Solaris 10 ISO got from the sun site (grub installed). A running ArchLinux x8664 installation. A running Windows 7 x86 installation with Cygwin (Though I guess it may be not that useful?) And here is what I have tried but failed: unetbootin (a tool that write Linux ISO’s to a USB flash drive, Solaris.

1. Solaris X86 Download Iso
2. Solaris 7 X86 Iso Download
3. Solaris 11 X86 Iso

In this lab, you will learn how to install the Oracle Solaris 11.2 Image for Oracle VM VirtualBox—the easiest way to get up and running with Oracle Solaris 11.2.

1. The Solaris Operating System, usually known simply as Solaris, is a Unix-based operating system introduced by Sun Microsystems. The Solaris OS is now owned by Oracle.
2. Sun Solaris 2.x. It is the successor to Sun OS and was released initially in June of 1992. The OS is based off of System V Unix and its first release was known internally as SunOS 5. This OS was typically used on SPARC based processors, up until 1994 when it began to support x86 and x86-64 based machines.

Published April 2015

Prerequisites

This lab is the first is a series of labs for Oracle Solaris 11. All of the labs in the series have these prerequisites in common:

• Operating system: Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, or Oracle Solaris on x86
• Memory: 2 GB of RAM

Before starting the lab, ensure you have installed the following:

• Download and install Oracle VM VirtualBox; see Installation Details for notes on installing on any of the above operating systems.
• Download and install the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack and follow the instructions at Installing VirtualBox and extension packs.

Also, you must enable hardware virtualization support in the BIOS. Oracle Solaris depends on those capabilities.

Download the template (that is, the virtual machine [VM]) called Oracle Solaris 11.2 Oracle VM Template for Oracle VM VirtualBox.

This page is found off the main Oracle Solaris downloads page.

1. 1. Start Oracle VM VirtualBox.
2. 2. Select File > Import Appliance. (This lab shows screen shots on a Mac. Screens might look slightly different on a PC.)

Browse to the location where you downloaded the Oracle Solaris 11.2 VM and select it. Notice that Figure 1 mentions the OVF format, but the downloaded file is a .ova file, which is the entire archive (including OVF.xml). Click Continue.

• 3. Before importing the VM, check the memory settings.

Scroll down to check how much memory is allocated to the image. Oracle Solaris 11.2 (or later) requires a minimum of 2 GB of memory.

• 4. Click the Import button.

In this exercise, we will run Oracle Solaris 11 for the first time—getting a basic understanding of what's there:

• 1.Select the Oracle Solaris 11.2 VM and click the green arrow labeled Start.

On first boot, the System Configuration Tool runs, prompting you to enter system information providing an explanation of what is to follow. Note that during installation, you have to actively switch between the VM and your host OS. Oracle VM VirtualBox will open a window to explain this. After the VM boots, the environments are integrated, so when you move the mouse pointer over the VM, any input will be directed to the VM, and when you move the mouse pointer outside the VM, subsequent input will go to the host OS.

Figure 5. First screen of the System Configuration Tool

- Set the region.
- Set the country.
- Set the time zone.

• 3. The next screen will prompt you for system name.
• 4. The third screen will prompt for networking settings. Choose Automatic.
• 5. Next will be three screens to set the time:
• 6. Then set the date.
• 7. And select the keyboard.
• 8. Set the password. Make sure you enter user account information as well as the root password. You will log in through the user account.

Figure 6. Screen for entering user account and password information

For this example, we created the user demo during the configuration step, so we now log into that account.

• 9. Next, there will be two screens to enable the Oracle Configuration Manager, that is, 'phone home' capability. Unless you enter your My Oracle Support credentials (e-mail address and password) this data gathering facility will not be activated. (No specific user information is collected and Oracle treats the data collected as a customer's private information.)
• 10. Finally, you will be presented with a summary page:
  • 11. Press F2 to apply the specified configuration, and then Oracle Solaris will complete the configuration/boot process.
  • 12.Log in to Oracle Solaris using the user account you set up in Step 8 above.

  Figure 10. Investigating the Oracle VM VirtualBox package

  The Oracle Solaris guest additions package creates tighter integration between the host OS and Oracle Solaris. For example, you can cut and paste text between the two operating systems. You can also put Oracle Solaris into full-screen mode. Do this now by selecting Machine > Switch to Fullscreen.

