04/01) and later, your default route will
attempt to be auto-detected, and used if found. If you use a sysidcfg
file, you can use the new "default_route" keyword to specify the route. Q: During flash archive creation (using flarcreate), I sometimes see "cpio: error: size of /etc/mnttab has changed" but the archive is created successfully. What gives? A: Internally, flarcreate uses cpio. However, cpio has known limitations when used to archive filesystems that are rapidly changing. Things in Solaris, such as the automounter, cause /etc/mnttab to change, and should be shut down before the archive is created. Q: Can I install Solaris using DVDs? A: Solaris 8 Update 7 (02/02) and later ship on DVDs. Check out the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) found at www.sun.com/solaris to find out if your DVD drive is supported. Q: How do I know what release of Solaris I just installed? A: cat /etc/release Q: What's the difference between installing the latest Solaris patches, and upgrading to the latest Solaris release? A: Simply installing the latest Solaris patches will get you security fixes and general software bugfixes, while installing (or upgrading to) the latest Solaris Release will get you new features as well. Q: Can I use Veritas with [Solaris Install|Solaris Upgrade|Live Upgrade|Flash]? A: Live Upgrade is able to work with Veritas. There is detailed documentation about using Veritas with Live Upgrade on the Live Upgrade website. However, the other tools do not, by their core OS nature, have direct support for Veritas. For details on working with Veritas in Solaris Install and/or Flash environments, see www.sun.com/blueprints. Q: Can I use the Solaris install program to update Solaris 8 with a MU release or do I have to wait for the update release?
A:
You can use the MU (Maintainence Update) to upgrade; however, the MU releases
only contain critical bugfixes and security patches, and do not contain all of the new features that the Update Release has to offer. If you only need bugfixes, go with the MU. Q: I recently bought a Sun Ultra 5 and put Solaris 8 on it. I have another PC with Windows XP and DSL. I would like to connect my Sun box to my DSL and my PC so I purchased a DSL router. I only have one problem how do I configure my Sun box to acknowledge my DSL and PC. I would also like to setup NIS on the system. I'm a novice at this and I have tried to find out in every book but I have had no success.Could you please help me out.
A:
I presume your ISP only gave you a single IP address, and you are going
to use the router to allow you to connect multiple machines through your
ISP. In this case, you probably want your Sun machine acting as the
NIS server, and the rest of the machines acting as NIS clients.
Q: Does Solaris (X86) support Intel 815 built-in display? If yes, then how do I install it? A: Yes, it does support the Intel i815 display chipset in the latest Solaris 8 releases. However, it does not support 1280x1024x24 or 1600x1200x24. For these resolutions, you must use a lower (8-bit) color depth. Q: Is JumpStart installation supported in network with netmask different from class of network. For example, if I have network 192.168.0.0 with netmask /22 (configured properly in sysidcfg, and on install server itself), what additional steps should I perform to make it working?
A:
Yes, it is possible. Solaris Install uses the ICMP NETMASK REQUEST
(ICMP_MASKREQ) packet to ask the
server what the appropriate netmask is. As long as the server responds with the appropriate
netmask, everything should go smoothly, and the machine should be configured with the correct netmask.
Q: Is the (first) CD necessary or can I use it as a table mat? ;) A: You can use whichever one accomplishes the task. The Installation CD takes a while because it must copy a portion of itself over to the local disk, then reboot to that disk, to allow you to eject the CD and insert other ones. However, Solaris 8 02/02 now ships on DVD so that alleviates that particular limitation. In addition, 02/02 also allows jumpstart installs from the DVD, thereby negating the need for the "1of2" and "2of2" CDs, or any other extra CD such as the Language CD or Documentation CD. Until the base distribution grows larger than one DVD, this should make things easier. Q: Is there a reasonably easy way to determine what software packages need to be installed (ie. dependencies) when installing a system (a checklist showing dependencies would be nice!)
A:
We don't produce an explicit dependency checklist,
as it would be very large (there are over 1300 packages
in the base distribution).
Q: On SunFire class machines, if one chooses to install the "Core" distribution, will that include all necessary drivers for the platform, including environmental monitors, DR controls, etc?
A:
"Core" is a basic set of services, enough to make the thing
boot and function at a basic level, and does indeed include
drivers for things like dynamic reconfiguration, but may not include
advanced utilities and tools that you would get with an End User
or Developer system, such as fancy environmental monitors or
DR tools. But rest assured that the drivers are there.
