Hi,
there is a notebook with second harddrive placed in Universal2000bay - which
means there is no internal CD/DVD drive attached directly to EIDE bus. Also
no FDD. There are USB2 and NIC connections available.

I want to install the Solaris x86 v.10 onto Second hard drive.
I have the DVD version of Solaris x86 v.10 which is bootable - tested on
desktop PC.

At first I've was trying to connect the external DVD drive through USB2. I'm
able to boot with this drive into Solaris bootloader and setup, but after
that when you have to choose the target bootable drive for starting the real
instalation process the is no possibility to point for that USB2 DVD drive -
cause is not listed - so I'm unable to countiniue the installation process.
Only EIDE disks are listed.
So, after that first option was impossible to proceed, probably cause of
limitations
the Solaris.10.x86 setup program which is unable to use the DVD drive
connected via USB2.
I've decided to run setup from network with PXE method. My master install
server is based on GNU/Linux Debian 3.1
with 2.6.13kernel. DHCP works ok. TFTP works OK. NFS also looks ok, but is
not the case.
Config that do DHCP for notebook is as follow:
host notebook {
hardware ethernet 00:0D:60:AA:8D:6C;
fixed-address 192.168.3.53;
filename "/boot/nbp";
option root-path "/boot";
}
Notebook is booting with NIC, getting proper DHCP numbers, loading the nbp
file and saing:
Solaris network boot ...
then stops for moment and after some minutes says:
"No vaild response to DHCPDISCOVER packet."

- I am sure that DHCP server is working OK.
Also, when I change the bootable filename/setup, I'm able to boot/run
remotly any other system on this notebook via PXE - like MSDOS, Win, Linux,
NetBSD, so I belive that whole infrastructure is OK. Exept that Solaris
network boot is unable to continiue it's installation process probably,
cause it wants some unusuall answer from DHCP server - which does not come
from Linux DHCP server - and I don't know why? I've even installed the rarpd
daemon:
cat /etc/ethers
00:0d:60:aa:8d:6c 192.168.3.53
- it didn't change anything.

According to those evnironment help me please with installing
Solaris.x86.v.10 into second harddrive in my notebook - or from external DVD
drive connected with USB2 or from network with PXE and NFS from Linux box or
even by any possible way in described case.

Using another Solaris box for master install server is not possible in my
env - cause I don't have oppty. to install that Solaris anywhere else except
my notebook - which is the case...
--
Regards,
Krzysztof

You might want to try a different dhcp server. I was having a similar inexplicable problem with dnsmasq. After reviewing the traffic using snoop / tcpdump, I found Solaris was asking for, receiving, and subsequently rejecting a DHCP offer.

I don't know the details, but it seems the DHCP client that comes with Solaris is really picky about the protocol.

I switched to dhcpd3 and it's working fine.