Infrastructure Software

I have a Dell D820 laptop with Windows XP and Fedora 6 installed on the hard drive. I downloaded the DVD image of Solaris 10 and this is what happens when I boot to the DVD:

1. "Loading Stage 2" is displayed
2. Options to run Solaris, Solaris Serial Con ttya, Solaris Serial ttyb
3. "..........." is displayed
4. The final message is: "Sun OS Release 5.10 version generic_11885-33 32-bit Copyright 1983-2006 Sun Micro Inc.
User is subject to license terms"

At this point the installation proceeds no further.

Apparently there are some issues with installing Solaris on a drive that already has Linux partitions. fdisk in Fedora says:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3187 25599546 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3188 4231 8385930 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 4232 4492 2096482+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

There's not much to help on the Web, but I did find these:

Can I install Linux and Solaris on the same drive?

Yes. If you use Solaris 10 or greater, it's no problem--as they use different partition IDs (0x82 for Linux and 0xBF for Solaris). Unfortunately, Solaris 9 and earlier and Linux swap partitions use the same ID, 0x82, so be careful.

For the most part, both Linux and Solaris use GRUB to boot load the OS. Linux and Solaris GRUB both live at the beginning of the partition and in the /boot/grub/ directory. Solaris GRUB can boot to either Linux or Solaris directly. Linux GRUB can't boot to Solaris directly, as it doesn't have the Solaris modifications (at least yet). But Linux GRUB can "chain load" to Solaris GRUB. The following is a sample entry to chain load Solaris GRUB from Linux GRUB:

# Boot from Linux GRUB to Solaris GRUB at the 3rd partition, /dev/hda3
title Sun Solaris GRUB Boot Loader
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

The following is a sample entry for booting Linux from Solaris GRUB. It can just be copied and pasted from your Linux GRUB menu.lst file:

# Boot from Solaris GRUB to Linux at the 4th partition, /dev/hda4
title SUSE Linux 10.1
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/tahoma-suse10.1/root-tahoma-suse10.1 vga=0x31a
initrd /initrd

http://faq.solaris-x86.org/9.html#9.5


If Linux is already installed on the system, there is also a way to install
Solaris on the same drive. Before installing Solaris, change the hex id of the
Linux swap partition to another id (e.g. change it to 83 <-- Linux native)
using Linux FDISK. Then begin the Solaris installation and proceed as normal,
creating a new partition for Solaris, etc. After the Solaris installation is
complete, change the id of the Linux swap back to 82. Depending upon what boot
manager you are using (Solaris, Linux's LILO, or a 3rd party) you should follow
a couple more steps. If you want to use the Solaris boot manager, make sure
LILO is on the Linux root partition. If you're using LILO as your primary boot
manager, make sure you have included a stanza for Solaris. A third party boot
manager such as System Commander should also work here fine. (Refer to LILO
documentation for these steps).

http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-9-15682-1

Since I am a Linux novice, I cannot really make heads or tails out of these instructions. Could anyone tell me what I need to do to get Solaris to exist on the same drive as Windows and Linux? Thanks very much.