Installation of Solaris 10_x86 on qemu (linux host

Normally installation of guest systems under qemu isn't that difficult, but with solaris 10 I had some problems to get it going, I succeeded at last and wrote a small howto:

First of all you need a litle patience: the installation of solaris 10 on my system went slow, sometimes it seems to "hang" and nothing happens for several minutes, but if you wait enough the installation wil proceed.
First you have to get Solaris, go to the Sun website and download the separate dvd.iso's and after you completed that step join them to one dvd.iso file  (named for example sol.iso)and put it let's say in /home/foo/solaris (everything well explained on Sun's site)
When I first tried to install solaris 10 on my linux box I found out booting the installed Solaris that I didn't had network. Seems that Solaris 10 has no support for the  NE2000 NIC that is emulated by qemu, although this is a very common nic.
Luckilly some one has wrote a driver for Solaris:
http://www.tools.de/solaris/itu/
download the driver update floppy and unpack it also to /home/foo/solaris.
after that you have a file that's called DU.img in that map.

Ok, let's start installation
First we create the image file for Solris installation:

qemu-img create -f qcow sol.qcow 15G

Then we start the installation with this command:
qemu -hda /home/foo/sol.qcow -fda /home/foo/solaris/DU.img    -cdrom /home/foo/solaris/sol.iso -enable-audio  -m 384   -boot d
Immediately at the boot screen push "Esc", now you get a blue screen " The Solaris Device Configuration Assistent"
From the menu we choose to " add driver", this is done by: "Esc" + "4"
Then "Esc" + "2" to continue
next screen we select our version of Solaris (Solaris 10)
"Esc" + "2"
You wil see that the additonal drivers are loaded
Next we choose done by  "Esc" + "4", and in the next screen look if the driver "ni" is present, that's the driver for our nic.
Again "Esc" + "2" (two times)
Now you should see the drivers that are loaded, look especially at the presnece of:

ISA: ADS Soundblaster
PCI: Realtek 8029

Proceed with "Esc" + "2" (2x) (be sure to choose you cdrom as boot medium)
You will notice that the configuration of device ni0 (network) is skipped, no problem that will be arranged later during the install.
As I said before be patient when nothing seems to happen. (various minutes)
After a while wou will be presented with a scren with the found configuration, accept it.
Select language (used here: English: 0)
Now we have the graphical install screen: choos : next.
Then we select: networked
And "dhcp for ni0"  "Yes" next
Enable "ipv6"  (I put "no")  next
Enable "kerberos"  "no"  next
Name Service: "none"  next
Specify time zone --> by  Geographic continent next
Make you choice     next
Date and time  next
choose root password and confirm  next
confirm information   confirm

Now  will start the installation of solaris on your "harddisk"  next
You can leave the proposed options about reboot and ejecting cd/dvd  next
then OK
for "media leave" the selection at CD/DVD and next
Then the system in initialized
Then you have to accept the sun licensce agreement  next
I choose in the next screen for a custom install  next
next (2x)
Select products: I selected all 4. next
Additional Products: none next
Select Sloaris Software Group : "Entire Group"  next
Disk Selection (leave as proposed)  next (3x)
Lay Out File Systems   next
Ready to install: "Install now"

Now the system is installed, You can do something else meanwile because this takes quite a while and with various packages again it seems that nothing happens anymore, but again: be patient.
After installation it's tim to reboot,this time from harddisk:



qemu -hda /home/foo/sol.qcow  -enable-audio  -m 384   -boot c

First boot takes a long time because of  this step:
"loading smf (5) service descriptions"


Don't log in when the console login appears on the screen, it takes again a while until the graphical login pops up automatically (after some error messages)

Enjoy your Solaris 10 for intel under qemu!