Soalris 9 installation Woes
 

Hi,

I have recently done a clean Solaris 9 install using the "Entire+OEM" option (Sun Netra T1 105). Everything completed with out errors and the machine runs fine, but many of the core packages needed for development are missing.

As an example SUNWsprot is not installed, and thus I do not have /usr/ccs/bin/as, make, etc..

I know this package is on the "Software 2of2" CD. When I insert the disk, it does not automount it to /cdrom. I can also not eject the disk, leading me to believe that vold has at least tried to mount the device. However it does not show up in the mount table. I'm able to read the disc from my PC, but the packages do not seem to be in solaris pkg format, so I don't know what to do with the contents.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks,
~ted

What happens if you actually mount the cd? Do you get any errors or are you actually able to read from it to see any files, etc?

And now my lack of Solaris experince shows through.

I do not see any obvious CD devices living in /dev. I was under the impression that there should be somthing akin to /dev/cd0a. But no such luck. The drive is working fine, as I just installed the OS from it.

~ted

A couple of things to keep in mind when working with CDs in Solaris:
- Use the eject command to remove the CD.
- eject does not work if your current directory is under /cdrom.
- Make sure vold is running if you want it automounted.
- Make sure that you are in in /cdrom when you insert the CD.
- The device is /dev/cdrom.

Also, for some strange reason Sun decided to separate out some software from the regular install.

-I am not in /cdrom and there is no one else on the box
-eject says "No default media available"
-there is no /dev/cdrom
-vold is running, and I have tried restarting it and re-inserting the disk.

You say to make sure that i AM in /cdrom when I insert the disk?
Why is that? I would assume that beiung in the directory would make it unable to mount.

Thanks for your suggestions. I think I'll probably try a reinstall booting from the first disk and doing the alternate text based install.

Thanks again,
~ted

Sorry, that was a typo on my part. You should not be in /cdrom when you insert the CD otherwise the mount point will be busy.

When you insert the CD, what does the output of "df -k" show? Is the CD listed at all?

Does your Solaris 9 media include 3 CDs? If yes, try installing from "1 of 2" instead of the start disk.

The "Installation disk" is really not needed for installing Solaris. It basically starts up that stupid java web browser based installation. Software disk 1 and 2 are the important ones. In Solaris, the cdrom drive will be in /dev/dsk as:
/dev/dsk/c0t6d0s[0-7].

You could try to mount the CD manually:
mount -o ro -F hsfs /dev/dsk/c0t6d0s0 /cdrom

--Matt

Thanks!!
 

Thanks to all for your respopnses. It turns out my "Software 2 of 2" CD was corrupt. I got another copy of the media and all went smoothly.

~ted