[illumos-Discuss] multiboot-fu needed

[Mike Riley]

On 09/14/10 19:52, Richard Doty wrote:
> All the docs I read say that it isn't possible to install more than one
> solaris partition on a disk. Surely that's not literally true. GRUB
> seems like it could handle it. Maybe the limitation is the default
> installer? Has anyone cracked this nut already?

There was a project to allow for Solaris partitions in the Extended partition as Logical 
Partitions.  It was being done by some guys in Bangalore and it was getting close when I was let 
go in 2008, but I don't know if it was ever finished.

The handling of partitions is done in sd (which is a terrible place to do it, BTW) and it only 
allows for a single primary Solaris partition.  If there is more than one it will only recognize 
the first one, although it might recognize the one that is set as Active even if it was after 
the first one, I would have to check the code.

The way GRUB handles booting multiple versions of Solaris, if you are not using a ZFS pool with 
different file systems in the pool, is to use slices for UFS file systems.  My system is 
currently booting various versions of SXCE with some slices as UFS and some as ZFS, and I have 6 
bootable slices currently with 5 in use.

There was a project to take the handling of partitions, and disk geometry, completely out of sd 
and impose it as a layer above it.  That way the new layer would handle knowledge of disk 
layouts and provide sd with a simple starting sector, sector size, and total sectors info to 
work with.  Again, it was being worked on back when I was with Sun, but I am not sure it ever 
got anywhere.  I know several of the people working on it at the time are no longer with Sun, so 
my guess is that it died.  Pity, because it is really needed, but it also is fraught with the 
possibility of bugs being introduced.  However, sd is so full of bugs right now I am not sure a 
re-write/re-design would be any worse.

Mike