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Solaris 10 What's New

Chapter 8 What's New in the Solaris 10 1/06 Release

This chapter summarizes all the new features in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

Installation Enhancements

The following installation enhancements are new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view installation features that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Installation Enhancements.

Upgrade Support Changes for Solaris Releases

Starting with the Solaris 10 1/06 release, you can upgrade the Solaris OS from the Solaris 8, 9, or 10 release. Upgrades from the Solaris 7 release are not supported. For further information, see the Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations.

Sun Update Connection, System Edition 1.0

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

The Sun Update Connection services enable you to keep your Solaris system up-to-date by giving you access to all the latest fixes and features. You can choose to perform local single-system update management or remote multiple-system update management. The Sun Update Connection services include these components:

To receive the Sun Update Connection services, you must register your system. The registration process is initiated the first time that you boot your system or the first time that you access the Update Manager.

A subset of the Sun Update Connection services is available to Solaris users who do not have a service plan. These services include the use of Sun Update Manager to manage all security fixes and device driver updates that apply to your Solaris system.

To use the full suite of Sun Update Connection services, you must have one of the service plans described at http://www.sun.com/service/solaris10/. The full suite of services includes access to all patches, the Sun Update Connection web application, and the Sun Update Connection proxy.

For information about the Sun Update Connection, System Edition, see these books in the http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1320.2/ on docs.sun.comSM.

For information about registering your system after you install the Solaris software, see the Sun Connection Information Hub http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/connection/.

x86: GRUB Based Booting

Starting with the Solaris 10 1/06 release, the open source GNU GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) has been adopted in the Solaris OS for x86 based systems. GRUB is responsible for loading a boot archive into the system's memory. A boot archive is a collection of critical files that is needed during system startup before the root (/) file system is mounted. The boot archive is used to boot the Solaris OS.

The most notable change is the replacement of the Solaris Device Configuration Assistant with the GRUB menu. The GRUB menu facilitates booting the different operating systems that are installed on your system. The GRUB menu is displayed when you boot an x86 based system. From the GRUB menu, you can select an OS instance to install by using the arrow keys. If you do not make a selection, the default OS instance is booted.

The GRUB based boot feature provides the following improvements:

For more information about GRUB refer to the following sections.

Task 

For More Information 

Overview information about GRUB based booting and installing 

GRUB Based Booting (Overview) in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

How to boot and install over the network with the GRUB menu 

Booting and Installing the System From the Network With a DVD Image in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations

How to boot and install with the GRUB menu and the Custom JumpStart installation method 

Performing a Custom JumpStart Installation in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations

How to use the GRUB menu and Solaris Live Upgrade to activate and fall back to boot environments  

Activating a Boot Environment in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

Chapter 10, Failure Recovery: Falling Back to the Original Boot Environment (Tasks), in Solaris 10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning

How to perform system administration tasks with the GRUB menu 

System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems

bootadm(1M)

installgrub(1M)

Note –

GNU is a recursive acronym for “GNU's Not UNIX.” For more information, go to http://www.gnu.org.

Upgrading the Solaris OS When Non-Global Zones Are Installed

This feature is available in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

The Solaris Zones feature provides the ability to configure non-global zones in a single instance of Solaris, the global zone. A non-global zone is an application execution environment in which processes are isolated from all other zones. If you are running a system with non-global zones installed, you can use standard Solaris upgrade programs to upgrade to the Solaris 1/06 release. You can use either the Solaris interactive installation program or custom JumpStart to upgrade. The process of upgrading with non-global zones installed has some limitations.

Networking Enhancements

The following networking enhancements are new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view networking features that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Networking Enhancements.

Source-Filtered Multicasting

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

Enhancements have been made to the Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) protocol, for IPv6, and the Internet Group Management Protocol (IGMP), for IPv4. The Solaris implementation of these protocols has been enhanced to support MLDv2 and IGMPv3. These extensions provide support for source address filtering on multicast traffic. Also included is support for IETF-specified socket extensions. This support enables applications to take advantage of source-filtered multicasting.

