[OpenIndiana-discuss] New to the list + SPARC & OpenSolaris

[Nikola M.]

On 01/11/12 12:03 PM, Bryan N Iotti wrote:
> Should I move to OpenSolaris (can't find the SPARC .iso anywhere!) and 
> be done with the whole "patch" thing?
Depending on your hardware, you can use Solaris 10 u8 (10/09) that does 
not impose usage restrictions for commercial use. (Later Solaris 10 
releases from Oracle allows using it for testing/development only 
without license/support contract that gives patches, too).

On Opensolaris side, latest you can use on Sparc is Opensolaris snv_134, 
available now on
http://dlc-origin.openindiana.org/isos/opensolaris/ , after genunix.org 
removal.

After that one can use Illumos building instructions to update and build 
illumos on Sparc, on Illumos wiki and openindiana wiki.
There is no Openindiana (as Illumos based distrinution) for Sparc yet, 
but there are development sparc machines under openindiana/illumos 
umbrella to compile on.
Best is to also get on Freenode IRC channel for Illumos , to get 
informed on sparc progress for Illumos and Openindiana and join forces 
with making it for yourself and others.
(There is upgrade jump needed after snv_134 , to be able to build 
Illumos and i can not find Wiki article about it anymore for SPARC , try 
it on Illumos mailing lists).

There were upgrade path before from opensolaris snv_134 , over Oracle's 
b134 and Solaris11Express to Solaris11, but it seems that Oracle removed 
both b134 and S11Express IPS publishers (repositories) disabling upgrade 
path for S11 for opensolaris users.
If someone have both b134 and S11Express repository images, it might be 
possible starting IPS publisher locally and upgrading or making it 
available for internet upgrade, etc.
Talk about upgrade is, since Oracle changed ZFS format that is not 
compatible with anything in rest of the world, beside S11, but it can 
use older dataset if upgraded to, and Oracle killed upgrade.