Solaris on a second hard disk and its booting process

zillah · 03-05-2006, 11:37 PM

I have two Hard disk, on the Primary master I installed windows (XP and 2003).

On the Primary Slave I installed FC4 and Mandrake 10, and Solaris on hdb1

Now the bootloader is FC4, when I chose the Solaris form the menu of grub bootloader , Solaris does not boot directly it has to go through many blue screens

1- First screen titled: “Solaris Device Configuration Assistant”,,,,,,,,,F2 to continue.

2- Second screen titled : “Loading escd.rf…”,,,,,,,,,Enter to continue

3- Third screen titled: “Identified Device Boot Solaris”.

Select one of the identified devices to boot the Solaris kernel and choose continue.

[ x ] Disk : Target1: WDC40 0BB-00DEA

Eventually I can boot solaris successfully.

A- Is this issue related to FC4 bootloader and solaris bootloader ?

B- What should the right entry be for Solaris within the bootloader file ?

Code:

[root@2[knoppix]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40016019456 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1        1912    15358108+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2            1913        2294     3068415    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda3            2295        4865    20651557+   7  HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1        1216     9765472+  bf  Solaris
/dev/hdb2            1216        1581     2929752    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hdb3            1582        4865    26378730    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5            1582        1607      208813+  83  Linux
/dev/hdb6            1608        2754     9213246   83  Linux
/dev/hdb7            2755        2787      265041   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb8            2788        2816      232911   83  Linux
/dev/hdb9            2817        2854      305203+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdb10           2855        4865    16153326   83  Linux
root@2[knoppix]#






   cfdisk 2.12p

                                                   Disk Drive: /dev/hda
                                             Size: 40016019456 bytes, 40.0 GB
                                   Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 4865

      Name              Flags             Part Type       FS Type                   [Label]               Size (MB)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      hda1              Boot               Primary        NTFS                      []                     15726.74
      hda2                                 Primary        W95 FAT32 (LBA)                                   3142.06
      hda3                                 Primary        NTFS                      []                     21147.20





     cfdisk 2.12p

                                                   Disk Drive: /dev/hdb
                                             Size: 40020664320 bytes, 40.0 GB
                                   Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 4865

      Name              Flags             Part Type       FS Type                   [Label]               Size (MB)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
      hdb1              Boot               Primary        Solaris                                           9999.88       *
      hdb2                                 Primary        W95 FAT32 (LBA)                                   3000.07       *
                                           Pri/Log        Free Space                                           4.23       *
      hdb5                                 Logical        Linux ext3                [/boot]                  213.86
      hdb6                                 Logical        Linux ext3                [/]                     9434.40
      hdb7                                 Logical        Linux swap / Solaris                               271.44
      hdb8                                 Logical        Linux ext3                                         238.54
      hdb9                                 Logical        Linux swap / Solaris                               312.57
      hdb10                                Logical        Linux ext3                                       16541.04

jlliagre · 03-06-2006, 04:16 AM

Your Solaris bootloader hasn't a default boot device set, fixing that would save you one step.

You are not using the last Solaris 10 release 1/06, or SolarisExpress, if you install one of it, you should be able to boot Solaris, Windows and your Linuxes with Solaris enhanced grub.

zillah · 03-06-2006, 06:14 AM

Quote:

Your Solaris bootloader hasn't a default boot device set

You meant that Solaris bootloader was not installed into MBR,,,,didn't you?

jlliagre · 03-06-2006, 09:03 AM

No, I meant your bootloader is not properly configured.

Run the eeprom command as root, and look for bootpath or boot-device or something like that.

This is stored in a property file under the /boot directory.

shshjun · 03-15-2006, 10:34 PM

the new 01/06 solaris 10 seemed need to reside, at least partially, on master IDE: i think this is for the grub part. this is not likely for me so i have to stick with the 03/05 release on that box

on the new box it occurs to me that solaris enhanced grub is able to boot solaris, linux and windows well. i don't like the idea when my solaris is for experimentation and it may bring all my system down when it's down.
instead I use linux's grub on MBR and chained it to solaris. solaris doesn't like this and won't boot - stuck somewhere in the middle. i didn't write its grub to its partition though.

i will try another round when i get time. does anyone has this experience that chained solaris 10 (01/06) or later from linux grub doesn't work well?

thanks, shen

zillah · 03-15-2006, 11:23 PM

Quote:

the new 01/06 solaris 10 seemed need to reside, at least partially, on master IDE

In my case it is on the master IDE (Slave Master not Primary Master).