Q: I'm getting the following error with Web Start Flash installation and Solaris 8 7/01: I create the flash archive with flarcreate -n name -R / archive_name (about 5GB file) and when I run the installation via jumpstart, the client shows a wrong flash archive size (1041MB) and shows the following error messages: -------------------
WARNING: Flash Archive IDs do not match (possible corrupt archive)
-------------------How can I fix this problem?
A:
This is a known bug with Flash. Internally, it uses as data type
which is 32 bits wide (4GB). When an archive gets larger than that,
an overflow occurs, and Flash thinks the size is (true_size % 4GB),
which in your case is around 1GB. The workaround is to use multiple,
smaller archives, each being less than 4GB. This is fixed in the
upcoming Solaris 9 release. We will most likely backport this to
Solaris 8, as many customers have also run into this bug, but no
guarantees on that one.
Q: Where is there complete information on creating a flash-archive and getting it onto a CD in a usable format?
A:
docs.sun.com
has complete documentation on Flash, including a step-by-step guide
on how to create and administer archives, as well as a reference of
for the various flash commands.
Q: We have had major issues getting our Sun Solaris 8 (Sparc) computer to connect to our DNS. We did the install selected DNS as the network protocol (vs NIS) and entered the appropriate Hostname, Server IP Addresses, Subnet Mask, etc. but when we get to a command prompt we still cannot ping any other servers, intranet or external. Any suggestions for where we should start looking (unix commands and books) for solutions to this conundrum? We even did a sys-unconfig and re-entered all the information again and that didn't work either.
A:
It sounds like you do not have a valid default route configured.
Routing Table: IPv4 Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface --------------- ----------- ----- ----- ------ --------- default 10.10.10.1 UG 1 475Which Update Release of Solaris 8 are you using? You can find out by looking at /etc/release on the installed system. In Solaris 8 04/01 (Update 4) and later, the ability to autodetect, and/or specify a default router (gateway) was added to Solaris Install. If you are using 04/01 and later, you can specify the default route by using the Installation CD, or by using jumpstart and specifying a default route via the "default_route" keyword in your sysidcfg file. PART II: Question Thanks for the assistance, howerver we still have not been able to figure out how to fix our problems. Below is a copy of our /etc/release and "netstat -r" :
$ more /etc/release
Solaris 8 10/00 s28s_u2wos_11b SPARC
Copyright 2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Assembled 31 August 2000
Note: We have just applied the "Recommended_8.zip" patches $ netstat -r Routing Table: IPv4 Destination Gateway Flags Ref Use Interface --------------- ----------- ----- ----- ------ --------- 144.23.224.0 isdtoscsun U 1 1 hm PART II: Answer You are using an older release of Solaris 8, which does not have the ability to configure your default route, which is why it's not working. You can attempt to configure the route automatically by running /usr/sbin/in.rdisc -s This will send out a three broadcast packet looking for any local routers. If it finds one, it will configure it for you. You can verify that it found one from either the return code from in.rdisc, or running netstat -r again and looking for a new entry with the "G" flag. If you know the IP address of the router on the local network, you can run "route add -net default <ipaddr>" where <paddr> is the IP address of the router, and that will manually configure it. If you use Solaris 8 04/01 or later (Update 4), this should automatically be done for you. Q: How can I change boot sequence of Sun Ultra? (I would like to boot from cd-rom (Sun Solaris CD)). How to change?
A:
If you *always* want it to boot from the cdrom,
change the "boot-device" EEPROM setting. You
can type:
# eeprom boot-device="cdrom disk"
from the running system, or from the "ok" prompt, type "setenv
boot-device cdrom disk" which will cause the
machine to attempt to boot to the cdrom first,
then the disk.
If you just want it to boot from the cdrom once, type "boot cdrom" from the "ok" prompt. Q: Can I install Solaris 8 1/01 on Sun Blade 100 systems? A: No. Sun Blade 100 systems require Solaris 8 07/01 ("Update 5") or later due to it's advanced USB and IEEE394 (Firewire) features. See http://www.sun.com/desktop/sunblade100/faq.html for more information. Q: What is the easiest way to get rid of the many many language bundles that came installed on my Sun Blade 100 (Solaris 8)?
A:
The easiest way is by running /usr/bin/prodreg.
This will show you each of the Localization bundles
that are installed on the machine, each of which can
be uninstalled by clicking on the localization bundle,
then clicking on "Uninstall".
