[indiana-discuss] [OT vmware] Why express iso

[Glenn Lagasse]

Hi Harry,

* Harry Putnam (reader at newsguy.com) wrote:
> I'm just barely beginning with opensolaris. I ran solaris a bit a few yrs ago
> before it was called opensolaris.  But have nearly forgotten whatever
> little bit I may have learned.  And anyway am now interested in
> building up a home zfs server.
> 
> To start, I thought I would try installing in a vmware just to learn
> enough to later on, install on a real machine with a heard of drives
> and maybe not have too much trouble getting the zfs setup running;
> having wet my feet a little in the vmware.
> 
> Cutting to the chase here:... reading along in the 2006 letter A kind
> solaris user has put up on the opensolaris sight (sorry don't have it to hand
> to quote names or whatever), but i notice he recommends we install in
> the vmware from the `express' image.
> 
> Is there some reason that is necessary?  I'd like to use the same
> image I plan to install the server from.  Which I guess would be;
> osol-0811-99.iso 

No reason why someone would have given that advice (unless it was before
we had OpenSolaris 2008.05/11 available).

> Which reminds me of another question I wondered about. 
> At the ftp site I used:
>    ftp://ftp.df.lth.se/pub/opensolaris/current/
>  
> I see there are 3 images all different sizes and slightly different
> dates.
> 
>   691251200 Nov 28 18:09 osol-0811-99-global.iso
>   770197504 Nov 28 18:08 osol-0811-99.iso
>   720697344 Nov 25 20:41 osol-0811.iso?e=\
>           1230212147&h=f84928d9dd10d88a36465d29abd5d2eb
> 
> I went through several of the `getting started' pages searching for
> `global' thinking some kind soul might have explained the difference
> there... but didn't find an explanation.  I'll admit I didn't spend
> much time on it, but enough to search 3 or 4 webpages from the FAQ,
> looking for `global'.
> 
> I'm probably just being dumb as a stick here but what is the
> difference between global image and the plain image? And what's up
> with the thing with the equal sign and what looks like and md5
> checksum in the name?  Looks a tad large to be just an md5 checksum. 
> 
> Does the global one just have more languages  included?  But then you'd
> expect it to be a bit bigger rather that a bit smaller...

Ok, so the global image does indeed have more languages installed.  The
plain iso is the 'primary languages' iso (english and a few others).

Those iso's however are woefully out of date (they are development
snapshots of what was to be the 2008.11 release).  I would suggest you
download the official release version of 2008.11.  Which you can get at:

http://dlc.sun.com/osol/opensolaris/2008/11/osol-0811.iso

or

http://genunix.org/distributions/indiana/osol-0811.iso

> And where is the `express' model?

'express' refers to Solaris Express which is basically what OpenSolaris
is derived from.  You're better off with the OpenSolaris iso.

Cheers,

-- 
Glenn