Next Generation Internet Protocol 

IPv6 

IPv6 adds increased address space and improves Internet functionality using a simplified header format, support for authentication and privacy, autoconfiguration of address assignments, and enables new quality-of-service capabilities. (more)

Directory Services and Naming Enhancements 

Native Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) 

Native LDAP provides the Naming Service switch back-end support for LDAP based directory service. (more)

Java Enhancements 

Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) for Solaris 

The Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition version 1.2.1_04 is the latest release of the Java 2 platform for the Solaris operating environment. It includes these enhancements:

• Improved scalability

• Improved class libraries, including the new Java 2 APIs

• Enhanced memory management system

• High-performance, scalable Java Virtual Machine (JVM)

• Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler optimizations

• Faster Java thread synchronization

Installation and Management 

Solaris Web Start enhanced installation CD 

Solaris Web Start, a graphical, wizard based, Java powered software application that installs the Solaris operating environment and other software, is now distributed on a separate installation CD. (more)

Booting a system over the network with Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) 

Network installs can now use DHCP to acquire boot parameters and network configuration information needed to boot a client over the network. DHCP booting is supported on certain SPARC and IA based systems. (more)

IA: Boot partition in Solaris 8  

Users running Solaris Intel Platform Edition can now designate a separate IA boot partition. (more)

IA: CD-ROM boot 

This new feature enables the user to boot a system from an installation CD (rather than the Device Configuration Assistant diskette, as was the case in the past) using the "El Torito" standard. (more)

DHCP Manager 

DHCP Manager provides a Java-based graphical interface for configuring and managing the Solaris DHCP server and DHCP databases. It allows the system administrator to use a single tool to perform all DHCP management duties: set up and manage DHCP servers, manage client configuration options and macros, and manage networks and IP addresses that are under DHCP management. (more)

IA: Large disk support  

By using improved BIOS interfaces to access the disk, Solaris 8 Intel Platform Edition now fully uses disks larger than 8 Gbytes. (more)

Solaris Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) Services 

Solaris WBEM Services software is an implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards and technologies in the Solaris operating environment. Intended for developers and administrators of WBEM-enabled environments, Solaris WBEM Services provides the Solaris Schema, extensions of the CIM Schema classes, and management, security, and logging services. (more)

Support for domain name system (DNS) in system identification utilities 

DNS has been added to the list of name services that can be configured through the system identification utilities. (more)

Support for IPv6 in system identification utilities 

Systems can now be configured at install time to use IPv6 in addition to IPv4. (more)

Unlimited number of pseudo-terminals available 

Solaris 8 software enables the opening on any number of pseudo-terminals (used by programs like rlogin and telnet). (more)

Reading documentation from the Solaris 8 Documentation CD 

The ab2cd script enables all users to read AnswerBook2^TM documentation directly from the Solaris 8 Documentation CD. It has been enhanced to provide better user feedback, to enable users to set the port number on which ab2cd runs, and to read documentation already installed on the user's system. (more)

Product Registry 

The Solaris Product Registry is a tool to manage software installed using Solaris Web Start 3.0 or the Solaris package management commands (pkgadd, for example). It enables you to:

• View a list of installed and registered software and some software attributes

• Install additional software products

• Uninstall software

• Browse for and launch an installer

(more)

Networking 

SPARC^TM: InterDomain Networks (IDNs)

IDNs enable the user to set up high-speed network connections between dynamic system domains without the need for special hardware. (more)

IP Security Architecture (IPsec) for IPv4 

IPsec provides protection for IP datagrams. The protection can include confidentiality, strong integrity of the data, partial sequence integrity (replay protection), and data authentication. (more)

IPv6 NFS/RPC compliant 

This feature adds IPv6 support to NFS^TM and RPC in a seamless manner. There are no changes to existing commands related to NFS. Most RPC applications will also run over IPv6 without any change. Some advanced RPC applications with transport knowledge might require updates. (more)

Logical Link Controller 2 (LLC2) 

The Class II logical link control driver (LLC2) interfaces network software (NetBIOS, SNA, OSI), running under the Solaris operating environment to a physical LAN network controlled by one of the supported communications adapters. This version of the LLC2 driver includes support for both connectionless and connection-oriented logical link control class II LLC2 operations for Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI adapters when accessed through the appropriate Solaris MAC layer driver. (more)

NIS/NIS+ over IPv6 transports 

This feature enables users to perform NIS and NIS+ operations over IPv6 RPC transports, and to store IPv6 addresses in the NIS, NIS+, and DNS naming services. (more)

sendmail 8.9.3

New options and utilities improve the storage and security functionality of sendmail. (more)

Service Location Protocol (SLP) 