Q: I've setup a jumpstart server based on Linux. Will Sun provide users with "fixed" scripts? Do you know of some? It seems that the netmask settings during istall is completely broken. I've not been able to install a client with a class A address however using subnetting to e.g. /24. Is it possible to install clients with IP 10.2.3.30/24 and a server IP 10.2.3.50/24? A: Linux distributions based on kernel 2.2.x do not respond, or support, the ICMP's ICMP_MASKREQ and ICMP_MASKREPLY responses, and therefore cannot be used as bootparams-based jumpstart servers. You must therefore use DHCP to install and configure your machines if you are going to use Linux as the OS running on your jumpstart servers. Q: I am looking for Solaris 7 (x86) version startup disk software to create the disks and install the OS. Could you please advise the URL to download the above. A: Sun does not distribute downloadable, burnable Solaris 7 images. Solaris 8 and above can be downloaded from www.sun.com/solaris/binaries. Q: How can I back up (tar) applications & data from a network install client, using a begin script, where I want the backup to go to a directory on the install/jumpstart server, when the /jumpstart and /export/install directories can only be shared read-only?
A:
You can mount a directory from the install server from your begin script.
Make sure the directory you are mounting is shared read-write:
Q: How can I download the free Solaris 8 for Intel? A: Kits for Solaris 8 Intel are available at http://www.sun.com/solaris/binaries. Only the Sparc edition is available for download. Q: We're currently using ufsdump "images" of filesystems to install or reimage like/similar systems. When I tried this on a Sblade1000 recently for the first time (Solaris 8) it didn't work. If fails when trying to mount /usr, saying the device doesn't exist (/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s3), but the device does exist, and the vfstab is correct. This is the first time using this technique on a Sblade, as well as Solaris 8. Any ideas? A: Did the system you were installing the ufsdump "image" on have the exact same disk hardware and configuration as the one the image was taken from? If not, then it's most likely that the symlinks and device node entries in /dev and /devices are not correct. Have you considered using Flash and Jumpstart as an alternative to ufsdump/ufsrestore? It does things like reconfigure the entries in /dev and /devices for you, among other things. Q: How can I start a Jump-Start-Installation (Solaris 8) on a E3500 with an flash-archive on a tape? A: Using jumpstart, you can specify to extract from a tape device with the following example jumpstart profile: #---------------------------- install_type flash_install archive_location local_tape /dev/rmt/0 partitioning existing #----------------------------If you have more complicated disk slice requirements, you can use alternate jumpstart keywords to configure them. Read the Solaris 8 Advanced Install Guide on docs.sun.com for more information on using Flash with tapes. Q: Some of our Solaris installation server are AIX machines. If we install a SUN Solaris machine from one of this servers, the installation hangs while configuring the network adapter used for the installation. The installation continues after we do a "ping" to the network adpater of the machine to install. From reading your previous answer I assume this is only a problem with the method for detecting the correct netmask - is this correct? Is there another automatic solution for this problem? A: It does not sound like your problem is related to netmask - if the machine somehow "wakes up" when you ping it from a remote system, it sounds like there may be a problem with your network router configuration. Q: Is there a utility for SUN-OS to make create a bootable/restorable tape of the OS, like mksysb for AIX and ignite for HP-UX?
A:
You cannot boot Solaris directly from a tape device - it does
not exist as a mountable root filesystem when it's on the tape.
Q: Why can't I install Solaris 8 on an Ultra 60? I was trying to install Solaris 8 10/1 on a U60. Usually I use the 1of 2 CD to boot and install from CD-Rom, but in U60s it doesn't work. Do I need to use WebStart? Why is the Webstart CD required for u60 were as the u5 and u10 works fine with 1of 2 cds? A: The 1of2 CD should boot and install an Ultra 60. What was the error message you saw? Do you happen to have hardware on the system that is unsupported in Solaris 8 10/01 (according to the Hardware Compatibility List)? Q: It's more of a wish list kind of thing but... with all the focus on redundancy and uptime from IT is there any plan to be able to do a mirror install using Disk Suite when you go thgough the install from CD or DVD? A: While I cannot give specifics regarding unreleased software, SDS support is certainly one area where Install could benefit greatly. Q: We have reinstalled the Solaris on Sun Blade 100. After that can you tell me how I can add the Domain name and where I should add it? We are trying to install Oracle Financials and we need the DNS Domain name for that.Can you help me to resolve this issue? Thanks in advance.
