Step by Step Guide to Install Solaris 10 11/06 With Windows XP on x86 PC

Question

hi everyone
here is how I fixed my dual boot & internet connectivity failure problems. I'm explaining in detail to help any Solaris newbie (like me) having same problems: ( as I didn't find any REAL Help thru Sun Help Documents / Pages )
My special thanx to " Phil Brown " ( who helped me alott on this )
First to get rid of Dell's Diagnostic Partition & System Recovery Partition I re-installed Windows XP Media Center Edition & at installation I made 4 Partitions of my Dell 9150 ( x86 Intel Pentium Dual Core ) 238 GB Hard Drive.
(1) C: 100 GB for Windows XP ( NTFS )
(2) D: 80 GB for Solaris 10 ( RAW )
(3) E: 50 GB for Linux ( RAW , which I haven't installed yet )
(4) F: 6 GB (RAW)
(5) G: 2 GB Un-Allocated Space
Restarted PC after Win XP installation & installed Partition Magic 8 . In PM8 I formatted Solaris partition as FAT 32 (at Solaris installation it changed to Solaris format) & Linux as Linux EXT 3 . Rebooted the PC. I Started Solaris 10 11/06 installation from the DVD I burned from Sun downloads.
Here's how I installed Solaris 10 11/06 :
(1) On the next screen after "Loading Stage 2 ... " I selected " Solaris "
(2) Selected " Solaris Interactive (default) installation
(3) Hit "enter" to accept proposed Windows configuration screen it displayed
(4) Selected 0 = English as language (you need to take cursor into white window so you can type 0 into it, otherwise u can't)
(5) hit NEXT
(6) Selected "Networked" option
(7) Selected YES to "Use DHCP for e1000g0 ( Intel Pro/1000 Network Adapter )
(8) Selected NO to "enable IPv6"
(9) Selected NO to "enable Kerberos"
(10) Selected DNS as "Name Service"
(11) entered " f.root-servers.net " as Domain Name
(12) Server's IP address : 192.5.5.241 ( you can choose the one that closest to you by visiting http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/ops/f-root/ )
(13) Search Domain: Left all boxes empty ('coz when I tried to put any IP's into 'em, it generated " SysidgenSyserr " and have to re-start installation )
(14) Geographic Continent / Country / Region: Americas > U. S. > time zone
(15) hit NEXT on Date & Time Screen
(16) Entered password twice
(17) Selected YES to "enable Remote Services"
(18) hit CONFIRM
(19) Clicked NEXT on Solaris installation Welcome screen
(20) Selected NO to " Reboot Automatically " and YES to eject additional CD/DVDs
(21) Clicked OK on NOTICE
(22) Specified CD/DVD as " Media from which you installing Solaris "
(23) Check ACCEPT & hit next
(24) Selected "initial install" & hit next
(25) I choose "Custom Install" > NEXT > North America > and checked both, " English ( U S ) ( en_us) & English ( U S, UTF-8) (en_us.UTF-8) and hit next
(26) Selected English (US, UTF-8) as initial locale > NEXT
(27) Selected " Solaris 10 Extra Value Software " > NEXT
(28) Selected NONE to " Web Start Ready Product Scan Location " > NEXT
(29) Selected " Entire Group - Default Packages " in Solaris software group screen > NEXT
(30) Selected " c1do(bootdisk) " > NEXT
(31) " c1d0 " Selected > NEXT
(32) There was a Warning: " A Linux fdisk partition was found on this disk (c1d0), which is the default bootdisk. Having a linux fdisk partition on the same disk as a Solaris fdisk partiton is not supported. Do you want to load the default Lay out ? I choose NO
(33) It displayed 4 partitions. 1st: " Unknown " 100GB , 2nd: FAT32LBA, this I changed to Solaris by clicking on partition, size 80GB . 3rd: Linux 50GB , 4th: DOSEXTLBA 8GB , hit NEXT
(34) I choose NO to " Preserve Data Warning " (the 80GB partition)
(35) Displayed " Lay Out File Systems " screen, c1d0 was highlighted. > NEXT
(36) On " Ready to Install Screen " it displayed Fdisk partitions: 1st: Unknown "Preserved" , 2nd: FAT32LBA delete, & Solaris add, 3rd: Linux "Preserved" , 4th: DOSEXTLBA "Preserved" >>> hit " Install Now "
(37) When installation finishes hit " Reboot " & when PC was restarting I ejected DVD manually
(38) After re-start it displayed 3 options: 1st: Solaris 10 , 2nd: Solaris failsafe , 3rd: Windows , ENTER on Solaris 10
(39) At sign-in screen, I signed in as, user name: " root " & enterd password (which I typed at installation)
(40) I choose JAVA Desktop System
When it was fully up, the Internet was working right away. Restarted again to check Windows. Selected " Windows " at reboot screen & Windows was working just fine.
It took me few allnighters to figure these out, I hope these will helpful to Solaris newbies like me. Still I can't figure out ... How to install any software (obviously designed for Solaris 10 (x86) ) onto Solaris, but thats a different issue.
- Jags Desai

Answer 1

"A Linux fdisk partition was found on this disk (c1d0), which is the default bootdisk. Having a Linux fdisk partition is not supported"
It might not be supported, but it works fine for me on my thinkpad :-) .
redhat/solaris/xp.
You can't just use the linux grub, though, because it won't understand
solaris 'slices within partitions'. You need to get Solaris to install
grub itself (in fact, you can't stop it doing so, which is rather unfair),
and then add in the linux * xp entries to Solaris's /boot/grub/menu.lst
(== grub.conf) to get it to pick up fedora & xp. Chainloading xp worked
fine for me. Chainloading RHEL4/5 doesn't, so I had to cat the grub.conf
from red hat on to the end of solaris's menu.lst. Stick red hat's grub.conf
on a USB pen or just write it down before putting Solaris on, otherwise you'll
have to boot linux rescue of a red hat CD in order to get hold of it after
Solaris's grub takes over.