Solaris 10 - First Try

I've been trying to install Solaris 10 yesterday and today, and have run into a nasty endless loop.

At work, we have a fairly large installation of Solaris 8. Our plans were to slowly replace our Solaris 8 SPARC machines with RedHat Linux Intel machines, with a target date of Oct. 2010. However, as time progresses these Solaris 8 machines are becoming more and more difficult to support software wise with regard to network integration. So, we're evaluating Solaris 10 as a stop gap upgrade.

Solaris 8 has given us problems in the past with package (and subsequent patch) dependencies, and our solution has been to "install everything", for better or worse. So, I did the same for Solaris 10, including the Solaris Validation packages. The initial install (from DVD) went smoothly, and rebooted off the hard drive just fine. It then brought up a secondary install step, where it asked for Solaris 10 software 5 CD/DVD. I popped the DVD in, hit Ok, and it promptly spit it out. Ok, given that it was the Validation software, which I likely didn't need, I told it to skip the software install. It continued forward, and asked me to Reboot the machine. I clicked on Reboot Now, and then ... nothing. Clicked again, nothing. Ok, I opened up a Terminal window, and typed reboot at the prompt, which worked. The machine rebooted, and launched the software installer again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

So, my next step was to download the ISO for CD 5 (wasn't that supposed to be part of the DVD????), and burn that. Well, this time it accepted the CD 5, and installed the software, so I figured I was in the clear. Reboot Now button still didn't work. Rebooted via the command line, and was promptly asked to install the software I had just installed. Lovely. Tried various tricks, but to no avail. So, this morning, I gave up, and started from scratch, however, this time I didn't select the Validation Packages. This will inevitably come back to bite me at the most inopportune time somewhere in the future when I've forgotten about Validation Packages and endless install+reboot loops (what is this, Windows?).

Long story short, removing the extra Validation packages from the install list solved this problem, and the machine booted properly.

It's interesting that they call the GNOME desktop environment, the Java Desktop.

Enjoy.