EFI and SUN Disk Labels

Published 04 Jun 2010 Read time 45 sec(s) (2362 views). Solaris

It's 7:32am and I'm on a customer site with a tight deadline installing a new system to run an test rig for a new NetWorker server; Bugger to find that the jumpstart fails to install, and it's that gotcha for me everytime, as I didn't change the label on the new disks.

You can't install Solaris on an EFI disk

This is a mental note for me to remember how to change the label.

There is a good document on docs.sun.com which shows some of the differences between the two formats but suffice to say that you cant install Solaris on an EFI disk. In a nutshell, you need to change it to an SMI label.

Easily done by simply using 'format -e'. select the label option, and then SMI label.

Once you have done that you can check the partition table as normal and restart the install successfully