If you’re in need of Linux emulation for whatever reason under Solaris, you’ve an existing mechanism at hand called BrandZ. The seemingly supported distros however are CentOS 3/4 and 5. Kind of antique. Stuff like Ubuntu or various other distros don’t seem to work. However if you really need an updated userland, try Fedora 9.
You go about following the usual Linux 2.6 brand install procedure, but instead feed this image to the zone installer:
http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/contrib/fedora-9-i386-default.tar.gz (courtesy of OpenVZ)
Logging into the zone console will not work. The zone will get stuck booting. Logging into a virtual terminal however does work (i.e. zlogin -l root zone). From there, create a new regular user and then go about installing all various sorts of things using yum. The image above is a minimal one. Be sure to create /etc/resolv.conf and fill some actual nameservers in there.
Update: Proof, pudding and all that shit…
on May 1st, 2009 at 18:56
Hey,
I have installed fedora-9-i386-default.tar.gz linked in your post successfully. But when I tried to zlogin into fedorazone, it said,
root@OSol:/# pfexec zlogin -l root fedorazone
[Connected to zone 'fedorazone' pts/4]
FATAL: kernel too old
[Connection to zone 'fedorazone' pts/4 closed]
Do you have any idea for this?
Thanks in advance.
on May 1st, 2009 at 21:39
Did you create the zone with the SUNWlx26 template? Sounds like you used SUNWlx instead, which simulates a 2.4 kernel instead of a 2.6 one.
on Nov 1st, 2009 at 18:03
I had the same problem. You are right, creating the zone with SUNWlx26 does solve it.
But I had to download it for open solaris 10, according to:
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+brandz/linux_2_6
Thanks very much, I found this post very usefull.
on Nov 15th, 2009 at 12:13
Could newer Images from openvz project (Fedora11, Debian5, etc) also be used?
on Nov 15th, 2009 at 16:44
Honestly, I haven’t tried. I’m still running the F9 bits since it’s enough to run Google Earth, the only thing I’m using it for currently.