For further information, see the Programming Interfaces Guide and the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

Enhancements for bge and xge Network Interfaces

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

The Solaris OS now contains features that extend the configuration possibilities for the bge and xge network interfaces. System administrators can now group these interfaces into LACP-capable link aggregations. These aggregations can support large-scale high availability or database implementations. In addition, you can configure xge and bge interfaces into virtual local area networks (VLANs) to extend network capability.

The new dladm command has been added for configuring and administering bge and xge interfaces. For further information, refer to the dladm(1M) man page.

Enhancements to Java Desktop System Release 3

The Solaris 10 1/06 release includes the Sun Java Desktop System Release 3 (Java DS). This section describes new and enhanced features in the Java DS.

New Features in Java DS

This release of the Java Desktop System on the Solaris 10 OS combines innovations from the open-source software community and from Sun Microsystems to create a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable desktop environment. The following section describes improvements and enhancements in this release of the Java Desktop System.

Mobility Enhancements

The Java Desktop System has improved profile management for roaming web browser profiles.

Interoperability Enhancements

The Java Desktop System has the following interoperability enhancements.

New Accessibility Applications

The Java Desktop System has the following accessibility enhancements.

See the Java Desktop System Release 3 Accessibility Guide and the Java Desktop System Release 3 Accessibility Release Notes for more details.

Internationalization Enhancements

The Java Desktop System has the following internationalization enhancements.

General Improvements

The Java Desktop System has the following general enhancements.

Plug-ins for Mozilla 1.7

This section contains information about plug-ins for Mozilla 1.7.

Java Plug-in

Java Plug-in is enabled in Mozilla 1.7 by default. If Java Plug-in does not work, then create a symbolic link in the /usr/sfw/lib/mozilla/plugins directory, pointing to the appropriate file shown in the following table.

Platform 

Path 

SPARC 

$JAVA_PATH/plugin/sparc/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

x86 

$JAVA_PATH/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so

In the Java Desktop System Release 3, $JAVA_PATH is /usr/java/jre.

Note –

Do not copy the libjavaplugin_oji.so file instead of creating a symbolic link. A copy of the file causes theJava software to crash.

Install all Java plugins in the /usr/sfw/lib/mozilla/plugins directory.

Other Plugins

The Adobe Acrobat Reader third-party plugin is also available for Mozilla 1.7.

For more installation information about Mozilla plugins, see the following location: http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/linux.html.

Localization Support

This release of the Java Desktop System includes localization enhancements.

Supported Languages

The supported languages for this release of the Java Desktop System are as follows:

Note –

This release of the Java Desktop System includes some localizations that are taken from the GNOME community. Sun Microsystems does not take any responsibility for the completeness or accuracy of these localizations.

Migration To Unicode Multilingual Computing

The Java Desktop System is a fully Unicode-enabled, multilingual system that supports languages with Unicode UTF-8 encoding. The Java Desktop System also provides codeset conversion to support legacy (non-UTF-8) encodings. See Solaris 10 Release Notes for recommended locales and descriptions of issues you might encounter when you migrate to Unicode multilingual computing.

Security Enhancements

The following security features are new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view security features that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Security Enhancements.

Set SMTP to Use Transport Layer Security

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) can use Transport Layer Security (TLS) in version 8.13 of sendmail. When enabled, this service to SMTP servers and clients provides private, authenticated communications over the Internet, as well as protection from eavesdroppers and attackers.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide: Network Services.

Metaslot in the Cryptographic Framework

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 2/05 release. This feature is of interest to both system administrators and software developers.

The metaslot is a component of the Solaris cryptographic framework library, libpkcs11.so. With metaslot software, an application that needs encryption can specify its cryptographic needs. With these specifications, the most suitable cryptographic mechanism that is available on the system will be supplied. The metaslot serves as a single virtual slot with the combined capabilities of all tokens and slots that have been installed in the framework. Effectively, the metaslot enables an application to connect transparently with any available cryptographic service through a single slot.