SLP is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) protocol for discovering shared resources (such as printers, file servers, netcams, and so on) in an enterprise network. The Solaris 8 operating environment contains a full implementation of SLP that includes APIs that allow developers to write SLP-enabled applications, and provides system administrators a framework for ease of network extensibility. (more)

Solaris STREAMS framework enhancements 

The STREAMS framework enhancements in the Solaris 8 operating environment provide more deterministic response times for real-time processes by ensuring that STREAMS processing uses a priority that does not conflict with the user process priority. (more)

Network time protocol 

NTP provides precise time and network clock synchronization for use in distributed computing environments. The Solaris 8 release has been upgraded to include the 3-5.93e version. (more)

File System Enhancements 

Universal Disk Format (UDF) file system 

The UDF file system, the industry-standard format for storing information on optical media technology, is supported in this Solaris release. The UDF file system can be used to exchange data on the following components when they contain a UDF file system: 

• CD-ROMs

• Disks and diskettes

• Digital versatile disc or digital video disc (DVD) -- DVD-ROM on supported platforms

(more)

NFS server logging 

NFS server logging allows an NFS server to provide a record of file operations performed on its file systems. This feature is particularly useful for sites that make anonymous FTP archives available to NFS and WebNFS^TM clients. (more)

IA: Extended Memory (XMEM) support 

XMEM support provides a mechanism that allows a single 32-bit process to efficiently allocate and manage more than 4 Gbytes of physical memory. The XMEM feature is implemented as a file system (xmemfs) that system administrators can mount and use to reserve memory for applications. (more)

WebNFS JavaBeans component 

The WebNFS JavaBeans^TM component contains an XFileChooser class that extends the JFileChooser graphical component of the Java 2 API. This bean can be used by any Java 2 application that needs to display a file chooser to enable users to select a file for input (open) or output (save). Using XFileChooser an application can access a file on a local disk or on an NFS server through the use of NFS URL naming. (more)

Deferred access time updates on UFS file systems 

Two new mount options, dfratime and nodfratime enable and disable deferred access time updates on UFS file systems. When enabled, writing access time updates for the file system may be deferred until the disk is accessed for a reason other than updating access times. (more)

Diagnostic and Availability Enhancements 

The coreadm command

The coreadm command provides flexible core file naming conventions and better core file retention. (more)

Examining core files with proc tools 

Some of the proc tools have been enhanced to examine process core files as well as live processes. The proc tools are utilities that can manipulate features of the /proc file system. (more)

Improved device configuration (devfsadm)

The devfsadm command provides an improved mechanism for managing the special device files in the /dev and /devices directories, including support for dynamic reconfiguration events. (more)

Improved system error messages 

The system boot and error message format now provides a numeric identifier, module name, and time stamp to messages generated by the syslog(1M) logging facility. In addition, messages that were previously lost after a system panic and reboot are now saved.

Modular debugger (mdb)

mdb is a new extensible utility for low-level debugging and editing of the live operating system, operating system crash dumps, user processes, user process core dumps, and object files. (more)

Remote console messaging 

This release includes the consadm command, which enables you to select a serial device as an auxiliary (or remote) console for troubleshooting remote system problems. (more)

TCP/IP internal trace support 

TCP/IP now provides internal trace support by logging TCP communication when a connection is terminated by a reset (RST) packet. (more)

Performance and Scalability Enhancements 

IA: Added support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) mode  

With the release of Pentium Pro, Intel introduced a mode called PAE on its advanced processors. By using PAE, Solaris Intel Platform Edition can address up to 32 Gbytes of physical memory. (more)

apptrace

A new application debugging tool, apptrace enables application developers and system support personnel to debug application or system problems by providing call traces to Solaris shared libraries, which may show the series of events leading up to a point of failure. (more)

SPARC: busstat

A new system monitoring tool, busstat provides access to bus-related performance counters on supported SPARC platforms. Viewing these performance counters with busstat enables you to measure hardware clock cycles and bus statistics including DMA and cache coherency transactions on a multiprocessor system. (more)

Faster boot for servers 

Large servers now require significantly less time to boot. (more)

New alternative to poll() interface

/dev/poll is a second form of polling for the completion of I/O events that provides much higher performance when a very large number of events must be polled for on file descriptors that remain open for a long time. This feature supplements poll(2); it does not replace poll(2). (more)

prstat

The prstat utility iteratively examines all active processes on the system and reports various statistics based on the selected output mode and sort order. (more)

IA: Xeon enhancements  

To maximize performance, Solaris 8 Intel Platform Edition now supports the Page Attribute Table (PAT) feature of IA32-bit processors (Pentium II and Pentium III). (more)

Security Enhancements 

Solaris Smart Cards 

The Solaris Smart Card feature implements the Open Card Framework (OCF) 1.1 standard. Security administrators can use this technology to protect a computer desktop or individual application by requiring users to authenticate themselves by means of a smart card. (more)

Default file system and directory permissions 

Many system files and directories in the Solaris 8 release have different default ownership and stricter permissions than in previous releases. (more)

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) 

Traditional superuser-based systems grant full superuser powers to anyone who can become superuser. With RBAC, administrators can assign limited administrative capabilities to normal users. (more)

Centralized administration of user audit events 

The file, /etc/security/audit_user, which stores audit preselection classes for users and roles, is now supported in the name switch. It is no longer necessary to set up the audit events for a user on each system to which the user has access.

