Solaris x86 hints page

Here is a growing collection of hints and utilities for Solaris x86. I add to them as I encounter issues with my BP6 dual-celeron system.
If you'd like to see some general solaris tips, see my miscellaneous hints page.

Table of Contents

1. Accelerated 3d support
2. Hardware
3. x86 disk diagnostic tools
4. Getting set up
5. Random solaris-x86 quickies

Accelerated 3d support

• Utah-GLX provides some free OpenGL drivers for machines running xfree86
• Xig.com provides commercial OpenGL drivers, coving a wider range of hardware, and more features.

Hardware

• The now famous Solaris compatible laptops list.
• A general Solaris-x86 HCL database, driven by community entries

• Xig (yes, the graphics folks) have a PCMCIA hack if your laptop is not recognizing a card on the sun HCL
• A sample sbpro.conf (ISA Soundblaster16) driver conf file, for solaris 2.6 and possibly later. But you should use a PCI soundblaster card instead these days.
• How to use a Sun monitor under solaris x86
• Getting a Compaq deskpro 6000 to work with solaris7
• How to use any Intel PRO/100 ethernet card
• General tips when adding new hardware
• A CPU temperature monitor driver, for motherboards with WinBond w83781d chips.
• A history of my troubles getting my device conflicts to work
• Mysterious I/O errors with old drive controllers?

x86 disk diagnostic tools

• getfdisk.c: "getfdisk /dev/dsk/c0d0p0" will give you the fdisk layout of a disk, in BLOCKS, rather than cylinders
• getvtoc.c: Tool to check whether there is a valid vtoc, aka "solaris partition info" on a device.
• aioread.c: Trivial Async-IO reading program, as a pseudo-benchmark. Queues up multiple disk requests VERY FAST, using asynchronous IO.
• to create a "boot partition" by hand, on a second disk, you can use

  mkfs_pcfs -o S,s,b=BOOT,B=/boot/mdbootbp,i=/boot/strap.com /dev/rdsk/c1d0p0:boot
  mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d1p0:boot /mnt/boot
  cp -r /boot /mnt/boot

• If you dont mind using a linux boot cdrom, you can try using ntfsresize from the knoppix bootable cdromto shrink an existing NTFS partition, to make room for Solaris.

Getting set up

• An explaination of the solaris booting sequence
• How to change your boot partition permenantly
• Incomplete knowlege into the x86 boot monitor. A possible place to look at, if you get stuck with device configuration, and you're a hacker.
• Get those nifty extra sun keys! Cut/Paste, etc. Plus 'Meta'.
• PS/2 mouse hint: use /dev/kdmouse
• Allegedly how to use a large IDE drive before solaris 8

Random solaris-x86 quickies

• "kstat -m iprb" to find out link speed and mode of iprb, or other GLD based ethernet adapters

• To set your default boot path by hand (if, for example, the DCA decides to lock up on you in "boot tasks), try

  eeprom bootpath /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a
  

  (Or whatever /pciXXXX path matches up to your /dev/dsk/c0d0s0)

• If solaris8 crashes during install, after it has loaded the kernel, try forcibly disabling acpi. Get a boot floppy if you dont already have one. Then edit /solaris/bootenv.rc on the floppy and add the line

  setprop acpi-user-options '0x2'

• Adding "ata-revert-to-defaults=0;" to /platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/ata.conf may help if your disk isnt accessible after soft rebooting.

and dont forget the alt.solaris.x86 FAQ site

Written by: Philip Brown
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