Asking uname and psrinfo, I see
SunOS fulliautomatix 5.11 snv_101b i86pc i386 i86xpv Solaris [from
OpenSolaris 2008.11]
The physical processor has 1 virtual processor (0)
x86 (AuthenticAMD 100F23 family 16 model 2 step 3 clock 2600 MHz)
AMD Phenom(tm) 9950 Quad-Core Processor
[and 3 more similar]
NIC is rge0.
Video is an unrecognized ATI Radeon HD, so I can't make it use an 8x5
aspect ratio to match my monitor.
I'm trying to consolidate machines running multiple OSs, and thought
I'd try OpenSolaris because of zfs and xen. We use zones at $JOB, so I
thought I'd also investigate brandz.
Specifically, I'm replacing a Windows XP machine, an OpenBSD machine,
and one or more Linux machines. I plan to expand by diversifying OSs
and versions, not merely to have several similar machines, so I don't
want to be constrained to particular OSs or versions.
Using the Xen xVM stuff to install an HVM MS Windows XP seems to have
succeeded, but I have no idea whether it's going to be okay in
practice, nor whether it'll actually be able to drive my USB printers
when I plug them in.
The BrandZ stuff can't cope with newer hardware since cpu family 16
isn't recognized, and it sounds like it can't handle recent
distributions of Linux anyway.
For OpenBSD, I created a HVM DomU, but the resulting machine can't
drive the fake re0 presented to it, and there's apparently no way to
change the virtual NIC. Maybe I need to recompile the qemu-dm stuff to
fix the driver?
To make up the gap I tried to install VirtualBox, but found it doesn't
run with Xen, even though both say "xVM". (I already know that VMware
and Xen don't coexist well on other OSs, so this is not a huge
surprise, but I still feel slightly conned.)
To show this isn't all just a big whinge, I am impressed by zfs, and
plan to continue using it for file service.
I'm sure I've just made a n00b mistake, and there are ways to get zfs,
Windows, Linux, and OpenBSD all working together. Please enlighten me
as to which directions I should persevere with, and which I should
abandon in the short term.
Plan B is to move the disks and OpenSolaris onto an older machine for
zfs, abandon Xen, and to run VMware on the machine I'm currently
trying to use so I can actually run stuff. I'd prefer not to (have
to) do that.
Holiday greetings...
--
Christopher Vance
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