Realtime Systems Enhancement 

High resolution timers 

The high resolution timers (HRTs) bypass the traditional 10 millisecond clock interface to expose the granularity of the physical clock interrupt from the hardware. Thus, the HRT interface allows a real time process to take control of one processor (of a multi-processor system) and operate to any required degree of precision in timing events. (more)

User-level priority inheritance 

The real-time threads feature implements the POSIX interfaces (previously only dummied in) that let the high priority thread "lend" its priority to the low priority thread until it releases the lock. (more)

Common Desktop Environment (CDE) Desktop Enhancements 

Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) support 

The PDA Synchronization (PDASync) is a Java-based application that enables users to easily synchronize their desktop calendar, mail, address book, and memos with their PDA. (more)

Hot Key Editor 

The Hot Key Editor enables users to predefine a series of commands to a given function key, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency. (more)

Java Media Framework (JMF) 

The JMF, a Java-based application, provides smooth streaming video file format support for MPEG1, MPEG2, Quicktime, and AVI, as well as audio support for MIDI. This feature enables users to take advantage of the real-time video creation and broadcast functionality. (more)

SPARC: Audio Mixer 

CDE now includes a new GUI tool, sdtaudiocontrol, that supersedes audiocontrol. sdtaudiocontrol, uses the features of the audio mixer, and provides more features. (more)

See also "SPARC: Audio Mixer"

SPARC: PC launcher 1.0 

PC launcher 1.0 for SunPCi enables users to get seamless access and power to view, edit, and print many popular types of PC files or attachments instantly, by automatically launching the associated Windows application and file. (more)

Netscape Application Launcher 

The Netscape^TM Application Launcher enables users to easily access and automatically launch Netscape files and associated Netscape applications such as Composer. This feature eliminates the need to run the entire Netscape environment, simplifying access to Netscape applications. (more)

Print Client enhancements 

Print Client now enables users to easily configure their own set of printers and default printer without any intervention from an administrator. (more)

SDTImage enhancements 

The SDTImage screen snapshot feature now enables users to easily and quickly capture a screenshot image from the command line. (more)

Smart card support 

CDE now supports smart card authentication security technology. Users can now use smart cards to authenticate their identity when logging in to CDE on a protected system, relogging in after a screen lock, or reauthenticating after the smart card is removed. CDE supports both external and internal smart card devices. (more)

ToolTips 

ToolTips provides users with Balloon Help, a simple and short description of an icon function. (more)

X11R6.4 support 

The X Server is upgraded to the X11R6.4 industry standard which includes key features that increase user productivity and mobility, including remote execution of X applications through web browser on any web-based desktop, Xinerama, Color Utilization Policy, EnergyStar support, and new APIs and documentation for the developer tool kits. (more)

Extended control panel 

This feature provides a unified, consistent, and extensible launchpad for desktop customization, such as desktop controls for color, font, backdrop, and Application Manager. 

Web Services 

Java Plug-in 

Java Plug-in for the Solaris operating environment is an add-on product for Netscape Navigator^TM that enables Java applets and JavaBeans components to run on Web pages using Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.2 instead of the default Java Virtual Machine (JVM) bundled with Navigator. (more)

Netscape Communicator 4.7 

Solaris 8 includes Netscape Communicator 4.7 and now installs it by default on your system. (more)

Solaris Network Cache and Accelerator (NCA) 

The Solaris NCA increases web server performance by maintaining an in-kernel cache of web pages accessed during HTTP requests. (more)

Apache web server 

The open source Apache web server is now bundled with Solaris. It includes all the standard Apache modules, including proxy server support, as well as the mod_perl module. (more)

Printing 

Print naming enhancement 

This Solaris release supports the printers database in /etc/nsswitch.conf, the name service switch file. The printers database provides centralized printer configuration information to print clients on the network. (more)

Solaris Print Manager 

Solaris Print Manager is a Java-based graphical user interface that enables you to manage local and remote printer access. This tool can be used in the following name service environments: NIS, NIS+, NIS+ with Federated Naming Service (FNS), and files. (more)

