Inchoate Curmudgeon

This is a collection of notes and links related to a dual installation of Solaris Nevada and Mac OS using Boot Camp. Although all of the links are helpful, this is a rapidly evolving set of technologies, thus there are some adjustments.

Possibly the most important adjustment I ran into is that the Boot Camp Beta was closed on December 31st, so you are compelled to use Leopard.

As you work through the installation, there are several things you can expect not to work, at least as of build 80 of Nevada.

• Sound does not work.
• Dual head configurations may result in irritating color differences between the two screens.
• Solaris does not support HID 1.1. This bit me with my Microsoft Optical Desktop 4000 mouse. The keyboard works. The mouse doesn’t.
• The one button trackpad won’t cut it. You’ll need a real wired three-buttoon mouse. No bluetooth. No bluetooth mice. The Wireless Mighty Mouse won’t work.

There are probably other issues, but these are the ones I’ve run into.

There are quite a number of links out there with helpful information, and on the whole, the installation works at least as well as I expected, and wasn’t too difficult. The biggest hassles are the Marvell yukon driver, and the Atheros wireless driver.

• Google “solaris nevada macbook boot camp”
• How to install Solaris on MacBook Pro
• Solaris Wireless on a MacBook
• How to Dual Partition a MacBook Pro with MacOS and Solaris is interesting since it shows how to dual partition without Boot Camp. I didn’t use this directly, but it was referred to by several other posts.

I somewhat mitigated the color differences between my laptop and my Apple Cinema display by using a Xinerama installation with different “Gamma” options for each monitor, rather than an Nvidia TwinView configuration. This allowed me to set the gamma separately for each monitor. All my attempts to use the Nvidia configuration mechanisms to deal with this were futile. Here is my /etc/xorg.conf

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath         "/usr/X11/lib/X11/rgb"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/misc/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/sun/"
    FontPath        "/usr/X11/lib/X11/fonts/F3bitmaps/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "IA"
    Load           "bitstream"
    Load           "xtsol"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/mouse"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "keyboard"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Apple Color LCD"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 75.0
    VertRefresh     60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
    Gamma          1.2 1.0 0.85
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Apple Cinema HD"
    HorizSync       74.0 - 74.6
    VertRefresh     60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
    Gamma          0.95 1.0 1.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8600M GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 8600M GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The production release of VMware Fusion 1.0 released yesterday resolves the issues with the VMware tools install inter-operation with xorg 7.2 distributed with current versions of Nevada.  I’ve tested the tools install with Fusion 1.0 (51348) and Solaris Nevada build 69 (SunOS solaris-devx 5.11 snv_69 i86pc i386 i86pc).

One of the recent Nevada builds introduces xorg 7.2 which breaks the VMware tools installation. Use these instructions to work around the issue.

You may want to enable root logins in /etc/ssh/sshd_config (”PermitRootLogin yes”) or create another login via in case you can’t get back in through the graphical console after these steps. You may also wish to tar up /etc/X11 and /usr/X11/lib just in case.

These instructions create a kludge for the VMware tools install:

• Copy and untar the vmware tools onto the root desktop.
• cd to /Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib/lib/configurator/XOrg
• copy “7.0″ to “7.1″ (cp -r 7.0 7.1)
• cd 7.1 (step not required)
• cp /usr/X11/lib/modules/drivers/amd64/vmware_drv.so . (step not required)

Go thorough the normal VMware tools install process:

• cd /Desktop/vmware-tools-distrib
• ./vmware-install.pl
• At the prompt “What is the location of the directory which contains your XOrg modules?” answer /usr/lib/X11/modules

IMPORTANT: Delete or move aside the generated /etc/xorg.conf. YAGNI and it is broken somehow anyway. The tools install will have installed the optimized network adapter and the VMware daemon processes, including the one that should allows your mouse to move off the VM screen w/o the special key sequence.

You need to log out and back in at this point to check you display and mouse configuration.