Upgrading OpenSolaris to the Latest Build from the dev Repository

At home I'm still running Solaris Express Community Edition. I was waiting for OpenSolaris 2010.03 to be released to perform a major upgrade of my workstation: months have passed and we're still waiting for it. Since I'm going to change my SATA drive with a new SAS one I could even try and go with OpenSolaris but I should upgrade it from the /dev repository since some ZFS pools are running versions which are unsupported by the 2009.06 release.

My earliest OpenSolaris test drives were pretty satisfactory as far as it concerns the OS "feeling." I really liked 2008.11 and, although it took some time to get accustomed to the IPS repository (it mainly is a psychological issue with it), I like the direction it took. Unfortunately SXCE was far more solid than OpenSolaris and, moreover, I was having some trouble with some Sun product (such as the Java Enterprise System) which I needed to work.

Since then and since SXCE discontinuation, I've been waiting for the next stable release before upgrading my system. This weekend I had some spare time and decided to give the latest OpenSolaris build a try. I downloaded VirtualBox for Mac, installed it and run the OpenSolaris 2009.06 installation. Once it finished the first thing I did was disabling the splash screen. 

Disabling the Splash Screen

To disable the OpenSolaris splash screen during boot you have to edit the /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the following fragments:

[...snip...]

... ,console=graphics

splashimage = ...

foreground = ...

background = ...

Please, pay attention to remove just the ,console=graphics fragment and not the entire kernel line. Failing to do so will result in an unbootable system.

Upgrading to /dev

Once I modified the menu.lst file I changed the package repository to point to http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/:

# pkg set-authority -O http://pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/ opensolaris.org

and run an image update:

# pkg image-update -v

The new packaging system is working far better than I remembered. Unfortunately, it still seems pretty slow, especially when compared to similar packaging systems such as Debian's. After a couple of hours build 134 (snv_134) was installed and rebooted into the new boot environment.

There's no need to examine change logs to notice that, almost one year after OpenSolaris 2009.06 was released, many things have changed. Although I already considered the Nimbus theme the most beautiful GNOME theme out there, there were room for improvements and the OpenSolaris guys have made a great job.

Minor Problems

Missing xfs Service

During the first boot I noticed an error from the Service Management Facility relating a missing service, xfs. This is just a manifestation of bug 11602 and it just affected the first boot after the upgrade.

Xorg Fails to Start

A more serious problem was Xorg failing to start. After the reboot in the new boot environment the system was not unable to start the graphical login session and was continuously dropping down to console login. Long story short, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that was present on the system had some invalid paths in it which were preventing Xorg to start correctly. Since Xorg usually detects the computer configuration correctly, I just deleted the file and Xorg came up happily.

.ICEAuthority Could Not Be Found (A.K.A.: gdm User Has Changed its Home)

As soon as Xorg started, a popup appeared complaining about a missing .ICEAuthority file. That's another misconfiguration to correct but harder to find: you're running into the following bug:

13534 "Could not update ICEauthority file /.ICEauthority" on bootup of build 130
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=13534

The gdm user home directory was reported as / by /etc/passwd. I just changed it to where it belongs and all problems were solved:

# usermod -d /var/lib/gdm gdm

Malfunctioning Terminals

Another problem you might find is the following:

12380 image-update loses /dev/ptmx from /etc/minor_perm
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=12380

The workaround is the following:

• Reboot into the working boot environment.
• Execute the following commands:

$ pfexec beadm mount your-BE /mnt
$ pfexec sh -c "grep ^clone: /etc/minor_perm >> /mnt/etc/minor_perm"
$ pfexec touch /mnt/reconfigure
$ pfexec bootadm update-archive -R /mnt
$ pfexec beadm unmount your-BE

Waiting for the Next Release

So far, OpenSolaris snv_134 is a Solaris as great as ever. I wouldn't mind running it on my workstation now. I'll patiently wait a bit longer just in case: I surely prefer running stable versions on some machines. However, OpenSolaris now seems as stable as SXCE was and I think it's an operating system that now should deserve the attention of any user who is running other *NIX flavors on their home workstations.