Introduction
OpenSolaris is an operating
system (OS), an open source
project licensed under CDDL, and a community.
The project’s goals are innovation, collaboration, and the extension of
OpenSolaris technology. OpenSolaris is free, open source, and well-suited for
desktops, laptops, servers, and data centers. The quality requirement of OpenSolaris
is perhaps best stated as Production
Ready All The Time. OpenSolaris technical
communities maintain kernel and userland consolidations and launch new
technology projects. OpenSolaris
is developed by communities working in the different projects. Each project
focuses on one or more specific areas of the system. The OpenSolaris developer
project is sponsored by Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Getting Started :
You will need an ISO image if you want to install it on a
Virtual Machine like VMware, VirtualBox or Microsoft Virtual PC. If you intend
to install solaris on the your computer, you need to burn the ISO image which
you have downloaded to a CD. You can download the ISO images of OpenSolaris
from their download page. I
assume you are installing Opensolaris on your computer and so will lead this
guide. But before you attempt to install OpenSolaris on your computer, make
sure your computer’s configuration matches the system requirements.
Minumum System
Requirements :
Memory : 512MB
Disk space : 8GB
CD-Writter
How to install :
Insert the OpenSolaris CD that you burnt of the ISO image.
Make sure you have set the BIOS settings to boot from CD. Once the CD boots you
will have this screen :
Now select the first option which says OpenSolaris with some
release date without any parametes. Now press Enter to go to the next screen.
Now you should have this screen :
Now here you need to select your keyboard layout. I assume
you have English keyboard. English is 41, which is the default option. Here you can either
type English or you can just press Enter to select the default language. Now
you should be at this screen :
Here select the desktop language, in which you will carry on
the rest of the installation process and your default language. Now your
computer will boot from CD and the live environment will be presented to you
shortly. If you just want to try OpenSolaris, you can use it now and turn off
your pc. But if you wish to install the OS on your computer read on. Now the
live OS is loaded and you have this screen :
Now double click on the “install” icon on the desktop and
the installation process will start. This will get you to this screen :
Click on install. Now you will be at disk and partition
selection screen. Select the appropriate disk and disk partition options. If
you have only one disk and you want to dedicate the whole disk to OpenSolaris,
you choose “Use whole disk” or if you want to use the whole disk in OpenSolaris
but with separate partitions, you can do so. This screen should look like this
:
Now select the Region, Location, Time Zone and set date and
time. This screen will look like this :
Now you will have a screen to select Locale. This means the
default language in which you will use your OpenSolaris Operating System. This screen
should look like this :
Now you have a screen where you need to provide the
administrator’s password [root] and user profile settings. It includes root
password, username, password for the username and computer name. The screen
looks like this :
Now comes the review screen. Here you will be shown the
details of what you have selected for installing OpenSolaris. If you come
across any error or you think you have configure or selected any wrong option
you can click on “Back” and make changes to the incorrect settings. Now if
everything is fine, click on “Install”. This review screen should look like
this :
Now Once you click on “Install”, the installation process
begins. Just sit back and let the CD install OpenSolaris to your hard disk. The
installation screen should look like this :
You can grab a coffee till the installation completes, it
will take some time depending on your system configuration. Now when the
installation finishes, you will have this screen :
Here you will need to click on “Reboot”. Now once the system
reboots, remove the CD from the CD-Rom and let your computer boot from hard disk.
OpenSolaris has Grub as its boot loader. Grub will load and you will reach at
this screen :
Now here, you will have two option to boot from, the first option
is for normal Graphical User Interface and the second option is for Text Mode
or Command Line Interface. Select the first option and press Enter. Now the grub
will transfer the control to OpenSolaris and it will begin to load. You will
see this boot screen :
When the loading completes, OpenSolaris will present you
with the first part of the login screen. Type your username and either press
Enter or click “OK” on this screen :
Now the second screen of the login page will appear and you
need to type your password. Here do not type your root password, but the
password that you created along with the username. This screen should look like
this :
You will be then presented by this screen which prepares
your OpenSolaris System to boot for the first time. This screen would just be
the default blue wallpaper with the mouse icon in the busy state, like this :
Now finally, it is time to see the desktop of the newly
installed OpenSolaris on your computer. This is what your desktop will look
like :
The OpenSolaris Operating System has Gnome as its default
Desktop Environment and ZFS as its File System. It is based on unix shell and
has many default applications that any other linux OS has, for example Firefox
is the default web browser, Terminal as its CLI to the system, etc. So now that
you have installed OpenSolaris on your computer, go and have some fun…
