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I'm trying to convert my bare metal Solaris 11 Express box into a virtual machine but I can't get it to boot.

I've already asked Is it possible to boot from a passthrough LSI 2008 SAS controller under VMware ESXi? but I suspect that it is impossible.

Therefore I've installed another instance of solaris on a virtual disk and got it to boot. But I really want to boot my existing OS as it has zones already configured, etc.

So here's my real question: what magic do I need to put into grubs menu.lst so that I can boot from a different disk? I've tried every combination of root, rootnoverify, and findroot that I could think of but grub can't seem to find that other disk.

Here's my current virtual menu.lst:

#rootnoverify /scsi_vhci/disk@g50014ee2b066ff9c
title Oracle Solaris 11 Express snv_151a
findroot (pool_rpool,0,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/solaris
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

#---------- ADDED BY BOOTADM - DO NOT EDIT ----------
title Virtual Oracle Solaris 11 Express snv_151a
findroot (pool_rpool1,0,a)
bootfs rpool1/ROOT/solaris
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive
#---------------------END BOOTADM--------------------

ps. I know I could mirror my real drive to the virtual drive but I consider that a last resort. My real drives are mirrored and much larger than my esxi datastore.

Kurt

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  • What about `chainloader +1` (or whatever arguments are appropriate)? – Mei Feb 18 '12 at 02:16
  • I'll give that try and if it's that simple I'll really feel like a fool, however I don't think that will work since it _seems_ like the problem is that grub can't find the other disks. – Kurt Feb 18 '12 at 19:03
  • Yep, trying to set `root (hd1,0)` still threw an error `can't find disk` (or something like that) so `chainloader` never got executed. – Kurt Feb 18 '12 at 23:44

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