Re: Booting solaris from linux on a dual-boot machine with linux GRUBMBR : a difficult question

[Jongki Suwandi]

> Hi Ian,
> 
> just a try: I extracted the MBR from a pure Solaris Grub-machine
> and attached it. It is extracted with=20
> 
>       dd if=3D/dev/dsk/c0d0p0 of=3DMBR.bin bs=3D446 count=3D1
> 
> Put it somewhere, where Fedora's grub can find it and
> try a=20
> 
>       chainloader (hd?,?)/.../MBR.bin
>       boot
> 
> from Fedora-grub command line. It might work.
> 
> Other possibility:=20
> 
> Under Solaris Apparently /boot/grub/bin/grub is the grub shell.
> So you could try to reinstall with that. After getting access
> to the ufs partition from linux (which is possible see:
> http://www.lrz.de/~bernhard/grub-solaris.html last paragraph).
> 
> Hope that helps ...
> 
> PS:
> > UFS. The solaris grub includes patches to support UFS, but=20
> > these patches were not sent upstream and are not part of the=20
> > official GRUB.
> 
> yes that is a pity, but currently the grub project
> refuses to accept development for grub 0.9x although
> I think the Solaris stuff should be included ...
> 
> I don't know about the status for grub2, but it would be
> important that solaris ufs support makes it way into it.
> (Shudong Zhou & Jongki Suwandi are you listening?)

Hi Bernhard,

I'm currently working on Solaris support for grub2 as we speak.  Please 
stay tuned.  :)

-Jongki

PS: BTW, Shudong Zhou is no longer at Sun.


> --
>       Bernhard Treutwein, IuK, Ref. III A 3
>       Bernhard.Treutwein(at)verwaltung uni-muenchen de
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ian Brown [mailto:address@hidden
> > Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2006 3:37 PM
> > To: address@hidden
> > Subject: Booting solaris from linux on a dual-boot machine=20
> > with linux GRUBMBR : a difficult question
> >=20
> >=20
> > Hello,
> > This may seem be a somewhat difficult (at least to me ) and=20
> > long question; Hope you can help.
> >=20
> > I have Feodra Core 6 on x86_64.
> >  The grub there is from default installation rpm ,grub-0.97-13.
> >=20
> > I had installed linux AFTER I hade installed solaris on this=20
> > machine. Now I want to be able to boot solaris from it.
> >=20
> > I boot my disk from linux.
> >=20
> > fdisk -l shows:
> >=20
> >    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> > /dev/sda1               1        3824    30716248+   c  W95=20
> > FAT32 (LBA)
> > /dev/sda2            3825        3837      104422+  83  Linux
> > /dev/sda3            3838       10211    51199155   83  Linux
> > /dev/sda4   *       10212       15312    40973782+  bf  Solaris
> >=20
> >=20
> > Now, as you can see, /dev/sda4 is the solaris partition ; it=20
> > is also the boot partition.
> >=20
> > It also has a GRUB installed on it,
> > which was installed when the operating system was installed.
> > I assume the linux installation did not destroy it
> > (BTW,I used the Fedora Core default GRUB installation,
> > so the linux GRUB was installed in the MBR).
> >=20
> > When I run:
> > file -s /dev/sda4
> > I get:
> > /dev/sda4: x86 boot sector, GRand Unified Bootloader (0.94);=20
> > partition 1: ID=3D0xc, starthead 1, startsector 63, 61432497=20
> > sectors; partition 2: ID=3D0x83, starthead 254, startsector=20
> > 61432560, 208845 sectors; partition 3: ID=3D0x83, starthead=20
> > 254, startsector 61641405, 102398310 sectors; partition 4:=20
> > ID=3D0xbf, active, starthead 254, startsector 164039715,=20
> > 81947565 sectors, code offset 0x48
> >=20
> > when I run: dmesg |grep solaris , I get:
> > sda4: <solaris: [s0] sda5 [s1] sda6 [s2] sda7 [s3] sda8 [s5]=20
> > sda9 [s7] sda10 >
> >=20
> >=20
> > I tried mounting the solaris partitions from linux ,=20
> > /dev/sda5-sda/sda10,
> > by: mount -t ufs -o ro /dev/sda[1-5] /mnt/solaris[1-5]
> > but I get error (mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on
> > /dev/sda5,...)
> > ; (this was done after ufs was modprobed succesfully,=20
> > needless to say).  However, this seems a BUG in Fedora Core=20
> > on x86_64, bacause with Feodora Core 6 Live-CD I am ***ABLE**=20
> > to mount these UFS solaris partitions and navigate to my=20
> > files there, etc. I aslo can boot from solaris USB livecd and=20
> > view the solaris partitions; so I am sure that nothing there=20
> > in the solaris partitions/slices themselves is damaged.
> >=20
> > By the way, at a different machine in the lab we did install=20
> > first linux and than solaris , and we could boot solaris from=20
> > linux and linux from solaris (we could also mount each one=20
> > from the other , but only as read-write).
> >=20
> > Now , my question is : As I know, linux grub does not support=20
> > UFS. The solaris grub includes patches to support UFS, but=20
> > these patches were not sent upstream and are not part of the=20
> > official GRUB.
> >   Upon boot the GRUB of linux is started (it is in the MBR).
> > I want that it will be able to boot solaris.
> > what is the solution for this ? Is it possible at all ?
> > I though of chainloading , so that linux GRUB will
> > start solaris GRUB , and I made
> > some trial of chainloading but it did not work; maybe I am=20
> > missing something ? More specifically, one trial that I did=20
> > and seems logical (or maybe not ? I'm not sure) was:
> > >From the grub menu, is this:
> > rootnoverify(hd0,3)
> > makeactive
> > chainloader +1
> >=20
> > And I got:
> >   Invalid or unsupprted executable format.
> >=20
> > Any idea what I should do?
> >=20
> > Regards,
> > Ian
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> 
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