Grub and Lilo

tamtam · 10-05-2008, 01:38 PM

Hi, new to open solaris.

I installed open solaris on my system...one disk had windows on two partitions...the other disk I installed opensolaris...this ofcourse was by the live cd.

It was taking ages so I left it running over night. When I got to it in the morning it had completed. The one option available was just to reboot...

Okay I did that and...nothing.

Just L 99 99 99 99 99 99 on and on.

Grub had failed.

No problem, I was going to install Slackware on the second partition on the first disk anyways. I installed Slackware. It detected my Windows XP installation but not the opensolaris. I now able to boot Windows and Slackware...but not opensolaris.

How can I configure opensolaris with Slackware lilo....Or re-enable grub to boot hopefully recognising the windows partition and then adding the slackware partition.

jlliagre · 10-05-2008, 03:57 PM

The "L 99 99 99 ..." message is a LILO error message, not a GRUB one. LILO is unable to boot Solaris / OpenSolaris. Did you try changing the boot disk in the BIOS to the one where you installed OpenSolaris ?

Nikosis · 10-05-2008, 09:19 PM

Take a look at these, might help
http://www.phildev.net/solaris/dualboot.html
http://www.unixguide.net/sun/x86faq/9.6.shtml
http://www.ibiblio.org/gferg/ldp/Lin...00+Solaris.txt

jlliagre · 10-06-2008, 01:58 AM

Thanks for these links. Beware that part of the information they contain is obsolete and might confuse users of recent Solaris releases.

tamtam · 10-06-2008, 09:41 AM

Sorry about cross threading. I wouldnot normally do it. I was desperate for an answer, though that should be no excuse. Another reason for posting in the Slackware forum was also to find solutions which Slackers may have used to overcome this situation.

Anyway, I changed the hard disk priority to the second disk and opensolaris is functioning. There are only two options, as was to be expected, opensolaris and windows. I booted into opensolaris okay. But not windows. The first disk has changed since the installation of open solaris. It has two partitions. In linux speak, hda1 is windows, hda2 is linux. How do I changed grub on opensolaris to recognize and boot when selected both windows and linux?

jlliagre · 10-06-2008, 03:21 PM

Please post the content of your /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst file.

tamtam · 10-06-2008, 04:29 PM

Could do if were able to get online...my next task

Right now from memory...
Tried a number of options... eventually narrowed it down to the following...

Code:

title Slackware 
     root (hd1,1)
     kernel /boot/vmlinuz

title Windows XP
     rootnoverify(hd1,0)
     chainloader +1

On reboot and choosing Slackware...

Quote:

root(hd1,1)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type is 0x83
Error 2: bad file or directory type

/boot/vmlinuz being a symlink to /boot/vmlinuz-huge-2.6.24.5 kernel image

On choosing Windows XP I get a cursor at the top of the screen and nothing else...

Previously, when I tried

Code:

title Slackware
     root (hd1,0)
     kernel /boot/vmlinuz

I got the following message...

Quote:

root(hd1,1)
Filesystem type is unknown, partition type is 0x7
kernel /boot/vmlinuz

This I narrowed down to being the windows file system (hopefully)

Last of all I left out the symlink and went straight for the kernel...

Code:

title Slackware 
     root (hd1,1)
     kernel /boot/vmlinuz-huge-2.6.24.5

title Windows XP
     rootnoverify(hd1,0)
     chainloader +1

I got a message again confirming the filesystem as ext2fs but now saying something about absolute path (cant remember correctly).

At the moment I am changing the order of the drives in the bios to boot into the various OSes...any examples of multiple drive grub menu.lst files would be appreciated...especially if they are Slack related.

tamtam · 10-07-2008, 02:20 PM

After many attempts at trying to get opensolaris to boot both Windows and Slackware through grub I have finally decided to try a clean install.

The installation process from the live cd is very slow. Hopefully this will work this time.

I now wish I had posted this thread initially on the Slackware subforum. There may have been more solutions from guys who have installed both Slackware and opensolaris.

tamtam · 10-07-2008, 04:07 PM

Well the installation from the live cd is going well started at 7.30 pm GMT and sitting now at 65% after just over 2 1/2 hours...enough time to do at least three installations of Slackware.

jlliagre · 10-07-2008, 06:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tamtam

Could do if were able to get online...my next task

No need to be online, you could have used a USB memory stick or similar.

Quote:

I now wish I had posted this thread initially on the Slackware subforum. There may have been more solutions from guys who have installed both Slackware and opensolaris.