Quote:

instead I use linux's grub on MBR and chained it to solaris

I am doing this right now with my system, FC4 bootloader resides into MBR, and I chained it to Solaris V10 1/06 whcih resides on hdb1, but without success for booting Solaris

Quote:

i didn't write its grub to its partition though.

During the process of Solaris 10 1/06 installation, Was you able to choose the location (position) for solaris's GRUB ? because as far as I remember I did not see an option (like Linux) let me choose the location(MBR, root slice, boot slice,etc) for GRUB.
I thought Solaris won't allow you during the process of installtion to choose the location for GRUB, by defaule it will choose the root slice,,,Am I right ?

Quote:

does anyone has this experience that chained solaris 10 (01/06) or later from linux grub doesn't work well?

I tried this, (install solaris V10 1/06 on hdb1), and I chained solaris from FC4 GRUB bootloader which resides into MBR, but still it did not work with me,,,I am trying to figure out where is the problem but without any luck yet.

jlliagre · 03-16-2006, 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shshjun

the new 01/06 solaris 10 seemed need to reside, at least partially, on master IDE: i think this is for the grub part.

Indeed, the Solaris installer is replacing the MBR by its own grub.

Quote:

this is not likely for me so i have to stick with the 03/05 release on that box

Why ?

Quote:

on the new box it occurs to me that solaris enhanced grub is able to boot solaris, linux and windows well. i don't like the idea when my solaris is for experimentation and it may bring all my system down when it's down.

Solaris and grub are idependant, if for some reason you manage to trash you Solaris installation, the MBR won't be affected.

Quote:

instead I use linux's grub on MBR and chained it to solaris.

Solaris grub is based on the same code as your linux grub, there have been enhancement to allow Solaris ufs filesystem recognition.
Until this code is consolidated in the mainstream grub, it won't be able to (directly) boot Solaris.

Quote:

solaris doesn't like this and won't boot - stuck somewhere in the middle. i didn't write its grub to its partition though.

You probably need to have Solaris grub installed on the second disk MBR.

Quote:

i will try another round when i get time. does anyone has this experience that chained solaris 10 (01/06) or later from linux grub doesn't work well?

Yes, I have different grubs referencing each other, and I have no problem with it.

alred · 03-16-2006, 11:12 AM

>> "Eventually I can boot solaris successfully."

although i never encounter this problem before , its kind of weird but what is the content of your bootenv.rc somewhere in your /boot directory ?? and what did you see when you issue the command "format" in you terminal ??

.

shshjun · 03-18-2006, 07:26 PM

i am glad that i finally made it work in last few days. before i was not able to boot into solaris successfully.

1. disable ultra DMA from bios - i've found this caused me problem from everywhere, including dvd-rom sometimes.

2. do a cold boot for solaris all the time. that is, upon boot start, hit reset button for another boot - this time will be ok. i have no idea what caused this.

and yes, my linux grub perfectly chained to solaris.

thanks, shen

ps: reference from groups given below.

[by Mark Piper on Thurs, Feb 19 2004 4:07 pm] Seems alot of people have asked questions concerning "Vendor 'Gen-ATA' error code: 0x3"...

I have found this on 3 boxes so far. Disabling UDMA in the BIOS works every time.

[by Dave Uhring on Tues, Jan 21 2003 2:15 pm] There is a partial fix for Solaris 8 on x86 but I think that what you need to do on any reboot is simply to make sure the reboot is a "cold" boot, i.e. hit the reset switch to force the memory test in POST.

jlliagre · 03-20-2006, 03:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shshjun

2. do a cold boot for solaris all the time. that is, upon boot start, hit reset button for another boot - this time will be ok. i have no idea what caused this.

I had suffered the same problem on several PCs, but it is fixed for the most of them when using latest Solaris Express builds.

I still have a MSI mainboard hanging during a reboot though ...

Did you try enabling plug'n play O/S in the bios ?