Unable to install Solaris 10

[Cliffy]

Hi,

I have installed Oracle VM VirtualBox on Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 and the version currently installed is 4.1.18 r 78361.

Recently I downloaded Oracle Solaris 10 x86 ISO image from the Oracle website and tried installing it as a guest OS in Oracle VM VirtualBox, but it does not seem to go beyond a certain point.

My Guest OS Configuration Details are as follows:

1> Name: Oracle Solaris 10 x64
2> Operating System: Solaris
3> Version: Oracle Solaris 10 10/09 and later (64-bit)
4> RAM: 1024MB
5> Boot Order: Hard Disk, CD/DVD-ROM, Network
6> Chipset: PIIX3
7> Extended Features: Enable IO APIC, Enable absolute pointing device, Enable 3D Acceleration
8> Processor Count: 1
9> Hardware Virtualization / Acceleration: Enable VT-x/AMD-v, Enable Nested Paging
10> Video Memory: 12MB
11> HDD: 40GB, Fixed Size, Normal VHD Disk

The place where the installation gets stuck and does not proceed is as shown in the snap-shot attached.

Snap-Shot

Screen Shot.png (76.05 KiB) Viewed 11558 times

I would also like to add that, I am able to proceed with installation when the disk type is Dynamic but not when it is Fixed Size.

When I use a dynamic disk, and say I mount critical File Systems such as /, /var, /etc, /export on seperate slices, then after successful installation of the OS, the OS does not boot to the desktop, it just gets stuck in some phase for which I don't have a snap-shot at this time.

Please let me know what am I doing wrong.

[Perryg]

Post the guests log file (as an attachment)
See Online Users Manual for the location of the file.

[Cliffy]

Hi Perry,

I am sorry for the late reply. Thank you for your quick response.

Well, I really needed a quick fix, I tried installing an older release of Solaris 10 and it began installing, but it got stuck at 90% and did not proceed installing further than that.

So, I deleted all my VM's in a hurry. Uninstalled VirtualBox, used Crap Cleaner to clean temp files, history and the registry. Restarted my system, re-installed VirtualBox and tried starting over again with the latest and the updated release of Solaris 10, turns out it installed fine and is working great too.

I do suspect that I may have faced all these issues because I didn't allocate the minimum amount of RAM required for the OS to install and run, but I am not sure. I say this because when I initially selected the appropriate OS, Version and Architecture (x86 or x64), VirtualBox suggested that I allocate at least 1536MB of RAM, but instead I allocated only 1024MB of RAM, this could have caused all those essentials freezes and non-response.

[Perryg]

Yes that is more than likely what caused your install failure. I suspected that but wanted the guest log file to confirm. Anyway you have it running now.

[Ramshankar]

Unfortunately, Solaris 10 (among other OSs) doesn't report this insufficient memory situation well, it just tries hard and ends up spinning somewhere on boot up. I don't think VBox.log would contain any indication of this, because as far as VirtualBox is concerned the guest is running fine.

[Carlos Azevedo]

Hi,

I was facing the same problem when trying to install a Solaris 10 U10 guest on a Solaris 11 FCS SRU 10.5 host with VirtualBox 4.1.18.
I have reduced memory size and got stuck and the same point.


I think we have to add to the official minimum of 1GB an additional amount required by VirtualBox, perhaps for VRAM and others.
On my case, 1070MB was fine to launch the installation.


Thanks and regards,
Carlos.