Solaris 10 install hanging at 3%.. Where to find log file, or ideas?

austinramsay · 05-13-2020, 05:33 PM

Hello,

Attempting to install Solaris 10 update 11 on a Sun Ultra 45 (single processor, 2GB RAM) off the official ISO downloaded from the Oracle website. File is verified to be good by the md5sum. Is there a log file I can view to see what the issue is? Where would the DVD installer store that? Any ideas on what may be wrong?

It is getting stuck at the installation at part:
"Solaris 10 Software [ Installing SUNWdefault-java ]"

with the progress bar at 3%.

The system is still responsive to where I can open a terminal and so on, but no progress ever gets made.

Thanks in advance.
Austin

EagleTG · 05-14-2020, 10:44 AM

Are you installing via burning the ISO to an actual DVD? If so, is it possible that the DVD drive in the Ultra 45 is having an issue? Possibilities would include the drive being bad, or an issue reading the disc that was burned.

austinramsay · 05-19-2020, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by EagleTG

Are you installing via burning the ISO to an actual DVD? If so, is it possible that the DVD drive in the Ultra 45 is having an issue? Possibilities would include the drive being bad, or an issue reading the disc that was burned.

Yes it was an actual DVD. I made a couple others just to be sure the media wasn't the problem but it made no difference. Just because I didn't really know what to do next I just tried an earlier version. I burned a disc for Solaris 10 update 10 (instead of update 11) and gave that a try to see what would happen. It actually sat at 0% for about 10 minutes but this time I got an error message! Errors included were:

Code:

ERROR: Could not create Solaris disk label (VTOC)
ERROR: Could not label disks
ERROR: Could not update disks with new configuration
ERROR: System installation failed
More information:
Log file: /tmp/install_log

I attempted to label the disk manually through 'format' but it failed as well.

After a little research, I found this could be a low level formatting issue to where the sector size is not 512KB which is what it is expecting? My workstation didn't come with a hard drive, so the hard drive I purchased could have been used for something else such as a disk array maybe? Although it is the same model drive that came with the Ultra 45, it was used for many other Sun devices.

Not sure how to deal with that exactly.. but I have another Ultra 45 so I took the drive out of that. Same model drive and everything but now the installation went perfectly smooth and completed fine.

So, it is obviously some kind of issue with the other hard drive that I will have to sort out. I got a few ideas from another forum on trying some things in the 'format' expert mode but will report back once I have some time to play with it.

Austin

rnturn · 05-20-2020, 05:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by austinramsay

Yes it was an actual DVD. I made a couple others just to be sure the media wasn't the problem but it made no difference. Just because I didn't really know what to do next I just tried an earlier version. I burned a disc for Solaris 10 update 10 (instead of update 11) and gave that a try to see what would happen. It actually sat at 0% for about 10 minutes but this time I got an error message! Errors included were:

Code:

ERROR: Could not create Solaris disk label (VTOC)
ERROR: Could not label disks
ERROR: Could not update disks with new configuration
ERROR: System installation failed
More information:
Log file: /tmp/install_log

I attempted to label the disk manually through 'format' but it failed as well.

After a little research, I found this could be a low level formatting issue to where the sector size is not 512KB which is what it is expecting? My workstation didn't come with a hard drive, so the hard drive I purchased could have been used for something else such as a disk array maybe? Although it is the same model drive that came with the Ultra 45, it was used for many other Sun devices.

Not sure how to deal with that exactly.. but I have another Ultra 45 so I took the drive out of that. Same model drive and everything but now the installation went perfectly smooth and completed fine.

So, it is obviously some kind of issue with the other hard drive that I will have to sort out. I got a few ideas from another forum on trying some things in the 'format' expert mode but will report back once I have some time to play with it.

Austin

I've had drives simply refuse to work in some systems but worked like a charm in others. Not on Sun boxen, though. I have an old Core2 Duo system that doesn't like newer drives As a result I've migrated data off of older drives in other systems onto newer -- and larger -- drives so I could use the older disks in the Core2 box. Unsure if this is something similar to what you're encountering but it might be worth doing a general search on the 'Net for "Ultra 45 disk compatibility" or something similar.

I wonder if this isn't a 512B vs 4096B sector size problem. The Ultra is old enough that it may not be able to handle the larger sector size.

Can you post the drive manufacturer and model for both the drive that isn't working and for the one that you moved and eventually worked in the Ultra 45?

Perhaps the drive you purchased can be jumpered to force a 512B sector size?

Good luck...