This page describes the most standard manual installation of OpenIndiana using the interactive installer. For specific use-cases there are other advanced installation methods, described on other pages of this Wiki and blog posts around the Internet.
OpenIndiana runs on a PC (32 or 64-bit) with at least 768 megabytes of RAM (1 gigabyte recommended), and 4 gigabytes of available disk space (2 gigabytes for the server install). You can also use virtual machine software such as VirtualBox, Parallels or VMware.
To create a bootable USB device, you must use a USB storage device exactly 1 gigabyte (GB) or larger.
To create a live USB with Windows, use the OpenSolaris Live USB Creator.
To create a live USB with illumos, Solaris or OpenSolaris, you may use the usbcopy tool.
To create a live USB on any Unix-like system (including OS X):
rmformat -l
), /dev/sd* on Linux (fdisk -l
), /dev/da* on FreeBSD (camcontrol devlist
), or /dev/disk* on OS X (diskutil list
).mount
command to list mounted filesystems. If any filesystems are located on the USB storage device, they must be unmounted.umount <path>
to unmount a filesystem, or rmumount <path>
on illumos/Solaris, and diskutil unmountDis
k <path> on OS X.cat 1G.header <live USB image file> | dd bs=1024k of=<path to raw USB storage device>
Boot your computer with the medium inserted. You may have to change the boot device order in your BIOS configuration.
In VirtualBox 3.2 or later, "Use host I/O cache" must be enabled in the emulated storage controller used by the virtual machine to successfully boot OpenIndiana.
If you do not see a menu after booting your computer with the DVD or USB device, and instead see some text and a "grub>" prompt, there may be an error in your copy of the installer, or it was created incorrectly.
If you see a "login:" prompt after selecting your keyboard and language and no desktop appears after several seconds, there may be a problem with the drivers for your graphics hardware. Please let us know if this happens. Include error messages you see on the console, and the output of the command svcs -xv
and the contents of the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log
if possible.
The login for the text session is username jack, password jack. The installer is graphical and requires X11, although it is possible to use it over a network with SSH X forwarding if you enable SSH. For administrative access, prepend your commands with pfexec
.