Here is a blog entry that was sitting in my Drafts folder for a long time (just because I didn't realize :). Anyway, it shows how to install Open Solaris 2008/11 on Virtual Box. The original install was done using Virtual Box 2.0.6. I installed Virtual Box 2.1 this morning and the image was easily recognized by the updated Virtual Box.

Here are the basic steps.


Create a new VM ...



As part of the previous step, create a new Virtual Disk mapping to the downloaded Open Solaris image ...




The generated VM settings are shown as below:



Click on "Start" and configure for the first run as:




Boot the Virtual Macine from the LiveCD shows the following GRUB:



Take the default for Language and Keyboard and then the following screen is shown after the boot:



Click on "Install OpenSolaris" ...



Clicking on "Install" starts the installation ...



And finally the install is completed.



Click on "Reboot", select "Boot from Hard Disk" and press Enter ...



And then select if "full boot" or "text boot" is required as shown:




And the welcome screen is shown as:



Now you can develop your Rails applications using the NetBeans IDE and deploy them on GlassFish and MySQL easily as explained here. There are multiple updates to the stack described earlier - JRuby 1.1.6, Rails 2.2, MySQL Alpha 6.0.x, GlassFish v3 Prelude, and Virtual Box 2.1.

So go ahead and develop, deploy, and debug your Rails applications as described in screencast #26. You can even manage your Rails applications using JMX as described in TOTD #61, #62, and #63.

Hwo do you follow the latest on each technology:

• Open Solaris at The Observatory and twitter.com/opensolaris. 
• Virtual Box at Virtual Box Buzz.
• GlassFish at The Aquarium and twitter.com/glassfish.
• Rails at Riding Rails and twitter.com/rails.
• MySQL at Planet MySQL.
• JRuby at #jruby (archived).
• NetBeans at NetBeans Planet and twitter.com/netbeans.

And, of course, this blog talks about all of them :)

Please leave suggestions on other TOTD (Tip Of The Day) that you'd like to see. A complete archive of all tips is available here.

Technorati: totd opensolaris virtualbox glassfish netbeans jruby rubyonrails mysql