Installing Solaris 10

C H A P T E R 6

This chapter provides information about installing the Solaris trademark 10 10/09 Operating System (Solaris 10 OS) on the Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 Servers Servers.

This chapter includes the following topics:

Task Map for the Solaris 10 Installation

Installing Solaris 10 Using Local or Remote Media

Installing Solaris 10 OS Using a PXE Network Environment

Post Solaris Installation Tasks

For information describing how to configure the preinstalled Solaris 10 OS image, see the Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 Servers Installation Guidee (820-5827) for setup instructions.

Task Map for the Solaris 10 Installation

Use TABLE 6-1 to preview the installation process defined as a series of tasks. The table identifies and describes the tasks required, and provides pointers to the instructions for performing that task.

TABLE 6-1 T ask Map for the Solaris 10 Installation
Step	Task	Description	Relevant Topic(s)
1	Review installation prerequisites.	Verify that all applicable requirements are met for installing an operating system to a Sun Fire X4170, X4270, or X4275 Server.	TABLE 1-2 OS Installation Prerequisites
2	Choose an installation method.	Evaluate and select an installation method that meets the needs of your infrastructure.	Installation Methods
3	Ensure that the BIOS factory defaults are set.	Verify that the factory default settings in the BIOS are set prior to performing the operating system installation.	Verify BIOS Settings for New Installations
4	Gather the Solaris 10 10/09 installation media.	The Solaris 10 OS is shipped with the CD and DVD media and documentation that you will need to install the Solaris OS for both SPARC and x86 platforms. For Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 Servers, use the media for x86 platforms.	You can download or order the media for Solaris 10 10/09 at: `http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp`
5	Perform the Solaris 10 10/09 OS installation.	The install instructions in this chapter describe the initial steps for booting the installation media and launching the Solaris installation program. For further information about installing Solaris 10 10/09, refer to the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations, (817-0544).	Installing Solaris 10 Using Local or Remote Media or Installing Solaris 10 OS Using a PXE Network Environment
6	Install driver(s), post installation, if necessary.	If the Solaris Operating System does not include the necessary device drivers to support your system, you might need to install additional device drivers.	Install System Device Drivers to Support Additional Hardware
7	Install patches, post installation, if necessary.	If necessary, install critical Solaris patches pertaining to your system. Solaris patches can contain new features, enhancements, or fixes to known problems.
8	Enable the Wake On LAN option, if desired.	This feature enables you to power on the server from another location over the network.	Enable the Option for Wake On LAN
9	Install RAID Management Software, if necessary.	If you have Sun StorageTek SAS RAID HBA (SG-XPCIESAS-R) installed on your server, you should install the Sun RAID management software.	Install RAID Management Software

Installing Solaris 10 Using Local or Remote Media

The following procedure describes how to boot the Solaris Operating System installation from local or remote media. It assumes that you are booting the installation media from one of the following sources:

Solaris 10 10/09 (or subsequent release) CD or DVD set (internal or external CD/DVD)

Solaris 10 10/09 (or subsequent release) ISO DVD image (network repository)

Note - If you are booting the installation media from a PXE environment, refer to Installing Solaris 10 OS Using a PXE Network Environment for instructions.

Before You Begin

Prior to performing the installation, the following requirements must be met:

All applicable installation prerequisites for installing an operating system should have been met. For further information about these prerequisites, see TABLE 1-2 OS Installation Prerequisites.

An installation method (for example: console, boot media, and install target) should have been chosen and established prior to performing the installation. For information about these setup requirements, see Installation Methods.

Note that the following procedure explains the initial steps for booting the installation media and launching the Solaris installation program. For further details about installing Solaris 10, see the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations (817-0544).

After completing this procedure, you should review and perform the required post installation tasks described later in this chapter. For more details, see Post Solaris Installation Tasks.

