- CD-RW with burnt "text install" ISO was used as installation media (luckily, the built-in IDE CD-ROM made by LG can read CD-RW disks).
- Text install procedure didn't show any serious problems, except the setup routine couldn't output the text correctly if non-standard screen resolution was selected and the install process was rather slow (nothing strange, the IDE subsystem of this computer is really slow).
- The OS boots! Slowly. ZFS is definitely funny. And so the text mode is (kernel can't find a driver for the video buffer, but it's not really related to the lack of desktop environment). Console text editor called nano said it "doesn't know how to deal with your dumb terminal", but the mighty vi works.
- It was a text install, so the graphical desktop environment is not installed by default. To get the GNOME, additional packages are needed to be installed from the repository.
- For greater repository availablity, it was transferred into the local filesystem: it was copied through SSH in the form of DVD image, which was mounted and its contents copied (yeah, it's an ugly way, don't try this at home: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/s11exrepositoriesalta-187967.pdf )))
- The next step was to install (and then remove) the slim_install package, which depends on Xorg, GNOME and so on: http://blogs.oracle.com/stw/entry/getting_gdm_to_work_on
- Really, it not helps, because X Server needs some drivers to work with the peripherals. OpenSolaris drivers for SPARC graphic cards can be downloaded here: http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/downloads/sparc_graphics
- Yes, they install, but complain there's no Xsun installed, and it's the main problem. After installation of the graphic card drivers and restarting the GNOME GDM login screen shows up, but the colors are distorted and keyboard with mouse are functioning non-adequately (some people confirm that: https://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=2136250). Xsun was removed with no further support planned in Solaris 11 and Xorg provided in the repository has no SPARC graphics support. But you can try to hack it yourself and/or use remote X server.
- Don't waste your time installing it on your Ultra 5, it's basically the same computer with some parameters reduced to fit in a pizzabox case.
- At last, Oracle has simply stated that "legacy SPARC hardware" (UltraSPARC I, II, IIe, III, IIIi, III+, IV and IV+ processor architectures, as reported by the Solaris psrinfo -pv command) support has been removed from Solaris 11, only SPARC Enterprise M-series and T-series Servers will be supported; "legacy SPARC hardware" still will be supported by Solaris 10: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/end-of-notices/eonsolaris11-392732.html
Conclusion: the last version of Solaris that really supports 64-bit SPARC workstations is Solaris 10.
