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Solaris Transition Guide

Serial Port Management

This section describes serial port management (which enables terminal and modem connections) through Admintool or the Service Access Facility (SAF).

System Administration Guide, Volume II describes the details of Solaris 7 setup and installation procedures for serial devices.

Terminal and Modem Management

Admintool enables you to set up and modify serial port software for terminals and modems.

Admintool provides:

This tool provides the capabilities of the Service Access Facility's pmadm command.

Service Access Facility (SAF)

Using SAF, you can manage access to all services in a similar way, whether they are on the network or attached only to local systems. SAF uses Service Access Control (SAC) commands to set up and manage services. It provides uniform access to system services, such as:

In previous versions of SunOS operating systems, the method for controlling devices depended both on the device providing the access and on the location of that device. Managing user access involved editing many device files.

SAF helps isolate the system administrator from these device dependencies and provides a common interface for managing a range of services, including the ability to:

SAF's common interface consists primarily of two commands: sacadm and pmadm. The sacadm command controls daemons called port monitors. The pmadm command controls the services associated with the port monitors.

Controlling Port Monitors

SAF's common interface helps control services called port monitors. A port monitor is a program that continuously monitors for requests to log in or requests to access printers or files.

Once a port monitor detects a request, it sets whatever parameters are required to establish communication between the operating system and the device requesting service. Then the port monitor transfers control to other processes (for example, the login program) that provide the services needed.

There are two types of port monitors included in the Solaris 7 operating environment: ttymon and listen. The listen port monitor controls access to network services and handles remote print and file system requests. The ttymon port monitor provides access to the login services needed by modems and alphanumeric terminals.

SAF Functions and Related Programs

SAF's common interface consists primarily of two commands: sacadm and pmadm. The sacadm command controls the port monitors. The pmadm command controls the services associated with the port monitors.

The sacadm command enables you to add and remove port monitors. You can also use the sacadm command to list the status of a port monitor, and to administer configuration scripts for customizing port monitors.

Using the pmadm command, you can add or remove a service, and enable or disable a service. You can, for example, disable all remote logins with one pmadm command. You can also install or replace per-service configuration scripts, or display information about a service.

Using only the sacadm and pmadm commands, a system administrator has complete control over access to resources. However, these two commands are only the interface to the SAF suite of programs and processes that make the integrated management environment possible. The functions and associated programs are:

The service access control, sac, is the most important program in the SAF suite. It is launched by the init program when a machine is first started. In turn, sac starts all the port monitors listed in its administrative file.

For more information on the SAF in general, or on the different ways to use the sacadm and pmadm commands, see System Administration Guide, Volume II.