Language Support 

Universal language coverage 

The Solaris 8 operating environment now includes support for more than 90 locales, covering 37 languages, on both the Solaris 8 Software CDs and the Solaris 8 Languages CD. (more)

Improved language installation and setup 

Changes to packaging on the language CD have reduced the storage requirements for a mixed language installation. A redesign of the install interface makes language selection and grouping extremely intuitive. (more)

Expanded Unicode support 

Solaris 8 continues to broaden support for Unicode with the addition of new Unicode (UTF-8) locales for Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. (more)

Customer-extensible codeset conversion (geniconvtbl)

With the Solaris 8 operating environment, developers can easily create and add to the Solaris system their own user-defined codeset conversions by using the geniconvtbl utility. Modification to existing Solaris codeset conversions is also supported. (more)

Improved data interoperability 

Data interoperability with non-Solaris environments has been improved in Solaris 8 with the addition of the following new iconv data conversion utilities:

• iconv for Japanese mainframe data types

• iconv for Microsoft data encodings (including user defined characters)

• iconv for UTF-8 interoperability in People's Republic of China and Korea

• iconv for various Unicode encoding formats and international and de facto industry standard codesets

New locales added 

Two new locales have been added to Solaris 8 for Iceland (ISO8859-15) and Russia (ANSI1251). The new Russian locale is in addition to the existing Russian (8859-5) locale and provides native Microsoft data encoding support. (more)

Documentation 

AnswerBook2 Documentation Server updates 

The AnswerBook2 Documentation Server has been updated for this release. Major changes since the Solaris 7 release include replacing the AnswerBook2 navigation icons with text, improved support for non-English locales, and minor changes to improve overall performance and stability. (more)

Reference Manual reorganization 

The section of the SunOS Reference Manual that describes the C library functions (but does not include the system calls) now contains six books instead of one. These books are

• Library Interfaces and Headers

• Basic Library Functions

• Networking Library Functions

• Threads and Realtime Library Functions

• Extended Library Functions

• Curses Library Functions

SPARC: audio mixer 

The audio mixer driver now enables multiple applications to simultaneously play and record audio. This new enhancement supersedes the previous capability, which only supported a single play application and a single record application. In addition, CDE 1.4 now includes a new GUI tool, sdtaudiocontrol, that supersedes audiocontrol. sdtaudiocontrol uses the features of the audio mixer, and provides more features. (more)

Software Developer Environment 

SPARC: 64-bit Kodak Color Management System (KCMS) libraries  

Kodak Color Management System^TM (KCMS^TM) is now providing a 64-bit version of the libraries. Applications that currently use KCMS and are converted to the 64-bit operating environment can now retain color management. (more)

Always ready Power Management^TM

With the Solaris 8 operating environment, a device driver using the new device Power Management interfaces will be power managed automatically. (more)

cpustat and cputrack commands

The new cpustat and cputrack commands capture system-wide and per-process CPU statistics respectively, to monitor the performance of a system or a process. (more)

Extensions to runtime link auditing 

Additional means of invoking runtime link auditing libraries is provided by the link editor options -p and -P. Additional runtime link auditing interfaces la_activity() and la_objsearch() have been added. (more)

Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) 5 

The popular programming language, Perl 5.005_03, is included in the Solaris 8 release. Perl is commonly used for CGI scripting as well as automating complex system administration tasks. (more)

Role-based access control (RBAC) for developers 

The addition of RBAC to the Solaris operating environment gives developers the opportunity to deliver fine-grained security in new and modified applications. Developers can now create privileged functions that check for authorizations instead of checking for specific IDs such as superuser. (more)

Secure path name change from /usr/lib to /usr/lib/secure

The secure directory from which files can be preloaded is now /usr/lib/secure for 32-bit objects and /usr/lib/secure/sparcv9 for 64-bit SPARCV9 objects. (more)

Dynamic string token support 

Greater flexibility in establishing instruction set specific, and system specific dependencies is provided with the new $ISALIST, $OSNAME, and $OSREL dynamic string tokens. (more)

strftime() function update

The %u conversion specification for the strftime() function has been changed. (more)

Alternate one-level libthread 

An alternate threads implementation provides a one-level model in which user-level threads are associated one-to-one with lightweight processes (LWPs). This implementation is simpler than the standard implementation and may be beneficial to some multithreaded applications. (more)

SPARC: audio mixer driver 

The audio mixer driver now allows multiple applications to play and record audio simultaneously. (more)

Updated DDI interfaces for cluster-aware device drivers 

A documentation overview introduces the concept of device classes and the necessary interface modifications and additions for device driver writers. (more)

8-bit visual support 

The 8-bit visual shared library enables device drivers with only 24-bit hardware to display 8-bit visual applications. 

