Solaris10 x86 using VMWare?

[etlpkby]

Hello!

I'm trying to get Solaris10 x86 running via VMWare (workstation5) on Linux FC3 platform.

Solaris installed OK and then installed cluster patches from SUN.

Downloaded and installed NVIDIA-Solaris-x86-1.0-7664.run OK. Problem is identifying the nvidia PCI card within vmware in order to do "update_drv" command. Here's the output of "scanpci" command :-

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x7190
Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x7191
Intel Corp. 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x07 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x7110
Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x07 function 0x01: vendor 0x8086 device 0x7111
Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x07 function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x7113
Intel Corp. 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x0f function 0x00: vendor 0x15ad device 0x0405
VMWare Inc Device unknown

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x10 function 0x00: vendor 0x1022 device 0x2000
Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x11 function 0x00: vendor 0x1274 device 0x1371
Ensoniq ES1371 [AudioPCI-97]

Am I trying something impossible here? :rolleyes:

Has anyone got nvidia graphics working for Solaris within vmware?

Thanks,
Patrick/

[zander]

The NVIDIA graphics devices can't be driven from within a VMware virtual machine by the NVIDIA Solaris graphics driver (a custom graphics device is made available within VMware virtual machines, drivers are available from VMware (though possibly not for Solaris client machines)).

[etlpkby]

Thanks. Thought I was being too optimistic :D

I've managed to get 1024x768 working using the vmware drivers. Basically I did the "kdmconfig" command and chose "Xsun" and not "Xorg". At least I managed to get a display. With Xorg it just fell over in a heap.

The resulting display is poor compared to my underlying system (Redhat FC3, AMD 64 3500+ CPU & Nividia Geforce6 6800GT card). But it's perfectly OK for what I want to do.

Patrick/

[etlpkby]

oh...just remembered and forgot to post in my comments above. You cannot install vmware tools via the VM->Install VMware Tools... menu. It won't let you on "guest operating" systems - only works for Microsoft installs :(

Any else thinking of installing Solaris10 within vmware will need to edit their *.vmx config file for Solaris10 and add the line paevm="TRUE" before you power-on.

Don't bother with Solaris9. I haven't got graphics working on that yet...I'm left in console mode at present :p

Patrick/

[ricercar]

Am I trying something impossible here?Unfortunately, yes, you are trying something that is impossible under Workstation 5.0.

The virtual machine's guest OS CANNOT recognize host's hardware, including your NVIDIA video card. The guest OS sees only the VMware SVGA virtual/emulated graphics card. Because of this, only the VMware video drivers (included in VMware Tools) are relevant to the guest OS.

You cannot install vmware tools via the VM->Install VMware Tools... menu. It won't let you on "guest operating" systems - only works for Microsoft installsActually this is not the case.

When you select "Install VMware Tools" from a menu in the Workstation/GSX/Remote console, in every guest OS a CDROM image is mounted with VMware Tools available. When a guest OS has no autorun, then you must launch the VMware Tools installer manually.

[msright1981]

Hi etlpkby,

I have to agree with the others, you can't setup the Nvidia card inside the virtual machine. Is there any particular reason you are trying this? I mean what kind of graphic thing are you trying to run in Solaris. I have always noticed the emulated VMware video driver is more the adequate for most purpose. I had seen a post as well which show a video of SUN Solaris 10 running on VMware Workstation where the graphics seems just fine. You might want to look at it Sun Solaris 10 running on VMware Workstation (http://www.virtualizationteam.com/virtualization-vmware/solaris-10-x86-under-vmware.html).

I hope that help.