Solaris x86 hints page

Here is a growing collection of hints and utilities for Solaris x86. I add to them as I encounter issues with my BP6 dual-celeron system.
If you'd like to see some general solaris tips, see my miscellaneous hints page.

Important! Let Sun know you are interested in solaris x86 servers and laptops,
by answering the 3-question servey

Accelerated 3d support

Utah-GLX provides some free OpenGL drivers for machines running xfree86
Xig.com provides commercial OpenGL drivers, coving a wider range of hardware, and more features.

Hardware

The now famous Solaris compatible laptops list.
A general Solaris-x86 HCL database, driven by community entries

Xig (yes, the graphics folks) have a PCMCIA hack if your laptop is not recognizing a card on the sun HCL
A sample sbpro.conf (ISA Soundblaster16) driver conf file, for solaris 2.6 and possibly later. But you should use a PCI soundblaster card instead these days.
How to use a Sun monitor under solaris x86
Getting a Compaq deskpro 6000 to work with solaris7
How to use any Intel PRO/100 ethernet card
General tips when adding new hardware
A CPU temperature monitor driver, for motherboards with WinBond w83781d chips.
A history of my troubles getting my device conflicts to work
Mysterious I/O errors with old drive controllers?

x86 disk diagnostic tools

As I'm working on my hpt driver, I'm building a few trivial tools to either make up what solaris doesnt have, or to augment lackings in current tools.

getfdisk.c: "getfdisk /dev/dsk/c0d0p0" will give you the fdisk layout of a disk, in BLOCKS, rather than cylinders
getvtoc.c: Tool to check whether there is a valid vtoc, aka "solaris partition info" on a device.
aioread.c: Trivial Async-IO reading program, as a pseudo-benchmark. Queues up multiple disk requests VERY FAST, using asynchronous IO.

Getting set up

An explaination of the solaris booting sequence
How to change your boot partition permenantly
Incomplete knowlege into the x86 boot monitor. A possible place to look at, if you get stuck with device configuration, and you're a hacker.
Get those nifty extra sun keys! Cut/Paste, etc. Plus 'Meta'.
PS/2 mouse hint: use /dev/kdmouse
Allegedly how to use a large IDE drive before solaris 8

Random solaris-x86 quickies

To set your default boot path by hand (if, for example, the DCA decides to lock up on you in "boot tasks), try
```
eeprom bootpath /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0/cmdk@0,0:a
```
(Or whatever /pciXXXX path matches up to your /dev/dsk/c0d0s0)
If solaris8 crashes during install, after it has loaded the kernel, try forcibly disabling acpi. Get a boot floppy if you dont already have one. Then edit /solaris/bootenv.rc on the floppy and add the line
```
setprop acpi-user-options '0x2'
```

Random good x86 site: http://fishbutt.fiver.net/

and dont forget the alt.solaris.x86 FAQ site

Written by: Philip Brown
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