The metaslot is automatically enabled. The system administrator can explicitly disable the metaslot if preferred.

When an application requests a cryptographic service, the metaslot points to the most appropriate slot, which simplifies the process of selecting a slot. In some cases, a different slot might be required, in which case the application must perform a separate search explicitly.

Further information about the cryptographic framework is provided in the Solaris Security for Developers Guide. See also the System Administration Guide: Security Services.

IKE Enhancements

These enhancements are new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

IKE is fully compliant with NAT-Traversal support as described in RFC 3947 and RFC 3948. IKE operations use the PKCS #11 library from the cryptographic framework, which improves performance. The cryptographic framework provides a softtoken keystore for applications that use the metaslot. When IKE uses the metaslot, you have the option of storing the keys on an attached board or in the softtoken keystore.

For further information about IKE, see the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

New Command for embedded_su

This enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This release includes a new command, embedded_su. This command offers “su-like” features to programs. This command enables graphical user interfaces to prompt for authentication data and execute operations as another user. This command provides functionality exactly equivalent to the su command, and so poses no new security risks. System administrators who have used /etc/pam.conf to customize the behavior of the su command can choose to add /etc/pam.conf entries to control the embedded_su command.

For an example, see the embedded_su(1M) man page.

System Performance Enhancements

The following system administration tools have been enhanced in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view performance enhancements that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see System Performance Enhancements.

Large Pages Enhancement

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This feature brings the benefits of large pages to a broader range of applications without requiring application tuning or system tuning. This enhancement applies large pages automatically for anonymous memory that is based on segment sizes.

Kernel Page Relocation

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

In these releases, system performance has been enhanced on the Sun FireTM 15K, Sun Fire 20K, and Sun Fire 25K domains.

Memory Placement Optimization Hierarchical Lgroup Support

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 6/05 release.

Hierarchical Lgroup Support (HLS) improves the Memory Placement Optimization (MPO) feature in the Solaris OS. HLS enables the Solaris OS to optimize performance for machines that have more than local memory and remote memory latencies. Machines with four or more Opteron CPUs might have local memory, remote memory, and further remote memory. On such machines, HLS enables the Solaris OS to distinguish between the degrees of remoteness. HLS enables the Solaris OS to allocate resources with the lowest possible latency for applications. The Solaris OS allocates local resources for a given application. And, if local resources are not available by default, the Solaris OS allocates the nearest remote resources.

The Programming Interfaces Guide explains the abstraction that is used by the Solaris OS to identify which resources are near each other for optimizing localization. The guide also described the API that can be used for the locality group (lgroup) abstraction. Man pages are also available for this API. See liblgrp(3LIB).

System Administration Enhancements

The following system administration tools have been enhanced in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view system administration enhancements that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see System Administration Enhancements.

Improvements to Volume Management (vold)

This volume management feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 11/05 release.

The vold command is now hot-plug aware. This improvement means that if you insert removable media, the media is automatically detected and mounted by vold. You do not need to restart vold manually to recognize and mount a file system from any removable media device.

If you are using a legacy or non-USB diskette device, then you might need to issue the volcheck command before vold can recognize the media. If the media is detected, but for some reason, is unmounted, then you'll need to run the following command:


# volrmmount -i rmdisk0

Before you hot-remove a removable media device, eject the media first. For example:


# eject rmdisk0

For more information about using vold, see Chapter 1, Managing Removable Media (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

SunVTS 6.1

SunVTS 6.1 software is available in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. SunVTS 6.0 software is available in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The SunVTS software is a comprehensive software diagnostic package. SunVTS tests and validates Sun x86 and SPARC hardware. The test suite verifies the configuration and proper functioning of controllers, devices, and platforms.

SunVTS x86 diagnostics are now supported in the AMD 64-bit environment for the SunVTS kernel (vtsk). All x86 diagnostics except the System Test (systest) are ported to the 64-bit platform.