IA Hardware Enhancements 

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)  

ACPI is a new, more flexible way to configure and control IA hardware. ACPI obsoletes Plug and Play BIOS and the Intel Multi-Processor Specification (MPSPEC). If ACPI is available on your IA based system, Solaris 8 automatically uses it to configure the hardware. (more)

PCI hot-plug support  

This feature enables standard PCI adapters to be hot-plugged into a machine with the hot-plug capability that is running Solaris Intel Platform Edition. You can now add (hot-add) or remove (hot-remove) adapters from a system while the system is still running. (more)

Universal Serial Bus (USB) support for keyboards and mouse devices  

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides USB support for keyboards and mouse devices. (more)

X Server video driver enhancement  

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides support for more video devices. (more)

IA SCSI Drivers 

IA: cadp driver enhancements

The Solaris cadp driver now supports Adaptec Ultra2 adapters. (more)

IA: ncrs device driver enhancements

The Solaris ncrs device driver now supports the SCSI hot-plugging functionality and Ultra2 devices, in addition to general functionality and performance improvements. (more)

IA: symhisl device driver

The symhisl device driver, which supports the adapters SYM22910 and SYM21002, is now included in Solaris Intel Platform Edition. (more)

Early Access Software 

The Solaris 8 release includes an Early Access (EA) directory with EA software. For more information, refer to the README on the Solaris Software CD 2 of 2. 

Freeware 

Several freeware tools and libraries are included in the Solaris 8 release. These tools assist the development of tools for administration and development tasks. (more)

Solaris 64-bit Operating Environment 

64-bit operating environment (SPARC only) 

The 64-bit Solaris operating environment is a complete 32-bit and 64-bit application and development environment supported by a 64-bit operating system. This permits maximum compatibility and interoperability for existing applications, both source and binary. At the same time, the 64-bit Solaris operating environment overcomes many of the limitations of the 32-bit system, most notably by supporting a 64-bit virtual address space as well as removing other existing 32-bit system limitations. (For SPARC Platform Edition only.) 

Web Browser 

Netscape Communicator 

Solaris 7 software now ships with Netscape Communicator. 

Network Management and System Administration 

UFS logging 

UFS logging is the process of storing transactions (changes that make up a complete UFS operation) in a log before the transactions are applied to the UFS file system. Once a transaction is stored, the transaction can be applied to the file system later.  

UFS logging provides two advantages. It prevents file systems from becoming inconsistent, therefore eliminating the need to run fsck(1M). And, because fsck can be bypassed, UFS logging reduces the time required to reboot a system if it crashes, or after an unclean halt.

-o noatime UFS mount option

To ignore access time updates on files, you can specify the -o noatime option when mounting a UFS file system. This option reduces disk activity on file systems where access times are unimportant (for example, a Usenet news spool).

LDAP 

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is an open-standard, platform-independent, access protocol based on the X.500 informational model. It is designed to run over TCP/IP and uses simple string encodings. LDAP applications are client-server applications and the client library included in this release enables developers to write LDAP applications and users to run LDAP enabled applications. 

Dynamic reconfiguration 

Dynamic reconfiguration allows the service provider to add, or remove and replace, hot-pluggable system boards in a running system, eliminating the time lost in rebooting. (For certain SPARC systems only.) 

New commands: pgrep and pkill

The pgrep command looks at the active processes on the system and displays the process IDs of the processes whose attributes match the specified criteria on the command line. The pkill command works the same way as the pgrep command except that each matching process ID is signaled by kill(2) instead of having the process ID displayed.

sendmail 8.9

This version includes hooks that enable restriction of spam (unsolicited, bulk email); virtual hosting that allows email to be received using different domain names; and an improved configuration hierarchy that makes building your own sendmail configuration file much easier.

Traceroute utility 

Solaris 7 software bundles the popular traceroute utility. The traceroute utility is used to trace the route an IP packet follows to an Internet host. It is especially useful for determining routing misconfiguration and routing path failures. 

System crash dump utility 

The system crash dump features include the following:

• The dumpadm command enables system administrators to configure crash dumps of the operating system.

• Dump data is now stored in compressed format on the dump device.

• Saving core files is run in the background when a dedicated dump device--not the primary swap area--is part of the dump configuration.

Network Performance 

TCP with SACK 

TCP selective acknowledgment (TCP SACK) provides the support described in RFC 2018 to solve the problems related to congestion and multiple packet drops, especially in applications using TCP large windows (RFC 1323) over satellite links or transcontinental links.  

Network Security  

RPCSEC_GSS

RPC has been modified based on the GSS-API. This increases security integrity and confidentiality, and NFS services are no longer tied down to a specific or a single security mechanism.  