I'm afraid you might be amongst the first LQ members to have both of these OS installed. I also doubt you'll find LQ users familiar with OpenSolaris visiting the slackware forum and not the Solaris one, the reason why I asked for the other thread to be closed. Of course, there is no problem if you want to ask again a question on the slackware forum if you feel it would help but I still think your issue is really OpenSolaris related.

One of the main differences between OpenSolaris and Solaris (10/Express) is their installer. OpenSolaris one is a relatively new project. You might be hitting a bug or a limitation of it.

The poor performance you observe is really outside the range of what is commonly observed. I didn't measure precisely, but I think the installations I made were completed between 30 to perhaps 45 minutes. One possible cause might be your machine to be undersized in memory.

psychicist · 10-07-2008, 09:33 PM

If you have Windows XP and Slackware on the first hard drive and the second hard drive is dedicated to Solaris/Opensolaris you could try to chainload Solaris's GRUB boot loader from Slackware's GRUB boot loader or vice versa and see if that works.

It's been more than a year since I installed Solaris (Express) for the last time and I have no experience with Opensolaris yet, but I'll have a look at this usage scenario in a virtual machine later this week.

tamtam · 10-08-2008, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by psychicist

If you have Windows XP and Slackware on the first hard drive and the second hard drive is dedicated to Solaris/Opensolaris you could try to chainload Solaris's GRUB boot loader from Slackware's GRUB boot loader or vice versa and see if that works.

Slackware uses LILO not GRUB.

Forgive me but describe the implementation of chainload and what it does...

Reinstallation has been completed...contents of menu.lst

Code:

#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------

title Windows
	rootnoverify (hd1,0)
	chainloader +1

# Unknown partition of type 131 found on /dev/rdsk/c3d0p0 partition: 2
# It maps to the GRUB device: (hd1,1) .

# Unknown partition of type 5 found on /dev/rdsk/c3d0p0 partition: 3
# It maps to the GRUB device: (hd1,2) .

# Unknown partition of type 131 found on /dev/rdsk/c3d0p0 partition: 4
# It maps to the GRUB device: (hd1,3)

This without any modifications.

Rebooting into windows from the opensolaris grub produces a clear screen with the cursor at the top...nothing.

What do I need to do to get the opensolaris grub to boot into Windows...

tamtam · 10-08-2008, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

No need to be online, you could have used a USB memory stick or similar.

Tried and opensolaris does not mount my 1TB external NTFS. Though it does my 20GB 2.5in external drive which is FAT format.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

I'm afraid you might be amongst the first LQ members to have both of these OS installed. I also doubt you'll find LQ users familiar with OpenSolaris visiting the slackware forum and not the Solaris one, the reason why I asked for the other thread to be closed. Of course, there is no problem if you want to ask again a question on the slackware forum if you feel it would help but I still think your issue is really OpenSolaris related.

Just my luck

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

One of the main differences between OpenSolaris and Solaris (10/Express) is their installer. OpenSolaris one is a relatively new project. You might be hitting a bug or a limitation of it.

Again just my luck.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jlliagre

The poor performance you observe is really outside the range of what is commonly observed. I didn't measure precisely, but I think the installations I made were completed between 30 to perhaps 45 minutes. One possible cause might be your machine to be undersized in memory.

System is 2.6 GHz P4 with 1GB of memory?

One more thing...it does not shutdown properly...

messages on screen

Quote:

Date...time opensolaris syslogd: going down on signal 15
Date...Time svc.startd[7]: svc:/network/physical:nwam: Method or service exit timed out. Killing contract 8
Date...Time svc.startd[7]: network/physical:nwam failed: transitioned to maisvc.startd: The system is down.
syncing file systems...done

Any ideas...

CJS · 10-08-2008, 03:52 PM

As far as booting Windows XP from Grub goes, if Windows XP is on a drive other than the boot drive, you have to use Grub's mapping trick to fool XP into thinking it is on the boot drive:

Code:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map        (hd0) (hd1)
map        (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

That should work assuming you don't have any issues with Windows. Let me know how it goes.

jlliagre · 10-08-2008, 04:06 PM

NTFS isn't natively supported. A third party driver allows read-only mounts but I didn't test it recently.

You should have a look at performance counters and error logs to see why your system is so slow with OpenSolaris. (vmstat 2, prstat, iostat -xtc 2, iostat -E, ...).
It might run faster under a virtualized environment like VirtualBox than natively ...

nwam is the service automatically handling network configuration. If you have no DHCP server or if your NIC isn't supported, you can disable the service (svcadm disable nwam).