  Exiting full-screen mode is most easily accomplished by moving your mouse cursor to the bottom middle of the screen, which will cause a menu to appear.

  zfs list

  This will print out data about all the pools and subpools created. Because there is only one pool in use on this system, a more succinct way to get information is to just look at rpool with the zpool(1M) command:

  zpool list rpool

  Figure 11. Listing data about all the pools and subpools

  sudo cat /etc/sudoers

  Doing this will give you privileges to run as the root user for five minutes. The demo account user attributes are in /etc/user_attr. If you look at the contents of the file, you will notice that when the demo user was created, it was given the role of type=root. Hence, it can operate with root privileges.

  • 13. After logging in, you should see the blank background of the user's desktop. Bring up a terminal window by clicking the icon that looks like a computer screen (located on the left side of the top bar of the Oracle VM VirtualBox window).
    • 14. To get started, investigate the Oracle VM VirtualBox package by running the command pkginfo -l SUNWvboxguest in the terminal window.
    • 15. Next, enter the following command:
    • 16. If you regularly use sudo(1), you can type in a command such as the following and enter the password of the demo account.

There are two ways to take a snapshot of your environment. The first is the traditional mechanism for VMs—capture all the information of that machine so that you can start it up from that saved state later. This includes a snapshot of the local file system.

To take a snapshot, from the VirtualBox menu, select Machine > Take Snapshot. Give the snapshot a name and optional description:

The other approach is using the capability of ZFS. There are two ways to do this: one for system administrators and one for users. Battlefront 3 free radical download.

For System Administrators (SAs)

To create a snapshot (called a boot environment [BE]), use the beadm(1M) command. A BE includes all the files Oracle Solaris needs to operate.

For example, to create a snapshot of the current Oracle Solaris environment, run the following command:

# beadm create Final fantasy 1 mac download.

After a snapshot has been created, the SA would then perform some action that would impact the Oracle Solaris environment, say, adding new packages. In the unlikely situation there is a problem from this action, the SA can reboot to safety-net-be to get back to a known working state.

When updating packages, for example, installing the monthly Support Repository Update, a boot environment is typically automatically created and the patches will be applied to that BE, not to the running system. In that case, after updating, the SA would reboot into the just-created BE containing the updated Oracle Solaris environment. If, after some testing, the SA is not satisfied with the update, it is easy to reboot to the pre-update state.

Creating a BE (a copy of your current Oracle Solaris environment) is a very fast process and shows off one of the key feature of ZFS: What is initially copied are mostly pointers to data blocks in the file system, not data blocks themselves. Over time, as the current Oracle Solaris environment changes, blocks might need to be rewritten. The old version of a block pointed to by the BE created earlier would not be updated, but a new block would be created for the current BE with updated data. BEs are not only fast to create, they are very economical from a storage perspective because the copy, that is, the current BE, has only blocks that are different from the original environment. Over time as changes are made, and new blocks are modified, added, or deleted, the snapshot grows. ZFS snapshots are fast and efficient, but they are only a snapshot the Oracle Solaris part of the system (for example, anything that could be patched). So user directories such as /export/home are not included in a snapshot. ZFS snapshots, though, are immensely helpful when making any system software changes, because it is a trivial reboot to get back to the previous environment.

See the beadm(1M) man page for information on how to select what BE to activate on next reboot, or any other of a number of administrative actions.

For Users

In any sort of production environment, backups are made on a regular basis. Individuals can augment these through Time Slider, a facility that allows taking frequent snapshots of a user's data. Time Slider can be accessed from the desktop through System->Administration-> Time Slider.

Wrap Up

That's it for this very brief introduction. Now you have an environment in which you can begin to learn about all the great features in Oracle Solaris 11. And with the snapshot features mentioned above, you never have to worry about messing anything up, because you can always roll back to a prior known good state.

When you are ready to halt the VM, go to the upper left corner of the display and click System. From that menu, you can shut down the system.

See Also

For additional information about Oracle Solaris 11 and the technologies used in this lab, see 'Taking Your First Steps with Oracle Solaris 11.'

About the Author

Jeff McMeekin is an Oracle Solaris product manager.

You can install Oracle Solaris 11 by using either an interactive or an automated installation. With an interactive installation, you have two options:

• The LiveCD for x86-based systems
• A text installer that can be used on either x86 or SPARC machines

These options are designed for installing the OS on a single system, whereas the automated installation option (commonly known as the Automated Installer, or AI) provides a “hands-free” network installation on a single system or for multiple-client systems.

System Requirements

Make sure the system has the below minimum requirements fulfilled, before beginning the installation of Solaris 11.

Installing Oracle Solaris 11 Using an Interactive Installer (Text Install on x86 VM)

For the purpose of this post, we will install Oracle Solaris 11 in an x86 VM machine. The process remains same while installing on SPARC based systems. To prepare for the installation, you first download and save the ISO image to your system. Select the ISO image as the boot media in Bios to begin the installation.