Install Solaris 10 Using Local or Remote Media

1. Ensure that the installation media is available to boot.

Note - For the Sun Fire X4275 Server, which has neither a CD/DVD-ROM drive nor a USB connector on the front panel, use the ILOM Remote Console to redirect the boot media from a remote storage device. For instructions, see “Remote Boot Media” in TABLE 1-4 Boot Media Options for Performing the OS Installation.

For distribution CD/DVD. Insert the Solaris 10 Distribution media (CD labeled 1 or the single DVD) into the local or remote CD/DVD-ROM drive.

For ISO image. Ensure that the ISO images are available and that the Sun ILOM Remote Console application is aware of the first ISO image location.

For additional information about how to set up the installation media, see TABLE 1-4 Boot Media Options for Performing the OS Installation.

2. Reset the power on the server.

For example:

From the ILOM web interface, select the Remote Control --> Remote Power Control tab, then select the Power Cycle option from the Host action drop-down list box.

From the local server, press the Power button (approximately 1 second) on the front panel of the server to turn the server off, then press the Power button again to power on the server.

From the ILOM CLI on server SP, type: reset /SYS

The BIOS screen appears.

Graphic showing BIOS Boot Screen.

Note - The next events occur very quickly; therefore, focused attention is needed for the following steps. Please watch carefully for these messages as they appear on the screen for a brief time. You might want to enlarge the size of your screen to eliminate scroll bars.

3. In the BIOS power-on self-test screen, press F8 to specify a temporary boot device for the Solaris installation.

The Please Select Boot Device menu appears.

Graphic showing the Please Select Boot Device Menu screen.

4. In the Boot Device menu, select either the external or virtual CD/DVD device as the first (temporary) boot device, then press Enter.

In the sample Boot Device menu shown in Step 3, the virtual CDROM device is specified as the first boot device.

The device strings listed on Boot Device menu are in the format of: device type, slot indicator, and product ID string.

Note - If you are performing the Solaris installation from the Sun ILOM Remote Console application, you need to select (in the Boot Device menu) the AMI Virtual CDROM.

The GRUB menu appears.

Graphic showing the GRUB menu screen.

5. In the GRUB menu, select Solaris, then press Enter.

Note - In the GRUB menu, if you want to redirect the install output to a serial console, press “e” to edit the GRUB menu to support a serial console (-B console = ttya).

The system loads the Solaris disk image into memory. This process can take several minutes. When it completes, the Install Type menu appears.

Graphic showing the Install type menu screen.

6. In the Install Type menu, choose the type of interface that you want to use to perform the installation.

Graphical User Interface (default)

Type 1 then press Enter.

Text Installer From Desktop Session

Type 3 then press Enter.

Text Installer From Console Session

Type 4 then press Enter.

Note - The screens that are displayed on your system might vary depending on the type of interface you chose to configure in Step 6. The following sample screens appearing in this procedure are based on the default Graphical User Interface (GUI) option (option 1).

The system discovers and configures the devices and interfaces. If the system discovers a keyboard, the Configure Keyboard Layout menu appears.

Graphic showing the Configure Keyboard Layout menu.

7. In the Configure Keyboard Layout menu, select the appropriate keyboard layout, then press F2 to continue.

The system configures the keyboard layout selection and searches for configuration files.

If you selected a GUI installation in the earlier steps, the next two steps (Step 8 and Step 9) confirm that the GUI is functioning. If you did not select a GUI interface earlier, skip to Step 10.

Confirming GUI functionality - Screen 1 - Press Enter

8. In the Discovering Network Configurations and Starting Solaris Interactive Installation screen, press Enter.

A second screen appears to confirm that the GUI is functioning.

Confirming GUI Functioning - Screen 1 - Screen is legible

9. In the screen that is confirming the text shown is legible, press Enter.

The Language Selection menu appear.

10. In the Language Selection menu, type the selected language ID number (0-9), then press Enter.

After a few moments the Welcome screen appears.

