Infrastructure Software

Hi,

I have been trying to install Solaris 10 x86 on my ESXi 4 server and have had a lot of
problems. The first step, obviously, was to download the Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) DVD.
I created a new VM (Solaris 64 bit) and booted off the DVD. Grub loaded fine but directly
after (when the kernel was about to load) it stopped with the error:

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Then I tried to install it as 32-bit on another VM (Solaris 32 bit) and added the following
option the .vmx: "monitor_control.disable_longmode = 1" but same error.

Next step I took was to download Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4) CD installation (5 CDs). As I
had read on another forum some people had success by first installing it as 32-bit in
vmware and then changing the VM to Solaris 64 bit. The 32-bit installation now went OK and
the system was up and running. However when I changed the VM to "Solaris 10 (64 bit) it
still booted into 32-bit. I have checked that 'eeprom' doesnt contain any specific 32-bit
kernel, and I have executed an 'bootadm update-archive -f' to make sure the 64-bit kernel
modules are in place. Still it boots in 32-bit mode.

After that I tried a fresh install again to a Solaris 64 bit VM. the first stage of the
installation went OK (it starts of in 32-bit mode), but then the installation wanted to
reboot the system. After this reboot, after GRUB, it showed that the 64-bit kernel had
started to load but directly after it rebooted again and continued in this matter. Then
I found a VMware KB article (1004227) that described this issue when installing Solaris
onto a system running a Xeon E5400-series processor, which I am not. So still no luck.


Anyone that have successfully installed Solaris 10 x86 on a VMware ESXi server in 64 bit mode?

Any suggestions to how I solve this?


The same ESXi server is hosting alot of other 64-bit OS:es with no problem at all
(Linux, Windows Server 2003, ...) Could it be that my processor model has the same issue
as the Xeon E5400-series? In wich the solution was to apply a Sun Patch.

Details:
- VMWare: ESXi 4.0.0
- Host CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad (Q9400)
- BIOS: Intel-VT enabled
- Solaris versions tested: 10/09 (U8) = Error before install, 8/07 (U4) = Only 32 bit

Thanks in advance!

/Tobbe