Okay, so I (mostly) pulled it off. My "white box" PC now contains:
Windows XP (SP2)
Linux (Fedora Core 6 .. a/k/a FC6)
Solaris (10 11/06)
I settled on using GNU GRUB 0.97 for a boot loader, which is what shipped with FC6 .. it's slightly ahead of the 0.95 flavor that's in Solaris. There's no Boot Loader option in XP .. aside from various freeware/shareware/COTS products .. i.e. not worth the effort tracking it down.
This was not without some miscues and one (near) PANIC! toward the end of this three-way, when something (I'm not sure what) flipped a bit in the partition table and marked the XP partition as "Hidden" (i.e. not bootable). After Google'ing for the error message ("autochk program not found - skipping AUTOCHECK"), then tweaking the partition table from another (running) OS, I can now boot any of the 3 operating systems.
As I suspected, FC6 looks/acts a lot like RHEL, so what I learn on one should be mostly portable to the other. I found myself online and browsing away about 15 minutes after starting the installation of FC6, not so with Solaris.
One remaining big issue: there's no network support under the Solaris installation - yet. Will it turn out that my gigabit Ethernet card isn't supported, or is this another "fit and finish" issue where the network adapter just wasn't enabled? I should know in a few days, after I get some cycles. I'll check the Solaris HCL and make a decision based on what I find there. If I have to buy a new adapter, I'll have to tweak the other two OSs (Linux and XP). Let's hope it's not that ... oy.
Monday update: rumor has it that if I'd read the Solaris How To Install Guide, my life would've been easier. Well, maybe .. but who reads documentation?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
who say what what?
Post a Comment