NIS+ extended Diffie-Hellman 

NIS+ enhances NIS+ security by increasing the authentication key length from 192 bits to 640 bits. 

BIND 8.1.2  

Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND), the most popular DNS implementation, has been upgraded to 8.1.2. It provides a new configuration file that enhances network security through the use of access control lists (ACLs). 

Ease-of-Use and Management Improvements 

Installation 

SPARC: Installing a 64-bit operating environment 

The Solaris 7 installation programs have a new check box for selection of 64-bit support; it is selected by default when installing on UltraSPARC^TM platforms.

Installing AnswerBooks with Solaris Web Start 

The Solaris Web Start product (on the Documentation CD) provides a point-and-click interface with selections for installing the AnswerBook2 server, all document collections on this CD, or selected document collections.  

More locale selections 

In the Solaris 7 release, the English and European localized versions of Solaris software have been combined on a single CD. As a result, more locale selections are available during installation of this combined CD than were seen for Solaris 2.6 software.  

Documentation 

Man pages available in AnswerBook2 format 

Man pages are available in AnswerBook2 (SGML), rather than AnswerBook format. This provides improvements in navigation and links to man pages directly from other AnswerBook2 documents. 

Running an AnswerBook2 server directly from the Documentation CD 

With a Documentation CD and root access to the system on which the CD is connected, the AnswerBook2 server can run directly from the CD using the ab2cd script. The documentation can be viewed from the CD.

Ability to use CGI-based web servers 

The AnswerBook2 server can run on top of an existing web server, such as Sun WebServer^TM, rather than requiring an additional web server run on the system solely for AnswerBook2 support.

Ability to control display of style sheet errors 

An environment variable, AB2_DEBUG, can be set on the AnswerBook2 server. It controls whether style sheet errors are displayed to the user with a red "BUG."

Language Support 

Enhanced language framework 

• Solaris software has expanded its Unicode support with the addition of six new UTF-8 locales: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and Europe. Also, enhanced Unicode locale with multiscript capability is included. Users can input and display text from different writing scripts such as Japanese, Thai, and Russian, and easily switch between the scripts without having to change to or install a new locale.

• Complex text support has been integrated for complex text layout languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai, which require special text pre-processing to handle bidirectional, composite, and context-sensitive text.

• Solaris 7 software implements the Internet Intranet Input Method Protocol (IIIMP) to enable seamless interoperability between the input methods provided in Solaris, Java, and non-X Windows applications.

• The Desktop Font Downloader enables users to download, remove, re-encode and convert fonts, check status, and perform other administrative tasks on a PostScript^TM printer.

Expanded locale support 

• The European Community (EC) has agreed to standardize on a single currency - the "Euro" currency. Beginning January 1999, all foreign exchange, banking, and finance industries in the EC will convert from using their local currencies to using the Euro. In anticipation of this changeover, Solaris 7 software has added support for the Euro currency with six new user locales.

• Solaris software has added support for the Eastern European, Thai, and the Middle Eastern regions.

Standards 

UNIX 98 branding 

Solaris 7 software is branded UNIX® 98.

Software Developer Environment 

64-bit developer environment (SPARC only) 

The Solaris 7 operating environment provides developers with complete 32-bit and 64-bit development environments. 

Runtime linker  

The runtime linker permits programs to find shared libraries without having to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH and makes the loading of shared libraries even more efficient.

man utility now displays SGML code

The man utility is now able to display man pages that are coded with SGML, as well as the traditional nroff.

Solaris 64-bit X Window libraries 

All of the core X11 shared libraries (.so) and all lint libraries (.ln) for programmers provided in 32-bit versions are available in 64-bit versions for 64-bit Solaris software.

Java Development Kit for Solaris performance improvements 

The Java Development Kit 1.1.5 for Solaris has been specially tuned and tested. As a result, it offers significantly improved scalability and performance for Java applications developed for, and deployed in, the enterprise and across the network. 

WebNFS Software Development Kit included 

The WebNFS Software Development Kit (SDK) provides remote file access for Java applications using WebNFS. Since it implements the NFS^TM protocol directly, it requires no NFS support on the host system.

truss now performs function-call tracing

The truss utility traces the system calls, signals, and machine faults of a process. It has been enhanced with a new option to enable entry and exit tracing of user-level function calls executed by the traced process.

Improved device configuration library 

The libdevinfo library, used to obtain device configuration information, has been made more robust and comprehensive in Solaris 7 software. For more information, see the man page libdevinfo(3).

Graphics/Imaging 

XIL^TM

The XIL foundation imaging library is suitable for libraries or applications requiring imaging or digital video, such as document imaging, color prepress, or digital video generation and playback. 

