Cloning a Sunblade 2500

UNIX Solaris
1

Good Morning,

I took a mirror drive from one Solaris 9 machine and used it to set up another. After syncing another mirror on the second machine I restarted but I don't get a login screen.

I see a message:

The X-server cannot be started on display :0

Also during startup I see:

Can't find driver for console framebuffer

Could someone please help me troubleshoot this?

2

You are cloning a Sunblade 2500 to another Sunblade 2500?

Are they the same hardware revision?

It looks like the O/S isn't loading the correct graphics driver. Do you know the type of graphics card in each? Are they the same?

You might have some luck if you tell Solaris to reconfigure at boot time:

ok> boot -r

If it's a third-party graphics adapter you might need to get drivers for it.

Can you get into single-user text mode with:

ok> boot -s

More questions than answers right now I'm afraid.

1 Like
3

Thanks.

Yes- 2500 to 2500.

Not sure about hardware revision. I did look at the video cards (info below). Should I look at something else?

I could

boot -r

and

boot -s

. Both will boot the machine but it looks about the same.

I opened them up. The card on the old machine is a 3D Labs card. The card on the new machine is ATI Radeon Graphics. When I boot up, I do see text and a Sun XVR 100 graphics logo just fine.

Is the different card my issue?

4

Yes, I reckon the different graphics adapters is the issue. Sunblade 2500's come in different flavors. You have one with a 3D Labs card (aka Sun OEM XVR-600) and one with an ATI Radeon card (aka Sun OEM XVR-100).

Since they are both Sun OEM cards I would have thought that both drivers would be on your Solaris 9 installation media but I'm not sure (yet).

You could download the manufacturer's drivers but, in this case, I would rather download the Sun/Oracle version specifically for Solaris.

I'll need to check this out. Try searching this forum whilst I do that.

Perhaps another Solaris specialist will chime in too.

You could try swapping the card over from the other system but I'm not going to recommend you do that because you might generate a problem with your working system. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

1 Like
5

I never used the installation media though I do have some. I only used the Operating Environment ROM when putting this together with the mirror drive.

What do I do now?

6

Well, if you have the Solaris 9 install media you could do a new install on another disk to see if it installs the correct graphics driver and everything works.

I understand what you are trying to do but, physically mirroring a disk, is not really the way to achieve it. You could have used 'flarcreate' to create a flash archive of the whole system which would be easier to restore to the new box whilst coping with the different graphics adapter.

Ideally, we can find a download of Sun's XVR-100 driver and install that.

I may well ask around to see if anyone still has the driver(s) in distribution form.

1 Like
7

Installing the Sun XVR-100 Graphics Accelerator Hardware and Software

This says the drivers for Solaris 8, 9 & 10 are on the Solaris 10 media which you can download.

Oracle Solaris 10 Downloads

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9

OK.. Thank you everyone..

The machine is up and running!

For the record- the drivers were in fact on the Solaris 9 Software CDs (

(/Product

directory- disk 1 of 2) even though you read in many places that you need the 10 CDs.

I

pkgadd -d

ed

SUNWpfbcf, SUNWpfbx, SUNWpfbw

and the GUI came right up..

1 Like
10

@Stellaman1977 ......thank you for posting the solution. It's great to see a new member who can take a few pointers and run their own investigation and not expect a solution on a plate. Welcome to the forums.

1 Like