[dundee] Open Solaris

[Gordon Dunlop]

For the past year Open Solaris can be downloaded from here:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp

You have to register for the download. There are other Open Solaris 
projects:

http://www.genunix.org/distributions/belenix_site/?q=home

http://www.gnusolaris.org/gswiki/Nexenta_OS

The Solaris system must be installed to a Primary partition using Unix 
file systems.
The GRUB boot loader can be used with Solaris. Examples of systems used:
_Solaris/Linux_
dev/hda1 - Solaris
dev/hda2 - Extended
dev/hda5 - Swap
dev/hda6 - Fedora 6

_Windows/Solaris/Linux_
dev/hda1 - Windows XP
dev/hda2 - Solaris
dev/hda3 - Extended
dev/hda5 - Swap
dev/hda6 - Fedora 6

There is a problem when trying to install on a second disk as Solaris 
thinks it is the first disk, i.e. /dev/hda1 and not /dev/hda2. It is 
best if you have a boot manager, aka GAG which boots an operating system 
from its own partition. I have not installed Open Solaris yet as I have 
other projects on the go , Fedora 7 has just been released (Yippee) and 
my family thinks I am a computer maintenance man so it will not be until 
July before I test it. I intend to install it first as a virtual machine 
using VMWare Server within Fedora. The interesting thing is that  Open 
Solaris has virtual zones, so I will try to run a virtual machine within 
a virtual machine. If everything works OK. I will then install it on a 
dedicated partition. Sun boasts that it is the world's fastest operating 
system, I will do benchmarks in comparison with Linux systems to see if 
it is the case, using LMbench 3 which is a micro-kernel benchmark and 
has an accuracy within a microsecond (refer to my MSc. dissertation).  
There is a  new version of VMWare Server (1.0.3) for free download, 
1.0.2 had a bug and a patch had to be installed. It is easy to use, when 
a new kernel is installed, run the script /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl and 
everything is updated. I find that my
Windows XP virtual machine in Linux boots faster than when I use it 
natively . I will let you know when I test Open Solaris next month and 
of my successes or failures, I might try and write a How-To if I have time.

Gordon