Note - The sample screen shown below reflects the GUI installation program. If you are running a text-based installation interface, the text-based Welcome screen (not shown) will appear.

Graphic showing the Welcome screen.

11. In the Welcome screen, click Next to begin the installation.

The Solaris installation program will display several configuration screens.

12. Continue the normal Solaris installation and, if necessary, refer to the Solaris documentation for additional details.

After the installation completes, the system will automatically reboot (if you previously selected this option during the configuration screens) and displays the Solaris login prompt.

Note - If you did not configure the system to automatically reboot when the installation completes, you must manually reboot the system.

13. Proceed to the section Post Solaris Installation Tasks to perform the post Solaris configuration tasks.

Installing Solaris 10 OS Using a PXE Network Environment

The following procedure describes how to boot the Solaris operating system installation from a PXE network environment. It assumes that you are booting the installation media from one of the following sources:

Solaris 10 10/09 CD or DVD set (internal or external CD/DVD)

Solaris 10 10/09 ISO DVD image or Solaris JumpStart image (network repository)

Note - JumpStart can help you eliminate some or most of the manual tasks of setting up the Solaris Operating System for the first time on multiple servers. For more information about using a JumpStart image, see the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations (817-5506).

Before You Begin

The following requirements must be met prior to performing the Solaris 10 PXE installation:

To use PXE to boot the installation media over the network, you should have completed the following tasks:

PXE boot install server setup to export the installation.

Note - The PXE network boot does not work properly over subnets that include multiple DHCP servers. Therefore, you should set up only one DHCP server on the subnet that includes the client system that you want to install.

Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 Servers MAC network port address configured as a client system on the PXE boot install server.

For further information about setting up and installing Solaris 10 from the network, see the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Network Installations (817-0544).

If your installation media source is a JumpStart installation image, the image must be properly prepared and ready for installation. Information concerning how to properly set up and deploy a JumpStart installation is outside the scope of this guide.

For details about creating a Solaris JumpStart image, see the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations (817-5506).

After completing the following procedure, you should review and perform the required post installation tasks described later in this chapter. For more details, see Post Solaris Installation Tasks.

Install Solaris 10 Using Network PXE Boot

1. Ensure that the PXE network environment is properly set up and the Solaris installation media is available for PXE boot.

For details, see the “Planning to Install From Network” sections in the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Network Installations (817-0544).

2. Reset the power on the server.

For example:

From the ILOM web interface, select the Remote Control --> Remote Power Control tab, then select the Power Cycle option from the Host action drop-down list box.

From the local server, press the Power button (approximately 1 second) on the front panel of the server to turn the server off, then press the Power button again to power on the server.

From the ILOM CLI on server SP, type: reset /SYS

The BIOS Screen appears.

Graphic showing the BIOS screen.

Note - The next events occur very quickly; therefore, focused attention is needed for the following steps. Watch carefully for these messages as they appear on the screen for a brief time. You might want to enlarge the size of your screen to eliminate scroll bars.

3. In the BIOS power-on self-test (POST) screen, press F8 to specify a temporary boot device.

The Please Select Boot Device menu appears.

4. In the Boot Device menu, select the appropriate PXE boot port, then press Enter.

The PXE boot port is the physical network port configured to communicate with your network install server.

Note that the options listed on the following sample Boot Device menu might be different from the options shown on your Boot Device menu.

The GRUB menu appears.

Graphic showing the Boot device menu screen.

5. In the GRUB menu, select Solaris, then press Enter.

Note - In the GRUB menu, if you want to redirect the install output to a serial console, press “e” to edit the GRUB menu to support a serial console (-B console = ttya).

The system loads the Solaris disk image into memory. This process can take several minutes. When it completes, the Install Type menu appears.

Graphic showing the Install type menu screen.

6. In the Install Type menu, choose the type of interface that you want to use to perform the installation.

Graphical User Interface (default)

Type 1 then press Enter.

Text Installer From Desktop Session

Type 3 then press Enter.

