Sun Blade 150 cannot mount Solaris 9 media properly

[Pete]

Hi All,

The background ....
I've just taken delivery of a Sun Blade 150 and V210 server. The V210
didn't come with a CD-ROM drive and has come preinstalled with Solaris
8. The Blade 150 has a DVD drive and solaris 9 installed. I have
access to a set of Solaris 9 media on CD-ROM format.

The goal...
I'd like to replace the version of Solaris 8 on the V210 with Solaris
9, some reading tells me I can setup a jumpstart server on the Blade
and boot the V210 over the network to install - apparently this isn't
a picnic but it is do-able.

So I follow the sun jumpstart documentation like a good little
sysadmin, but ...

When I place the Solaris install disk 1 of 2 into the Blade, it gets
mounted under /cdrom by vold I can access only two directories called
s4 and s5 (slice 4 and 5 - if I understand solaris disks?). These
directories are empty ;-(

Anybody have any clues or hints on how I can get this to mount
properly .. jumpstart installation instructions say I should have
access to a Tools "folder" and I can see this ok if I put the disk in
a W2k machine - but no show on the SPARC box.

I've googled already and one of the suggestions was to swap the drive
in the Blade -- unfortunately I have only one drive! Surely a sun DVD
drive is compatable with a set of Sun cd-roms!!!????

Thanks in advance,

Pete.

[Rich Teer]

Post by Pete
When I place the Solaris install disk 1 of 2 into the Blade, it gets
mounted under /cdrom by vold I can access only two directories called
s4 and s5 (slice 4 and 5 - if I understand solaris disks?). These

That's correct.

Post by Pete
directories are empty ;-(

Hmm. Slice 0 and slice 1 contain the good bits; the rest are
essentially empty by design, but you should be able to see s0
and s1...

Post by Pete
Anybody have any clues or hints on how I can get this to mount
properly .. jumpstart installation instructions say I should have
access to a Tools "folder" and I can see this ok if I put the disk in
a W2k machine - but no show on the SPARC box.

Can you mount the slices manually (you might have to disable vold
first)?

[Doug McIntyre]

Post by Pete
When I place the Solaris install disk 1 of 2 into the Blade, it gets
mounted under /cdrom by vold I can access only two directories called
s4 and s5 (slice 4 and 5 - if I understand solaris disks?). These
directories are empty ;-(

This is a bug in Sol9 that I've encountered a few years ago. It was
fixed by some patch installed. So, try installing all your recommended
patch set patches..

You probably also can temporarily disable vold and mount the slices
you need by hand (s0 and s2 IIRC) somewhere (even in /cdrom/s0 and
/cdrom/s2 just like vold would do), and go on your task.

[Pete]

Hi All,

Thanks for your help. I spent a wee bit of time messing arround with
manual mounting and I'm just posting the following for anybody else
who googles for this problem in the future.

Just for reference, the media set I have is 12/03 solaris 9 - I'm
guessing the version that came preinstalled on the Blade 150 is an
older, buggier version. I've yet to try and add the other cd-roms to
the jumpstart image, or even attempt to boot the v210 over the
network.

I'll freely admit to this being my first installation of solaris on
sparc so doing a headless jumpstart install over the network is
proving to be a bit of a baptism of fire!

Can't believe sun don't include a CD-ROM drive with their v210 server
by default... Grrr...

Hmm... what is it they say ... "good learning experience" or
something...

====

bash-2.05# /etc/init.d/volmgt stop

bash-2.05# mount -F ufs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1 /cdrom
bash-2.05# cd /cdrom/
bash-2.05# ls
a dev kernel opt reconfigure usr
bin devices lib platform sbin var
cdrom etc mnt proc tmp
webstart

bash-2.05# mkdir /cdrom2

bash-2.05# mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0 /cdrom2/

bash-2.05# cd cdrom2/

bash-2.05# ls
Copyright Solaris_9

bash-2.05# cd Solaris_9/

bash-2.05# cd Tools/

bash-2.05# ls
Boot add_install_client dial
rm_install_client setup_install_server

bash-2.05# ./setup_install_server -t /cdrom /install_sol9/
Verifying target directory...
Calculating the required disk space for the Solaris_9 product
^C
====