Yes, I know it's not something you're *supposed* to be able to do, but I've been experimenting with it anyway to make life easier on my jumpstart server (which currently still needs to be able to install any OS from 5 and up). I was hoping I could trick Solaris into letting me build and install flash archives of 6 and 7 to save on install/patching time.
Here is the process I've gone through so far-
I installed Solaris 6 full OEM, and patched with the latest recommended cluster, did a few minor customizzations, etc.
I then booted the 420r using a Solaris 9 miniroot (I used the miniroot from my jumpstart box rather than a cdrom- it really shouldn't matter though)
I mounted the original solaris 6 image on /a , mounted a filesystem on a spare disk as /mnt and did the unspeakable-
flarcreate -n sol_6_test -R /a -S /mnt/solaris_6.flash
The flarcreate appeared successful, however, when I attempt an install using this flash image, I get unusual errors that I'm not sure how to work around-
To install, I booted a Solaris 9 miniroot again, and attempted a flash install using the solaris 6 flash archive- After paritioning the disks, I get the following output-
Beginning Flash archive processing
Predeployment processing
/usr/bin/uudecode: ISO08859-1 to 646 conversion: Invalid argument
16 blocks
/usr/bin/uudecode: ISO08859-1 to 646 conversion: Invalid argument
16 blocks
/usr/bin/uudecode: ISO08859-1 to 646 conversion: Invalid argument
16 blocks
No local customization defined
sh: /tmp/flash_tmp/predeployment_processing: not found
ERROR: Error while processing system predeployment script
ERROR: Predeployment processing failure
ERROR: Flash installation failed
#
Any ideas on a workaround for this? Maybe some extra steps or paramters I need to do when I create the flash, maybe some odd one-off I can do in a jumpstart begin script to workaround this, or I am I just trying to do the impossible?
Vincent Esposito