I have bought a used SUN Enterprise 250 server that currently runs solaris 8. Ive downloaded solaris 10 (sparc edition) from sun.com, and have burned the iso files to cd roms. So far so good.
I can log into the system via the serial interface (port A).
I want to sweep the discs, and install solaris 10 from scratch. I never before installed solaris, but a few times I did install freeBSD, though that was on x86 scale. I cannot interface via keyboard, and also theres no graphical interface to connect to, only ethernet plugs, and broad serial plugs.
How do I manage to clear the system and install the new OS?
is there perhaps another unix that can run on Sparc CPUs?
connecting via serial port a is ok. you should see a prompt "ok". insert the cd (sol10) and type "boot cdrom" at the ok-prompt. during the install process you'll be asked to setup the disk.
Just installing the OS will not wipe the drives. All areas need to be written to. Take a spare disk and run the analyze and verify steps of the format command. This will write to all areas twice ensuring that data is overwritten.
yeah - what i really need is to bust all data from those discs, no backup or anything. You recommend installing a new disc to do this from? -should i carry the discs to another system to format them there? -and put them back in the server to get on with the OS installations ?
no, this is not required, and probably all that is required is that you clear the slices from the vtoc. Jost go through the disks and make all the slices on the disks of size 0 (except slice 2) and you should be fine.
yeah, well... I dont really know what you mean by that "go through the slices exept slice 2". Is this a standard part of the installations procedure of Solaris 10 ?
I am not certain of the reasons for your need to scrub your disks. If it is required that no previous data exists on your disks, then what reborg is stating is not sufficient. See the sun doc at ttp://www.sun.com/blueprints/0600/scrub.pdf for further clarification on what I am stating.
if I do remove the driver (4 pieces) from the server, and format them elsewhere, then when theyre back in the server, would it boot on CDrom by itself? -or is it more like BIOS that I have to set it to boot on cdrom. Since no OS then would be installed I figure that I cant escape to the OK prompt to enter reboot -cdrom.
Absolutely, as I understood it the objective was not to scrub, but merely to remove any visible existing data from the previous install, ie that there would be no old software/files visible. I would still reccommend strongly against doing the disk moves, the less handling a disk gets the better as far as I am concerned.
I would always use an alternate boot media ( CD/DVD/network ) in this situation and maintain custom recovery/wiping images with additional tools for this type of task, but could just as easily do it with the format command in the way suggested by Just Ice. I don't see any reason for transporting the disks to another system to do this.
I would also not recommend moving the disks to another system. It is generally wise to limit the number of power interruptions to the system. You can achieve the scrubing of your root disks by mirroring your root disk (SVM/DiskSuite). Install the OS how you want it. Scrub your second disk then partition the second disk the same as your root disk, make the second disk bootable, and mirror the second disk you can then break the submirror to the first disk scrub it and repeat the process to add it back to the root mirror. Vxvm offers a scrubbing feature but vxvm requires a license.
the Solaris 10 was installed successfully, but im suffering from only one disk are in use on the system, when 4 should be the case. The disc in use would be the disc "0" and is only 11 gigs, and its too bad since the other discs are (1x11G + 2x36G). So i really would like them added. How do I do that?
... maybe I did something wrong during the install process, as I recall from installing freeBSD, Im asked to define the mounts and all that, and even, how much of the disks i would like to define for the system...
The question is how I get all offa my disks visible to the system?
ps. Does anyone have experience running free or Open BSD on Sparc64 ?
confirm that the disks are not visible by running "format < /dev/null" ...
if they are all there, then you just need to either add them as mirrors or as separate disk devices with their own mount points ... see "man newfs," "man mount," "man metainit," "man metattach," "man metadb" for more options ...
Thomas, you need to check the disks visible form a hardware perspective first.
Boot the machine and watch for memory check. You need to stop the boot process, this is normally done using STOP+A keys but you are not on a Sun Keyboard, think it is the "ESC" or "BREAK" key?
You should get an OK prompt.
Type probe-scsi
It should list all the available disks:-
Target 0
Unit 1
Target 1
Unit 1
etc
In your case there should be 4. Assuming you can see four then enter boot
Follow the instructions given by people above for formatting and creating file systems.
Doing this could cause your system to hang on the probe-scsi command.
The correct way would be after the Stop+A set auto-boot?=false then type reset-all Once that is done you can run your probe command.
But try devfsadm first and then if you still can't see the disks with a format try running the probe-scsi command from the prom level, but only after setting auto-boot to false and running reset-all
Yep tornado you are right it could. I left that out to avoid confusion and to try to keep it simple. If a reset-all is required the system will tell you
