Re: Manually creating a Debian boot sector Or a bootable Debian disk in Solaris for x86

On 03/14/2011 04:00 PM, A E [Gmail] wrote:
Hello All,

<snip>

So, the question is,

Does anyone know how to partition the 2nd HDD while in Solaris, install the Debian boot files and bare-bone kernel from boot.img.gz archive, initrd and vmlinuz on it so that when selected to boot from it, it boot into debian and then install whatever I want to install on it.

Thanks
AE

I've done some work with Solaris 10, trying to get rid of it for most of my workstations. I was unaware there was even a solaris 8 x86 install (I'd change the Solaris install to 10 as a matter of principle -- ZFS is that good).

Use the "format" command in Solaris to change the partition layout. You should be able to resize without much issue. There is a manpage for it. You'll also need to set the partition you create as bootable.

As for the rest of it, you should probably install GRUB onto the second HDD, and chainload into Solaris (if you can do that in BIOS), as GRUB wasn't used in Solaris 8 x86 (started getting used in 10 1/06).

I'd probably tarball a working Debian system's files and extract it into the secondary partition (created above... make sure support for whatever FS you format it to is compiled-in), then configure a custom-compiled GRUB to boot it. You'll have to do that by hand (see linuxfromscratch.org for some help).

But seriously, if you can go to Solaris 10, do so. S10 x86 is a heck of a lot easier to deal with, as it includes GRUB as its boot method. If you can grok Solaris 8 x86's bootloader config and get it to boot Linux, good luck.

--Joseph Lenox

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