Text Installer From Console Session

Type 4 then press Enter.

Note - The screens that are displayed on your system might differ depending on the type of interface you chose to configure in Step 6. The sample screens appearing in this procedure from this point on are based on the default Graphical User Interface (GUI) option (option 1).

The system discovers and configures the devices and interfaces. If the system discovers a keyboard, the Configure Keyboard Layout menu appears.

Graphic showing the Configure Keyboard Layout screen.

7. In the Configure Keyboard Layout menu, select the appropriate keyboard layout, then press F2 to continue.

The system configures the keyboard layout selection and searches for configuration files.

If you selected a GUI installation in the earlier steps, the next two steps (Step 8 and Step 9) confirm that the GUI is functioning. If you did not select a GUI interface earlier, skip to Step 10.

Graphic showing the Discovering Network Configurations screen.

8. In the Discovering Network Configurations and Starting Solaris Interactive Installation screen, press Enter.

A second screen appears to confirm that the GUI is functioning.

Confirming GUI Functioning - Screen 1 - Screen is legible

9. In the screen that is confirming the text shown is legible, press Enter.

The Language Selection menu appears.

10. In the Language Selection menu, type the selected language ID number (0-9), then press Enter.

After a few moments the Welcome screen appears.

Note - The sample screen shown below reflects the GUI installation program. If you are running a text-based installation interface, the text-based Welcome screen (not shown) will appear.

Graphic showing the Welcome screen.

11. In the Welcome screen, click Next to begin the installation.

If you preconfigured all of the system information, the installation program does not prompt you to enter any configuration information. If you did not preconfigure all the system information, the installation program prompts you for this information on several configuration screens.

12. Continue the normal Solaris installation and, if necessary, refer to the Solaris documentation for additional details.

After the installation completes, the system will automatically reboot (if you previously selected this option during the configuration procedure) and displays the Solaris login prompt.

Note - If you did not configure the system to automatically reboot when the installation completes, you must manually reboot the system.

13. Proceed to the section Post Solaris Installation Tasks to perform the post Solaris configuration tasks.

Post Solaris Installation Tasks

After completing the Solaris installation and rebooting the Solaris Operating System, review the following post installation tasks and, if necessary, perform the tasks that are applicable to your system.

Install System Device Drivers to Support Additional Hardware

Enable the Option for Wake On LAN (optional)

Install RAID Management Software

Install System Device Drivers to Support Additional Hardware

The following table identifies the system device drivers available for you to install on your system. You should review this table to determine which drivers, if any, are currently required for installation on your system.

TABLE 6-2 Additional Solaris Device Drivers
Hardware Device	Driver Required	Instructions	Download Driver From This Site (URL)
Sun Dual Port DDR IB Host Channel Adapter PCIe Card	Hermon device driver	The hermon device driver is included in the Solaris InfiniBand (IB) Updates 3 software release. For additional information about this device driver, see: `http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-2254/hermon-7d?a=view`	`http://www.sun.com/download/index.jsp?cat=Hardware%20Drivers&tab=3&subcat=InfiniBand`
Sun QDR IB-HCA PCI-e Card (X4237A)	Hermon device driver

Enable the Option for Wake On LAN

After installing the operating system, you might want to consider enabling the Wake On LAN (WOL) option in the BIOS Setup utility. This feature enables you to power on the server from another location over the network. For details about the requirements for enabling WOL, see “Wake On LAN” in the Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 Servers Service Manual.

Install RAID Management Software

If you have Sun StorageTek SAS RAID HBA (SG-XPCIESAS-R) installed on your server, you should install the Sun RAID management software, which is available on the Tools and Drivers CD/DVD. If you do not install the RAID management software on your system, the Solaris OS will not be able to detect and report disk errors.

You can access the Adaptec RAID Storage management software on the Tools and Drivers CD/DVD at the following location:

solaris/tools/raid_adaptec