Device Management

This section describes all device management features in the Solaris 10 3/05 release that are new or have been enhanced since the Solaris 9 OS was originally distributed in May 2002. To view device management features that are new in the Solaris 10 7/05 release, see Device Management Enhancements.

New or Updated Drivers

These driver features were new or revised in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

bge Gigabit Ethernet Driver for Broadcom bcm57xx

The Solaris Express 10/04 release provided an enhanced bge driver to support Broadcom 5700/5701/5705/5782 gigabit Ethernet chipsets.

For further information, see the bge(7D) man page.

asy Handles IXON/IXOFF in Driver

This feature enables a quick response for software flow control on x86 platforms. This quick response avoids situations where asy can stall because an XOFF or XON character is embedded in pending data.

For further information, see the asy(7D) man page.

ECP Parallel Port Driver

The lp driver that was originally used for parallel print ports on x86 platforms lacked Enterprise CRM Platform (ECP) mode support. The new ECPP driver provides a robust parallel port driver with ECP mode support for x86 systems.

For further information, see the ecpp(7D) man page.

UHCI Driver Enhancement

An interrupt-out transfer has been added to the new Universal Host Controller Interface (UHCI) driver for x86 platforms. This new feature enables users to transfer urgent data to the devices through Interrupt Out in a high priority.

Other new features provided by the new UHCI driver include the following:

• BULK short transfer

• Port enumeration

• Multiple BULK transfer

• Isoc IN transfer

• BULK IN transfer

In the Solaris 10 3/05 release, the UHCI driver is available for the both x86 and SPARC platforms.

For further information, see the uhci(7D) man page.

Adaptec AdvancedRAID Controllers Support

Software support of Adaptec AdvancedRAID controllers has been added for x86 platforms. This feature enables you to utilize SCSI RAID disk arrays both as data drives and as boot drives. SCSI CD-ROM, DVD, or tapes are not supported, nor are online configurations.

For further information, see the aac(7D) man page.

Dell/LSI SCSI RAID PERC Controllers Support

Software support of Dell/LSI SCSI RAID PERC controllers has been added for x86 platforms. This feature enables users to utilize SCSI RAID disk arrays both as data drives and as boot drives. SCSI CD-ROM, DVD, or tapes are not supported, nor are online configurations.

For further information, see the amr(7D) man page.

Realtek RTL8139 NIC Support

This Solaris 10 OS provides x86 platform support for the Realtek fast Ethernet chipset RTL8139.

For further information, see the rtls(7D) man page.

audio810 Audio Driver

The audio810 device driver has been added for x86 platforms. This driver supports the audio controllers that are embedded in the Intel ICH3, ICH4, ICH5, and AMD 8111 southbridge chips. This driver supports Solaris audio mixer interfaces, and enables users to utilize audio hardware to play back or record sound.

For further information, see the audio810(7D) man page.

SATA Controllers Support

Software support of selected SATA controllers was added for x86 platforms. This feature allows users to utilize Serial ATA Hard Drives both as data drives and as boot drives.

For further information, see the ata(7D) man page.

1394 (FireWire) and Mass-Storage Support on x86 Systems

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

In this Solaris release, the 1394 OpenHCI host controller driver has been updated to include support for x86 systems. Previously support for 1394 (FireWire) technology was only available on SPARC systems.

IEEE 1394 is also known by the Apple Computer trademark name, FireWire.

1394 is an industry-standard serial bus that supports data rates of 100 Mbit/sec, 200 Mbit/sec, or 400 Mbit/sec. The bus readily handles data from consumer electronics devices, such as video cameras, because of its high bandwidth and isochronous (on-time) capabilities.

For more information, see the hci1394(7D) man page.

In this Solaris release, the scsa1394 driver has been introduced to support 1394 mass-storage devices that are compliant with the Serial Bus Protocol 2 (SBP-2) specification. This driver supports both bus-powered and self-powered 1394 mass storage devices. Previously, only 1394 video cameras were supported.

