I have just installed solaris 10 x86.
I am forcing myself to use this, but I am starting to have second thoughts.

First, I did a core custom install. No CDE or GNOME. Want a headless server, what do I need a gui for!?

smpatch update ran fine the first time, now I am getting an error:
Failure: Cannot connect to retrieve Database/current.zip: Server returned HTTP response code: 403
From reading previous threads, I need to register? How, they say I need the gui to do this.
What crap is this, has to be another way.

I have been picking away at this server for about 2 weeks now, and I could have had a centos up running samba in a hour.

***
Well, turns out that Sun is blowing lots of smoke. They are correct when they do not have a solution yet for a command line interface for the Sun Update Connection.

Wow, lets install software and make sure they can no longer update there packages until the next release of solaris!

Getting very bitter with sun.

Hey, and I still can not eject my CDROM!

Okay, thanks for your comments.

So I read there are only two issues you are complaining of:

1) can't run a graphic only command while the graphic libraries haven't been installed.

2) can't eject your cdrom.

Well, the fix for 1 seems obvious, why not installing the missing libraries ?
This has nothing to do with the fact you want a headless server, as the required libraries are for client use, not server. If you really insist in not using a graphic interface, even remotely, you may want to try this freeware which seems to be the answer:
http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/intro.html

Also, it is untrue you cannot install patches until the next release, there are already patches available, they can be freely downloaded without any subscription, and you can install them using the command line.
There is now precisely 65 MB of freely downloadable patches for Solaris 10 on x86
available at http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/show...s/patch-access
. Security patches and drivers are made available as soon as released for both subscribed and unsusbscribed users.

Also don't confuse patching and upgrading. If what you really want is keeping freewares to their latest available version, you can have this all done automatically and with a CLI with blastwave's pkg-get.

About 2, can you elaborate ? how do you fail to eject the CD-ROM ?
Any error message ?

I have started a thread on Solaris Forums...
http://forum.sun.com/thread.jspa?for...threadID=26329

Basically,
iostat -En
c0t0d0 Soft Errors: 0 Hard Errors: 0 Transport Errors: 0
Vendor: SAMSUNG Product: CD-ROM SC-148C Revision: B103 Serial No:
Size: 0.00GB <0 bytes>
Media Error: 0 Device Not Ready: 0 No Device: 0 Recoverable: 0
Illegal Request: 0 Predictive Failure Analysis: 0

eject cdrom does not work either.
Just typing eject gives me an error, no default media available.

I have tried with vold running and without.
Wish I could man eject, but that is the package that I want to install by cdrom!

I did the install thru cdrom, so no hardware problems. I even did a full install with oem, and had no problem with the cdrom.
I am missing something...

I have the smserver running
also tried with vold on and off

With volmgt running
mount -F hsfs /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1 /cdrom
I get an error, is already mounted or /cdrom is busy

I am not in the /cdrom directory and when I do:
mount |grep c0t0d0s1
Nothing is returned!

If I shut off volmgt and try the same command:
I get: no such device

fuser -c gives me nothing.

Well, you are using a command when you shouldn't, with a wrong device, missing an option, and on a possibly wrong directory ...

Try

Nope that did not do the trick!
All I received was kernel errors in dmesg

Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0
Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown timeout: reset target, target=0 lun=0
Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
Sep 7 18:21:22 unknown timeout: reset bus, target=0 lun=0

With a hung process, could not kill the mount command.

When I tried it again I got:
# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 /tmp/cdrom
mount: /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 no such device

Try disabling UDMA for your CD on your bios.

IBM m20
Has no option within the bios to change the UDMA! Crap!