Solaris 8 and windoze dual boot

[Rickdog]

Does anyone here have experience dual booting Solaris 8 and windows? I have successfully set up a number of systems dual boot with RH 7.2 and Windows Me, but haven't been able to find much about dual booting with Sun solaris 8 and any windows OS. I should be receiving my solaris 8 media kit for Intel soon (if Sun ever ships it) and would like to set it up dual boot also if possible. TIA, Rickdog.

[javierm]

It will work. I have done it in the past.
However, which version of windows? I've done
it with 98. Hope it helps and that yours works.

[pointreyes]

Recommend you image back up your drive before installing Solaris because it might eat up your drive. I have more than once had to erase my MBR after Solaris 8 blew it up.

I use System Commander for creating pre-built partitions. However, the partition for Solaris will be classified as a Linux Swap and that could cause a problem if you have the Linux Swap partition on the drive. You should be safe if the Linux Swap partition is an extended partition. I believel Solaris only like primary partitions for installation.

My biggest problem with Solaris is that it keeps the light on my UPS (connect by serial port) as if it is discharging it.

The slices that Solaris comes up with will not be enough for the companion CD (you might have to download that CD-not sure about it). I had to manually resize the slices to accomodate for more than Sun claimed was needed. You might want to check the forums on Sun's web site regarding Intel based installations.

[Denise]

On disk1, all you need to do is to create another partition on your existing disk. You can use Solaris boot manager to boot Solaris x86, NT, and Win 9x (among other systems).

To shrink an existing MS-DOS/MS Windows partition, if you need to make room, use something like Partition Magic.


To use Solaris boot loader to boot NT:
Create 3 PRIMARY partitions on the disk in the following order
DOS FAT
DOS FAT (to become NTFS)
empty (to become Solaris)

install DOS (or Win 9x) on Partition 1
Then install NT on partition 2, converting to NTFS while installing
Finally, install Solaris 2.6 on partition 3 using Solaris interactive.
Solaris boot manager will be the master boot controler, but then choose partition 1 to boot NT (yes that is right, not 2). Then the NT boot manager will come to life, allowing you to select either DOS (partition 1) or NT (partition 2). Note that Solaris is the active partition.


For dual with a NTFS partition:

The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root Solaris/x86 partition into a file in the DOS/NT partition. Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.sun (inspired by c:\bootsect.dos) you can then edit the c:\boot.ini file (copy boot.ini to boot.old first): to come up with something like this

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT="Windows NT"

multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(0)C:\BOOTSECT.SUN ="Solaris/x86"

C:\="DOS"


This procedure assumes that DOS and NT have been installed onto the first disk and Solaris/x86 or whatever have been onto the second disk. Note that in order to use the Windows NT boot loader, the NT partition must be the active boot partition. Solaris/x86 must also be the active boot partition, so must reside on another disk.

Mount a DOS-formatted floppy (if you've converted to NTFS, which isn't readable from Solaris/x86) or the FAT partition, under, say, /mnt. Type:

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 of=/mnt/bootsect.sun bs=512 count=1

# (Note: The above is for SCSI; use /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 for ATAPI/IDE.)


Reboot into DOS or NT. NTFS users copy the bootsect.sun file from the floppy to C:. Modify the DOS/NT attributes (permissions) on boot.ini with:

attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini

Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example boot.ini above, and restore the system and read-only file attributes:

attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini

Problems have been reported inter-working with OS/2, however. Reportedly, the order in which you install things is very important. Solaris doesn't "share" computers and partitions really well. You need to install Solaris first, on a partition towards the end, reinstall the boot manager and add the partition.

Other options for booting is to use System Commander, IBM's Boot Manager (bundled with Partition Magic or OS/2), FreeBSD's OS-BS (or OS-BootSelect (open source), instead of the Solaris' Boot Manager.

Go to the Solaris on intel platforms FAQ for more information on this

[Rickdog]

Thanks to all who replied. Your help was useful but, alas, I think I am going to abandon the Solaris 8 intel project. There seem to be way too many stumbling blocks to getting a network going and so-forth. Only a handful of network cards are supported, etc. The install seems to have many bug stoppages, not smooth like RH 7.2 and others. Partitioning and master boot recording do not go nearly as smoothly, in fact they are not nearly automated as is the case with Redhat. The best advice I got was to get a sparc system on e-bay or something.

My linux teacher (yes, we have a class on linux here) told me that setting up Solaris on a sparc machine was not easy (and he's a computer science instructor teaching linux and unix at university) so I think linux is still a much easier route in my experience. Had I known what I know now, I would not have ordered the $45.00 (+$8 shipping) media kit. A lesson to those more fortunate souls who may read this before they spill their hard earned dollars.