My Experience Installing Solaris Express Developer

By Robert Eckstein, January 2008

Join Bob Eckstein, senior SDN writer, as he takes SXDE out for a spin.

Contents

• Author's Note
• Types of Installations I Tried
• Stand-Alone Installation on a Sun Ultra 20 System
• Installing Solaris Express Developer Edition Using VMWare
• Dual Booting With SXDE on a Custom-Built Server
• Conclusion
• For More Information

Author's Note

Recently, I was asked to try out the new Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) 09/07 and write an article on my installation experience. I was originally apprehensive, as I'm more of a Java programmer than an IT administrator, but I do have plenty of experience installing and re-installing operating systems-shredding plenty of master-boot-records in the process-so I figured that I would give it a try. I did, however, promise that I would run it through the gauntlet to see if it actually performed as well as I was told it would. I was pleasantly surprised by the results.

Types of Installations I Tried

Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) 09/07 includes a new installation procedure that rivals the simplicity and ease of use in Linux installations, a bonus for those looking to install or upgrade to the OpenSolaris operating system. SXDE is downloadable as a three-part DVD .ISO file or VMWare Virtual Machine. In addition, you can choose to have a free DVD mailed to you.

I performed a number of installations of Solaris Express Developer Edition. This article documents my experience installing SXDE 09/07 on the following:

• A Sun Ultra 20 stand-alone system
• A VMWare Virtual Machine running on Mac OS X
• A dual-boot with another operating system on a custom-built server

Because this was Sun hardware, I encountered no issues at all. However, I'll cover the basics of the installation process so that you will be familiar with them on the other types of installations. When the DVD first booted, I was presented with the standard GNU GRUB screen shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The GNU GRUB Screen for the Solaris 09/07 Installation
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What If My System Doesn't Boot the Solaris Installation DVD?

This is what happened to me initially on the Ultra 20 system, and it turned out it was because the computer's BIOS settings are telling it to boot initially from the primary hard drive. If this is the case with your system, reboot your machine and go into the BIOS before the system starts. Instructions shown briefly on the BIOS startup screen will often tell you how to do this (common methods include pressing F2 or Delete or Escape). Once inside the BIOS setup, change the boot order options to ensure that the DVD drive is listed before the primary hard drive.

 

After I started the Solaris Express Developer Edition installation program, I chose the first of the three menu options, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Solaris DVD Installation Menu
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After a quick keyboard detection, the X Windowing system started. Because X Windows forms the basis for the GNOME Desktop Environment that the installation process uses, the Solaris installation program attempts to start a baseline X Windows session on the system to test if the settings are correct before going any farther. The Solaris OS then presented me with a simple window and asked me to press the Enter key, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: X Windows Initialization Screen
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This was an important step in the installation process. If X Windows didn't work, I would have had to back down to a text-based installation and hope for the best. However, X Windows is very robust, and everything went smoothly. After the X Windows system finished initializing, I was presented with the main installation screen, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The Solaris Disk and Partition Selection Screen
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From here, it was fairly easy to walk through the dialogs to install the operating system. I've included several of them here in figures 5, 6, and 7 so that you will be familiar with them as you try various installations.

Figure 5: Setting the Installation Time With SXDE
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Figure 6: Setting the OS Language With SXDE
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Figure 7: Creating Users With the SDXE Installation Program
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At this point, I reviewed my installation settings, accepted the Solaris license agreement, and started the installation procedure. A full installation can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, with helpful information being shown on the screen throughout. On my Ultra 20 system, it took 34 minutes.

When the Solaris Express Developer Edition installation was complete, a link to the installation log was presented, where I could review the results. I simply clicked the Reboot button and ejected the SXDE installation DVD from my DVD drive. Installation was now complete, and I could log in to the Solaris OS using my new user ID.

Installing Solaris Express Developer Edition Using VMWare

Next, I tried to install SXDE using VMWare. My test system was my primary development computer:

• Quad-core 3GHz Intel Xeon Mac Pro
• 4 GB 667 Mhz DDR2
• Dual DVD Burners
• Mac OS X 10.4.9
• VMWare Fusion 1.0

There are two ways to install SXDE using VMWare. The first is to download a pre-configured VMWare Virtual Machine from the SXDE download page. If you want to experiment with the Solaris OS without having to configure any settings, this is the best approach. Visit the SXDE installation page and follow the instructions for your VMWare tool to install it.

If, however, you would like to change the system settings, such as the amount of virtual hard drive space that the Solaris OS uses, it's better to create a new virtual machine using the settings that support Solaris 10, as I did in Figure 8. Be sure to tell VMWare to use the 64-bit version of Solaris 10, if available.