New support for stereoscopic image display enables the presentation of image pairs representing a left-eye/right-eye view. This provides an image display with depth perception. 

The XIL Developer's Kit is now separate from Solaris and is available free of charge. 

Desktop 

Common Desktop Environment, (CDE) 

CDE contains new tools to make it easy to find, manipulate, and manage address cards, applications, email addresses, files, folders, hosts, processes, and web addresses. 

Included in CDE is support for Motif 2.1, which includes five new Motif widgets and is MT-safe. Motif 2.1 supports ISO standard Complex Text Language locales in which a single binary developed on the Solaris 7 operating environment provides advanced and standard support for Hebrew, Arabic, and Thai customers. 

Printing 

Enhanced Font Management 

The Desktop Font Downloader allows users to download, remove, re-encode and convert fonts, check status, and perform other administrative tasks on a PostScript printer. 

Intel Platform Edition Hardware Support

SCSI disk driver sd

The sd SCSI disk target driver, formerly supplied only on Solaris (SPARC Platform Edition) systems, is now used for SCSI disk support and ATAPI CD-ROM support in place of cmdk. The cmdk driver is still available to support non-SCSI hard disks.

Intelligent I/O framework support 

Intelligent I/O (I2O) is an emerging standard for modular, high-performance I/O subsystems. This feature, which is dependent on I2O-capable hardware, is only available for Solaris (Intel Platform Edition).

Java 

Java Virtual Machine 

The Java Virtual Machine 1.1 integrates the Java platform for the Solaris operating environment. It includes the Java runtime environment and the basic tools needed to develop Java applets and applications. 

HotJava^TM browser

The HotJava browser provides an easy-to-use, customizable user interface for exploring the Internet and corporate intranets. It can run executable content in the form of applets. (Applets are Java programs that can be included in an HTML page, much like images can be included.) 

Intranet/Internet Services 

WebNFS software 

The WebNFS software enables file systems to be accessed through the Web using the NFS protocol. This protocol is very reliable and provides greater throughput under a heavy load.  

Performance Improvements 

Database Performance 

UFS direct I/O 

For UFS files, direct I/O enables a program to read and write data directly from and to the disk, bypassing the virtual memory buffer cache. An example of a bulk I/O operation is downloading large amounts of satellite data to a file. 

Raw I/O 

Improvements were made to low-level I/O support routines that dramatically improve throughput for I/O to disk devices without a file system (raw devices often used for database files.). The driver for the SPARCstorage^TM Array was rewritten to improve its throughput.

Network/Web Performance 

Kernel sockets 

The kernel sockets implementation provides improved compatibility with SunOS 4.x and BSD sockets, and enables higher socket performance. 

TCP large windows 

TCP large windows provides the support described in RFC1323. It improves performance over high-bandwidth networks such as ATM, or high-delay networks such as satellite links, by using windows that exceed the normal 64-Kbyte limit. 

Zero copy TCP/hardware checksum 

Zero copy TCP has been used to eliminate copying from user-space to kernel-space.  

Support for hardware checksum has been added as well. Performance is improved by avoiding software computation of the checksum, off-loading the work to a network adapter that supports it. This is currently only supported on the SunATM^TM card.

Ease-of-Use and Management Improvements 

Installation 

Solaris Web Start browser-based installation 

Solaris Web Start is a browser-based utility that guides users through selection and installation of both Solaris and bundled application software. 

Installation documentation 

IA device configuration 

The Configuration Assistant interface is part of the new booting system for the Solaris (Intel Platform Edition) software. It determines which hardware devices are in the machine, accounts for the resources each device uses, and enables users to choose which device to boot from.

IA configuring peripherals 

The kdmconfig program is used to configure the mouse, graphics adapter, and monitor on an IA based system. If an Owconfig file already exists, kdmconfig will extract any usable information from it. In addition, this updated version of kdmconfig will also retrieve information left in the devinfo tree by the devconf program, and use that information to automatically identify devices.

Changed Solaris CD layout 

Slice 0 on the Solaris CD has been reorganized to make it more intuitive and extensible. 

Upgrade with disk space reallocation 

The upgrade option provides an auto-layout feature to reallocate disk space if the current file systems don't have enough space for the upgrade.

Testing upgrade profiles 

The pfinstall command is now available to test profiles that use the upgrade option.

Changing a system's boot device 

A system's boot device is now changeable during installation. 

Preconfiguring system Configuration information 

Using the sysidcfg file, you can now preconfigure system configuration information through a set of keywords. You can choose to provide one or more of the keywords to preconfigure varying levels of system information.