1394 mass storage devices are treated as removable media devices. A 1394 mass storage device can be formatted by using the rmformat command. Using a 1394 mass-storage device is no different than using a USB mass-storage device. You can mount, eject, hot-remove, and hot-insert a 1394 mass-storage device.

For more information about using these devices, see the hci1394(7D) man page. See also Chapter 8, “Using USB Devices (Tasks),” in the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

Internet Printing Protocol Listener

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

The Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) listener feature for printing on a network works in conjunction with the Apache web server that is shipped as part of the Solaris software. IPP uses HTTP to transport requests. Using the Apache web server, the listener loads IPP print requests and processes them. The IPP listener listens on port 631 for HTTP requests and then communicates the requests to the printing system.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration.

Fibre Channel Connectivity for Storage Devices

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release.

The Solaris Fibre Channel I/O stack provides connectivity and multipathing functions for Fibre Channel devices in a Storage Area Network (SAN). The following enhancements have been made to this feature:

• Boot support with Solaris installation programs on SPARC platforms for Fibre Channel devices

• x86 platform support (32-bit and 64-bit) for Fibre Channel devices

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Note –

Previous SAN releases were distributed through SunSolve^SM and Sun Download Center (SDLC) in patch sets and packages for the Solaris 8 OS and the Solaris 9 OS. All new SAN features will be integrated and distributed through Solaris releases.

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For more information about SAN and related documents, refer to http://www.sun.com/storage/san/.

Expanded Printer Support

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/04 release and in the Solaris 9 9/04 release.

In this release, modifications have been made to incorporate support for a wide array of printers. This support is accomplished through the use of additional transformation software, raster image processor (RIP), and PostScript^TM Printer Description (PPD) files.

These additions provide functionality that enables you to print to printers, such as the Lexmark Optra E312 and Epson Stylus Photo 1280, by using PPD files.

This feature is useful in an environment where printers do not have resident PostScript processing capabilities.

In addition, the existing Solaris printing tools have been modified to include a new -n option to the lpadmin command. With this option, you can designate a PPD file to use when creating a new print queue or when modifying an existing print queue.

Also, the Solaris Print Manager screens have been updated to enable you to choose a PPD file for the print queue through the selection of make, model, and driver. This new feature differs greatly from previous Solaris software releases. In previous releases, the provided list of printer types, and information about whether the printer accepted PostScript or ASCII text, was limited.

For more information, see the lpadmin(1M) man page and the System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration.

Common Solaris Target Disk Driver

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 5/04 release.

In this Solaris release, the disk drivers for SPARC and x86 platforms are merged into a single driver. This change creates one source file for the following 3 drivers:

• SPARC sd for SCSI devices

• x86 sd for Fibre Channel and SCSI devices

• SPARC ssd for Fibre Channel devices

In previous Solaris releases, three separate drivers were needed to provide support for SCSI and Fibre Channel disk devices on the SPARC and x86 platforms. All of the disk utilities, such as the format, fmthard, and fdisk commands, have been updated to support these changes.

For more information, see the sd(7D) and ssd(7D) man pages.

In addition, Solaris support for the EFI disk label is now available on x86 systems. For further information about EFI disk labels, see Multiterabyte Disk Support With EFI Disk Labels.

For further information, see also “What’s New in Disk Management in the Solaris 10 Release?” in the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

Wheel Mouse Support

Support for the following mouse features was added in the Solaris Express 4/04 release and in the Solaris 9 9/04 release:

• Wheel mouse scrolling is available on a USB mouse device

  This support means that rolling the wheel on a USB or a PS/2 mouse results in a “scroll” in the application or window under mouse focus.

  StarOffice and Mozilla applications support wheel mouse scrolling. However, other applications might not support wheel mouse scrolling.

