New To Solaris 10, Few Questions
 

Alrighty folks first post.... here goes

I just installed Solaris 10 8/07 Express Edition on my computer (p4 2.5 GHZ , 1024MB DDR Ram, 865 chipset with an nvidia 6800gs 256mb agp 8x vid card and a linksys lne100tx v4 based pci nic card)

install went great, no issues, other than i was NOT happy about my mbr being wiped and replaced with grub.... nothing against grub.... anyways the questions i have are...

1) My bootloader i prefer is the darwin bootloader... its just the way it is. it autodetects my linux installs so therefore i like it. so i have reinstalled the darwin bootloader on my computer. why is it that now i cannot boot into my solaris install with the darwin bootloader? i know that it can chainload into grub JUST FINE.... maybe i should simply use my main linux partition to chainload into solaris... any other suggestions? SCRATCH THIS FIGURED IT OUT....

2) i use dhcp on my other operating systems, so i would like to use it for solaris if it is at all possible. but solaris does not appear to have detected my nic card. do i need to install/compile a driver for my nic? any other mehtods? ***** NEVERMIND i r dumb used detection tool and now i know what to do FORGET THIS ONE TOO!!

3) screen resolution... i have a 1680x1050 monitor... however solaris kindly defaulted it to 640x480 :p so i was hunting for the manual way of changing it but so far have had no success. (i kinda feel like the guy in the hardware store looking for duct tape if u know wut i mean) so wut would be the manual way? it has detected my video card so yah...


now i am new to solaris but not new to unix. i have used linux for a few years and installed freebsd a few times so i consider myself unix competent (by no means any expert) so i would appreciate the help if i could get it :D

thanks

Grama

Just a suggestion for the future: post your solutions instead of asking to "forget" the questions.

Bye,
Enrico.

3: I don't think your video card has been detected. 640x480 is likely to mean the generic VESA driver is used.

I was under the impression that the boot loader (grub) that is loaded with solaris is somehow modified specifically for solaris and other boot loaders could not be used. Since you found a solution, I would like to know what it is.

Thanks,

You are correct. The grub delivered with Solaris is enhanced to support, in addition to the various Linux and bsd filesystems it already does, Solaris ufs and zfs.

I guess the open poster either find out a solution to chainload Solaris grub from the darwin bootloader or the opposite.

Solaris grub is installed in the Solaris primary partition first sectors, not the MBR so there should be no problem overwriting the MBR with something else. I never did it though.

well my solution too the bootloader issue was simple... i used the darwin bootloader to chainload into the grub bootloader used by solaris. what i did that was incredibly retarded was forget that all i had to do to gain the darwin bootloader back was turn off the boot flag on the solaris partition, reput it on my darwin boot partition and reinstall the bootloader (fdisk -u /dev/rdisk0) and it was installed... my problem before was both the solaris partition and the darwin boot partition were flagged as boot and since the solaris partition came first, no matter wut i did i could not my preferred bootlader back :D nice thing is now i can boot into any of my os's without needing to worry about configuring my main bootloader as the darwin bootloader is auto-detecting.

enrico, i am sorry but ur post makes no sense too me.... but i will post my solutions (i posted one of them before and now the second). i dont know wut u mean by "asking to forget the questions..." i believe my situation was simply that i was lost for a solution, and a 20 minute google search had not produced any results nor had reading other forums.... so i posted :p then i happened to have a couple brainwaves... but i will post solutions from now on.

the reason i say my video card i sbeing detected is that when i boot into solaris i can hear the fans spin down (as they do in all my other os's with nvidia drivers) and it even says in the nvidia configuration panel "nvidia 6800gs" which is my card. is the xorg.conf file located at /etc/X11/xorg.conf? when i used ls in the /etc/X11 folder there appeared to be no file, but i'll check again.

any other suggestions or tips would be much appreciated, i thank you for your time.

If you are using the nVidia proprietary driver, you should be able to change the resolution from the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" panel.

X11 on Solaris doesn't require an xorg.conf file.

well unfortunately for me i cannot do that, my resolution is not listed.... interesting that there is no xorg.conf, is their any other file which i can edit? can i create an xorg.conf and define my resolution in their? i think my problem is more about my monitor, an lg flatron L222WT, not being detected than my video card having problems, but ofcourse i could always be wrong :D

thanks again!

Grama

You can create an Xorg.conf from the nVidia settings panel.

You may also want to have a look at the Xorg logs (/var/log/Xorg.0.log) to see why your screen resolution is missed.

I beg your pardon Grama, I was only suggesting you to post the solutions you found, instead of writing things like:
You're obviously welcome in LQ.

Bye,
Enrico.

OpenSolaris supports more hardware than Solaris 10. Have you tried OpenSolaris (beta version of Solaris 11)?

@jlliagre, could you plz. explain this? Where else are X-settings saved then?

Yes there is a file. If you type ls -al you 'll see


coolster@nosparc:/etc/X11>ls -al
total 22
drwxr-xr-x 4 root sys 512 Apr 9 18:59 .
drwxr-xr-x 94 root sys 4608 Apr 9 18:59 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 155 Feb 27 20:40 .video.devs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1842 Feb 27 20:40 .xorg.conf
drwxr-xr-x 7 root sys 512 Feb 27 20:05 gdm
drwxr-xr-x 2 root sys 512 Feb 27 19:23 sysconfig

.xorg.conf is obviously a dot-file.

C

its weird becuz not only is my solaris 10 install behaving as it is, but so is my latest resinstall of arch linux (my linux distro of choice) altough my xp install is behaving just fine. before xorg would typically auto-detect my screen resolution. but now it is not... sorry i am not at home right now to try your suggestions, but when i am home i will.... thanks for the suggestions!!!

i was actually really quite tempted to try opensolaris, but i was going to wait for Indiana to finish. it is due soon. i could have tried nexenta but indiana appears to be getting pretty close, i might as well wait for it. would i be wise to wait or should i try nevada for for now (or nexenta or belenix)

thanks again

Grama

Well, they aren't saved. That's the idea behind not having an xorg.conf file.
If the automatic builtin default configuration Xorg provides with Solaris is correct, then there is no point but room for trouble in saving it.
Indeed there is that .xorg.conf file but it is not used by the X Server.

Thanks for your answer.
Right..... I was wondering this myself some time ago, because I didn't understand why the xorg.conf file was hidden.
Another thing about the automatic builtin default configuration is that you obviously can't change&save the resolution & other X-server instructions.
I wonder what philosophy is behind this.

Could you route me to some documentation where this is described?

Thanks (again).

C