Solaris 10 install doesn't recognize free space? 1

[SilverLinkX2]

Hi I'm completely new to Solaris and I ordered a free DVD from the sun site. I want to install it. I have 3 primary partions on the hard drive (MBR, Vista, XP) one logical with two extendeds inside (Ubuntu: swap and root) and I have roughly 20 gigabits free at the end of the hard drive. The problem is, when I try to install Solaris, it doesn't see this 20 gigs. It sees the 4 partions (3 primary one logical) and that's it. I'm completely new to Solaris and I have no idea how to do anything with it, so I have no idea where to start. Any ideas? Thanks.

-Silver

 

[Annihilannic]

Have you tried creating a partition or partitions for Solaris from one of the other OS before attempting the install?

Annihilannic.

 

[SilverLinkX2]

No, it's just unpartitioned space at the end of the disk. What would you use to format it? Can it be a logical partition? If so what other volumes do I need inside the partition? Does it come with it's own bootloader or do I need to edit my grub? What filesystem should I use?

Thanks

 

[Annihilannic]

I think you mean one extended with two logicals inside, by the way.

I would use fdisk from Linux to create the partition, just to see whether Solaris can see it when you attempt the installation. Don't worry about creating filesystems and so-on because Solaris should do that itself.

Can you post the output of fdisk -l from your Ubuntu installation?

I can't remember what happens during the Solaris installation, does it not give you an opportunity to modify the partitions?

Annihilannic.

 

[SilverLinkX2]

I used partition logic to create a solaris swap and a solaris partion on the free space I had remaining. When I did an fdisk -l using ubuntu it showed all 7 partitions on my hard drive (mbr, vista, xp, linux swap, linux, solaris swap, solaris). When I tried installing solaris however it only showed 4 partitions still, and they all read "other." I deleted the ubuntu partition from the solaris installer and installed solaris. everything went well, it booted up to solaris grub, when I selected solaris everything worked fine. However, I could not use the solaris grub to boot into windows, both crashed out. I used the Vista CD to do a repair and it reinstalled the Vista bootloader, and then I could boot into vista fine, but it didn't see solaris. Could not boot into xp. Used xp cd and ran a fixmbr and fixboot and the computer now boots straight into xp without giving me the vista bootloader. I have no idea what to do. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[Annihilannic]

I can't help you much with the Vista/XP side of things, although you may find this article that a work colleague referred me to useful. It describes how you can branch from the Windows boot loader to grub.

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/h/2337

It sounds like Solaris only sees 'primary' partitions, not logical partitions within an extended partition, so you could be stuck unless you can relayout your entire drive, or somehow rearrange it with Partition Magic (is that what you meant instead of Partition Logic?) so that the Solaris ones are primary partitions.

Annihilannic.

 

[SilverLinkX2]

Ok, I think I almost have it. I have to reinstall grub to the partition that solaris is installed in, so that would make it hd0, 3. I tried using the command

installgrub -m /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0d3s0

and it gave me an error message stating:

cannot open/stat device /dev/rdsk/c0d3s2

when I try to do an installgrub to c0d0s0 it doesn't give me any problems. But I don't want to install the grub to the mbr, I need to install it to the bootsector of the partition that solaris is currently installed on. Any ideas? Thank you so much for your help so far.

 

[Annihilannic]

How many hard drives have you got in the system? IDE or SCSI? I'm guessing only one IDE disk. c0d3 means controller 0, disk 3. So you probably mean to install it on c0d0s3 or c0d0p3. I don't have much experience with Solaris and IDE disks though, so take this advice with a pinch of salt...

Annihilannic.

 

[SilverLinkX2]

It's a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop. One hard drive. Three primary partitions already taken up.

I think I'm going to try a different approach. I'm just going to install Solaris and use it's grub to boot my other two windows partitions. I thought that wouldn't work but today I was able to boot into Vista from the Solaris grub which surprised the heck outta me.

Thanks for all your help man. Really appreciated. Voted for tipmaster.