OpenSolaris Indiana test drive part 2

After a quick trip to EasyVMX! to create a suitable empty image for VMware Player...

I created a 10GB disk image to install Indiana on, it should be enough. Gave it 1GB of memory. The install is running pretty slowly.

For sure, I'll get 8GB of memory for my next work-from-home computer, as well as an extra 500GB disk I'll slice up so that I can give my virtual machines direct disk access for faster action.

The "Loading smf(5) service descriptions" part of the first bootup takes a while, wouldn't it be possible to precompute whatever this does?

First boot done, now to log in as the username I provided to the installer.

Accept the license without reading it, just like everybody else. Wow, the fonts are screwed up even worse. Change the resolution to 1024x768. Set the font antialiasing again, and this time go to the Advanced tab and set the DPI setting manually to 96.

Start up a terminal. The home directory is in /export/home/$USER. The default shell is bash, thank goodness. The root file system is ZFS.

How to get the network adapter working under VMware? The solaris-indiana mailing list to the rescue, this is a known defect, http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=66.

Shutting down the system from the Gnome button doesn't work (another known defect) so I had to run "pfexec gnome-sys-suspend" from a terminal.

I chose the "e1000" workaround for the networking defect, had to disable the automagic networking option as described at http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nwam/phase0/nwamd_1m/ and then configure the virtual network adapter through the System -> Administration -> Network utility. A reboot, and the network connection is up and working.

Created a ZFS snapshot of my home directory by running the command "pfexec zfs shapshot zpl_slim/export/home@now". Have to remind myself that "pfexec" means "sudo" in Solaris-land. I was lucky enough to find out about the pfexec through a Google search, this would have been a very short test drive if I hadn't. Hope others are as lucky.

I don't think I'll try zones yet. They probably won't work yet.

At least Firefox works after I've set its fonts to look reasonable.

To be continued... part 3.