Finally, OpenSolaris 2008.05 snv_97 is out! This includes the network driver for the network card on the HP Proliant ML115 G5 (the Broadcom BCM 5722). By surprise, it also includes the GFX driver for the onboard graphics card (some MGA 200 thing). This makes installation a lot easier than trying to do it via Text.

This is great news. I can finally drop running Solaris under ESXi 3.5u2 and get onto using the OpenxVM (which is really XEN, but packaged by Sun). Why is that good news? I prefer native ZFS. Speed being the main thing.

You can get the DVD directly from Genunix in both primary languages and all languages formats.

I’ve been quite busy recently (you know, getting married etc.) and discovered this week that Sun had finally updated OpenSolaris 2008.5 with a new set of updates.

Wow, cool! So I drop to a terminal and do:

pkg image-update

Great! 2GB of downloads later (I kid you not - they need to work on that) I hit reboot. Well, type reboot, there is no actual way to reboot from their Gnome setup.

Oh look, it no longer boots. So I start digging and discover this post on their ‘other’ forums. Yes, there are two sets of OpenSolaris forums (thanks Sun).

General jist:

1. Boot from LiveCD and drop to a root terminal (su password is ‘opensolaris’)
2. zfs import -f rpool
3. mount -F zfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris /mnt
4. /mnt/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R /mnt
5. reboot

Tada! You’ll boot again. Thanks Sun. Please please PLEASE start posting this stuff in places where people know to look… like your official OpenSolaris site!