• Support for more than 3 buttons on USB or PS/2 mouse devices

USB 2.0 Features

This description is new in the Solaris Express 2/03 release and updated in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, USB 2.0 support is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

The Software Express releases include the following USB 2.0 features:

• Better Performance – Increased data throughput for devices attached to USB 2.0 controllers, up to 40 times faster than USB 1.1 devices

  You can particularly benefit from the high-speed USB protocol when accessing high-speed mass storage devices, such as DVDs and hard drives.

• Backward Compatibility – Compatibility with 1.0 and 1.1 devices and drivers so that you can use the same connectors and software interfaces

  USB 1.x devices can also use the same 1.x cables as before or the newer USB 2.0 cables. USB 2.0 devices, per next description, require USB 2.0 cables.

For a description of USB devices and terminology, see “Overview of USB Devices” in the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

USB 2.0 Devices

This description is new in the Solaris Express 2/03 release and updated in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, USB 2.0 device support is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

USB 2.0 devices are defined as high-speed devices that follow the USB 2.0 specification. You can refer to the USB 2.0 specification at http://www.usb.org.

Some of the USB devices that are supported in this Solaris release are as follows:

• Mass storage devices – CD-RWs, hard disks, DVD, digital cameras, Zip drives, diskettes, and tape drives

• Keyboard, mouse devices, speakers, and microphones

• Audio devices

For a full listing of USB devices that have been verified on the Solaris release, go to:

http://www.sun.com/io_technologies/ihvindex.html

Additional storage devices might work by modifying the scsa2usb.conf file. For more information, see the scsa2usb(7D) man page.

Solaris USB 2.0 device support includes the following features:

• Increased USB bus speed from 12 Mbps to 480 Mbps. This increase means devices that support the USB 2.0 specification can run significantly faster than their USB 1.1 counterparts when they are connected to a USB 2.0 port.

  A USB 2.0 port is defined on SPARC and x86 systems as follows:

  • A port on a USB 2.0 PCI card

  • A port on a USB 2.0 hub that is connected to a USB 2.0 port

  • A system USB port, assuming that it has a USB 2.0 port on the motherboard

• USB 2.0 is Solaris Ready on all PCI-based platforms. A USB 2.0 PCI card is needed to provide USB 2.0 ports. For a list of USB 2.0 PCI cards that have been verified for the Solaris release, go to http://www.sun.com/io_technologies/ihvindex.html.

• USB 1.1 devices work as they have in the past, even if you have both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 devices on the same system.

• While USB 2.0 devices operate on a USB 1.x port, their performance is significantly better when connected to a USB 2.0 port.

For more information on USB 2.0 device support, see the ehci(7D) and usba(7D) man pages.

For information about USB cables and bus-powered devices, see “About USB in the Solaris OS” in the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

Solaris Support for USB Devices

This description is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release.

USB 2.0 support for x86 systems was first introduced in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

Support of USB 2.0 devices in the Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 releases is provided through the USBA 1.0 version of the USB Dual Framework. The USBA 2.0 framework in the Solaris 10 3/05 release supersedes the USBA 1.0 version.

USB Mass Storage Devices

This description is new in the Solaris Express 2/03 release and updated in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, this feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

All USB storage devices in the Software Express releases are now accessed as removable media devices through volume management. This change has the following advantages:

• USB storage devices with standard MS-DOS or Windows (FAT) file systems are now supported.

• You can use the user-friendly rmformat command instead of the format command to format and partition all USB storage devices. If you need the functionality of the format command, use the format -e command.

• You can use the fdisk command if you need to do fdisk-style partitioning.

• Nonroot users can now access USB storage devices, because the root-privileged mount command is no longer needed. The device is automatically mounted by vold and is available under the /rmdisk directory. If a new device is connected while the system is down, do a reconfiguration boot with the boot -r command so that vold recognizes the device. If a new device is connected while the system is up, restart vold. For more information, refer to the vold(1M) and scsa2usb(7D) man pages.

