BOSUG News

[Venky]

Hi!

Sorry for lack of activity in the group for over a week now.
Figured it is about time we got some discussions going!

What do you guys think we should talk about in the first user group
meeting? There are just so many cool things in OpenSolaris, we are
spoilt for choice. My initial candidates would be:

DTrace: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/dtrace/
SMF: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/smf/
Zones: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/zones/

The communities portal at OpenSolaris.ORG has a more comprehensive
list of topics.
http://opensolaris.org/os/communities/

What do you guys think? Which areas would you be interested in?
Please let me or the group know.

For people who have not dipped their fingers in OpenSolaris waters
yet, here are some pointers and links:

The OpenSolaris site: http://opensolaris.org/os/
OpenSolaris Blogs: http://opensolaris.org/os/blogs/
Download stuff: http://opensolaris.org/os/downloads/
Browse the source: http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/
Setting up multiboots: http://multiboot.solaris-x86.org/
(Instructions are slightly dated, since the
new OpenSolaris builds use GRUB as the boot
loader, but is a still a good place to
start.)

If you need any help with anything, please send a mail to the group.
There are quite a few Sun engineers on the list who work on these
technologies every day who would be glad to help.

Once again, Welcome Aboard!

Venky.

[Binu Jose Philip]

Hi Bosuggers,

I am curious to know how many of us in the list have functional opensolaris
installations at home or wherever. I for one do not have that and spend my
time cartoon-charactering linux every few minutes.

For me the first requirement is information on obtaining, installing
and building
a functional opensolaris box. If blastwave is fully compatible I am not averse
to using even that. I have to confess I haven't trawled opensolaris.org to the
greatest of depths. If it is RTFW, please give the URL for RTFWing with options.

Here is the spec: Given a functional linux partition (and if needed, the latest
greatest gcc, what all should I do to get a SAFE shot at booting the thing into
opensolaris and then getting the other parts pulled in. It would be
nice if there
was a fast way.

cheers
Binu

[Moinak Ghosh]

Hello Binu,

OpenSolaris as of today is not yet self-hosting. Which means that you
cannot
yet have a "pure" bootable OpenSolaris environment. As yet some of the
critical
components (including libm.so.1) are closed source.

So you need to first install the Solaris Express (Nevada) community
edition and
then build OpenSolaris and do a BFU. It should be possible to have an
OpenSolaris
setup with the missing parts filled up with GNU components.

I am actually looking at getting to a LiveCD with this configuration.
That should
be the first step towards having a complete distro - maybe using the Gentoo
infrastructure. It will be great if you can help. All of the components for
getting a functional ramdisk are already present in Nevada/OpenSolaris.

Regards,
Moinak.

[Binu Jose Philip]

Moinak Ghosh <Moinak...@Sun.COM> writes:

> Hello Binu,
>
> OpenSolaris as of today is not yet self-hosting. Which means
> that you cannot yet have a "pure" bootable OpenSolaris
> environment. As yet some of the critical components (including
> libm.so.1) are closed source.
>
> So you need to first install the Solaris Express (Nevada)
> community edition and then build OpenSolaris and do a BFU. It
> should be possible to have an OpenSolaris setup with the
> missing parts filled up with GNU components.

Does this mean, Nevada can/will live in my existing grub config
if asked? In other words, I install nevada to some partition
(formatted as ufs which linux understands?) and do some magic on
my existing grub conf, my Sun built neavada can be booted. Then I
go in there and build+install whatever opensolaris components,
including the kernel, that I want.

Is it better to let nevada live on whole disk or will it
co-operate with existing grub?

Does the current Linux fs-drivers r & w nevada ufs - atleast
without journalling?

cheers
Binu

[Moinak Ghosh]

Binu Jose Philip wrote:

>Moinak Ghosh <Moinak...@Sun.COM> writes:
>
>
>>Hello Binu,
>>
>> OpenSolaris as of today is not yet self-hosting. Which means
>>that you cannot yet have a "pure" bootable OpenSolaris
>>environment. As yet some of the critical components (including
>>libm.so.1) are closed source.
>>
>>So you need to first install the Solaris Express (Nevada)
>>community edition and then build OpenSolaris and do a BFU. It
>>should be possible to have an OpenSolaris setup with the
>>missing parts filled up with GNU components.
>>
>>
>
>Does this mean, Nevada can/will live in my existing grub config
>if asked? In other words, I install nevada to some partition
>(formatted as ufs which linux understands?) and do some magic on
>my existing grub conf, my Sun built neavada can be booted. Then I
>go in there and build+install whatever opensolaris components,
>including the kernel, that I want.
>
>Is it better to let nevada live on whole disk or will it
>co-operate with existing grub?
>
>Does the current Linux fs-drivers r & w nevada ufs - atleast
>without journalling?
>
>

You will need to use the Grub that comes with Nevada since Grub
has been modified to read UFS partitions so that it can load the
Solaris kernel and boot archive(miniroot). This patch is in the
process of being contributed back to the Grub project.

Nevada Grub will be able to boot your Linux, Windoze and Nevada
partitions. So dedicate one primary partition to Solaris where
you create all the slices and install Nevada and allow Nevada
to put Grub in MBR. Then boot into Nevada and do some magic
with grub.conf to boot the other OSes. Then you can build and
upgrade to OpenSolaris.

Linux UFS support is not yet safe for RW access. RO access is
recommended. BTW I believe there is an old ext2 module for
Solaris 9. It might be interesting to make it work properly on
S10.

Regards,
Moinak.

[Binu Jose Philip]

Moinak Ghosh <Moinak...@Sun.COM> writes:

> You will need to use the Grub that comes with Nevada since Grub
> has been modified to read UFS partitions so that it can load the
> Solaris kernel and boot archive(miniroot). This patch is in the
> process of being contributed back to the Grub project.
>
> Nevada Grub will be able to boot your Linux, Windoze and Nevada
> partitions. So dedicate one primary partition to Solaris where
> you create all the slices and install Nevada and allow Nevada
> to put Grub in MBR. Then boot into Nevada and do some magic
> with grub.conf to boot the other OSes. Then you can build and
> upgrade to OpenSolaris.
>
> Linux UFS support is not yet safe for RW access. RO access is
> recommended. BTW I believe there is an old ext2 module for
> Solaris 9. It might be interesting to make it work properly on
> S10.

Thanks Moinak ;-)

I can give some time for doing the livecd that you were thinking
about. Let me know. I can atleast do some experimenting for you.

It has to be another HDD then. Now to burn burn nevada.

cheers
Binu