A:
You can put your domain name in the /etc/domainname file, or specify
it explicitly for the current session using /usr/bin/domainname Q: I have the following problem: When boot machine am receiving it the following : Cannot read /usr/lib/ld.so.1
and the machine reboots automaticaly.There is no CD-Rom in the machine. Can you help me? A: It sounds like you did not completely install the machine. I suggest re-installing it, as it appears critical system files are missing and the time it would take to replace some or all of them would not be worth it. Q: Flash Archive is a good start to custom-restore system but it still doesn't support restoring a mirrored one. It would be really nice to have something like AIX's mksysb. Can we expect flash or anything in S9 (S10?) that will support restoring a system to its complete state including mirrors? A: While I cannot give specifics regarding unreleased software, SDS and/or VxVM support is certainly one area where Install could benefit greatly. Q: Have you created any "jumpstart" scripts for special installs? I want to have a minimal Solaris install (no unneded packages). By manually selecting packages, I have gotten it down to about 50 (needed tools for compiler). However once I installed a fresh system with only those 58 packages, useradd doesn't want to add users and complains that uid 100 is taken. Newsgroups produced some ideas that SUNWnisr and nisu need to be installed. Why? If I don't need them, why would they break useradd? (nsswitch.conf has files) This is a fresh install of Sol8 sparc, so nothing has been changed (other than some networking setup files). A: SUNWnisu contains getent, which used to be used by useradd, but no more. Check the output of "pwck" and see if it reports password file inconsistencies. Q: How do you upgrade to the latest release and not just patch level? Is there a patch cluster you do this by or by cdrom only or what ?
A:
To upgrade to a new update release (such as "Solaris 8 Update 7"), you
must use the Solaris Update CDs/DVDs, or download the images from
www.sun.com/solaris/binaries.
Q: We have a Enterprise 5500 server running that services a large part of our company. We just bought another one. We want to make it as close as possible both hardware and software wise as the original enterprise server. Do you have suggestions or a software package that would probe all the hardware on both the servers that would make somewhat of a fairly accurate comparison between the two so we can purchase additional hardware etc. for the one we just bought?
A:
In terms of software, it is easy to clone the existing system using Solaris
Flash technology. You would simply create a snapshot of the original machine using /usr/sbin/flarcreate, then re-deploy that archive to the new machine using traditional flash installation applications such as suninstall or Web Start Flash.
Q: Is there a utility to do a OS backup, which can be restored?
A:
Yes, Web Start Flash can be used to backup the OS, and restore it later.
See http://www.sun.com/blueprints/1101/webstart.pdf.
Q: As all good Solaris folks are interested when will Solaris 8 02/02 ship and when will it be available on the download site as ISOs (for SPARC platforms)? A: Solaris 8 02/02 went out the door to manufacturing and resellers on Feb. 4th. The binaries for 02/02 are already available at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html. Q: According to the documentation the Flash installation is supposed to work with Solaris 8 and newer only. We did some tests and found out that it *seems* to work also for Solaris 7 installations (booting Solaris 8 to create the archive and also to install the archive). Because the machines I'm talking about are our production server I want to be sure: Is the Flash installation of Solaris 7 ok? If yes, what about installing Solaris 6 this way? Is it supported by SUN?
A:
I'm not surprised that Flash works with for Solaris 7 and earlier. We
actually tested it and had success back to 2.5.1. However, *Flash is only
support on Solaris 8 01/01 and later*. We do not ship Flash on
earlier releases, nor do we support creating archives from machines
running the earlier releases.
Q: I would like to triple boot my home system with XP, Sol8-Intel & Linux. What type of problems would you predict I might have installing Sol8 in this scenario?
A:
The main problem with dual booting is the boot manager that you use
to select which OS to boot. Windows XP will overwrite it and not
allow you to boot anything but Windows XP. Therefore, install XP first,
then install Solaris, and finally, Linux. When installing Linux, make sure
to NOT let Linux use the Solaris partition as it's swap device (they have
the same partition ID and Linux will try to use it by default). Finally,
install LILO (the Linux boot manager), and use it to select which
OS to boot.
Q: I need to install NTP on Solaris 8 (on a netra). I have found documentation on how to setup NTP, and that NTP version 3.95xxx is included on Solaris 8. I have not been able to find the executables on the system, nor have I been able to find the appropriate package on the Solaris 8 cd's. I have the Solaris 8 4/01 cd's. I have searched using 'find / -name \*ntp\*' Searching the sun website returns too many hits and a lot of false leads - I've wasted several hours on this. Somewhere, there should be a list of all the packages for solaris 8, their descriptions, and where to find the NTP package for solaris 8 on the cd's. If there's a simple search that finds this, please let me know for future use.
A:
Sun's NTP implementation lies in the SUNWntpr and SUNWntpu packages.
