Force Solaris 10 reinstall on SPARC T4

Question

New job, new environment...

I'm picking up for someone who has "moved on to other projects." One of the last things he worked on was installing Solaris 11 on a Sun SPARC T4-2.

Solaris 11 was further than the end users needed to go. The application is only supported on Solaris 10.

So, I have physical access to this SPARC system, a Solaris 10 DVD, and no idea what this previous fellow set up as the root password. I've found the iDevelopement.info page on how to install. I just need to convince the system to stop on the ILOM System Console after a reboot.

I can punch the power button. What do I do then?

Thanks! David

Answer 1

Beware the link you posted (iDevelopement.info) is 7 years old and shows how to install an obsolete update of Solaris 10 on a 11 years old hardware. That's probably not the best starting point and is actually not advisable.

Your T4-2 server provides two way to achieve what you want without reinstalling the OS.

You can create a Solaris 10 branded zone from a template made on an existing server running Solaris 10 and install the application requiring it inside. You might not have that server available so there is another virtualization technology with which you can install Solaris 10 without touching the existing OS: Oracle VM Server for SPARC (a.k.a ldoms)

Both of these will require root's privileges but you might not need root password. By default, root is no more a user on Solaris 11. What you need is to know the password of a regular account allowed to have root's privileges, either configured with sudo or rbac. If you are unable to gain root access that way, you still have the possibility to boot on a Solaris 11 DVD. Select the "user shell" choice, it should recognize the existing file system and ask you about mounting it. Accept then simply edit its /etc/shadow file, put the hash you want (or clear it) there and reboot.