Splitting Install Media

Problem

You've downloaded (and, if appropriate, assembled) the install images for your Solaris OS, then mounted it using lofiadm (see Mounting ISO images through loopback). However, if you look for the Boot information, you will find that the directory (usually something like Solaris10/Tools/Boot) is actually a symbolic link back to a non-existent directory.

Discussion

The Boot stuff is stored in a different slice on the install media. Nice, huh?

Solution

Get scanufs (source) (also attached to this page). Scan your .iso image for the marker point of the UFS filesystem (hit ^C after the first FS should start at block... because that's all we care about):

% scanufs.sparc sol-nv-b16-sparc-v1.iso 
Found ufs marker at block 495376(0x78f10)
FOUND ufs magic at block 495376
FS should start at block 495360
Found ufs marker at block 495392(0x78f20)
FOUND ufs magic at block 495392
FS should start at block 495376
^C

Take that value and extract the slice:

% dd if=sol-nv-b16-sparc-v1.iso of=sol-nv-b16-sparc-v1-s1.iso iseek=495360

Now you can mount this .iso file with the ufs slice as per normal.

Remove the symbolic Boot link you found above. Replace it with a directory named Boot, then copy the content of your mounted .iso file to that directory.