Several Solaris Versions(2.6,7,8) on the same disk. Possible ?

Question

Hello folks!
I hope someone will be able to help me here. I've been after this problem
for weeks now!
Here it is:
for testing purposes I need to install Solaris 2.6, 7, and 8 on the same
machine (Ultra 2 enterprise).
I started with the installation of 2.6 with the following partitions
configuration:
- c0t0d0s0 root for Solaris 2.6
- c0t0d0s5 root for Solaris 7
- c0t0d0s6 root for Solaris 8
- c0t0d0s7 /home for all Solaris versions
The installation of 2.6 went fine and the system runs without problems.
However when I did the installations of the other two versions (7 and 8), I
configured manually the file system during installation and, of course, I
chose to preserve the existing installations. I also chose not to change the
default boot partition(c0t0d0s0).
The installation didn'T show any problem, but at the OpenBoot (OK prompt),
only the
OK boot disk
works. I assumed I had to boot partition 5 and 6 doing:
OK boot disk5
or
OK boot disk6
but it doesn't work. I assume there is some other setting I skipped, or some
wrong configuration.
Thanks a lot,
Pietro
PS Only the first partition c0t0d0s0 starts within the first Giga Byte. This
might be the problem ?

Answer 1

Hi ,
First check if the other OS are properly installed in the other partition. You can boot the system in 2.6 and mount the other partitions and see the directory structure. It is also good to use the same swap space for all the other OS.
At the OBP, disk0 or disk5 are the alias name for the device names. Each of the partition has a device name. At the OBP the device name for the disk can be obtained from the command:
ok>show-disks
or
ok>show-devs
On an Ultra 2 it would look something like this:
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0
The partitions are represented as alphabets, where "a" would represent partition 0, "b" for partition 1
so for the disk0 or the first disk and partition 4 would be:
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0:e
and partition 5 on disk1 or 2nd disk as:
/sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@1,0:f
The device name can also be found by bootiing is Solaris 2.6 and using the command "format"
If you want to give alias name for the different partitions at the OBP so that you do not have to write the whole path of the device again, you can use the command "nvalias" at OBP
ok> nvalias <alias name> <the device path>
eg.
ok> nvalias sol8 /sbus@1f,0/SUNW,fas@e,8800000/sd@0,0:g
Please refer to http://docs.sun.com for more details on these commands
I hope that would help.
Regards
Anshul