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OpenSolaris 2009.06 as a domU guest on Xen 3.4/openSUSE 11.2

OpenSolaris LogoI recently trawled the web figuring out how to install a paravirtualized OpenSolaris 2009.06 on Xen. No one place had all the story, so I’m blogging this. I found a lot of the information spread across many other blog entries; some I figured out on my own. Thanks to all the giants on whose shoulders I am now standing:

The procedure:

  1. Download OpenSolaris 2009.06 ISO
  2. Mount the ISO somewhere 
    pat-m6400:~ # mount -o loop,ro /vm/opensolaris/osol-0906-x86.iso /mnt
  3. Copy the kernel and rootfs somewhere convenient 
    pat-m6400:~ # cp /mnt/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix /vm/opensolaris
pat-m6400:~ # cp /mnt/boot/amd64/x86.microroot /vm/opensolaris
  4. Create a disk image for your root filesystem 
    pat-m6400:~ # dd if=/dev/zero of=/vm/opensolaris/root.img bs=1G count=1010+0 records out
10+0 records in
10+0 records out
10737418240 bytes (11 GB) copied, 127.888 s, 84.0 MB/s
  5. Create a Xen config file (let’s call it /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris-install.cfg) with the following content: 
    name = "opensolaris"
vcpus = 1
memory = 1024
kernel = "/vm/opensolaris/opensolaris/unix"
ramdisk = "/vm/opensolaris/x86.microroot"
extra = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix -B console=ttya"
disk = ['file:/vm/opensolaris/osol-0906-x86.iso,6:cdrom,r', 'file:/vm/opensolaris/root.img,0,w']
vif = ['bridge=br0']
on_shutdown = "destroy"
on_reboot = "destroy"
on_crash = "destroy"
  6. Now start your VM: 
    pat-m6400:~ # xm create -c /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris-install.cfg
  7. You should see something like: 
    Using config file "./opensolaris-install.cfg".
Started domain opensolaris (id=21)

v3.4.1_19718_04-2.1 chgset '19718'
SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_111b 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Hostname: opensolaris
Remounting root read/write
Probing for device nodes ...
Preparing live image for use
Done mounting Live image
USB keyboard
1. Albanian                      23. Lithuanian
2. Belarusian                    24. Latvian
3. Belgian                       25. Macedonian
4. Brazilian                     26. Malta_UK
5. Bulgarian                     27. Malta_US
6. Canadian-Bilingual            28. Norwegian
7. Croatian                      29. Polish
8. Czech                         30. Portuguese
9. Danish                        31. Russian
10. Dutch                         32. Serbia-And-Montenegro
11. Finnish                       33. Slovenian
12. French                        34. Slovakian
13. French-Canadian               35. Spanish
14. Hungarian                     36. Swedish
15. German                        37. Swiss-French
16. Greek                         38. Swiss-German
17. Icelandic                     39. Traditional-Chinese
18. Italian                       40. TurkishQ
19. Japanese-type6                41. TurkishF
20. Japanese                      42. UK-English
21. Korean                        43. US-English
22. Latin-American
To select the keyboard layout, enter a number [default 43]:
  8. Press enter to select the default… 
    1. Arabic
2. Chinese - Simplified
3. Chinese - Traditional
4. Czech
5. Dutch
6. English
7. French
8. German
9. Greek
10. Hebrew
11. Hungarian
12. Indonesian
13. Italian
14. Japanese
15. Korean
16. Polish
17. Portuguese - Brazil
18. Russian
19. Slovak
20. Spanish
21. Swedish
To select desktop language, enter a number [default is 6]:
  9. Press enter again… 
    User selected: English
Configuring devices.
Mounting cdroms
Reading ZFS config: done.

opensolaris console login:
  10. Now login with jack/jack 
    opensolaris console login: jack
Password:
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_111b        November 2008
jack@opensolaris:~$
  11. And su with the password opensolaris 
    jack@opensolaris:~$ su
Password:
Feb  5 20:29:29 opensolaris su: 'su root' succeeded for jack on /dev/console
  12. Now do ifconfig -a to discover your IP address. You might have to try a few times since it seems to take a minute or two to get an IP: 
    jack@opensolaris:~# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
xnf0: flags=1004843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet 192.168.69.124 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.69.255
ether 0:16:3e:79:d:ba
lo0: flags=2002000849 mtu 8252 index 1
inet6 ::1/128
xnf0: flags=2000841 mtu 1500 index 2
inet6 fe80::216:3eff:fe79:dba/10
ether 0:16:3e:79:d:ba
  13. Now go to a dom0 shell and find the domain id: 
    pat-m6400:~ # domid=`xm domid opensolaris`
pat-m6400:~ # echo $domid
21
  14. Use xenstore-read to find the vnc port and password: 
    pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/port
5900
pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/guest/vnc/passwd
5PaJpX6n

