Known Issues With Running Solaris OS as a Host and Guest on Different Virtualization Platforms

Known Issues With Running Solaris OS as a Host and Guest on Different Virtualization Platforms

Obtaining Paravirtualized Drivers for Guests

• For Microsoft Windows 2003 SP2, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2008:
   Obtain the Sun xVM Guest Additions (Early Access 3) drivers and Sun xVM Guest Additions (Early Access 3) Installation guide at https://cds.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/CDS-CDS_SMI-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewProductDetail-Start?ProductRef=Sun-xVM-guestadd-EA3-G-F@CDS-CDS_SMI" and install in the guest. Reboot the guest from inside the guest.
• For Solaris 10 guests, the Solaris 10 5/09 or later release, which includes the drivers, is recommended.
   If you choose to use a release prior to Solaris 10 10/08:
   Download Solaris 10 patch 137112-06 (or later) from SunSolve. The SunSolve site provides download instructions. After the patch is applied, run sys-unconfig(1M) and reboot the guest. Upon reboot, select the PV network interface (xnf).
   The patch is included starting with update release Solaris 10 10/08.

Known Issues, Patches and Workarounds

Issues When Running OpenSolaris 2009.06 as an HVM Guest

 On OpenSolaris 2009.06 dom0:

• 6828707 Xserver failed to start on OpenSolaris HVM domu
   If you're running an OpenSolaris 2009.06 HVM guest on OpenSolaris 2009.06 dom0, you'll need to apply the workaround for CR 6828707 for XServer to start on the guest. The issue is how long gdm should wait before it assumes a started Xserver is defunct.
   The default set in /usr/share/gdm/factory-defaults.conf is:

GdmXserverTimeout=10

 The default should be increased. To override the default and set the timeout to the recommended value, add the following to /etc/X11/gdm/custom.conf:

GdmXserverTimeout=30

 If the workaround is not used, the user will not see the GUI login window. If booted in text mode, only a console login window will be available. If booted in graphics mode, only the OpenSolaris startup screen will be seen.

• RFE 6829838 CDROM in HVM domU does not support MMC instructions on snv_112

 On Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V SP2:

• CR 6768204, dnet interface takes a long time to resume after plumb/unplumb in Hyper-V virtual machine
   If you are running an OpenSolaris 2009.06 HVM guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V SP2, you will need to obtain the fix for this CR by updating your OpenSolaris 2009.06 guest with build 113 or later from the OpenSolaris Packaging Repository https://pkg.sun.com/opensolaris/support by running pkg_image-update.
   Without the update, the network interface doesn't work for several minutes after the first interface unplumb/plumb operation.

Issues When Running OpenSolaris 2009.06 as a PV Guest on RHEL 5.3 dom0

 You cannot install a PV guest using virt-install. You must use xm and specify the location of the kernel and ramdisk in the *.py configuration file.

 After installation, do not reboot the guest, but copy out the boot_archive file from the guest, and specify this file as the ramdisk in the next boot.

 To proceed with the installation of the OpenSolaris PV guest:

1. There is no content under /a, so you must manually mount the slice that includes boot_archive under /a.

zfs set mountpoint=/a rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
zfs mount rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
/usr/bin/scp -S /usr/bin/ssh /a/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix IP.OF.YOUR.DOM0:/root/xen/kernel/os0805/unix
/usr/bin/scp -S /usr/bin/ssh /a/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive IP.OF.YOUR.DOM0:/root/xen/kernel/boot_archive
shutdown -i0 -g0 -y

1. Copy your image to an xVM system, and boot it.
    Once this has completed, create a .py file for the new Linux guest. Your os0811_boot.py file should look something like this:

name = "os0811"
vcpus = 1
memory = "1024"
disk = ['file:/root/xen/file/os0811/disk.img,0,w']
vif = ['']
kernel = '/root/xen/kernel/os0811/unix'
ramdisk = '/root/xen/kernel/os0811/boot_archive'
extra = '/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix -B zfs-bootfs=rpool/52,bootpath="/xpvd/xdf@0:a"'

1. Start the domain:

xm create -c os0811_boot.py

Issues When Running a Solaris 10 5/09 HVM Guest

 On OpenSolaris 2009.06 dom0:

• CR 6649354 xnf sends bad checksum on small IPv6 packets (PV domU)
   The Patch ID is 141445-04. The fix was integrated in Solaris 10 10/09.

 On VirtualBox 2.2:

• CR 6810371 HCTS CPU test fail with "can not fork: too many processes" if virtual machine uses dynamic hard disk
   The workaround is to either change the hard disk of the virtual machine to fixed-size, or to create a big file and point system swap to use that file.
• CR 6842046 JAVA crashes when run HCTS CPU/Memory test on s10u7 64-bit virtual machine hosted by VirtualBox

 On Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V SP2:

• CR 6768204 dnet interface takes a long time to resume after plumb/unplumb in Hyper-V virtual machine
   Obtain Patch ID 140124-02. Before you install this patch, be sure to install the latest patch utilities patches for your operating system. This list of patches is defined at SunSolve. The fix was integrated in Solaris 10 10/09.

Issues When Running a Solaris 10 10/09 HVM Guest

 On Oracle VM Server 2.2:

• When Solaris 10 10/09 is installed as a guest OS on Oracle VM Server 2.2 using the virt-install command, there will be no network interface in the Solaris guest OS by default.
   The workaround is to run the following command on the Oracle VM server to add a network interface to the Solaris guest OS, which is named s10_domu in this example: 

# virsh attach-interface s10_domu bridge xenbr0 

Then, in the Solaris guest OS, a network interface will be present: 

# dladm show-link
xnf0            type: non-vlan  mtu: 1500       device: xnf0