= Install Solaris 10 Update 9 - ZFS only =

**Summary**: How to install Solaris 10 U9 in VMware with only ZFS as filesystem \\
**Date**: Around 2015 \\
**Refactor**: 1 March 2025: Checked links and formatting. \\
{{tag>solaris vmware}}

Solaris 10 Update 9 was the first edition of solaris after Oracle took over Sun. There hasn't changed much in the install procedure, but I hadn't done a full ZFS install yet, so I decided to create a new howto. This page will have a follow up for [[solarispostinstall|post install configuration]].

This installation was done in a VMware vSphere VM, with a vmxnet3 network adapter. That adapter is not natively supported by VMware, so the VMware Tools will have to be installed before the network card will be available.

> Note: If you're looking for a installation with the root filesystem being UFS, take a look at [[installsolaris10u8]].

= Install =

For this installation, this media was used:
* Used Media: sol-10-u9-ga-x86-dvd.iso

During the installation the following options were chosen to make sure all filesystems use ZFS and all software would be available:
* Install Option 4: Solaris Interactive Text (Console session) (Option 3 or 4 is required to install a ZFS root file system)

* Keyboard Layout: US-English
* Language: English

* Hostname: solarixbox
* TimeZone: Europe
* Countries and Regions: Netherlands

* Root Password: RootPass
* Remote Services Enabled: No

* Installation Method: Standard
* Eject a CD Automatically: No
* Auto Reboot: Yes
* Accept License: Yes
* Geographic Regions: Western Europe
* System Locale: Posix C (C)

* No Additional Products

* Filesystem Type: ZFS

* Software Selection: Entire Distribution

* ZFS Pool Name: rpool (default)
* ZFS Root Dataset Name: s10x_u9wos_14a (default)
* ZFS Pool Size (in MB): 45019 (default - max size)
* Size of Swap Area (in MB): 0 (will be created on different disk)
* Size of Dump Area (in MB): 2560 (default)
* Keep / and /var combined: yes

Check the profile summary:
{{installsolaris10u9.jpg}}

= Install VMware Tools =

Install VMware Tools according to the manual which comes down to:

* Click VM in the virtual machine menu, then click Guest → Install/Upgrade VMware Tools and click OK.
* Then use these commands to install the tools:

<code bash>
# cp /cdrom/vmwaretools/vmware-solaris-tools.tar.gz /tmp
# cd /tmp
# gunzip vmware-solaris-tools.tar.gz
# tar xvf vmware-solaris-tools.tar
# cd vmware-tools-distrib
# ./vmware-install.pl
</code>

Follow the prompts and reboot

Afterwards you can check the installation like this, depending on the VMware tools version you'll see this:

<code bash>
# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools status
vmware-guestd is running
vmware-memctld is running
</code>

or this:
<code bash>
# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools status
vmtoolsd is running
</code>

You can now continue configuring Solaris using the [[solarispostinstall|post install]] howto.