System Resource Enhancements

The following system resource features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 10/08 release.

New Solaris Zones Features

The following Solaris Zones enhancements are found in the Solaris 10 10/08 release:

• Update on Attach – If the new host has the same or later versions of the zone-dependent packages and their associated patches, using zoneadm attach with the -u option, updates those packages within the zone to match the new host. If the new host has a mixture of higher and lower version packages and patches as compared to the source host, then an update during the attach operation is not allowed. This option also enables automatic migration between machine classes, such as from sun4u to sun4v.

  For more information, see the zoneadm(1M) man page and System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

• Ability to Set Default Router in Shared-IP Zone – A defrouter property has been added to the net resource in the zonecfg utility for shared-IP non-global zones. You can set the default router for the network interface through this property.

  For more information, see the zonecfg(1M) man page and System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

• ZFS Zone Path Permitted – Starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release, the zonepath can be on ZFS and the system can be upgraded. For a zone with the zonepath on ZFS, only Solaris Live Upgrade can be used to upgrade the system. For more information, see System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.

x86: New GRUB findroot Command

All Solaris installation methods, including Solaris Live Upgrade, now use the findroot command for specifying which disk slice to boot on an x86 based system. Previously, the root command, root (hd0.0.a), was used to explicitly specify which disk slice to boot. This information is located in the menu.lst file that is used by GRUB. The most common form of the entry in the menu.lst file is:

findroot (rootfs0,0,a)
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

The findroot command has the ability to discover the targeted disk, irrespective of the boot device. In addition, the findroot command provides enhanced support for booting systems with ZFS roots, as well as those with UFS roots. In addition to the findroot command, the name of a signature file on the slice, (<mysign>, 0, a) is now provided. The boot signature is located in the /boot/grub/bootsign directory on the system. The name of the signature file varies, depending on the installation method that is used.

For more information, see Implementation of the findroot Command in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

x64: Support for 256 Processors

Starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release, the Solaris 64-bit operating system supports up to 256 processors on the x86 platform. Previous releases of the Solaris OS supported only up to 64 processors on x86 platforms in the 64-bit mode.

Support for 256 processors provides users the following benefits:

• Users can use this release of Solaris on their existing x86 systems with up to 256 processors.

• Users need not upgrade their OS when they upgrade to machines with over 64 processors in the future.

Users using this release of Solaris will be able to retain their entire software stack including the operating system, when they purchase larger machines.