Solaris 11 Serial Console

I am providing support for Solaris Cluster again and have am now on a Mac (Hacintosh) using Vmware Fusion for my virtualization. Before you proceed with this tutorial, you must first install socat on the Mac as it is used to perform the console I/O redirection. I suggest using homebrew:

brew install socat

I’ve modified my original virtualization script, vb.pl, to work with Fusion and renamed it to vmwf. When building the VM, don’t worry about the serial port as this utility will insert the serial port into the configuration when it’s booted. Here’s how I use it to manage and connect to the console from the terminal. Build and install the VM using the Fusion GUI. Once installed, change the console device in Solaris. Here’s an example of a freshly installed VM with a single boot entry:

# bootadm list-menu
the location of the boot loader configuration files is: /rpool/boot/grub
default 0
console text
timeout 30
0 Oracle Solaris 11.3

Listing the single boot entry shows no kernel arguments:

# bootadm show-entry -i 0
title: Oracle Solaris 11.3
kernel: /platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix
kernel arguments: None
boot archive: /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
bootfs: rpool/ROOT/solaris

We need to tell grub and the Solaris kernel to use a serial port for the console device:

# bootadm set-menu console=serial serial_params=0,19200,8,n,1
# bootadm change-entry -i 0 'kargs=-B console=ttya'

Check your work:

# bootadm list-menu
the location of the boot loader configuration files is: /rpool/boot/grub
default 0
console serial
serial_params (0, 19200, 8, 'N', 1, None)
timeout 30
0 Oracle Solaris 11.3

# bootadm show-entry -i 0
title: Oracle Solaris 11.3
kernel: /platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix
kernel arguments: -B console=ttya
boot archive: /platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive
bootfs: rpool/ROOT/solaris

Once grub is set, bring the VM down (init 5) and boot it from the command line.

$ vmwf -l


  Virtual Machines

       Ubuntu 64-bit  ::  Down
    Win7-HomePremium  ::  Down
            s113sc43  ::  Down


$ vmwf -n s113sc43 -b
2017-08-26T09:56:32.614| ServiceImpl_Opener: PID 22328
Loading hd0,gpt2/ROOT/solaris/@/platform/i86pc/kernel/amd64/unix: 0%...done.
Loading hd0,gpt2/ROOT/solaris/@/platform/i86pc/amd64/boot_archive: 0%...done.
SunOS Release 5.11 Version 11.3 64-bit
Copyright (c) 1983, 2015, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Hostname: s11sc43

s11sc43 console login:

If you need to disconnect from the console leaving the VM running, use the key sequence Control+] or ^].