I just installed openindiana 2015.10 last night.

but the screen frequently hangs and doesn't respond to keystroke or mouse gestures.

this happens when i tried to run:

pkg set-publisher -O http://pkg.openindiana.org/hipster-2015 --search-first openindiana.org

I put the HD on a different machine, and pkg set-publisher was executed successfully. System seems ok now.

Not sure why it didn't work with the first machine.

Mark the thread as resolved.

You should always make a Boot Environment after installation, that way you can always rollback if there are any problems. I have numerous BE, I suggest you start to use them?

the system hang problems crawls back, i've reinstalled the OS but to no avail. I installed the OI hipster 2015.10 on an IDE hard drive in a AMD64 machine with Nvidia 6600GT card.

how to make boot environment?

Google Boot Environment, the command is called "beadm". Basically, it is a ZFS snapshot of the system disk. So before attempting to make any changes/upgrades/etc to the operating system, create a boot environment first with "beadm create ...". The next time you boot the system you will see in GRUB different BE to boot into. So you can boot into the last created ZFS snapshot. You can clone an already existing BE and snapshot it again and again. Only the changes will be saved, so you will not loose any disk space if you use many BE.

the Hipster installation seems to be corrupted since I have difficulties to boot from harddrive. I updated the motherboard Bios last night and tried again. Hipster still won't even launch, it's caught in an endless loop at boot screen: showing the OI splash screen for a while and then system rebooted - again and again.

I've booted into the Live OS from usb installation disk, and it reports errors - about clock applet not loaded properly and something else that I don't remember, if I started installation, the system frequently hangs once I double click on the GUI/Text installation icons on the desktop - tried two different IDE harddisk.

I'm not sure whether Hipster doesn't like my system or it's still an immature OS, but at this stage, i'm giving up on the OI-hipster.

OI has it's source code from Solaris, a very mature Unix. There are sometimes problems with Solaris or OI, because they are Enterprise, meaning they have very long support cycles, meaning they are usually not happy with bleeding edge hardware. My hardware is quite desktopy, a Supermicro X10-SAT mobo which Solaris 11 does not really like, I have some missing drivers but still everything works and it is very stable. I suggest you try out OmniOS which is a Illumos derivative, and similar to OI. Or try out Oracle Solaris 11 which is free for non commercial usage, mainly testing and developing software. If none of them works, then your hardware might be too modern. Lastly, you can try SmartOS which is like OI but mainly for the cloud, it also has KVM from Linux.

It that doesnt work, you can try out OpenBSD or FreeBSD. Or Linux of course.

I took another plunge on OI installation today. this time was a success.

i put the hard drive in another desktop and installed the OI from bootable usb image. it seems that OI is very picky about hardware. of the three desktop machines I have, first one with MSI K8N MB won't install OI because OI can't see IDE hard drive, second HP machine can't detect existing hard drive(SATA), only on the third machine i tried (with an old Abit IC7 MB) i was able to install.

thanks for the help! Now i can rest

OI still has problems updating packages.

current publisher is set at:
erdos@quantum:~$ pfexec pkg publisher
PUBLISHER TYPE STATUS P LOCATION
openindiana.org origin online F http://pkg.openindiana.org/hipster-2015/

when i tried to install a new pkg, system hangs at 'caching catalogs' and take forever...
root@quantum:~# pkg install cde
Caching catalogs ...


using command has the same problem:
# pfexec pkg refresh --full
Caching catalogs ...

As I have understood it OI is not as actively developed as other Illumos derivatives, such as OmniOS or SmartOS. Read this thread for more information
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1573272

thanks for the reply!

There are several problems I encountered with OI 2015.10 installation:
1. USB Installer can't detect available hard drives properly hence OI can't be installed onto internal hard disk, though MB bios can detect hard drives (IDE, SATA) just fine. this happened on two out of three desktop machines I own.

2. 'rpool' can't be mounted during installation.

3. once installed, system often hangs once I tried to update the package list or install new packages. (# pfexec pkg refresh --full)

4. system frequently freezes during launching a application, i.e. firefox, file manager etc.

I've looked at OmniOS and SmartOS, interesting OS and I'll give OmniOS a try. I was a Debian linux user but I've been using FreeBSD since Debian switched to systemD earlier this year. I'm doing some distro hopping now to see what other choices are available besides BSDs. I remember Solaris since I used it back in college. Oracle Solaris will be a last resort for me since it's a closed source commercial product.