Can VMware be used with Solaris x86?

Can VMware be used with Solaris x86?

Yes.
VMware
is commercial software to allow one to boot and use multiple
operating systems at the same time, such as Linux and Windows 2000.
This is done by creating a "virtual machine" for each OS.
VMware provides graphical (VGA/SVGA) and X display
capabilities. For networking, VMware provides
for a "virtual disk" for the client O/S. It also
can provide access to the floppy, CD-ROM, a virtual
NIC and a virtual sound blaster 16. Note, the
CD-ROM is a "virtual" ATAPI CD-ROM.
Networking can be either host-based (private IP
space and TCP/IP + SMB between the host O/S and
the client O/S), or bridged (client uses an address
on the actual network, host's NIC is bound to
two or more IP addresses).


VMware doesn't have documentation on installing Solaris Intel,
but you can use these notes instead:


Please read the other HOWTOs on the
VMware site, http://www.vmware.com/
before installing Solaris x86.
My install of version 7 on the dual PII 300 took about 1 hour.
I have tested Solaris x86 version 7 (11/99 release)
with VMware 2.0.1 with a Linux host. The host is a
dual PII/300 with 128 MB of RAM. Solaris under
VMware seems stable (it has been up for days).
The host was setup with Linux (RedHat 6.2, patches,
and 2.2.16). VMware was installed and bridged networking
was enabled. Bridged networking allows the virtual
machine to appear as a host on the local LAN.
The CDROM, Floppy and virtual NIC were enabled.


  1. Create a virtual disk for Solaris using VMware.
    I used 1GB on a free partition.
    When creating a virtual machine, VMware will ask you to select the guest
    OS type.
    Since Solaris is not currently a selection, use Windows 98.
    That has seemed to work best for most folks.`
  2. Insert the Solaris x86 boot floppy and boot CD-ROM
    in the host computer. Start vmware and "power on"
    the virtual machine. The virtual machine should
    boot from the floppy and run the Solaris hardware
    detection program.
  3. Follow the normal Solaris install instructions. Let
    Solaris find the floppy, CDROM, and virtual NIC.
    Partition your virtual disk (I let Solaris do it
    for me). Install Solaris normally.
  4. I am using my virtual Solaris as a test NISPLUS
    server so I enabled NISPLUS and set the server to
    point to this machine. Following install, I setup
    NISPLUS on the virtual Solaris and all seems functional.
  5. Setup X as VGA. It appears to work fine. However,
    I typically use my virtual Solaris in text mode and
    export xterms to my base O/S (Linux). Someone
    suggested that you try a Linux or other XF86 server
    but I have not tried this. The vmware server
    for Linux may work. If anyone does this could they
    please mail me instructions on what they did?
  6. Setup files in /etc including /etc/hosts, etc. For
    example I changed /etc/netmasks: 172.16.4.0 255.255.255.0



Problems and issues noted:


  1. Sometimes the Solaris install is very unhappy with the VirtualFloppy drive.
    Just disable it for your Solaris config if it gives you grief. One of the
    symptoms of this may be a VMware panic dialog box during the install.
  2. I recommend you either a) Setup Solaris with an FTP Server ASAP or
    b) Insure you have an FTP server on the same network.
    This is the quickest way to get files in and out of a virtual machine --
    especially until you get DNS working properly.
  3. Solaris x86 currently does not use the HLT instruction
    in the idle loop (a post indicated this will change
    in the future). This causes the virtual machine to
    try to use 100% of your CPU (or on an SMP machine,
    100% of a single CPU as VMware only emulates
    an UP machine). This makes a virtual Solaris only
    really usable as a server on an SMP machine.
  4. A "volcheck" followed by a "mount" resulted in
    a strange "unimplemented" error from VMware. However,
    the CDROM appeared to be properly mounted.
  5. There are no VMware tools for Solaris x86. There is
    no VMware X server.

  6. Since there are no VMware tools for Solaris, the best resolution/color combo
    you can get out of the box is 640x400, 16 colors. However, you can use remote
    access programs (VNC is highly recommended) to set up a console "server"
    that you can connect to with a remote "client". I have used VNC to access my
    Solaris VM at any resolution and a color depth of 32. Accessing the Virtual
    Machine via VNC not only looks better because of the color and resolution,
    it is faster than using Solaris the native way it comes out of the box.



Earl Fernandez has posted an alternate solution using a third-party video
driver by
http://www.mostlysoftware.com/
His solution is posted at

http://miataru.computing.net/solaris/wwwboard/forum/545.html


[Thanks to W. Wade Hampton & additional notes from Patrick Allmond]



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