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6   Installing an OS on Simics

6.1   Installing Solaris on Simics

Solaris can be installed directly on the simulated machine in Simics. Solaris can be obtained from Sun's web-site at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/binaries/get.html in the form of ISO images.

To simplify the installation process, some scripts are supplied with the Simics distribution for the abisko machine: abisko-sol<version>-cd-install1.simics, abisko-sol<version>-cd-install2.simics and abisko-sol<version>-cd-install3.simics, where <version> is 8, 9 or 10. The scripts will answer all questions automatically to create a standard workstation install.

6.1.1   Installation, step by step

This section describes how to install Solaris using the command-line version Simics.

  1. Select the install script to use, depeding on Solaris version to install, either abisko-sol10-cd-install1.simics for Solaris 10, abisko-sol9-cd-install1.simics for Solaris 9, or abisko-sol8-cd-install1.simics for Solaris 8.

  2. Set the path to the CD image in the simics script. The line 
        $cdrom_path = "sol-10-u2-ga-sparc-v1.iso"
    should be changed to reflect the location and name of the CD image for stage one of the installlation. It can either be an ISO image file, or a CD-ROM device file (Linux and Solaris host only).

  3. Start the first installation script, for example: 
      $ ./simics targets/serengeti/abisko-sol10-cd-install1.simics
    and wait for it to complete. This may take several hours, depending on the performance of the host machine.

  4. When the script stops, installation from the first CD is finished, and Solaris has tried to reboot the system. Since Simics does not support system reboot for this architecture, exit Simics at this point.

    If the installation is performed from a real CD, it is now time to change disc in the drive. Also make sure that the path to the CD is correct in the second install script.

  5. Now run the second script in the same way as the first, this script may also take a few hours to complete.

  6. When the second script has stopped, run the third and last one. This script only takes a few minutes to finish.

  7. When the third script has stopped the installation is ready. The newly created disk image has the following file name: abisko-sol<version>-install.disk. There are also a number of persistent state files.

  8. To boot a machine with the newly installed Solaris OS, run the abisko-common.simics and make sure that the variable $os is set to "solaris10", "solaris9" or "solaris8" depending on the operating system version installed). Add a line like the following first in that simics script: 
      $os = "solaris10"

  9. An optional last step is to compress the disk image with the craff utility to save some disk space.

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