• Disks with FAT file systems can be mounted and accessed. See the following example.

  mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c2t0d0s0:c /mnt

• All USB storage devices are now power managed, except for those that support LOG SENSE pages. Devices with LOG SENSE pages are usually SCSI drives that are connected through a USB-to-SCSI bridge device. In previous Solaris releases, some USB storage devices were not power managed because they were not recognized as removable media.

• Applications might work differently with USB mass storage devices.

  Note the following issues when using applications with USB storage devices.

  • Applications might make incorrect assumptions about the size of the media because only smaller devices such as diskettes and Zip drives were removable previously.

  • Requests by applications to eject media on devices where this would be inapplicable, such as a hard drive, succeed and do nothing.

  To revert to the behavior of previous Solaris releases that did not treat all USB mass storage as removable media devices, update the /kernel/drv/scsa2usb.conf file.

For more information about using USB mass storage devices, see the scsa2usb(7D) man page.

For information on troubleshooting USB mass storage device problems, see “What’s New in USB Devices?” in the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

USB Driver Enhancements

This description is new in the Solaris Express 2/03 release and updated in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, this feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

This section describes USB driver enhancements in the Software Express releases.

• New generic USB driver – USB devices can now be accessed and manipulated by applications that use standard UNIX read(2) and write(2) system calls, and without writing a special kernel driver.

  Additional features include the following:

  • Gives applications access to raw device data and device status

  • Supports control, bulk, and interrupt (in and out) transfers

  For more information, refer to the ugen(7D) man page and the USB Driver Development Kit at http://developers.sun.com/.

• Digi Edgeport USB support – Provides support for several Digi Edgeport USB-to-serial-port converter devices.

  • New devices are accessed as /dev/term/[0-9]* and /dev/cua/[0-9]*.

  • USB serial ports are usable as any other serial port would be, except that they cannot serve as a local serial console. The fact that their data is run through a USB port is transparent to the user.

  For more information, see the usbser_edge(7D) man page, or go to http://www.digi.com and http://www.sun.com/io.

• Documentation and binary support for user-written kernel and userland drivers – A Solaris 9 USB Driver Development Kit (DDK) is available, and its documentation is applicable to the Solaris 10 OS. For up-to-date information about USB driver development, including information on the Driver Development Kit, go to http://developers.sun.com/.

EHCI and OHCI Drivers

This description is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release. For Solaris 9 users, this feature is new in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

Features of the EHCI driver include the following:

• Compliance with enhanced host controller interface that supports USB 2.0.

• Support for high-speed control, bulk, and interrupt transfers.

• Currently, no support is available for high-speed isochronous transactions. For example, you cannot connect USB 1.x devices to a 2.0 hub that is connected to a USB 2.0 port.

Note the following when using EHCI and OHCI controlled devices:

• A USB 2.0 host controller has one high-speed Enhanced Host Controller (EHCI) and one or more low-speed or full-speed OpenHCI Host Controller (OHCI) embedded controllers. Devices connected to a USB 2.0 port are dynamically assigned to either an EHCI or OHCI controller, depending on whether they support USB 2.0.

• If USB 2.0 and USB 1.x devices are on the system, the EHCI and OHCI drivers “hand-off” device control, depending on the type of device that is connected to the system.

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  Note –

  USB 2.0 storage devices connected to a port on a USB 2.0 PCI card, and that were used with a prior Solaris release in the same hardware configuration, can change device names after upgrading to this release. This change occurs because these devices are now seen as USB 2.0 devices and are taken over by the EHCI controller. The controller number, w in /dev/[r]dsk/cwtxdysz, is changed for these devices.

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For further information, see the man pages ehci(7D) and ohci(7D).

Logical Unit Reset

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Solaris SCSI disk driver now supports SCSI logical unit reset. This feature improves error recovery processing on multi-LUN SCSI target devices. This feature can reset a logical unit without affecting other logical units on that device.

The ability to reset LUNs is particularly useful in conjunction with multiple pathing and with storage units that provide a large number of LUNs. For more information, see the scsi_reset(9F) and the tran_reset(9E) man pages.