Your own SPARCStation 5 workstation, with QEmu and Solaris, PART 2 - Installing Solaris 2.6

 

Overview

In the previous installment, we downloaded all required software, created a disk image, and prepared the disk. We ended with a reboot, and the emulator should now be showing the OpenBIOS boot prompt again. We are ready to install Solaris.

For our installation, we cannot always use the defaults that the installer presents us. We want to do three things differently:

1. We want to set up the network using the virtual network system that QEMU provides the emulated machine with. This means that we will give the emulated system a fixed IP address.
2. We want to have larger sizes for /var and /usr than the installer will use by default. We want to manually layout the file system.
3. We don't want to automatically reboot after the installation is done. We want to set up a few little extra network options before the reboot.
   

Starting the installation procedure

After rebooting, the emulator will be in the OpenBIOS boot prompt. But this time, we will boot normally from the cdrom, instead of booting to single-user mode.

# boot cdrom:d

Booting now commences.

And after a while we are treated to the Solaris welcome screen.

Configuring the network

After another short while, the installer will start the first part of the installation: ask for all necessary information to join a network. It wants to know our language and locale first, and will then give some general information on setting up the machine.

On the next screen we can enter a hostname for your system. I used "qemu-solaris".

After that, we are asked if our system is connected to the network. We want to use QEMU's built-in virtual network, so we answer 'yes'.

Next screen up, we are asked for an IP address. To make the system participate in the QEMU virtual network, we will choose a fixed IP address of 10.0.2.15.

A summary screen is now shown, giving us a chance to check what we entered and maybe change our minds. We select continue if all is well.

Now we are asked for a name service. Choose 'Other' in order to use DNS. We will set up the use of DNS later. Note that we won't really make use of DNS in this current setup. But if we want to actually connect the emulator to the real internet later (using a TAP network configuration), it's best to configure it now.

Again a summary screen is shown. We select continue if all is good.

We are now asked if your system is part of a subnet. Choose 'No', we have only one network (the virtual QEMU network).

Next up is the timezone. Choose any method you like to enter the timezone you want, I chose Geographic Region.

Make sure that the time is correct. I found that it did not automatically correct for daylight savings, so my time was 1 hour off.

We are presented with another summary screen and can select continue.

Now some packages will be installed and the network options will be configured, which takes a short while. When this finishes, a new message will be show and we can select continue. Now we are going to configure the harddisk.

Configuring the harddisk

We do not want to automatically layout the file system, because it wil leave /usr, /etc and /var with not enough space and we would quickly end up with a huge harddisk space but no space to install any required software packages. In the next steps, we will partition the harddisk in a muh more useful way.

The installer ask us if we want to allocate space for diskless clients. Select continue: we don't want that.

The installer now lets us configure extra languages. Choose any extra you like, but I didn't bother. The list doesn't contain any interesting language for me anyway.

Next, the installer asks us what kind of distribution we want to install. I recommend to install 'Entire Distribution'. We have the disk space. But OEM support is a waste, I think.

Now the installer asks us on which device we want to install. There is only one harddisk, and it's already selected, so we can continue.

The installer gives us a chance to preserve existing data. There is none, so continue.

Now the installer arrives at the crucial step. This is where we are asked if we want to automatically layout the file system. Which we don't want.

So, we take care to select 'Manual Layout'.

The installer show us a preview of what it currently wants to create. Here, we want to select Customize, so that we can manually enter the partitions and sizes.

Credits go to Brezular again, although I tweaked his numbers a little to have less unused disk space.

I also named the large partition /usr/local, as that is what most software packages expect to be installed in.

Delete anything that is prefilled here, we don't want any of it. Instead we will enter these parameters for every slot:

0    /                1780 
1    /var             4280 
2    /opt             4280 
3    swap             4096 
4                          
5                          
6    /usr             5280 
7    /usr/local       15000

We will receive a warning that there is still unused disk space. It's only 9MB, and let's not push our luck and risk problems because of rounding errors. So just select Ok to continue.

The installer asks us if we want to mount remote file systems. Not necessary, so we select Continue.

We are presented with another summary screen. Check everything and press Begin Installation if all is well.

The installer will bother us with another warning that there is still unused disk space. We ignore it and select Ok.

And as last step the installer asks us if we want to auto reboot. And no, we do not want to automatically reboot. After installing, we want to finalize the set up for the network. So we select 'Manual Reboot'.

The installer will create the partitions and start copying files. A proper '90's system administrator will now go for a cup of coffee and a chat. :) But actually it only takes a few minutes with QEMU.

When the installation is finished, the installer will tell us so in the Solaris Install Console at the top of the screen. This window is not just informative, but is a proper shell (/bin/sh) with a prompt (#). And in it we will finalize the installation. The console can be resized to make it easier to see the results of the extra steps.

First thing to do is to set our default gateway (or 'default router' in Solaris terms) to 10.0.2.2. We select the Solaris Install Console and type the following (the # is the prompt, we don't type that):

# cd /a/etc
# echo "10.0.2.2" > defaultrouter

Now we need to enable the DNS services. This is a bit of a complex line, but it basically adds the entry ' dns' to the line 'host: files' in nsswitch.conf, making a backup of the original, just in case.

# sed 's/hosts:.*files/hosts: files dns/g' nsswitch.conf > nsswitch.conf.new
# mv nsswitch.conf nsswitch.conf.old && mv nsswitch.conf.new nsswitch.conf
# chmod 644 nsswitch.conf

Alternatively, if you know how to use vi, you can just open the existing nsswitch.conf file, find the line that says 'hosts:     files', and add ' dns' after it, like so:

hosts:     files dns

Next up is to set our DNS to 10.0.2.3.

# echo "10.0.2.3" > resolv.conf

And that's it! We can now reboot.

Before being able to log in and use the system, we are first asked to give a password for the root user.

The system will reboot automatically after entering the root password, and after a while we are presented the login screen. Enter username root and the password that you gave. The system will give us one last question: do we want to use Common Desktop Environment or OpenWindows Desktop. Naturally we want the CDE. OpenWindows is older, and CDE is much better in my opinion.

And there we are, we are now in Solaris 2.6 on our very own SparcStation 5!

In part three, we will be installing a few packages that I think are indispensible. One is SSH, enabling us to copy files from and to the emulated system (using 'scp'). Another is GCC, which is necessary because Sun stopped packing a C compiler with the system, so Solaris 2.6 does not have a compiler.