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I recently bought a used Sun Blade 2500 Silver. The system has been completly wiped, so I get an OpenBoot prompt when I boot.

When I look on Oracle's compatibility page, I can see the station is able to run Solaris 10 8/11. So I downloaded the OS from the Oracle website.

According to the documentation I found, to install Solaris 10 from OpenBoot should be quite easy: put the DVD in the player, enter boot cdrom and then follow the instruction on screen.

Problem is, when I enter boot cdrom, I get the following message:

read failed

Evaluating:
The file just loaded does not appear to be executable.

I checked the DVD-ROM is able to read DVD-R. It is. And now, I have no further idea. Any clue?

Alexis Dufrenoy
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  • Did you download the SPARC iso ? How did you record it ? – jlliagre Oct 16 '12 at 07:32
  • Yes, I downloaded the Sparc iso on the indicated website, and burned a DVD-R. – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 16 '12 at 08:05
  • Then the more likely reason would be a corrupted media. Make sure the iso is correct and try using a different tool to record it. – jlliagre Oct 16 '12 at 10:25
  • I can open the iso with Daemon Tool, and I can read the DVD I burned. Anyway, I went through the whole process again, and the result is the same. As the workstation is used, could it be the DVD reader is broken? Would I get this message? How could I check it? – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 17 '12 at 18:48
  • You might want to try this live cd instead of a dvd: http://alexeremin.blogspot.fr/2009/11/opensolaris-sparc-snv125-livecd.html , also, try using a different recording program, as I already suggested. – jlliagre Oct 17 '12 at 21:09
  • I tried with the standard Windows 7 software the first time, and with ImgBurn the second time. Thank you for the link, I will give it a try. – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 17 '12 at 23:13
  • Actually, none of the links indicated on the page is w – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 17 '12 at 23:30
  • Surprisingly (for me), it worked. I was able to boot with the OpenSolaris LiveCD you indicated, burned on a CD and not a DVD. I don't understand why, though. Is it a problem with the DVD burning software? Has anyone burned DVD on Windows meant to be read on a Sparc station? – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 22 '12 at 09:15
  • For a complete info: the LiveCD is actually faulty. Xorg is not working properly, for example. – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 22 '12 at 09:16

1 Answers1

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As the the comments demonstrate, the SB2500 has issues reading the DVD. Usual causes are either in the recording side, some DVD recording applications cannot refrain to modify the iso they record, the media, or the server side, for example dvd recorded at too high a speed for the drive to properly read it.

Often, using a CD recorded, especially at a lower speed, instead of a DVD allows booting which is what you experienced with the livecd.

Unfortunately, there are no more Solaris 10 CD distributions available so the alternative would be a network boot. This would require another Solaris server running which I'm afraid is a catch22 situation in your case ...

jlliagre
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  • Do you know a DVD recording software which could do the job? And are you seriously implying that the "readability" depends on the recording speed? – Alexis Dufrenoy Oct 23 '12 at 09:09
  • You are right. I ordered a Solaris 10 Media Pack from Oracle, and now, my system is almost up and running... https://shop.oracle.com/pls/ostore/f?p=dstore:product:580188138862857::NO:RP,6:P6_LPI,P6_PROD_HIER_ID:6916731061041191748546,6916016290451192110906 – Alexis Dufrenoy Nov 13 '12 at 18:57