I'm trying to install Solaris 10 on an HP ProLiant DL140 to use for testing (we're using an old system so we no one will mind if we accidentally brick it), but I'm running into some problems:
1) The device doesn't have a DVD drive (just a CD-ROM), so I took my Solaris 10 DVD (burned from the iso on the Oracle website) and installed it onto a virtual machine on my Windows 7 laptop, then used that virtual machine to make a bootable USB copy of the DVD (using these excellent instructions: https://blogs.oracle.com/jim/entry/how_to_create_a_usb )...so far so good.
2) I can boot to the Solaris install menu, but as soon as the miniroot is copied into memory, it looks like it shuts down all the USB ports. Neither my USB Pendrive nor mouse will give any indication that they're receiving power, so I can't mount the pendrive as a CD-ROM to continue the install (I've tried mounting everything listed in the "/dev/dsk" directory, with no success).
3) I tried unhooking the CD drive, and plugging in a DVD drive...but the ProLiant does not see the Solaris DVD as bootable. This is the same DVD I used to create the bootable USB, so I don't know why the HP doesn't like it.
4) I tried to get clever by booting from the USB, then directing the install to check the DVD drive...but it insists that the DVD isn't a Solaris CD (technically true, I guesss). If I open and close the drive, it spins up, and the light stays green for about ten minutes. After that, the DVD drive light will not even flicker, and the drive won't even twitch. As far as I can tell, the installer isn't even attempting to read the drive (unless it only does that when the disk is first inserted). When I exit the install menu and check the /cdrom folder, it's empty...so the DVD isn't even mounted. Attempts to manually mount it from the /dev/dsk folder with "mount -o ro /dev/dsk/XXXXXX /cdrom" are equally unsuccessful as when I attempted it with the USB pendrive. No new devices appear to be listed in that folder; it still looks like the two hard drives.
I apologize for the long-winded rambling in this question, but I've been all over the road trying to figure this out. I am extremely inexperienced with all things Linux/Unix/Solaris, so I'm having trouble even framing my questions properly. This is a zero-budget endeavor, so I'm limited to what I can scavenge or legally download for free.
Any advice would be very much appreciated, thanks.