Cannot Boot Cd TO Install Solaris 11

UNIX Solaris
1

Recently our school acquired a number of Sun Blade 100 systems from a university that was previously using them as a computational cluster. We intend to rig them to do the same thing, but they failed to give us the head node, and all the machines we have are still configured to boot from network. I've managed to turn off auto-boot so I can reach the ok prompt, but having never used Solaris or a Sun system for that matter, I have no clue where to go since none of the boot devices seem to work. I've tried the various combinations of boot commands for the cdrom drives, but it can never seem to open boot device.

Thinking it might have been an error in the hardware, I replaced the CD drive to an old HP CD Writer Plus 8200 series, jumped it to be master on the actual drive, and tried again. Still no luck. I haven't an idea where to go from now since I've never used OpenBoot before and can't seem to figure the correct arguments to try and locate the thing myself. I'm using a burned Solaris 11 Express disc if that makes a difference. (hence why I tried a new drive)

Any outputs you may need, feel free to ask. I don't know if I can pipe it anywhere, so I'll just type it up.

2

Try the following from the ok prompt;

boot cdrom -s - install

If you have a problem post the output - I'll be here for an other couple of hours.

Regards

Dave

3

Same problem, but I checked the output of devalias and noticed something strange:

cdrom /pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/cdrom@1,0:f
cdrom2 /pci@1f,0/ide@d/cdrom@2,0:f
cdrom1 /pci@1f,0/ide@d/cdrom@1,0:f
cdrom /pci@1f,0/ide@d/cdrom@1,0:f

It seems there are multiple aliases and one seems to duplicate a name and the other the parameters. I have no clue why. Any advice?

4

Post output of

show-devs
5 
/pci@1f,0/S0NW,m64B@13
/pci@1f,0/pci@5
/pci@1f,0/ide@d
/pci@1f,0/sound@8
/pci@1f,0/pmu@3
/pci@1f,0/usb@c,3
/pci@1f,0/firewire@c,2
/pci@1f,0/netowrk@c,1
/pci@1f,0/isa@7
/pci@1f,0/ebus@c
/pci@1f,0/ide@d/cdrom
/pci@1f,0/ide@d/disk

I didn't list all of them, if you need more I can append it if need be. I put the majority of what seemed relevant.

6

Solaris 11 only supports T- and M-Series Sparc Servers. The Sun Blade 100 includes an ancient Ultra Sparc IIe CPU, which is no longer supported.

7

It is true for Solaris 11, but not necessarily true for Solaris 11 Express (which OP mentioned in the first post).

8

Is the Solaris 11 express disk a DVD or a CD?

10

Its a CD from this oracle link(can't post URLs yet): /technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html

11

from the same link you will find this:
OTN - Oracle Solaris 11 11/11: Hardware Compatibility List
your system is not supported with solaris 11...

12

Well, that's an oversight on my part. Okay, let's try it this way:

What versions of Solaris are usable with the Sun Blade 100 and how can I go about obtaining and installing them?

13

I'm reliably (Sun Kernel Writer) informed that the Sun Blade 100 has a SPARC IIe processor, this will probably not run anything above Solaris 2.8 the best bet for a CD copy of this would probably be Ebay.

Regards

Dave

14

solaris 10 will run on the blade 100:
OTN - HCL: Sun Microsystems Sun Blade 100

15

Solaris 11, which you appear to have downloaded, requires 64-bit platforms.

Solaris 11 Express supports both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. You might be able to get Solaris Express to run on your hardware. However you are probably better sticking with the latest release of Solaris 10.

16

I take it all back and someone who worked for Sun as a driver/kernel writer for almost 20 years will have to buy me some beers!:o

17

Technically, you should be able to run Solaris 10, OpenSolaris based distributions and Solaris 11 Express on a SB100. However, low end SB100 have 512 MB of RAM, not enough for the installer to complete successfully.

In such case, you might install milax, a lightweight OpenSolaris based OS. The bootable CD doesn't seem to be downloadable any more but there are wanboot images here.

In any case, here is a useful SB100 FAQ: 040.digital-bless.com: Unofficial SUN Blade 100 FAQ

18

All UltraSPARC CPUs are 64-bit.

The current release of Solaris 11 won't run on an UltraSPARC IIe, but any version of Solaris 10 shoud run just fine - just don't use the JDS desktop, it'll be waaaay too slow. Use CDE instead. Better yet, just disable X Windows logins on the box entirely and SSH/telnet in from a new Linux box or similar and use the remote display.