Hi John, * John Lynch (asafoetida at eircom.net) wrote: > Hi. I am new to Solaris. > > I have been trying to install Open Solaris to dual-boot with Windows > XP on my laptop, which has a 60GB HDD. My Windows (system and boot) > partition occupies the first c. 12GB of this drive. The rest was data > partitions. I backed up the data and deleted the other partitions, > leaving about 45GB free space. > > I then booted to the System Rescue CD which I burned from the .iso > image available on this website. I didn't find QTparted as specified > in the screencast from > http://frsun.downloads.edgesuite.net/sun/07C00892/media/demos/OpenSolarisDualBoot-Step2-Partition.html, > but instead (after typing startx to get the GUI) found Gparted. I used > this to create a Linux-swap partition in the free space, which I then > got Gparted to format. Rebooting to Windows, this showed up OK as > "Unknown partition". > > I then booted to the Open Solaris Developer Preview Live CD, signing > in as jack/jack. I clicked on the Installer icon, but then came the > problem: 2 options were displayed, (1)Use the whole disk (2)Use an > existing Solaris partition. > > Unfortunately, although I could see the Windows partition and the > Linux-swap partition, they were all greyed out and unclickable. > > I have tried this about 4 or 5 times, each time the partitions are > greyed out and the only option available is "Use the whole disk" - > which I don;t want to do as I still need Windows. > > Can anyone help point me in the right direction to a solution of this > issue please? I very much want to try out OpenSolaris and get into > the open-Source world.
The installer doesn't recognize linux swap as a valid Solaris partition (because it isn't really). That partition id (82) was for the old Solaris partitions. Now the partition id is Solaris2. What you want to do is once booted to the liveCD, open a terminal window and run format -e: bash-3.2$ pfexec format -e This will show you the disks on your system. You want to pick your hard disk (you can trial and error this if you don't know by looking at the offerings). Once you've found the correct disk, type fdisk into the format prompt. You'll get a display showing the partitions on that disk. There will be an option (#4) that says "Change between Solaris and Solaris2 Partition IDs". Choose that and specify the linux swap partition (which fdisk will recognize as a Solaris1 partition type). Once that's done, quit fdisk and format and then run the Installer again. It should now see the partition as a valid Solaris partition and offer to install into it. Cheers, -- Glenn
