[illumos-Discuss] multiboot-fu needed

[Milan Jurik]

Hi Mike,

Dne 15.09.10 07:37, Mike Riley napsal(a):
> 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.
>

Shesha putbacked PSARC/2006/379 Solaris on Extended partition last year 
in July.

http://src.opensolaris.org/source/history/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/common/io/scsi/targets/sd.c


> 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.
>

Exactly. You can have multiple instances of Solaris in UFS slices or in 
different ZFS, but all instances must be in one "PC partition".

Any reason why Solaris installations should occupy more "PC partitions"?

> 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.
>

Best regards,

Milan