[H-GEN] Free Solaris (was: package management systems.)

[Ian Pulsford]

[ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
[ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]

Ewan Edwards wrote:
> 
> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and     ]
> [ Unix-related topics. Posts from non-subscribed addresses will vanish. ]
> 
> On Thursday 13 February 2003 04:13 pm, Greg Black wrote:
> >
> > with an experimental OS.  Either create some space for it as
> > part of a multi-boot thing and keep nothing that you care about
> 
> I wouldn't try doing that myself.  It seems that Solaris has a very different
> way of slicing up space on a hdd.  Different that is to the way most of us
> understand partitions under Linux, or Windows, or DOS for that matter.
> 
> > guidance) not to clobber other bits of your disk, then get
> > another box or another disk for your experimentation.  Enough
> 
> I am lead to believe that if you don't have a good understanding of the
> Solaris way, then you run the very real risk of trashing everything on your
> hdd, so I heartily agree with this suggestion.

It uses a primary partition like most other OS's.  I have Win2k, FreeBSD
5, and Solaris 8 all running on this machine off the same boot disk. 
What DOS calls a partition, Solaris (and BSD) call a slice.  Solaris
then divides the slice into the usual "partitions" within the slice.  As
with installing any new OS on a HD you need to be careful but I can
assure Solaris can be safely installed on a free x86 partition.

Ian

--
* This is list (humbug) general handled by majordomo at lists.humbug.org.au .
* Postings to this list are only accepted from subscribed addresses of
* lists 'general' or 'general-post'.  See http://www.humbug.org.au/