Guidelines for Partitioning a System Prior To Installation

When installing Oracle Solaris from the live CD ISO image or from the text installer image, you can use the entire disk, or you can install the operating system on an x86 partition. With the text installer, you can install the operating system on a SPARC slice.

On x86 based systems, the installer uses GRUB, which supports installing multiple operating systems on one drive. You can create a partition for installing Oracle Solaris prior to installation, as well as during an installation. After partitioning and installing the various operating systems, you can deploy any of them by selecting the appropriate menu entry in the GRUB menu at boot time.

x86: How to Partition a System Prior to Installation

The following procedure describes how to partition an x86 based system prior to installation. For information about partitioning a system during an installation, see Guidelines for Partitioning a System During an Interactive Installation.

1. Back up your system.

   Backing up your system is strongly recommended before partitioning your hard drive. The Ghost for UNIX (G4U) open-source tool was designed to back up x86 based systems.

2. On your hard drive, create a partition for installing the operating system.

   Choose one of the following options:

   • Use the fdisk command to create or modify an Oracle Solaris fdisk partition.

     For instructions, see How to Create a Solaris fdisk Partition in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems. See also the fdisk(1M) man page.

   • Use commercial products or open-source tools to partition your hard drive.

     GParted is an open-source tool for disk partitioning. You can use this tool to create New Technology File System (NTFS) partitions. To access the GParted tool on the live CD desktop, double-click the GParted tool icon. To access the tool from the main menu, choose Applications -> System Tools -> GParted Partition Editor.

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     Note - The GParted tool is not supported in the text installer media.

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     If you create Linux-swap partitions by using the GParted tool, note that Linux-swap uses the same partition ID that Oracle Solaris uses. During the installation, in the disk partitioning step, you can change the Linux-swap partition to an Oracle Solaris partition.

3. Use the installer to install the operating system on the Oracle Solaris fdisk partition.