Q: How do I exclude mutliple directiores which creating a flash archive using flarcreate? A: You can't. It's a shortcoming of Flash that will be fixed in Solaris 9 Update 2. Q: I am having a problem installing Solaris 8 (sparc) on my Ultra 10 workstation. I keep getting error NOTICE: ata_controller - Primary Channel BSY set after reset. No hard disk found on system. A: This is a known bug in Solaris which has been fixed in Solaris 8 Update 7 (02/02), and Solaris 9. Q: I am using an Ultra-60 Solaris 2.7 system as my jumpstart server. I have been succesful in jumpstarting Solaris 7 and 8 images on systems, primarily Ultra-2s, but also Ultra-60s. One system is giving me, "Rx fifo Overflow" error messages. This system used to have dual 450Mhz processors, but it has dual 296Mhz processors at this time, atleast that is what the banner page is telling me during the boot up sequence. Do you know what the issue might be? What is the patch that I need for my jumpstart server for processors above 419Mhz? A: This bug has been reported on numerous platforms over time, and, unfortunatly no patch has been issued that I could find. Several people have reported using 10MBPS speeds with no issues. You can either do that, or try a later revision of the OS (like Solaris 8 Update 7) and see if it fixes your problem. Q: I have installed Solaris 8 on my Intel machine. I want to get up and running on the Internet, and I've got an USB Alcatel modem. I need to get the drivers for this modem so that I can take advantage of the Netscape that's on Solaris. Do you know where I can get those drivers and also is there anything special that I need to do in order to get started on the Internet? A: Alcatel USB modems aren't on the Hardware Compability List, which means Sun does not produce a driver for that device. Searching the Alcatel website, I could not find any Solaris drivers, so the solution is to use a modem that is supported on Solaris. Q: Can you please tell me how to disable the help viewer from coming up each time Solaris is booted? A: A system administrator can replace the set of applications that are started as part of the user's initial session by copying /usr/dt/config/language/sys.session to /etc/dt/config/language/sys.session and modifying the latter file. Unlike the resource files, this file will be used as a complete replacement for the desktop default file, so you can make a copy of the system default file and make any necessary modifications. Q: How can I change the frame buffer resolution on a Ultra Sparc 10 machine while still in PROM mode? A: If you are using a Creator 3D card, and you wanted 1280x1024x76 (76 is the refresh rate), you could type: ok setenv output-device screen:r1280x1024x76 ok resetAlso, check out the framebuffer FAQ at: http://www.sunhelp.org/faq/FrameBuffer.html Q: Why can't I install Solaris 8 x86 on an Intel SCB2 based server? Is there any workaround?
A:
The Intel SCB2 motherboard typically uses a Promise Technology
PDC20267 IDE controller chipset that is not compatible with Solaris.
When booting a Solaris kernel, an ATA timeout occurs and the
IDE CD-ROM can no longer be used. It is therefore impossible to
install Solaris 8 from a CD-ROM.
Q: Someone has changed the root shell from sh to /sbin/csh in /etc/passwd then logged off. Unfortunely csh is not in /sbin. I'm working onto a Netra X1 without cdrom. I'm trying to do boot from remote cdrom but, without root permission I cannot mount remote cd. A: The easiest way, without the ability to boot cdrom or off the net, is to take the drive out, plug it into a different machine with a cdrom (or one you have root access to), mount the root filesystem, and change the shell back. Q: When I setup a Jumpstart server, I always have issues with the keyword password. Does this keyword work with all Software clusters or is it a "limited" key word?
A:
It works with all Software Groups except "Core".
With "Core", you do not get the sysid suite
of utilities by default, so you don't get /usr/sbin/sysidroot,
which consumes the root passwd setting in your
sysidcfg file. You can install it, but you must also
install it's requisite packages if you are going to install
it with "Core".
Q: Installed Solaris 7 64 bit with OEM. The machine used to have Solaris 8 installed. I now cannot use NFS. If I mount a filesystem from any other OS including Solaris (2.6 or 8) and try to copy a file larger than a MB big across network I get "NFS server not responding" and the terminal locks. I then have problems doing any other file system activities until I reboot the machine. Have I missed something when I moved the server back a version of the OS?? Or is it possible that I now hae a hardware problem. A: It sounds like re-installing and re-booting the server has caused all the clients connected to it to get what are known as "Stale NFS file handles", since the machine they were talking NFS to was suddenly re-installed with a different OS. Before using NFS after this activity, you need to re-cycle the NFS client system by issuing the command "/etc/init.d/nfs.client stop; /etc/init.d/nfs.client start". |
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