On the First screen, you are prompted to select the keyboard layout and language. Select appropriate keyboard layout and language here and proceed.

On next screen, you would see the text installer menu. The menu contains several options:

• Install Oracle Solaris: Allows you to install the operating system
• Install Additional Drivers: Allows you to install any device drivers that may be required to support the operating system
• Shell: Provides a shell; can be used to debug the installation
• Terminal type (currently sun-color): Provides a means of displaying the text installer correctly in case the default terminal type doesn’t work
• Reboot: Enables you to reboot the system after the installation has completed

To initiate the installation, select option 1. The default, as indicated by the number 1 in brackets, is to install Oracle Solaris, so all you have to do is press Enter to continue.

“Welcome to Oracle Solaris” Screen

This screen provides you with the temporary location of the installation log (/system/volatile/install_log) as well as instructions on how to navigate through the installer by using the function keys located at the bottom of the screen and the up and down arrow keys. To continue to the Disk screen, press the F2 function key.

Selecting a Disk

From the Welcome screen, you are taken to the Disks screen, where you are prompted to select where you want Oracle Solaris to be installed. To select the highlighted disk and continue to the next screen, press F2.

Selecting an Fdisk Partition

From the Disks screen, you are taken to the Fdisk Partitions (or the formatting disks) screen, where you can select to use a whole disk or to partition the disk. The “Use the whole disk” option is highlighted by default. Using the whole disk is highly recommended. To select this option and continue to the next screen, press F2.

Selecting a Network

The next screen is the Network screen, where you provide a computer name and select the wired Ethernet network connection configuration (Automatically, Manually, or None). The Automatically option automatically configures the network connection for you. The Manually option enables you to manually configure the network connection by responding to the prompts presented on the subsequent screens. The None option tells the system that you do not want to configure the network at this time.

To select one of these options, arrow down to Automatically, Manually, or None. When you have the desired option highlighted, press F2 to select it and continue. For this post example, you will manually configure the network.

Manually Configuring the Network

The next screen prompts you for the IP address for the network interface. In this example, the network interface is net0. When you have entered the required information for your network configuration, press F2 to continue.

DNS Name Service

The next screen provides you the opportunity to configure a DNS name service. To configure a DNS name service, select the first option. If you do not want to configure DNS, select the second option. In this example, you are not going to configure DNS.

Alternate Name Service

The next screen enables you to select an alternate name service, such as LDAP or NIS. For this example, you are going to select None.

Selecting the Time Zone: Regions

The next screen that appears is “Time Zone: Regions“, where you select the region that contains the time zone that is appropriate to your installation. To make your selection, arrow down to the region and then press F2 to select it and continue. In this example, you are going to select Asia.

Setting the Time Zone: Locations

The next screen is the Time Zone: Locations screen, where you select the location that contains the time zone that is appropriate to your installation. Again, to make your selection, arrow down to the location of your choice and then press F2 to select it and continue. In this example installation, India is selected for the location.

Solaris X86 Download Iso

Selecting the Time Zone

You next see the Time Zone screen. The selections presented on this screen are based on the region and location selections you made previously. To select the appropriate time zone, arrow down until your time zone is highlighted, and then press F2. To support the example installation, you select Asia/Kolkata.

Setting the Date and Time

The “Date and Time” screen appears next. Review the information that is presented and edit it as required. Note that the time is in the 24-hour format. After you have made the necessary edits, press F2 to continue.

Providing User Information

Next is the Users screen, where you enter your user information to include the system root password, your name, your username, and your user password. To continue, press F2.

Reviewing Installation Summary

After completing the configuration data, you see the Installation Summary screen. Review the information carefully to make sure it is accurate before you start the installation. To start the installation, press F2.

Monitoring the Installation

The Installing Oracle Solaris screen enables you to monitor the progress of the installation. The installation takes about 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

Solaris 7 X86 Iso Download

Verifying the Installation

When the installation concludes, the Installation Complete screen appears. This screen provides you with access to the installation log and, an opportunity to verify that no error messages were generated and that all the major facilities installed successfully.

You have the option of viewing the log at its /system/volatile/install_log location before rebooting by pressing F4. Alternatively, you can view the log at /var/sadm/system/logs/install_log after reboot.

Solaris 11 X86 Iso

Rebooting the System

After you have verified that the installation was successful, you can reboot the system by pressing F8. If you press F9 to quit, you are returned to the text installer menu, where you can select option 5 to reboot the system.