YJL

I probably really bored, so I am trying second non-Linux unix-like OS. I downloaded the 2008.05 CD from OpenSolaris. Booted it up, after chose keyboard layout and language, it went into graphical mode. It is a live environment, GNOME 2.20.2. I clicked on Install icon on desktop.

In the dialog of setting user account. It is amazing that I could not have a log-in name longer than 8 characters! That’s my first time to see this kind of restriction through my own eyes. Few clicks later, it started to install and took about 20 minutes to finish.

First boot took 1:30 to the login screen. The screen resolution is 1024x768. So I ran nvidia-xconfig as root and restarted X. That didn’t work because the driver is 170 series. I need legacy 96 series. I changed back to the nv driver, but I broke X. I tried to switch back to console, I can’t and I don’t even know if Solaris is as if Linux has virtual consoles.

I tried to find out if there is a runlevel 3 as I can boot with an appending 3 in Linux kernel parameter in GRUB. That took me a while to find a solution on OpenSolaris forums, I finally read things about single user mode, which only accepts root user login. By appending -s to kernel booting parameter, I can modify xorg.conf and get nv driver worked again.

Now, I think I should get online first. I checked the network interface, I only have loop device. Device Driver Utility reports nForce Audio Processing Unit’s and nForce2 Ethernet Controller‘s drivers missing. I found a driver called nfo, the version I used is 1.1.2. It already has binary files, you can’t compile since you don’t have GCC or SunCC. The pre-compiled binary works well, you only need to follow the instructions in README.txt.

By the way, the ext2/3 file system is NOT SUPPORTED out-of-box in OpenSolaris if you have to attach USB external disk. You can use FAT16/32, instead. After rebooted, Device Driver Utility now reported the NIC uses nfo driver. That’s good, I then am able to proceed for the PPPoE configuration. I followed the steps in this¹ and this. I need to release IP from DHCP in order to get network worked normally, no idea how to resolve this.

Now I have the Internet connection, I launched the Package Manager from desktop and did the first-time update. First update needs to download around 630 MB. That is hugh amount of data, I can only wait.

Unfortunately, that didn’t work, it just keeps rebooting. I booted up the original BE (Boot Environment) and hours wasted. I decided to download legacy nVidia driver, I uninstall the one from OpenSolaris, then installed legacy one. Ran nvidia-xconfig and rebooted, I got the 1680x1050!

I think OpenSolaris is OK in production usage, but you may need to do a lot of homework if you want finely tune it. Lastly, a screenshot:

[1]	http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_Connect_Solaris_to_BSNL_DataONE is gone.