[OpenIndiana-discuss] Anything special todo to used discs on fresh install

[Nikola M]

On 03/21/17 08:11 PM, Harry Putnam wrote:
> Setup: running oi-151_9 on:
>   Hardware: HP xw8600 - 2x Xeon  CPU X5450 @ 3.00GHz - 32 GB ram
>
> I'm about to try installing hipster from the 161030 gui iso on the
> above hardware that has been running build 151_9 for something like 2
> yrs maybe more.
>
> I've had some good helpful posts on how to get this done.  But as I
> get nearer to actually doing it... I began to worry about the discs.
> I'm running.  I've had the rpool on a mirrored pair of ide discs
> probably a bit long in the tooth, but trouble free. And expect to
> continue running them as mirrored rpool.
>
> Nilolas M tried to explain to me, how to handle the new grub / new
> boot loader kind of problem but some of it flew right over my head.
>
> So the IDE discs I'll use for rpool currently have grub in the MBR.

You should probably better use SATA disks in SATA mode (check 
motherboard settings too), because IDE under illumos do not have 
'smartctl' working under illumos and SATA in general does control/check 
data transfer and SATA implementation is much better on illumos.
It is always better to use full disks for zpool, because that way system 
won't turn off on-disk cache. (because with partitions, one might use 
UFS and ZFS on same disks and it is turned because of UFS having 
problems if it is not the only filsystem on disk).
If used as full disks zpool disks are formatted as GPT disks.
If installing on MBR partition it is better to delete partition and let 
installer create partition and slice in free space then to give to the 
installer ready-made partition. That is because on top of max 4 MBR 
partitions, there are also up to 8 Solaris slices that are being created 
on top of it and is is better to have zpool on the top of slice, then on 
top of MBR partition directly.

> Are there steps I need to take to rid them of grub? Something I can do
> once the machine is shutdown and booted with a livecd or something.
>
> And what about the data on them... does it need removed in some way?
> I mean beyond deleting.
>
> That last bit also goes for the other 4 discs but they are all sata.
>
> Is there something beyond deleting data that needs to be done?

You can probably boot live media and do zpool import and zpool destroy 
if there are existing pools you don't need. Plus giving to installer 
free disk space instead of ready-made partition.
Installer should install illumos loader, but also once booted into newly 
installed BE and update, one can reinstall illumos loader. (bootadm 
install-bootloader -Mfv)

If you want, you can also checkout #openindiana channel on 
irc.freenode.net for general chat etc. (irc://irc.freenode.net/openindiana)