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So part one finished up with a Virtualbox VM , two blank disk and the OEL CD image in the virtual CD drive. Fair warning I have taken some liberty with technical preciseness of handsfree, but it’s pretty close. If some knows how I can second commands to the guest from the host command line let me know, virt-install maybe. So this is straight forward and I have covered some of these techniques in other posts like Kickstart for Solaris Admins or my even older Grub menu reinstall. Startup the VB guest it should boot off your attached CD/DVD image. and the welcome screen press TAB key

Rather than wait until I have the whole thing polished I thought I’d do a multipart entry on building Oracle VM Manager VM and installing the software. Now the previous version 3.0.3 had a VirtualBox template available. The current version 3.1.1 doesn’t, at least not that I can find, so this is a kinda of roll your own template. Tools used for this job: Virtual Box 4.1.8 Oracle VM Manager ISO 3.1.1 OEL R6U1 ISO

Solaris 11 repo setup but you want to have your own repo serving up own home grown packages, separate from your main Solaris 11 image repository. Actually I’d like an extra two repo’s I want a dev repo that to test my packaging abilities and a “release” one when I’m ready to publish. Mostly becuase there doesn’t seem to be a straight forward way to remove packages from a repo and my packaging skills are work in progress. ...

Installing Ruby 1.9.3 and libyaml on Solaris 11Recent blog entries would indicate I’ve upgrade to Solaris 11 proper or Solaris 11/11 as it goes by. The upgrade was mostly driven by the fact I need to compile some software and figured I may as well have the most recent version rather than on the express edition. I’m looking into Vagrant at the moment as it might fit in with some of the automation bits I’m playing with. I’m not getting into Vagrant here just yet as there are a couple of steps I need to do to first to prep my Solaris 11 environment.For the “First cloud OS” Solaris 11 is distinctly lacking some items that you could almost say are essentials in todays cloud, Ruby. And I here the cries from the Oracle faithful we ship Ruby, Hmm Version 1.8 nearly 5 years old and only months away from EOL. I did attempt to install Vagrant with version 1.8 and gem just failed to meet the prerequisites by 0.0.1 if I recall. None the less I had committed to building a more recent version of Ruby that I’ll need for some other stuff in progress.So what do you need to build ruby 1.9.3-p125 on Solaris 11,a compiler obviously and I’m using the gcc 4.5.2 include in the Solaris 11 repo, and libyaml, otherwise we end by with this annoying message. ...

Solaris 11/11 has been out for some time I’ve been slow to move. Mostly the Solaris 11 express I run know works well and fits my needs so I have not need to upgrade. However I’m working on some side project and some software is going to need complied, that and I figured I need to keep my hand in so best move up to the current release. So should be pretty straight forward: ...

Linux kickstart for Solaris Admin’sSo sometimes Solaris Admins need to turn their hand at another OS for various reasons, especial in this day and age of mass production of virtual environments. Solaris Admins will be well versed with jumpstart a tried and truly tested system of automated builds for over a decade now. While recently this system has been thrown out with the bath water for AI in Solaris 11 and while the jury is still out on that one that’s a conversation for another time. ...

This exercise for me is to replace my current single disk rpool, the second disk was removed for another project, on to two slightly smaller disks. Doing so restores my root mirror but as the disks are slightly smaller some work is required. For reference my current root pool name is rpool, the current disk in this pool is c5t1d0, the first replacement disk is install at c5t0d0 and is empty. ...

Just a short time back I had what amounts to a mini revilation or small epiphany, take your pick. Actually it was a realization what I had known for some time just never admitted to myself. Since when did we need so many non IT people running the IT infrastructure. Two things happened. I spent a numbing 8 hour day in a training course for Configuration management, not the funky new Devops definatation of configuration management but the boar you to tears ITIL version, seriously do you really need 6 different slides and 15 minutes to explain release management as “do steps 1 through 7 in serial sequence completing 7 before starting on step 1 again for the next release”. I get it that this is a generic course not aimed at the twenty year veterans , but a two year old could understand this. ...

First Video as part of a presentation MSOSUG in April 2011 showing how to create a Solaris 11 zone