    Supposedly you can also discover the IP address this way, but I’ve never seen
    it:

    pat-m6400:~ # xenstore-read /local/domain/$domid/ipaddr/0
xenstore-read: couldn't read path /local/domain/21/ipaddr/0
  15. Now you can VNC to the OpenSolaris installer – use the port and password you just discovered. Note the double colon (::) to use port number rather than
    display number

    pat-m6400:~ # vncviewer 192.168.69.124::5900
Connected to RFB server, using protocol version 3.8
Performing standard VNC authentication
Password:
Authentication successful
[...]
  16. You should see the OpenSolaris installer – hurrah! Go through the install process, click ‘restart’ and the domain should shutdown.
  17. Once it is down (you can check with xm list), create another config file – opensolaris.cfg 
    name = "opensolaris"
vcpus = 1
memory = 1024
bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
disk = ['file:/vm/opensolaris/root.img,0,w']
vif = ['bridge=br0']
on_shutdown = "destroy"
on_reboot = "destroy"
on_crash = "destroy"
  18. Now you can create the VM again using the new config 
    xm create -c /vm/opensolaris/opensolaris.cfg
  19. If all is well, you should now be the proud owner of an OpenSolaris domU 🙂
  20. Now, log in as the user you specified in the install, su – to root and find the IP address. 
    pat@opensolaris:~$ su -
Password:
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0
xnf0: flags=1004843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet 192.168.69.128 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.69.255
ether 0:16:3e:5d:6:60

That’s the basic install done. You have a couple of options at this point depending on whether you want to be able to VNC in for the full OpenSolaris desktop experience, and whether you want a static IP address.

For the OpenSolaris desktop:

  1. Set X11-server to listen to the tcp port 
    root@opensolaris:~# svccfg -s x11-server
svc:/application/x11/x11-server> setprop options/tcp_listen = boolean: true
svc:/application/x11/x11-server> quit
  2. I disabled idletimeout on the VNC server, so that I don’t lose the desktop over my lunch break! 
    root@opensolaris:~# svccfg -s xvnc-inetd
svc:/application/x11/xvnc-inetd> setprop inetd_start/exec = astring: "/usr/X11/bin/Xvnc -inetd -query localhost -once securitytypes=none -IdleTimeout 0"
svc:/application/x11/xvnc-inetd> quit
  3. Enable XDMCP for GDM 
    root@opensolaris:~# printf '[xdmcp]\nEnable=true\n' >>/etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf
root@opensolaris:~# svcadm restart gdm
  4. Make sure GDM runs on startup 
    root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable -s gdm
  5. Turn on xvnc-inetd services 
    root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable xvnc-inetd
  6. Now just connect from dom0: 
    pat-m6400:~ # vncviewer 192.168.69.128

    And you should be in GNOME desktop wonderland 🙂

  7. If you want to continue to use DHCP, on subsequent boots, just run nmap on dom0 to find your IP address: 
    pat-m6400:~ # nmap -sP 192.168.69.0/24
    Starting Nmap 5.00 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2010-02-05 23:15 PST
Host 192.168.69.1 is up (0.00056s latency).
[...]
Host 192.168.69.128 is up (0.0017s latency).
Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (9 hosts up) scanned in 2.48 seconds

As an alternative to getting a VNC session, you can do

ssh -X 182.168.69.128

(or whatever) and then (at the OpenSolaris prompt) you can do

pat@opensolaris:~$ some-gui-program &

to have the program run on the dom0 desktop. Cool 🙂

To configure OpenSolaris to use a static IP address:

root@opensolaris:~# svcadm disable network/physical:nwam
root@opensolaris:~# svcadm enable  network/physical:default
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 down
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 192.168.69.25 netmask 255.255.255.0
root@opensolaris:~# ifconfig xnf0 up
root@opensolaris:~# route add default 192.168.69.1
root@opensolaris:~# echo 192.168.69.25 netmask 255.255.255.0 > /etc/hostname.xnf0
root@opensolaris:~# echo 192.168.69.1 > /etc/defaultrouter

So there you have it – OpenSolaris 2009.06 happily running as a Xen domU. If you have any comments/corrections, please post them and I’ll update this entry as appropriate.

Create a Xen config file (let’s call it
/vm/opensolaris/opensolaris-install.cfg) with the following content: