Hi,

Firstly, apologies for the lengthy text I am about to write, but I have tried to address this from a number of angles and would like to go through them so as not to waste your time writing answers for solutions I've already tried. I want to show that I have given this plenty of thought and effort myself already.

Having said that, I am very new to Solaris so I may simply be doing something very foolish. If this is the case, then by all means let me know and point me to a good source to learn some basic Solaris knowledge (I was hoping to start from page 1 of the help system once I had Solaris up and running).

The problem: I cannot persuade Solaris 8 to install under VMWare 3.2 (or directly, for that matter). Here are the details:

Machine in use:

Dell Precision 330 1.5GHz P4.
512 MB RAM.
NEC DV-5800A DVD/CD Reader
SONY CRX160E CD Writer
3COM Integrated FE Controller (3C905C-TX Compatible)
50GB IDE Hard Drive
6GB IDE Hard Drive
Adaptec AHA-3940U/UW/UWD PCI SCSI Controller
Seagate 9GB SCSI drive
NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Pro Graphics card

Not sure how much of this is relevant as most devices are emulated anyway in VMWare.

Software:

VMWare 3.2 (Build 2230)
Solaris8-CD1-iso-image.iso
Solaris8-CD2-iso-image.iso
S28DCA1101 install floppy image obtained from Sun website.

I followed the excellent instructions posted elsewhere on Computing.net - http://miataru.computing.net/solaris/wwwboard/forum/545.html
- before trying my first install.

(On an aside, the VMWare / Solaris video drivers at www.mostlysoftware.com no longer seem to be there. Does anyone know what's happened to them or where I can find an alternative source? Not really a problem as I can VNC into the virtual machine anyway.)

Rather than burning the ISO images to CD, I captured them directly in VMWare, because of the widely reported problems there are with Windows preventing VMWare from reading CD-ROM drives in the way Solaris would like.

Everything proceeded smoothly, booting directly from the CD1 image, up until the point where I was asked to select the '1. Solaris Interactive' or '2. Custom Jumpstart' as the type of installation I would like to perform. Shortly after this point I see the following messages:

'Booting kernel/unix...
SunOS Release 5.8 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2000 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.'

Then a long pause, after which, an error message of some kind pops up very briefly and the system reboots. This happens so fast I have no chance of actually seeing what the error message says.

I then remembered that after you hit 'suspend' on VMWare, you are able to see a screen shot of the moment the suspension took place. So, I went through the install again and quickly hit suspend just at the point where the error message pops up. I was then able to successfully view the screen shot and tell that the error message is:

'Cannot mount root on /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ide@1/sd@0,0:a fstype ufs

panic[cpu0]/thread=fec17440: vfs_mountroot: cannot mount root

fec12adc genunix:vfs_mountroot+5c (fec09650, fec01e3c)
fec12aec fenunix:main+78 ()

skipping system dump - no dump device configured
rebooting...'

Hmmm... Not sure what is going on here. Does the error mean Solaris can't mount the CD to run install files from? But it is already mounted because that's what it booted from. So, does the error mean Solaris can't mount a Hard Drive to copy files to? Or is it conflict caused by another device?

I tried making another VMWare virtual machine and removing all possible conflicting devices (sound, usb, network), leaving only the basics such as graphics card and hard drive. Didn't help.

So... I then tried a number of other options:

1. Booting from the Floppy image instead. Same error.
2. Booting from a burned CD of the ISO image. Same error.
3. Installing Solaris directly onto a spare hard disk I had. Same error! So it's nothing to do with VMWare...
4. Installed Red Hat Linux onto the spare hard disk and then installed VMWare on Linux. Tried to install Solaris there. Same error!
5. Tried installing VMWare on two different PCs, an HP Vectra running Windows 2000 Server and a Compaq Deskpro running Windows 2000 Pro. Same error.
6. Tried installing Solaris directly onto hard disk booting from an old NEC CD-drive I had that is on the Solaris 8 HCL. Same error.

7. Tried installing Solaris 8 under Virtual PC 5.1... and NO ERROR!!! But there was a different one instead...

This time the install seemed to go fine right to the end when the 'Solaris is installed successfully' appears. I did a 'reload' to reboot, and shortly after the BIOS startup is finished I get an error message. It is a single piece of text at the bottom of a blank screen.
It says 'Bad PBR sig' in white on red text. If I hit any key I get the message:
'Reboot and Select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device'
The floppy drive sounds as though it is trying to access a disk, which implies the virtual Hard Drive (which from the virtual BIOS I have set to boot first) is not bootable. But surely it should be as I've just installed Solaris on it?

I have read that the way round this is to use windows 'fdisk' to ensure the Solaris Partition is active. I could do this, but I would prefer to find a way to solve the Solaris under VMWare problem. I only have a trial version of Virtual PC and it seems to be more processor intensive than VMWare is (although to be fair I only have Linux under VMWare working to measure this by).

Well... if you have read this far, I thank you indeed. I thought it best to get it all down in some detail but if you need any more then do let me know. I am beginning to wonder if the Solaris images I have are an old or otherwise strange distribution - I borrowed them from a friend who downloaded Solaris 8 ages ago but never got round to installing it.

I have searched far and wide on the various error messages I have been getting, both on www.sun.com and the internet. But perhaps I have not searched for enough. On Computing.net I found the advice 'from install software, you need to load basic unix shell, then reformat this drive. (Virtual Table Of Contents....VTOC)'. But I'm not sure what this means...

Any help would be much appreciated. I hope, in time when I gain some Solaris knowledge, to return the favour to other users on computing.net.

Thanks for your time.