Several mysterious problems with Solaris 11 x86 install

Question

Hi folks,
I've recently installed Solaris 11 x86 as a replacement for Solaris 9 SPARC on an Ultra 2 machine. I like the operating system, but I've promptly acquired some mysterious problems. The computer is a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo E2500 with a Pentium 4 HT 3.06 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, an 80 GB SATA disk and a 147 GB SCSI disk.
I have had a few occasions on which the screen goes totally blank, the monitor claims that there is no signal, and I have to restart the machine. However, with the blank screen, the hard drive activity light is sometimes still flashing. This happens predictably when I try to log off (as opposed to shutting down) and when I use Totem media player and click on anything inside the Totem window. The motherboard has built-in graphics and brief specifications can be found here:
http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/professionalpc/ESPRIMO/Datasheets/ds_esprimo_edition_e2500.pdf
Yesterday my PS/2 keyboard started causing the motherboard to beep crazily when I use it. It beeps rapidly 4 times, then prints the expected character. However, the problem doesn't occur at the initial log in screen. The mouse cursor has also gone beserk on one occasion, flying all over the screen (I had this problem with a previous PC, but a different OS, and thought it was a hardware fault, which I why I got this new computer). With the keyboard problem, the machine is basically unusable. However, it is configured as a dual boot machine, and the keyboard problem isn't present with Windows XP.
There are also a few smaller, odd problems. Occasionally all the icons vanish from my Gnome desktop. The command prompt also mysteriously changed from $chris@pluto to $bash-4.1 just before the keyboard problem appeared, although that might have had something to do with me copying my home directory to a different disk and editing the /etc/auto_home file (moving the home directory worked fine). Also, unlike with Solaris 9 SPARC, I find that I have to have external SCSI devices switched on at boot time, should I want to use them later. That's a pain. With Solaris 9, I could run "boot -r" when I first attached the device, then switch on the SCSI devices and mount them whenever I wanted.
After the useful advice I received here about "more" and "less", I thought I'd post these problems and see if anyone can help. I'd really appreciate some advice. Can anyone identify likely causes for these problems? Which problems can I expect to solve and which do I have to live with?
Many thanks,
Chris Tidy
Edited by: Chris Tidy on 23-Mar-2012 03:36

Answer 1

Hi folks,
I've recently installed Solaris 11 x86 as a replacement for Solaris 9 SPARC on an Ultra 2 machine. I like the operating system, but I've promptly acquired some mysterious problems. The computer is a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo E2500 with a Pentium 4 HT 3.06 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, an 80 GB SATA disk and a 147 GB SCSI disk.
I have had a few occasions on which the screen goes totally blank, the monitor claims that there is no signal, and I have to restart the machine. However, with the blank screen, the hard drive activity light is sometimes still flashing. This happens predictably when I try to log off (as opposed to shutting down) and when I use Totem media player and click on anything inside the Totem window. The motherboard has built-in graphics and brief specifications can be found here:
http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/professionalpc/ESPRIMO/Datasheets/ds_esprimo_edition_e2500.pdf
Yesterday my PS/2 keyboard started causing the motherboard to beep crazily when I use it. It beeps rapidly 4 times, then prints the expected character. However, the problem doesn't occur at the initial log in screen. The mouse cursor has also gone beserk on one occasion, flying all over the screen (I had this problem with a previous PC, but a different OS, and thought it was a hardware fault, which I why I got this new computer). With the keyboard problem, the machine is basically unusable. However, it is configured as a dual boot machine, and the keyboard problem isn't present with Windows XP.
There are also a few smaller, odd problems. Occasionally all the icons vanish from my Gnome desktop. The command prompt also mysteriously changed from $chris@pluto to $bash-4.1 just before the keyboard problem appeared, although that might have had something to do with me copying my home directory to a different disk and editing the /etc/auto_home file (moving the home directory worked fine). Also, unlike with Solaris 9 SPARC, I find that I have to have external SCSI devices switched on at boot time, should I want to use them later. That's a pain. With Solaris 9, I could run "boot -r" when I first attached the device, then switch on the SCSI devices and mount them whenever I wanted.
After the useful advice I received here about "more" and "less", I thought I'd post these problems and see if anyone can help. I'd really appreciate some advice. Can anyone identify likely causes for these problems? Which problems can I expect to solve and which do I have to live with?
Many thanks,
Chris Tidy
Edited by: Chris Tidy on 23-Mar-2012 03:36