Solaris Installation problem

[dormendo]

Hello everybody,

I have been administrating linux servers for 7 years and I thought it was time to try another (Unix) flavour, so I downloaded Opensolaris to install it. The boot from CD is OK but the installer does not detect my hard disks. I see this is a "common" problem, but none of the suggestion I found here was the good one for me.

Attached files are the output of hwls and lspci -nnvv when running Fedora 8, after BIOS upgrade to F12, the current firmware release. All information are there, but just to let this thread be searchable, my mobo is a Gigabyte Technology, full of VT chipsets, and my HDs are a Hitachi Deststar and a Quantum Fireball. Both are IDE, but the system sees ATA disks - and I have found no way to make BIOS access them in legacy mode. Any suggestion, even if duplicated :-) , will be greatly appreciated.

Bye
Dormendo

[Alan]

It must be something to do with the fact the disk has Linux on it. The Solaris partition on the disk needs to be before any Linux swap partition. However, the installer should still see the disk, as the format command can see them both. Does the installer just come up with an error saying "no disks found" or something like that?

Thanks

Alan

[dormendo]

I first tried to install opensolaris on the first disk - the one with linux - but the installation program did not see it. So I replaced it with the second one, which is clear, no partition at all, but still the installation program did not see it. Eventually I put both disks back into in my pc so that I cold still use it.
The installation program does not exit with errors, it simply keeps showing the slowly whirling image, saying something like "scanning system for disks". I actually did not wait too much, I closed it after a couple of minutes (I mean, the time to prepare and drink a coffee)

[dormendo]

just fixed it!
the problem are the disks themselves. Have tried a new Western Digital HD, put it in my home machine and the Installation program recognized it in 2 seconds. I suppose my disks are still to be discovered by Sun.
Thank you all for the forum and support.