New x86 diagnostics for this release include the following:

New SPARC diagnostics for this release include the following:

Refer to the SunVTS 6.1 documentation at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/sunvts6.1-s10-1-06. This documentation provides details about these new features and tests.

Support for SCSI Disks Larger Than 2 Terabytes

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

SCSI, Fibre Channel, and iSCSI disks that are larger than 2 terabytes are now supported on 64–bit platforms. The format utility can be used to label, configure, and partition these larger disks.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

Fibre-Channel HBA Port Utility

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

fcinfo is a command-line interface that collects administrative information about fibre-channel HBA ports. This interface also collects data about any Fibre-Channel targets that might be connected to those ports in a Storage Area Network (SAN).

For further information, see the fcinfo(1M) man page.

Additional Banner Page Printing Option in Solaris Print Manager

This enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 3/05 release.

Solaris Print Manager has been expanded to include an additional “Never Print Banner” option. This option ensures that banner pages are never printed for the specified print queue.

Previously, you only had two choices for printing banner pages in Solaris Print Manager:

The current printing options in the Print Manager reflect the lpadmin command options for printing to local print queues.

For further information about the Solaris Print Manager, see the System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration.

x86: New prtconf Option to Display Product Names

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 7/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

A new -b option has been added to the prtconf command. This option displays the product name of a system. This option is similar to the uname -i command. However, the prtconf -b command is specifically designed to determine the marketing name of a product.

The -b option displays the following root properties from the firmware device tree:

To display additional platform-specific output that might be available, add the -v option to the prtconf -b command.

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

Developer Enhancements

The following developer tool enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view developer tools that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Developer Tool Enhancements.

mediaLib 2.3

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

mediaLib is a low-level application library for building portable, high-performance, multimedia applications. These applications are useful in the telco, bioinformatics, and database fields. mediaLib 2.3 introduces a multithreaded (MT) library for better performance on multiprocessor systems. mediaLib 2.3 also introduces 340 new functions.

For further information, see the libmlib(3LIB) and libmlib_mt(3LIB) man pages. See also http://www.sun.com/processors/vis/mlib.html.

Advanced DDI Interrupts

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

The Solaris OS now provides a new DDI Interrupt framework for registering interrupts and deregistering interrupts. Support for Message Signalled Interrupts (MSIs) is also provided. New management interfaces enable you to manipulate priorities and capabilities, to interrupt masking, and to obtain pending information.

The framework includes the following new interfaces:

Note –

To take advantage of the features of the new framework, developers need to use the new interfaces. Avoid using the following interfaces, which are retained for compatibility only:

For more information, see “Interrupt Handlers” in the Writing Device Drivers manual. See also the individual man pages for the new interfaces. All man pages for these interfaces are in the 9F man page section.

Desktop Enhancements

The following desktop enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view desktop enhancements that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Desktop Enhancements.

SPARC: Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.0.1

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 12/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

In this release, Adobe® Acrobat Reader is updated from version 5.0 to version 7.0.1. Adobe Reader enables you to view, navigate, and print Portable Document Format (PDF) files. This enhancement is for the SPARC platform.

SPARC: Sun OpenGL 1.5 for Solaris

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

Sun OpenGL® for Solaris has been revised to cover the 1.5 specification for devices which can support OpenGL 1.5 functionality. Sun OpenGL 1.5 for the Solaris OS is available with the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

For further information, see the man pages are under the following directories:

Xorg Configuration GUI

This enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

xorgcfg, the Xorg Configuration GUI, allows for easier configuration of the Xorg X server on x86 systems.

Xorg Release 6.8.2

This enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

The Xorg X server implementation has been upgraded from the 6.8.0 version to version 6.8.2 in this release. This upgrade fixes several bugs in the modules for various graphics cards. The upgrade also adds support for new graphics card models.

X Client Support for XFree86 Extensions

These X11 windowing enhancements are new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

These enhancements take advantage of X server extensions that were originally developed by the XFree86 Project. These enhancements are now incorporated into the Xorg X server.

