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UPDATE November 15, 2005:

Successful install of Solaris 10 x86 on a Dell 1850, with the RAID ENABLED

CLICK BELOW !

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hey guys, 

my system: Dell PowerEdge 1850 with the LSI 1030 controller:
 
I got a super solution to all problems with this Solaris x86 on Dell and LSI issue.


Summary: 
1. forget about solaris 10 for now, until LSI releases a 64 bit version of their [itmpt] driver.
2. Solaris 9 in its newest incarnation (09/04) will not install. (maybe intrerrupt choices, dunno)
3. Solaris 9 08/03 installs fine, and this is how you make it work and sing, as described in detail below.
4. At the end I was able to transfer a 600 megabyte file from one drive to the other in 9 seconds !. so the crap works ! 


How to make it work:

A. preparation:
1. get a copy of the Solaris 9 08/03 version (email me for info if you dont have it)  you only need Software 1 & 2 CD's forget about the install CD. (scour the office for some old unburned cd's hehe)
2. download yourself a copy of the 119873-01 patch, which is the SD.ITU for Solaris 9 x86. unzip that and dd it to a floppy.
3. download yourself a copy of the ITMPT  from lsilogic.com. The file I got is: itmpt-x86-5.05.00.zip , unzip that and dd it to a floppy.
4. download yourself the e1000 driver from Intel.com. The file is called: INTCGigaE.pkg copy that file to any empty diskette. Lamentably you will have no network to start, but after system installed, then we'll apply that, and I'll show you how to network your beast.

B. Implementation:
5. get into the BIOS Setup of the box (F2), and set the Raid Controller (integrated devices) thing to SCSI mode, not RAID mode (though I havent tested to set it up with raid hardware configged yet).  Don't worry about going into the LSI configuration utility, that's set fine as default.
also, I set the IRQ's to 5 for the scsi card  (you wil notice the vga moves with it, funky)

6. Boot the beast with the Software 1 of 2 CD in. 
7. F4 to add a driver, insert the ITMPT floppy, choose Sol 9.
8. take it out, and insert the SD.ITU floppy
9. F4 Done
10. Continue till you get the device config screen, then choose BYPASS (text install rather than graphical).
11. you will notice that you get no network config, fine.
12. at the first time when you can EXIT the configuration, by pressing F5 , do it.
13. at the shell prompt, type:
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 bs=1024k count=10
and repeat for ...c0t1... if you got 2 disks like I do.
This clears any and all previous badly written VTOC from the dfrives.
14. type suninstall, and that takes you back to the config screen.
15. from here on out its all normal, notice that in this old release of solaris, the max swap slices you can have are 2gb. so I set myself up one on drive1, and one on the second drive, both 2gb.
16. let the beast install, at the end of the install, it will ask you for the floppies again, in the same order as you gave them at boot.
if the thing says  , sorry could not find the data in the diskette, then press Enter AGAIN and it will find it ! (yes thats right,something funky there dudes.)
17. once all installed, and rebooted, put in the floppy where the Intel E1000 driver file is, and type volcheck, that will mount it
go there, copy the file to /tmp/
18. cd /tmp/   , then type: pkgtrans INTCGigaE.pkg /tmp/
that will transfer the file into a pkg folder.
19. type  pkgadd -d .  and install the E1000 drivers.
20. vi /etc/hostname.e1000g0 and put in whatever hostname you want, then put in the same hostname, with an IP in /etc/hosts
21. vi /etc/defaultrouter , and put in the IP of your default route
22. vi /etc/resolv.conf and add  nameserver x.x.x.x where x.x.x.x is the IP of your nameserver of choice.
23. vi /etc/nsswitch.conf  and add  a space and the word   dns  at the end of the line where it says: [hosts:  files].
24. touch /reconfigure
25. reboot


all should work like a charm.  I get more than 80 megabytes / second transfer between disks !.

Now, while writing this, I have downloaded and installed the Solaris 9 x86 Recommended patches, and that killed the box, it will not boot now.  So, I will have to investigate that tomorrow.

and here's the solution to that:

I figured out how to make the Recommended Patches work.

it is the SD driver, which is getting overwritten back to an old version.

so, this is what I did,

1. mkdir -p /usr/local/patches/backup_files/
cp /kernel/drv/sd /usr/local/patched/backup_files/
2. reboot, and type: b -s
at the boot type prompt.
3. unzip the recommended patches
4. cp /usr/local/patches/backup_files/sd ...../9_x86_Recommended/117172-17/SUNWos86r/reloc/kernel/drv/
where ..... is whatever place you put your patches zip file.
5. execute: install_cluster  (NOTE that the kernel update patch shows up as failed, that is fine, it basically fails on the checksum of the sd file we have introduced. the rest of the package installs fine.), I gather we could just leave the file as is , install the recommended patches, and then make sure to copy the backup of od the sd driver into /kernel/drv/
6. touch /reconfigure
7. reboot

voilla, system is working like a charm.

2 things to keep in mind:
-- at least with the 2 CPU's I have, the 3Ghz Xeons 64bit capable, solaris 9 is not recognizing /using the Hyperthreading, i.e. mpstat will only show you 2 cpu's. (compared to the Sun V60's we also have with the old 2.8Ghz Xeons, which show 4 cpu's with Solaris 9 also)
-- I got 4GB of ram installed, which would call for 8GB of swap, but I lamentably can only have 2GB / disk swap devices.

So the box will be a bit handicapped, at least until LSI releases some update to their ITMTP driver, which would work under Solaris 10 x86.

yo