Solaris8 for Intel Install Help 1

[moepower]

I'm trying to load Solaris8 for Intel on a brand new Compaq Proliant 800 server. I've gone through and ran Compaq SmartStart Manual option and specify that I'll be loading Solaris OS. I then shutdown the machine and insert the Solaris8 CD and reboot. I specify the hard drive to install the software and Solaris came back with an error message that No VTOC found? What does that mean?

Thanks,

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Here is some information I found on various Solaris sites. It's quite long, but covers this topic fairly well. I have posted a summary of what I think is your problem at the bottom:


Solaris boot process consists of two conceptually distinct phases, primary boot and secondary boot. The primary boot is implemented in the BIOS ROM on the system board and in BIOS extensions in ROMs on peripherial boards. The code is x86 real-mode code. This part of the boot process is common for all PC-compatible systems.

A Solaris boot partition is a primary partition, and must be active in order to boot Solaris. It begins with one-cylinder boot slice, which contains the partition boot program pboot in the first sector, the standard Solaris disk label and the VTOC in the second and third sectors, and the bootblk program in the fourth and subsequent sectors (VTOC is discussed later).

When a system is booted from a hard disk drive, MBR of that disk is read into memory. If Solaris was the last operating system installed to this disk, its MBR contains mboot - master boot program. The program, though specific for Solaris, works as usual Master Boot Code, that is, it reads the first sector of the first active primary partition on the boot disk, and jumps to its first byte. If the active partition is Solaris boot partition, its VBS is read and pboot - partition boot program contained there is invoked. Then pboot in turn loads and runs bootblk program.

In case Solaris is booted from floppy or CD-ROM, the first physical sector of the media read by BIOS, is a VBS not MBR. The pboot program contained there is responsible for loading the image of the boot manager strap.com.


VTOC
A disk label or Volume Table of Contents (VTOC) is a special area of every disk set aside to store information about the disk controller, geometry and slices (partitions). The interactive format(1M) or the commands fmthard(1M) and fdisk(1M) can be used to create a VTOC.
The definition of a slice consists of 5 files: slice number, tag, flag, starting sector and size. There is room for 16 slices per partition. VTOC occupies the second and third sector of the Solaris partition.


Summary:

With this information, and my (sometimes painful) experience with Compaq servers, I think it's safe to assume that you need a disk controller driver for Solaris. If the machine has a RAID controller you may not be able to get this working.

The nearest I have come to this situation was when my company bought a DELL PowerEdge with a RAID controller. We had to disable the RAID and use the Adaptec SCSI drivers instead, to run Solaris for Intel.

I haven't tried installing it on a Compaq server - so I'd be interested in your solution.

I hope this helps.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

This link may also help - it's the Solaris 8 Hardware Compatibility list

http://soldc.sun.com/support/drivers/hcl/8/1000/BOOK.htm

 

[CitrixEngineer]

...and this link actually covers your situation, I think...

http://www.execpc.com/~keithp/bdlogsol.htm#point

The exact text is:

[QUOTE/] The first series of screens in the install are character-based. One common mistake made during this process is when a screen appears asking you to:
"Select one of the identified devices to boot the Solaris kernel"
When it asks you to select the boot device many people think it's asking for the device you will boot the operating system from after the installation, i.e. the hard-drive. However, selecting the hard-drive results in a "VTOC" error. What it is really asking you is from what device are you going to boot the kernel from during the installation. Since your are installing the OS from the CD, you'll want to select your CD-ROM drive in response to this prompt. [/QUOTE]

 

[moepower]

After several hours of fighting with the Compaq server I finally got the Solaris to start the installation and gotten past the VTOC error message.

However, Solaris 8 is unable to find a compatible disk drive to install the software on. I'm very suprise to get this error message since I'm using all standard Compaq equipment (one main reasons why I bought this server is because it's on Sun Solaris approved hardware list). The
server is a Compaq Proliant 800 with 64Mb RAM and 2.1Gb SCSI Ultra Wide-3 hard drive -- I don't want to add any additional hardware until the OS is in place.

Do I need to download a driver to get the compaq server to work?

Thanks,

 

[teddy74]

Hi Moepower!

Does the install program recognize the SCSI adapter to which the harddrive is connected , if it doesnot detect it in the initial setup process of device detection, then u got to get the drivers for that adapter and configure it before the setup program can access your hard disk.You can verify this from the list of detected devices and compare the outputs with the Compaq's list of devices - this can be optained from the Compaq built in utilities.
Hope it helps.
Rajesh rajeshrcmc@hotmail.com
"Better to ask a question once and be thought a fool once, than never to ask and remain a fool forever"

 

[moepower]

Hi Rajesh,

The initial scan does detect the SCSI Adapter, that is why this is confusing the heck out of me right now.

 

[teddy74]

Hi Citrix Enggr !

I have a question here for you. In your response above ..viz the commands format(1M) fmthard(1M) and fdisk(1M) , what does the string within brackets -"1M" imply ?
Well ..i have seen this manytimes in sun's documentation also , but i could not figure it out.
thanks and regards,
Rajesh
X-) rajeshrcmc@hotmail.com
"Better to ask a question once and be thought a fool once, than never to ask and remain a fool forever"

 

[teddy74]

Hi Moepower !

Then r u sure that the hardisks r connected properly , i mean i haven't experienced loading Solaris on compaq servers, but just trying to troubleshoot, can u try running diags or try loading WinNT etc , just to check the hardisk's
connected .
Hope it helps ,
Rajesh rajeshrcmc@hotmail.com
"Better to ask a question once and be thought a fool once, than never to ask and remain a fool forever"

 

[CitrixEngineer]

rajeshrcmc;

The (1M) refers to the section in the manual that the command is located.

http://icarus.weber.edu/home/bob/web/cs213/whatis.html

 

[moepower]

Hi Rajesh,

The hard drive is connected properly and has power to it because I ran the Compaq SmartStart before hand and it install some of the info. into the drive fine.

 

[teddy74]

Hi moepower ,

Then i feel u can try downloading the latest drivers from the compaq's website , it should be a driver issue , i can't think of any other.
regards,
Rajesh rajeshrcmc@hotmail.com
"Better to ask a question once and be thought a fool once, than never to ask and remain a fool forever"

 

[cmn577]

Hi moepower

I'm having difficulties installing Solaris 9 on IBM Blade Servers. The problem is exactly the one Citrix Engineer discribes on Aug 5 with the VTOC error. Any idea how to get pass this error?

Thanks