Figure 8: Creating a Virtual Machine for SXDE (VMWare Fusion Shown)
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Also, I had to give the virtual machine at least 1 gigabyte of memory, which is required for the Solaris OS, as shown in Figure 9. Note that VMWare often sets the amount of memory for a virtualized operating system at 512 MB by default. Once I set up the correct parameters, I was able to install SXDE normally as shown here.

Figure 9: SDXE in VMWare Requires at Least 1 GB of Memory (VMWare Fusion Shown)
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Dual Booting With SXDE on a Custom-Built Server

Finally, I tried to create a dual-boot system with Fedora Core 8. This was the most challenging, as I also custom-built this server from off-the-shelf parts:

• Asus P5GC-MX/1333 Motherboard
• 2.0 Ghz Intel Pentium Dual-Core With Fan
• 1 GB PC5300 DDR2 Memory
• 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive
• Trendnet TEG-PCITXR Gigabit Ethernet Card

First, I installed Fedora 8 using the standard installation process. However, I did perform a custom partitioning, pre-allocating a 60 GB partition for the Solaris OS and giving it the partition type "bf". Once I had Fedora 8 up and running, I installed the latest version of the Java 6 platform on the system and ran the Sun Device Detection Tool, a JNLP-enabled application that can help determine if your system is capable of running the Solaris OS without specialized drivers or configuration. The results are shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: The Sun Device Detection Tool
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Because the hardware seemed to be compatible, I started configuring for a dual-boot system. The good news: I found that it is possible to dual-boot a machine with Solaris Express Developer Edition 09/07. If you are using Windows, the installation program automatically installs Solaris GRUB, which presents you with a menu at bootup asking which operating system you would like to start.

If you are using Linux, and you wish to dual-boot SXDE, we recommend this procedure only for advanced users that are familiar with GRUB and partitioning disks, as this is currently unsupported by Sun Microsystems, Inc. However, if you wish to create a dual-boot system, you will need a Rescue CD or equivalent approach to log in to the Linux partition after the SXDE installation is complete.

To create a dual-boot system:

1. Back up any important data on your Linux partition, in case things go wrong.
2. In Linux, use the fdisk tool to create a new partition on your drive. Change the partition type to the identifier "bf", if it is not that type already, and write out the new partition table. Also, make sure that any Linux swap partitions come after the Solaris partition on the drive. Otherwise, the Solaris GRUB will not recognize the correct Solaris partition. Note that this may require you to edit the /etc/fstab file on your Linux partition, so be sure that Linux works with its new swap partition before continuing.
3. Install Solaris Express Developer Edition as shown above. Ensure that the Solaris partition that you just created is the installation target for SXDE.
4. Use the Rescue CD to log in as root to your primary Linux partition. Create an entry in your grub.conf file that is similar to the following (this assumes that the Solaris OS is the second partition on hard drive 0), and return the "grub-install" script on the drive that contains the master boot record (MBR).
    
   

   title Solaris
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1
   

    
   

At this point, the Linux GRUB should start on boot and allow you to choose the Solaris OS. Once chosen, Solaris displays its own GRUB that allows you to run the OS or perform maintenance. Of course, it would be optimal to have a single GRUB for both operating systems, but I was unable to get this to work.

Conclusion

Solaris installation has come a long ways since the early days of the Solaris x86 OS. There are a number of options that allow administrators and developers to try out the Solaris OS on their own systems, including dual-boot and VMWare options. In addition, I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how functional Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) 09/07 was right out of the box, including support for the Java platform, various enterprise servers, and the NetBeans IDE.

For More Information

• Sun Solaris: See
• Solaris Developer Center: The Solaris Developer Center is great place for those who wish to do development on the Solaris OS, including advice on the NetBeans IDE, Sun Studio tools, and multi-core development.
• Sun Device Detection Tool 2.0: The device detection tool can tell if Solaris Express Developer Edition had the proper driver support for your system.
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE): See the home page for Solaris Express Developer Edition.
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) Download: You can download a three-part DVD ISO image or a VMWare Virtual Machine.
• Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) Support: The official support site for SXDE.
• VMWare Workstation (Windows) or Fusion (Mac OS X Intel): Allows you to create a virtual machine for Solaris Express Developer Edition. You can a 30-day trial.

About the Author

Robert Eckstein has worked with Java since its first release. In a previous life, he has been a programmer and editor for O'Reilly Media, Inc. and a programmer for Motorola's cellular technology division. He has written or edited a number of books, including Java Swing, Java Enterprise Best Practices, Using Samba, XML Pocket Reference, and Webmaster in a Nutshell. In his spare time he has been known to tinker with filmmaking and digital photography, as well as hacking with vintage video game consoles.