Solaris 10 on a Powerbook

Note : This page may contain outdated information and/or broken links; some of the formatting may be mangled due to the many different code-bases this site has been through in over 20 years; my opinions may have changed etc. etc.

Now I’ve got my Powerbook back from repairs, I decided to continue my experiment to get Solaris 10 installed under Virtual PC 7. I’ve finally managed to get a useable system, although it did take a fair amount of hacking. The end result is a fully useable Solaris 10 installation complete with zones and dTrace, and provides a useful base for installing Blastwave packages.

Unlike previous versions of Solaris, there is no need to modify the ISO images, and the system will boot right off the CDs or DVD. However, there seems to be an issue with the Java VM and Virtual PC; whenever any Java application is run, the VM segfaults. This is an issue because some of the installer utilities are written in Java. The way around this is to perform a text-mode install, either at the console or in a X session. Install the bare minimum of packages - the "mininal networking" cluster is a great starting point. This should complete succesfully from the first CD without needing to reboot and add additional packages (which would fail, as it attempts to use the java installer again).

When the system has rebooted, you’ll be left with a very minimal system, so you’ll need to add some additional packages from the rest of the CDs, I’ve attached the list I use in the main article body. Using this set of packages, the install base comes to around 314Mb, but you are left with a system that lets you experiment with all the major new Solaris 10 features (zones, dtrace etc.). There is no X11 software included on that list, so if you need CDE or would like to experiment with the new JDS, you’ll have to add those yourself.

Any additional software can be grabbed from Blastwave, and as the complier support packages are also installed, you can even build your own packages. However, as psrinfo reports the equivalent of a 300Mhz Pentium on a 1.3Ghz G4, you’ll probably be waiting a while for things to finish!

Disk 1

Package name    Purpose
------------    -------
SUNWadmc        Core software libraries used for system administration 
SUNWbip         Basic IP commands (/usr/sbin/ping, /bin/ftp) 
SUNWbipr        Basic IP commands (Root) 
SUNWdtrc        Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) Clients 
SUNWdtrp        Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) Providers
SUNWgss         Generic Security Service Application Program Interface
SUNWgssc        Generic Security Service Application Program Interface
SUNWipc         Utilities to monitor interprocess communication 
SUNWj5rt        Java Platform virtual machine and core class libraries 
SUNWlibC        Sun Workshop Compilers Bundled libC
SUNWlibCf       Sun Workshop Compilers Bundled libC (cfront version)
SUNWmdu         Solaris Volume Manager commands 
SUNWmdb         Sun modular debugger
SUNWsndmr       Sendmail Configuration Files 
SUNWsndmu       Sendmail Utilities 
SUNWtnetc       Telnet Command (client) 
SUNWtoo         Software development utils, including ld, ldd, od, and truss 
SUNWudf         Universal Disk Format 1.50 File System
SUNWudfr        Universal Disk Format 1.50 File System

Disk 2

Package name    Purpose
------------    -------
SUNWGlib        Library of useful routines for C programming 
SUNWadmfw       System and network administration libraries and services
SUNWadmfr       System configuration for services
SUNWbart        Basic Audit Reporting Tool
SUNWbash        GNU Bourne-Again shell (bash) version 3.0 
SUNWdoc         Utilities and fonts for displaying manual pages
SUNWgcmn        Common GNU package 
SUNWgssk        GSSAPI (kernel module)
SUNWgzip        The GNU Zip (gzip) compression utility 1.3.3 
SUNWidnu        Internationalized Domain Name Support Utilities 
SUNWlcl         International Components for Unicode User Files 
SUNWlur         Live Upgrade (root) 
SUNWluu         Live Upgrade (user) 
SUNWluzone      Live Upgrade (zones support)
SUNWlxsl        The XSLT library (libxslt-1.1.7) 
SUNWmdar        Solaris Volume Manager Assistant (Root)
SUNWmdau        Solaris Volume Manager Assistant (Usr) 
SUNWntpr        NTP Daemon and Utilities (xntpd) 
SUNWntpu        NTP Daemon and Utilities (xntpd) 
SUNWpool        Core software for resource pools 
SUNWpoolr       Core software for resource pools 
SUNWrcapr       Solaris Resource Capping Daemon
SUNWrcapu       Solaris Resource Capping Daemon
SUNWsmapi       Software libraries for storage management 
SUNWuiu8        Iconv modules for UTF-8 Locale 
SUNWulcf        UTF-8 Locale Environment Common Files
SUNWweuos       GB locale
SUNWxcu4        Utilities providing conformance with XCU4 specifications 
SUNWxcu6        utilities providing conformance with XCU6 specifications 
SUNWzoner       Solaris Zones Configuration Files
SUNWzoneu       Solaris Zones Configuration and Administration

Disk 4 (Disk 3 not needed)

Package name    Purpose
------------    -------
SUNWarc         Lint libraries and startup objects for software development
SUNWarcr        Lint libraries and startup objects for software development
SUNWast         System security tools
SUNWaccu        Utilities for accounting and reporting of system activity (sar)
SUNWaccr        Utilities for accounting and reporting of system activity (sar)
SUNWbtool       Software development utilities
SUNWhea         SunOS C/C++ header files 
SUNWidnd        Internationalized Domain Name Support Developer Files 
SUNWlibm        Maths library
SUNWlibmr       Maths library
SUNWman         System Reference Manual Pages
SUNWmddr        Reconfiguration coordination manager module for SVM 
SUNWperl584man  Perl 5.8.4 Reference Manual Pages
SUNWsfman       GNU and open source man pages 
SUNWsprot       Solaris Bundled tools
SUNWwgetr       GNU wget 1.9.1 
SUNWwgetu       GNU wget 1.9.1 
SUNWxcu4t       XCU4 Compliant Versions of make and sccs utilities