Thanks for doing this! :)

Cool write-up. My memories and resources stashes got rusty over the decades, so your text and links were very helpful. A couple of notes:

regarding GCC and libm - the errors I see (also with gcc-4.7.4-2 package) indicate that it was built for a newer release/patch of Solaris 8, or at least of this library:
```
ld.so.1: /usr/tgcware/libexec/gcc/i386-pc-solaris2.8/4.7.4/cc1: fatal:
libm.so.1: version `SUNW_1.1.1' not found
(required by file /usr/tgcware/lib/libstdc++.so.6)
```
Checking if an older gcc-4.x would work on the release prepared and patched by your doc
Some versions were bumped by TGC so "verbatim" your scripts no longer install everything. It would be helpful if they recorded what they failed to install, so someone like me could take another pass over it.
It seems to help to update LD_LIBRARY_PATH (not just PATH as scripts suggest) to mention TGC. For my use-case, I want to build/run a project against the OS-provided ecosystem, so TGC path additions go after system paths.
as is often the case, GCC goes to dedicated directory tree and its bin has to appear in PATH explicitly too
git needs pcre2 (to start) and zlib (for github at least) installed, scripts miss that I think. Regarding libz.so.1 - git seems to be linked against the system one (without some symbols needed at runtime), so embedding the /usr/lib path even if LD_LIBRARY_PATH prefers /usr/tgcware/lib first. Using LD_PRELOAD=/usr/tgcware/lib/libz.so.1 git ... fixed that. UPDATE: Possibly I had a typo in that session; other attempts worked well.
also it needs a modern-ish less
baseline setup may benefit from adding sudo to the list
developer setup would welcome not just m4 but also automake and autoconf.
Bummer that TGC lacks ccache and cmake... at least, ccache-3.x can be built (with autotools - 4.x switched to cmake) :)

As a data point, I managed to get this running on Windows 10 Hyper-V (gotta use what I must have deployed and activated anyhow).

Keyboard was crazy in Solaris part (select language etc.) but okay in the loader. Using serial console with PuTTY (as UAC admin) connecting to serial port \\.\pipe\VMNAME at 9600 baud worked (except pasting large blocks of text like your scripts). In F4 device setup had to change keyboard and display to ttya. After installation saved that with eeprom command for usual OS boots to honour. Every VM reboot/reset needs PuTTY to reconnect the port session.
Scrolling to end of choice-lists in loader and installer with "real" console got the machine frozen - I suppose it blinks and bells, and can not reproduce that in practice, same as the HW detection hang for Windows Sound System?.. Anyhow, not an issue for serial console.
An added "Legacy NIC" was recognized as dnet0.
IDE can be detected twice (as ISA c0d0 and PCI c2d0 for same VHDD). I picked the latter as it might be faster (not sure) and had to remount RW and fix up /etc/vfstab after first boot.
ATA DMA trick seems to not have worked, often timing out storage I/Os.
Thanks for reminding about ISOs to import the patches etc. The https://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/ project helped make those.
Graphics worked with SVGA monitor (end of list).
After installing the first CD and rebooting, machine hung after "Starting print services". On another attempt I ejected CD1, inserted CD2 and just then rebooted and all went well.

Thank you very much for your kind words.

I got kinda bummed out towards the end (I don't remember all of the details) about getting a good video output. Apparently, there was a driver available the would go beyond SVGA 4-bit colour, but all of the links that pointer to it were dead and I don't have the knowledge / time resources to attempt to build one from source(s). I think the best I was able to achieve was the example desktop pictured in the instructions in my VirtualBox. All of those steps were done on Fedora 34 with VirtualBox-6.1.26-2.fc34. || I noticed that Solaris 10 was available on archive.org and I was in the process of building a live system using that. I got pretty far and even found a supported network card (NoS) chipset and mfg (Hawking) that Solaris would recognize. nVidia has drivers that build under Solaris 10 for particular nVidia graphics cards (it's my understanding that they used to support Solaris 8, but I can't find those binaries anywhere).

I recently updated my desktop to Fedora 37. I have a love/hate relationship with Fedora releases - it seems that every release has its own quirks and regressions that are not always for the faint of heart :). Fedora 37 surprised me in that 98% of the stuff actually works! There was some nail-biting there for a while with the graphics after an update (windows would sometimes be painted completely black), but another update appears to have resolved that issue without breaking something else (I gotta tell you using modern software, irrespective of vendor (yes even Windows), is like playing Whac-A-Mole.) Having said all of that, I was just in the last couple of days, looking to build another Solaris VM following my steps to update / fine tune those steps.

I got down this path because I use the olde Unix image viewer program called 'xv'. I wanted to add some features (e.g., support webp images) and updates to the program but did NOT have a way to fully test it at various bit depths (remember those days of 8-bit colour displays?) I know there are a lot of old Sun systems out there, so I wanted to ensure that any changes I made would still build and run on those legacy systems. Hence, the rabbit hole that I entered...

Again, it was a real joy to hear that someone found my instructions helpful - thank you!

-- Stephen D.

On 12/21/2022 10:55 AM, Jim Klimov wrote:

Cool write-up. My memories and resources stashes got rusty over the decades, so your text and links were very helpful. A couple of notes:

regarding GCC and libm - the errors I see (also with gcc-4.7.4-2 package) indicate that it was built for a newer release/patch of Solaris 8, or at least of this library:

|ld.so.1: /usr/tgcware/libexec/gcc/i386-pc-solaris2.8/4.7.4/cc1: fatal: libm.so.1: version `SUNW_1.1.1' not found (required by file /usr/tgcware/lib/libstdc++.so.6) |

Checking if an older gcc-4.x would work on the release prepared and patched by your doc

Some versions were bumped by TGC so "verbatim" your scripts no longer install everything. It would be helpful if they recorded what they failed to install, so someone like me could take another pass over it.

It seems to help to update |LD_LIBRARY_PATH| (not just |PATH| as scripts suggest) to mention TGC. For my use-case, I want to build/run a project against the OS-provided ecosystem, so TGC path additions go after system paths.

|git| needs |pcre2| (to start) and |zlib| (for github at least) installed, scripts miss that I think.

also it needs a modern-ish |less|

baseline setup may benefit from adding |sudo| to the list

developer setup would welcome not just |m4| but also |automake| and |autoconf|.

Bummer that TGC lacks ccache and cmake... at least, ccache-3.x can be built (with autotools - 4.x switched to cmake) :)

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Solaris 10 should be relatively easy; for network it should pick up Intel e1000g0 served by all I guess hypervisors nowadays. There should also be decent VirtualBox Guest Additions support for video, shared guest/host filesystem, etc. Next step up would be running illumos like OpenIndiana or OmniOS :) Likely you can run Solaris 10 branded containers in those, as well as lx brand for Linux workloads (in OmniOS). I think Sol 9 and maybe Sol 8 containers were a thing at some point, but were mostly a commercial effort for porting legacy systems to new boxes, so might not have made it into OpenSolaris and beyond.

mac-65 / Solaris_8_x86_VM

Thanks for doing this! :) #1