Installing Solaris x86 on HP DL385 G6

I had a hard time installing the Solaris u7 on the HP DL385 G6 server. The controller firmware is the issue.
OS installation is failing as its not able to find the disk. Below are the steps I followed for the successful installation

1) Download the driver from the HP support site for Solaris x86. The driver name is "CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz".

2) unzip the archive and burn the iso image(CPQary3.iso) inside the archive to a cd/dvd

3) Boot the machine from the Solaris OS and when the installation option appears choose option 5 (Applydriverupdates) for driver installation.

4) Eject the solaris media and insert the iso image burned media into the machine

5) Choose option C for cd/dvd and it will install the driver. This is only a temporary installation

6) choose option "e" to end and eject the media and resinsert the Solaris media and press enter

7)  Continue with the OS installation. While partition the OS make sure that /usr and /var is not a seprate partition. everything should be under / filesystem

8) once the installation complete, reboot the machine into failsafe mode and reinsert the iso image cd and do the following

9) # install-du
10 # install-recovery ( this will search for the installed OS instance)

11) You will be asked  to mount the root slice to /a  , say yes and enter

12) Eject the cdrom and burn a new cd with the CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz archive. You may face an issue that you wont see the full name, go ahead with the name there.

13) mount the cdrom to /mnt
 # mount -F hsfs -o ro,nrr,nomaplcase /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0 /mnt

14) cd /mnt ; cp CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.tar.gz   /a/var/tmp

15) gunzip and untar the archive, you will get the directory CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.
     # gzcat  CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386 - | tar xvf -

16) #cd  CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386 ; ls
      you will find the package file there with name " CPQary3.pkg"

  Note: I'm getting the following errors when doing a pkgadd command
  pkgadd: ERROR: unable to open admin file No such file or directory


17) create a file with the following parameters
  # vi /tmp/admin
      instance=overwrite
      mail=
:wq!

18) cd to the directory CPQary3-2.3.0-solaris10-i386.
     # pkgadd -a /tmp/admin -d `pwd`/CPQary3.pkg    CPQary3

you will get the message Installation of  CPQary3 was successful

19) cd /a ; touch reconfigure

20) init 6

Well I did this after a lot of trial and error, there may be some easy procedure avl I believe. i written what I did. If there is any easyway please comment here.

Enabling Jumbo Frames on bge interface V240/M4000 and Netapp Filer

I need to enable jumbo frames settings on the Sun server which is connected to the Netapp 3020 through iSCSI Lun's. These lun's  are used for Oracle database.  Initially the storage utilization was very high. Once the jumbo frames enabled, its reduced considerably. mtusize 9000 bytes seems to be the generally accepted size for jumbo frames.

To enable jumbo frames on this setup, the configuration on each point in the network must be configured to support jumbo frames.That means I need to enable jumbo frames on the  host interface(s) and the Filer interface and on the switch if its connected through the switch else the network connection will not have jumbo frames enabled and may not succeed.


Here is how I enabled for the Sun Server bge interface:

1.  Enabled jumbo frames on the server by editing the /etc/system file

             set bge:bge_jumbo_enable = 1

2. Edit the file “/platform/sun4u/kernel/drv/bge.conf ”for Jumbo frame settings. Each line ends with a semi-column(;)

   default_mtu             = 9000;  

    name="bge" parent="/pci@0,600000" unitaddress="2" default_mtu=9000;

bash-3.00# ifconfig -a

bge1: flags=201000843 mtu 9000 index 3
        inet 172.168.0.20 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 172.168.255.255
        ether 0:xx:xx:xx:xx:f1

Enabling Jumbo Frames on the Netapp FAS3020

filerA>ifconfig e0b  mtusize 9000 mediatype 1000fx flowcontrol full
filerA> ifconfig e0b up
filerA> ifconfig -a

e0b: flags=948043 mtu 9000
        inet 172.168.0.10 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.168.0.255
        ether 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:87 (auto-1000t-fd-up) flowcontrol full

SCSI Connectors

Very High Density Cable Interconnect (VHDCI) is a 68-pin connector for connecting Ultra SCSI  and other peripheral devices.This is compatible with LVD Buses.

SE SCSI also called Single-Ended SCSI. In SE SCSI each signal is carried by a single wire. It has a short distance limitation, a maximum of 6 meters and very susceptible to noise.

Differential SCSI also called HVD or High Voltage Differential SCSI is completely incompatible with SE SCSI because it uses differential rather than single-ended signaling. HVD signaling uses two wires for each signal to improve signal integrity and allow long cables to be used without data loss or corruption.It works well in noisy areas and can reach up to 25 meters.

LVD SCSI also called Low Voltage Differential SCSI is the newest type of SCSI cabling.It can reach up to 12 meters.LVD uses two wires for each signal, but use lower voltage to create the complementary signal pairs.




LVD/SE is that it will work either LVD or SE however the two can't be mixed on the same bus.The entire bust must be one or the other.





LVD devices are not electrically compatible with HVD devices.Do not mix them on the same SCSI cable. This may damage or shutdown  to the LVD devices.

Solaris-Disabling GUI Login

I was installing vmware on my laptop to setup a jumpstart server. I dont have enough resourse on my laptop to start my Solaris guest OS on GUI moreover I'm not use to with GUI interface, so I need to disable my GUI login. You can disable it in two ways. I prefer the 1st way

1) # svcadm disable cde-login

2) The second method  needs a reboot 
   # /usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d (disable) 
   # /usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -e (enable)

Hardware Raid on T2000

Few useful commands while creating hardware raids.
Display RAID volumes: (Output from T2000 server before configuring h/w raid)

# raidctl
Controller: 0
        Disk: 0.0.0
        Disk: 0.1.0
        Disk: 0.2.0
        Disk: 0.3.0

Create a mirror:

# raidctl -c [-r 1] primary_disk secondary_disk

Create a stripe:

# raidctl -c -r 0 disk1 disk2 [disk3] . . .

Delete a RAID volume:

# raidctl -d volume

Display the disk controller firmware

# prtconf -vp | egrep '(model|version)'

Update the disk controller firmware:

# raidctl -F  [path_of_image_file] [controller#

eg:

root@Sun # prtconf -vp | egrep '(model|version)'
        version: 'OBP 4.30.0 2008/12/11 12:15'
        model:  'SUNW,4.30.0'
                        model:  'XVR200'
                    firmware-version:  '1.09.00.00'
                    mpt-version:  '1.05'
                    model:  'LSI,1064E'
                    version: '1.00.40'
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