The new programs available include the following:

xgamma

Alters a monitor's gamma correction through XF86VidMode extension

xrandr

Resizes or rotates the screen through the RandR extension

xvidtune

Provides video mode tuner for Xorg through XF86VidMode extension

xvinfo

Prints X Video extension adapter information

Advanced users can use these applications to tune the settings of the Xorg server at runtime. This process provides more information about the capabilities of the current system hardware.

Note –

These programs require support for the XFree86 extensions. As such, these programs do not currently work with the Xsun X server. These programs do not work with other X servers that lack this support.

For more information, see the man pages for each application. Add /usr/X11/man to your $MANPATH, if needed, to view the man pages.

Support for Virtual USB Keyboard and Mouse Devices

This enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This feature enables the Solaris OS to support multiple keyboards and mouse devices simultaneously. The virtualkm feature also provides an auto-switch function that enables users to obtain separate input for keyboards and for mouse devices. All these enhancements are compatible with existing applications.

This feature is particularly useful for the following users:

For more information, see virtualkm(7D).

Device Management Enhancements

The following device management enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view device management tools that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Device Management.

Support for iSCSI Devices

This feature is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release and in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

Support for Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) is provided in this release. iSCSI is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage subsystems. By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, the iSCSI protocol enables you to mount disk devices, from across the network, onto your local system. On your local system, you can use the devices like block devices.

The iSCSI protocol does the following:

You can use the iscsiadm command to set up and manage your iSCSI devices. For more information, see the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems and the iscsiadm(1M) man page.

New and Updated Drivers

The following driver enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view driver features that are new in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see New or Updated Drivers.

SPARC: Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator

This driver is new in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This release introduces the kfb driver that supports the XVR-2500 graphic board. For further information, see the SUNWkfb_config(1M) and kfb(7D) man pages.

SCSI HBA Driver for LSI MegaRAID 320-2x SCSI RAID Controller

This driver is new in the Solaris Express 8/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This release introduces the lsimega driver. The LSI 320-2x card is supported by lsimega with back-end support from LSI. Sun Fire V20z/V40z servers with the optional 320-2x RAID card receive better support for RAID disk I/O and passthrough I/O for SCSI tape and CDROM.

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

USB CCID IFD Handler

This driver is new in the Solaris Express 8/05 release and in the Solaris 10 1/06 release.

This release delivers a userland device driver for USB CCID-compliant smart card readers. This feature uses the USB CCID IFD Handler that is part of the MUSCLE project. With this feature integrated into Solaris, customers can now use a wide variety of USB smart card readers on Solaris systems that have USB ports.

For further information, see the usb_ccid_ifd(3SMARTCARD) man page.

More documentation is available at the public MUSCLE card web site at http://www.musclecard.com.

New nge Driver

In the Solaris 10 1/06 release, the nge driver supports the NVIDIA CK8–04 gigabit Ethernet interface. See the nge(7D) man page.

Documentation Enhancements

The following documentation improvements have been made in the Solaris 10 1/06 release. To view documentation changes that were made in the previous Solaris 10 3/05 release, see Documentation Changes.

Solaris 10 1/06 Documentation

Solaris 10 documentation contains the Solaris 10 base documentation plus new documentation and revisions that have been published since the Solaris 10 3/05 release. New and revised documentation for the Solaris 10 1/06 release, therefore, can be found in the Solaris 10 collections that are available at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/solaris.10.

Sun Fire Documentation Changes

In the Solaris 10 1/06 release, three Sun Fire midrange and high-end system user guides have been combined into a single book. The new book is Sun Fire High-End and Midrange Systems Dynamic Reconfiguration User Guide (819-1501-10).

This new book replaces the following three previous documents:

Sun Fire Midrange Systems Dynamic Reconfiguration User Guide (817-7167-10)

Sun Fire High-End Systems Dynamic Reconfiguration User Guide (817-7166-10)

System Management Services 1.4 Dynamic Reconfiguration User Guide (817-4459-10 for Sun Fire High-End systems)

The new book is available in the Solaris 10 on Sun Hardware Collection at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1140.2.