Reading and booting from CD ROMs in Solaris

hopbalt · 08-09-2003, 10:51 AM

I have a cd rom formatted as a Solaris 9 boot disk that I want to run on a machine that is Solaris 5.1

when I put the cdrom drive in, the Solaris 5.1 box cant seem to read the cdrom.

Even after I type volcheck after putting the cd in, the /cdrom directory never shows the cdrom0 or the file that is on the cdrom.

Also, when trying to boot cdrom -s on the 5.1 machine, it hangs, presumably because it cant find/read the CD.

Can Solaris 5.1 not read Solaris 9 files? How do I get a Solaris 5.1 boot cd?

trickykid · 08-11-2003, 01:16 PM

My only guess is to check and see if you can't mount and read another cd, if you can, its most likely a bad burn or disk.

If you can't read another data cd, it could be a bad cdrom, etc.

fishsponge · 08-13-2003, 06:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by hopbalt
Also, when trying to boot cdrom -s on the 5.1 machine, it hangs, presumably because it cant find/read the CD.

if it can't find the CD, it would just continue to boot from disk... here's the logic chart:

Code:

                                                           NO    --------------------------
                                                         /-----> | Boot from DISK (below) |
 --------     -----------------------------  can boot?  /        --------------------------
 | boot | --> | first boot device = cdrom | ----------->
 --------     -----------------------------             \  YES   -----------
                                                         \-----> | Boot OK |
                                                                 -----------



                                                           NO    ----------------
                                                         /-----> | FAIL TO BOOT |
 --------     -----------------------------  can boot?  /        ----------------
 | boot | --> | second boot device = disk | ----------->
 --------     -----------------------------             \  YES   -----------
                                                         \-----> | Boot OK |
                                                                 -----------

infedel · 08-19-2003, 12:44 AM

One other thing to note as well is that your Solaris 5.1 box depending on it age may not beable to read newer cdrom disk you have burnede. In the same way I can burn a disk on my 32x cdrw but will not beable to read it on my 8x cdrom drive.

osprey0331 · 08-24-2003, 02:10 AM

The other issue is that the older system will not recognize a cdrom not burned for a Solaris distribution, and with the session not being closed. The 9 disk is also most likely a java based web-start application, so the older distribution might not be able to launch the java VM.

Just some suggestions, but I think you will find the most likely culprit is that the session was not closed on the CD burn.

chozzie · 08-26-2003, 03:47 AM

What hardware specs are you running?
Older Sun architecture isn't compatible with Solaris 9.
Could it be that you're in this category?
Do you know what processor you're running? e.g. Sun4U? Sun4M?

osprey0331 · 08-26-2003, 03:58 AM

good call...that could be part of the problem...i don't think that the sparc 4m is compatible with the 9 iteration...the sparc 4u, which is ultra 5 and higher, although some ultra 5's did have sparc 4m processors. this along with the session issue could be the problem

stickman · 08-26-2003, 02:20 PM

Sun supports supports Solaris 9 all the way back to the SPARCstation LX.

osprey0331 · 08-26-2003, 08:34 PM

I must humbly disagree...if you check the documentation on the Solaris 9 CDs and some white papers on the Sunsolve website, I do believe you will find that there are some architectures that will not support Solaris 9 and some that will support only Solaris 8 and up...

stickman · 08-27-2003, 07:56 AM

Hmm... Then someone at Sun needs to clean that tables of supported platforms up.

osprey0331 · 08-27-2003, 11:34 PM

You are probably right there...but after some additional checking, I believe I had the issues somewhat confused... I know that netra t1's would not support loading Solaris 2.6 but would take 2.7 and 2.8. I believe I was confusing the hardware not accepting the software, rather than the software not supporting the hardware. My humblest apologies, as I have been working in the nether world of MS for the last few months and my skills have decayed somewhat...

Back to the original problem...I believe the real culprit is that the session on the CD that was burned was left open instead of being closed....I had problems with on backup copies of the OS and also on custom jumpstart CDs....