[ale] grub with Linux and Solaris??

Geoffrey esoteric at 3times25.net
Sat Jan 28 10:01:28 EST 2006


So, I downloaded Solaris 10 and decided to install it on my spare 
laptop.  Went well except that the built in mouse doesn't work.

Now it's been a long time since I've played with Solaris, so be kind folks.

Anyway, the plan is to have a couple different distros on this box, so I 
then installed SuSE 10.0.

Now Solaris uses grub, so I figured I'd be able to modify my SuSE grub 
config to boot the Solaris.  With my SuSE install, I created a separate 
/boot partition.  The only way I could get it to boot the Solaris was to 
physically copy the kernel and module files that the Solaris grub config 
points to, to my new /boot tree.  The original entries are as follows:

root (hd0,0,a)
kernel /platform/i86pc/multiboot
module /platform/i86pc/boot_archive

What I was expecting to do was to add the grub entries for Solaris to 
the SuSE grub config and simply modify them to point to the right place.

Now Solaris has a different approach to it's filesystems.  It uses a ufs 
type filesystem and basically, you have multiple file systems in a 
single slice.  Kinda like extended, only fdisk literally sees one 
partition for it.  For example, I installed Solaris on /dev/hda1, but 
there are multiple filesystems.  As noted above in the grub config for 
Solaris, root(hd0,0,a) refers to the first drive, first partition, first 
partition in that partition.  Now I may have the semantics wrong, but 
you get the picture.

Further, I can mount the Solaris root partition under SuSE as the 
/dev/hda6 as follows:

mount -t ufs -oufstype=sunx86 /dev/hda6 /solaris

Yet, fdisk does not show a /dev/hda6 partition.  So it's like a hidden 
partition.

I've tried all kinds of variations to tell grub where to find the 
/platform directory on the Solaris partition, but no good, including:

kernel hda(0,0,a)/platform/i86pc/multiboot
kernel hda(0,5)/platform/i86pc/multiboot

Currently, what's working is:

kernel hda(0,2)/platform/i86pc/multiboot

Only because I copied /platform/i86pc/* to my SuSE root partition.

Suggestions would be appreciated.
-- 
Until later, Geoffrey



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