I have gone through the process of installing Open Solaris in a number of places without problems. I am currently trying to install Open Solaris alongside my Ubuntu Linux distribution on my Acer Aspire One Netbook. I seem to find articles of others who have installed Open Solaris on a similar Netbook.
I am aware of the gotcha's relating to running Linux and Solaris side by side. There is no extended partition. I created a Swap typed partition for Solaris to use. I backed up Ubuntu's grub information to manually apply to Solaris's boot menu once Solaris is installed. First time around things seemed to go ok initially. I went through the installer and it got to the main install and seemed to be installing ok. I left it to install from that point on. Later I came back to check on it and the progress had stopped at 99%. I left it longer and it still was stuck there. Checking the resource manager there was no cpu activity and seemed to be no io activity either. I had left it long enough to be pretty certain something had gone wrong. I rebooted and started the install again. This time it gets stuck after 5% and gives me information about having failed to load an image. I noted that the image was a amd64bit image which could well be the problem in the first place. I am not sure about all models of the Intel Atom. It seems my Netbook is 32bit only. Ubuntu x64 live CD refuses to boot due to the processor type. Interestingly I have a home server I set up myself running a Micro ITX Atom board which seems to run Ubuntu x64 server with no problems. Curious. Anyway the installer doesn't seem to offer very much in the way of installer options. I don't know for example if I can force the installer to install in 32bit mode. Perhaps the LiveCD is the inappropriate medium to use. I have some Solaris and Linux experience but am by no means an expert. If I can't get things to work I may just have to repair the Linux mbr and do without Solaris on my Netbook but I really hoped I would be able to have it. I think I am at the point where asking questions might prove more effective than more blindly trying to sort it out on my own. If anyone can give me some guidance it would be appreciated. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
