Solaris 8 Network Install from Linux

I was able to successfully install Solaris 8 on my SPARCstation 10 using my Red Hat 7.3 Linux machine as a boot server. I downloaded the Solaris 8 CD images from Sun. I don't have a SCSI CD-ROM for the SS 10. But I do have CD-RW drive on my Linux machine and a network to connect them together. I connected to the serial console on the SS10.


Network Boot
The Solaris Install CD isn't needed for the install; it is for booting from the CD drive and doing a graphical install. The Software 1 CD CD contains the root filesystem and core packages. The Software 2 CD contains optional packages that can be copied over for the main install, or installed later.


The Solaris_8/Tools directory contains some shell scripts that are used on Solaris machine to setup a boot server. These don't work under Linux but inspecting them shows how a boot server can be setup on other Unix machines.

Setup network booting as described in my Network Boot Server for SPARC article.

Root Files
The root filesystem is on the Software 1 CD in the Solaris_8/Tools/Boot directory. It needs to be copied to the boot server using either tar or cpio commands to preserve all the file attributes.

# cd /mnt/cdrom/Solaris_8/Tools
# find . -depth -print | cpio -pdmu /pub/solaris/Solaris_8/Tools

TFTP
The network boot file for loading over TFTP is the usr/platform/platform/lib/fs/nfs/inetboot file in Solaris_8/Tools/Boot. Copy the file for your platform to the /tftpboot directory and symlink it to the file for the client.

# cd /pub/solaris/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot
# cp usr/platform/sun4m/lib/fs/nfs/inetboot /tftpboot
# cd /tftpboot
# ln -sf inetboot C0A8010C.SUN4M

Product Files
The core packages are also on the Software 1 CD in the Solaris_8/Product directory. This directory must be available over NFS. It can be copied from the CD-ROM to the hard drive. If you want to install the packages from the Software 2 CD, also copy them to the same location onto the hard disk with the same command.

# cd /mnt/cdrom/Solaris_8
# find Product -depth -print | cpio -pdmu
# /pub/solaris/Solaris_8

Alternatively, the CD-ROM can be exported directly over NFS. One snag with this is that you won't be able to unmount or eject the CD while it is exported. The solution is to not add a line to the /etc/exportfs file, but use the exportfs -i command to export it and then do exportfs -r to remove it.

# exportfs -v -i -o ro,no_root_squash 192.168.1.0/24:/mnt/cdrom

Bootparams
All the locations for directories above needed to be exported through NFS. They also need to be transmitted to the client with the bootparamd file. Add the configuration for the client to the /etc/bootparams file.

# cat >> /etc/bootparams
balrog root=kraken:/pub/solaris/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot \
        install=kraken:/pub/solaris \
        rootopts=:rsize=32768 boottype=:in

Problems
Some people have reported problems with interaction between the Linux NFS daemon and Solaris. I didn't have any trouble with the Linux 2.4.18 kernel so this may have been fixed in more recent kernels. You can try changing the rsize option to 8192 if you run into problems.

The first couple of times that I tried booting Solaris, the boot process would hang after loading the kernel but before loading the installer. After some investigation of the scripts in /sbin in the root filesystem, I discovered that the /sbin/get_netmask program was handing. Since it didn't seem to be doing anything important (the interface has already been properly configured), I moved it out the way.


# cd /pub/solaris/Solaris_8/Tools/Boot
# cd sbin
# mv get_netmask get_netmask.boot

Booting
Now you are ready to boot the Solaris installer over the network. Enter the boot command from the OpenPROM prompt.

ok boot net-tpe - install

Install
If everything is working correctly, the Solaris interactive installer should appear on the console. Most of the questions it asks are pretty straightforward and I didn't have any trouble installing Solaris once I got it to boot.

It should be possible to automate the installation using Jumpstart. Jumpstart uses a couple of files to configure the install. These are also exported through NFS and parameters added to the bootparams file. The scripts used to set this up automatically won't work on Linux but it should be possible to do it manually.

Related
Network Boot Server for SPARC
Copyright © 2005 Ian Burrell
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Last Modified: 2006-08-17