Solaris 10 Operating System x86 Platform Edition
Support
This guest operating system has experimental support on the following VMware products:
General Installation Notes
Be sure to read General Guidelines for All VMware Products as well as this guide to installing your specific guest operating system.
VMware products support only the x86 Platform Edition. You cannot install the SPARC Platform Edition in a VMware virtual machine.
The easiest method of installing the Solaris 10 Operating System in a virtual machine is to use the standardSolaris x86 Platform Edition Installation CD. The notes below describe an installation using the CD. If your VMware product supports it, you mayalso install from a PXE server.
Before installing the operating system, be sure that you have already created and configured a new virtual machine.
Installation Steps
- Insert the Solaris x86 Platform Edition Installation CD in the CD-ROM drive.
- Power on the virtual machine to start installing Solaris 10.
- In most respects, you should follow the installation steps as you would for a physical machine. The following steps outline the special choices you should make for installation in a virtual machine. In particular, note that it is more convenient to delay configuration of the KDM X server until near the end of the installation.
- When you reach the screen titled Boot Solaris, press F4 to go to the Boot Tasks screen.
- At the Boot Tasks screen, use the arrow keys to navigate to View/Edit Property Settings, press Enter to select it, then press F2.
- At the View/Edit Property Settings screen, use the arrow keys to navigate to ata-dma-enabled, press Enter to select it, then press F3 to change the value.
- At the Specify Value prompt, type 1 and press Enter to enable DMA.
- When you return to the View/Edit Property Settings screen, press F2. Then on the Boot Tasks screen, press F3.
- Choose CD if you are installing from the CD-ROM set and continue with the normal installation steps.
- When the kdmconfig - Introduction screen appears, press F4 to skip configuration of the X server for now.
Note: It is important to skip configuration of the X server both at this point and
at the point mentioned in the next step. Wait until the third opportunity - after
all the software is installed - before configuring the X server.
- After the first reboot and before installing the Solaris software, the installer again displays the kdmconfig - Introduction screen. Again, press F4 to skip configuration of the X server for now.
- After installing all the software and rebooting, the installer again displays the kdmconfig - Introduction screen. This time, press F2 to continue with the configuration steps.
- Press F2 to configure the video device and monitor.
- Press Enter to select 16 color Standard VGA 640x480 (256K), then press F2 to continue.
- Use the arrow keys to move to Multifrequency 100KHz (up to 1600x1200 @ 80Hz), press Enter to select it, then press F2 to continue.
- Keep the default screen size of 17 inches and press F2 to continue.
- Keep the default of No changes needed - Test/Save and Exit. Press F2 to continue.
- Press F4 to bypass the tests.
- Continue with the normal installation steps.
This completes basic installation of the Solaris 10 guest operating system.
Note: There is no VMware Tools package for Solaris guest operating systems.
Known Issues
PAE Message During Installation
VMware Workstation: If your host computer has a processor that includes NX (no execute) technology you may get an error message during installation. The message says the guest operating system is trying to use PAE. The NX technology is present in AMD processors including Athlon64, Opteron and Sempron. It is also present in Intel EMT64-capable processors.
To avoid the problem, be sure the virtual machine is powered off, then use a text editor to edit the configuration (.vmx) file for the affected virtual machine. Add the following line to the file:
paevm="true"
You can then power on the virtual machine and install the guest operating system.