After almost a year I decided to upgrade the Operating Systems on my laptop.
The plan was to install the latest Solaris build – Solaris Express Developer Edition 1/08 (snv_79) and openSUSE 10.3 along with the pre-installed Windows XP.
I managed to get hold of a USB hard disk to take a backup of my data, partitioned/formatted my disk and installed Win XP.
This is how my partition table looks like:
root@abhiltlnx(~)# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcd9ccd9c
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1912 15358108+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1913 3452 12370050 bf Solaris
/dev/sda3 3454 8061 37013760 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 * 8062 9729 13398210 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 3454 5759 18522913+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 5760 7799 16386268+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 7800 8061 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
root@abhiltlnx(~)#
I then went about installing Solaris. Anyone who has tried installing Solaris in the past will be totally impressed with the new installer – very user friendly!
It gives simple options to the user to pick from and goes about installing the OS.
I haven’t spent much time looking into the system, however I must mention the things that I already like:
- Easier user/group administration – creating user part of the installation process
- Easier network management – It detected my wireless device and post-installation, displayed all the networks I can connect to.
- Nice Gnome-based Desktop with the “Shutdown” option (Yes!). Although I’ve gotten used to “poweroff”
- Detected all the devices and installed NVidia drivers
- Out-of-the-box development environment viz. NetBeans 6, Apache, Databases etc.
Some screenshots:
Next on the agenda was openSUSE 10.3 installation.
I’ve been using openSUSE for over a year now and based on my past experience,
I was kind of expecting the installation to be fairly trivial.
Unfortunately, that was not to be :(. After few minor glitches (the installer kept crashing every now and then), I finally managed to install it.
Things I love about openSUSE 10.3
- Love the Green look-and-feel
- The startup time has really improved – A good enough reason to upgrade for 10.2 folks.
- 1-click install of packages
- Detected all my devices
Some screenshots:
Configured Compiz desktop:
Lastly, I had to modify the Grub menu for both openSUSE (to add an entry for Solaris) and openSolaris (to add an entry for openSUSE).
openSUSE grub menu:
root@abhiltlnx(~)# vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Feb 7 21:41:29 UTC 2008
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,3)/boot/message
##YaST - activate
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 10.3
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_IC25N080ATMR04-_MRG401K4G1SY6C-part4 vga=0x317 resume=/dev/sda7 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader (hd0,0)+1
<b>
### Abhi: Solaris entry added based on the windows one ###
title Solaris SXDE 1/08 - snv_79a
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
</b>
###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 10.3
root (hd0,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22.5-31-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-SATA_IC25N080ATMR04-_MRG401K4G1SY6C-part4 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.22.5-31-default
openSolaris grub menu:
root@abhiltsol(~)# vi /boot/grub/menu.lst
#pragma ident "@(#)menu.lst 1.2 07/01/10 SMI"
#
# default menu entry to boot
default 0
#
# menu timeout in second before default OS is booted
# set to -1 to wait for user input
timeout 10
#
# To enable grub serial console to ttya uncomment the following lines
# and comment out the splashimage line below
# WARNING: don't enable grub serial console when BIOS console serial
# redirection is active!!!
# serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
# terminal serial
#
# Uncomment the following line to enable GRUB splashimage on console
splashimage /boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#
# To chainload another OS
#
# title Another OS
# root (hd,)
# chainloader +1
#
# To chainload a Solaris release not based on grub
#
# title Solaris 9
# root (hd,)
# chainloader +1
# makeactive
#
# To load a Solaris instance based on grub
# If GRUB determines if the booting system is 64-bit capable,
# the kernel$ and module$ commands expand $ISADIR to "amd64"
#
# title Solaris
# root (hd,,x) --x = Solaris root slice
# kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix
# module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#
# To override Solaris boot args (see kernel(1M)), console device and
# properties set via eeprom(1M) edit the "kernel" line to:
#
# kernel /platform/i86pc/kernel/unix -B prop1=val1,prop2=val2,...
#
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title Solaris Express Developer Edition 1/08 snv_79a X86
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title Solaris xVM
kernel$ /boot/$ISADIR/xen.gz
module$ /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------
#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title Solaris failsafe
kernel /boot/platform/i86pc/kernel/unix -s
module /boot/x86.miniroot-safe
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
<b>
### Abhi: Linux entry added based on the windows one ###
title Linux
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
chainloader +1
</b>
# Unknown partition of type 15 found on /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 partition: 3
# It maps to the GRUB device: (hd0,2) .
# Unknown partition of type 131 found on /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 partition: 4
# It maps to the GRUB device: (hd0,3) .
. I soon realised that it held true for every applet that required root access for execution. Earlier, when I used to click on these launchers, the username/password window/dialog box would appear and if the user entered the correct password, the applet window ( 
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