My first post for this topic = "My Tech Experience"
The specs:
AMD Phenom X4 Quad core
Nvidia 9400GT 1Gb
8Gb RAM
Gigabyte Mobo
Seagate 1TB
The installation was smooth.
Edit network config to have a static IP (same as Linux procedure), however, unlike Ubuntu/modern GNU/Linux distros, OpenSolaris needs me to manually restart the network daemon.
Doing:
pfexec svcadm restart nwam at the CLI won't work.
I tried
svcadm restart network/physical:nwam
to no avail. Google is not a friend anymore, so I did a reboot as a quick solution(remember the old good win9x days).
At terminal pfexec pkg image-update to update the OS image, takes a few seconds. At reboot, we have a new default BE : opensolaris-1.
I still don't know how to upgrade the whole system like upgrading firefox into the latest version. I've installed the latest Virtualbox package (2.2 version at the time of this writing). Readme.txt provides the quick help how to install the package:
(*) First, the VirtualBox kernel interface package:
pkgadd -G -d VirtualBoxKern-2.2.0-SunOS-r45846.pkg
To perform an unattended (non-interactive) installation of this package add
"-n -a autoresponse SUNWvboxkern" (without quotes) to the end of the above pkgadd command.
(*) Next, the main VirtualBox package:
pkgadd -d VirtualBox-2.2.0-SunOS-r45846.pkg
To perform an unattended (non-interactive) installation of this package add
"-n -a autoresponse SUNWvbox" (without quotes) to the end of the above pkgadd command.
The nvidia driver was downloaded from nvidia website through the Solaris package. Can't find the specific driver for 9400GT, it may have a different name :(
At the time of this writing, I still need to reboot the system if the new nvidia driver will work.
Rebooted.
Solaris nvidia driver package won't work. As a result, I can't accelerate my virtualbox windows guests. OpenSolaris is really great, the ZFS feature is a handful tool for doing snapshots of my home directories. But if the Nvidia 9400GT video card won't work except for the default vesa driver, I will not use the OS.
The latest CEntOS 64-bit would be great, or should I install Ubuntu instead? The problem of Ubuntu server is it doesn't have a GUI, I need a GUI to administer my virtualbox guests locally. Of course, we can add gnome/kde on top of the Ubuntu server, but the regular updates on the server won't affect the gui packages or vice versa? I am thinking of installing Ubuntu/KVM that way. Actually I am also waiting for the Redhat Linux Enterprise 6.0 clone(CEntOS). But it is a year away I think.
OpenSolaris was sluggish sometimes, even if I only have Firefox running with few tabs! Given my machine specs above, this is not acceptable! I think I have configured the system from BIOS to the optimal setting, enabled the SATA > ACHI. No RAID for OpenSolaris, it cannot detect or it doesn't have the driver for it. If anyone read this, what's wrong? Even the mouse pointer slows down a bit, maybe it is due to ZFS?
I will replace OpenSolaris with Linux this time. I will come back to OpenSolaris if it will have a larger userbase, applications and compatibility. I can't just use ZFS with its superb features when all of the "must" have stuff are nowhere. I can't even install a package via IPS, when I am behind proxy. This is an important feature in the company where 98% of the computers are firewalled/proxied.
The Register OpenSolaris won't work(at least I am behind proxy) . It says that I need to register to have the updates. But it is broken with these error messages:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/opensolaris-register", line 35, in ?
obj = urllib2.urlopen(req)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 130, in urlopen
return _opener.open(url, data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 358, in open
response = self._open(req, data)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 376, in _open
'_open', req)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 337, in _call_chain
result = func(*args)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 1029, in https_open
return self.do_open(httplib.HTTPSConnection, req)
File "/usr/lib/python2.4/urllib2.py", line 996, in do_open
raise URLError(err)
urllib2.URLError:
At least it will provide a DIALOG BOX to inform me that it can't connect to the server. :(
Anybody reading this with sufficient OpenSolaris knowledge, I would be glad to hear your advice.
The most important for me is OpenSolaris should work for my Video Card so that I can I have 3D machine guests.
Buying a compatible IBM/HP server is not an option.
*Update: It is rather easy to use Ubuntu/KVM without the GUI, all I need is to manage the guests in another Linux desktop with virt-manager.
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