Optional 8-bit locales 

Documentation 

AnswerBook2 documentation 

Solaris online documentation can be accessed with any popular browser. The AnswerBook2 viewer uses a web browser-based interface that enables users to view and print a variety of Solaris information, including existing AnswerBook^TM documents and man pages.

Desktop 

Common Desktop Environment (CDE) 

Solaris CDE is an advanced Motif-based desktop with an easy-to-use interface that provides a consistent look and feel across UNIX® platforms. With Solaris CDE you can run OpenWindows^TM applications without modifications. In addition, CDE applications are integrated with the Web; for example, you can click on an HTTP address in a CDE Mailer message and a browser will open to the selected address.

Power Management for SPARC desktops 

Power Management software enables users to be more frugal with power consumption on desktop systems when they are not being used. By default, all UltraSPARC desktop systems power off when left alone for 30 minutes. Users can modify or turn off Power Management if needed. 

OpenWindows desktop 

The OpenWindows 3.6 desktop and libraries have been updated with bug fixes and prepared for the year 2000. 

New user locales  

Ten new locales are added for Eastern European, Russian, Greek, and Baltic states. 

Two locales that are Unicode 2.0 and ISO 10646 compliant have been added. These locales enable multiscript input and output and are the first locales provided in the Solaris environment with this capability. These locales support the CDE environment only, including the Motif and CDE libraries 

Font administration 

- Font Admin enables easy installation and usage of fonts for the X Window System. It supports TrueType, Type0, Type1, and CID fonts for multibyte languages, and provides comparative font preview capability. It is fully integrated into the CDE desktop. 

- TrueType fonts are supported through X and Display PostScript. Font Admin enables easy installation and integration of third-party fonts into the Solaris environment. 

Solaris 2.6 software has been re-architected to the historical dependency on the Extended UNIX Codeset (EUC). Additional codeset support and locales for popular Asian PC encoding standards (ShiftJIS (PCK) in Japan, Big5 in PRC, and Johap) in Korea are also provided. These locales support the CDE environment only, including the Motif and CDE libraries. 

Standards 

X/Open UNIX 95 

(Spec 1170) 

The previous release of the Solaris software was compliant with much of Spec 1170. The Solaris 2.6 release now meets all the requirements. 

X/Open XFN CAE 

Federated Naming Service (FNS) is now compliant with the X/Open XFN CAE definition.  

POSIX 1003.1b 

POSIX real-time functionality is added. This includes full support for POSIX AIO (with the exception of the -PRIORITIZED I/O option) and some new extensions to support 64-bit files (see "Large Files").

The ISO 10646 standard defines Unicode 2.0, including UCS-2 and UTF-8 (the standard UNIX implementation). All implementations specified in this standard are Unicode 2.0 compliant. 

Robust Software Developer Environment 

Large files 

Large files are supported on UFS, NFS, and CacheFS^TM file systems. The interfaces defined by the Large File Summit are supported.

Versioning/scoped libraries 

Developers of shared libraries can now have better control over the public interfaces that they offer. This helps to control the dependencies that applications have on these shared libraries. It also means the applications are more portable and less affected by changes in the shared libraries, thus leading to higher-quality products for both. In the Solaris 2.6 operating environment, the system libraries take advantage of this technology and have been both scoped and versioned. 

Scheduler activations 

Scheduler activations provide additional kernel scheduling support for multithreaded applications.  

Pre-emption control 

Pre-emption control allows application control over kernel pre-emption. 

/proc File system and watchpoints

The previous flat /proc file system has been restructured into a directory hierarchy that contains additional subdirectories for state information and control functions. It also provides a watchpoint facility to monitor access to and modifications of data in the process address space. The adb(1) command uses this facility to provide watchpoints.

Federated naming service (FNS) 

FNS is now compliant with the X/Open XFN CAE definition. FNS has also been enhanced to include support for Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and provides improved support for the files and NIS back ends. 

Asynchronous I/O support for tapes provides an interface to improve performance on high-performance tape devices. With the ability to queue up I/O requests, this feature significantly improves the I/O throughput. 

Solaris Developer Kit (SDK) 

The SDK software is now built into the Solaris operating environment and is no longer an unbundled product. All the information a developer needs to produce applications and graphics handlers for end-user Solaris runtime environments is now available in this Solaris release. 

Graphics 

XGL^TM

The XGL 2-D and 3-D immediate-mode API provides portability across hardware platforms and optimal performance from graphics acceleration. The XGL API includes support for raster text, environment and vertex-level texture mapping, four-component texture mapping, DGA transparent overlay, and triangle list Gcache. 

XIL 

The XIL foundation imaging library is suitable for libraries or applications requiring imaging or digital video, such as document imaging, color prepress, or digital video generation and playback. The following features are new in the Solaris 2.6 release. The XIL 1.3 library:  

- Is MT-hot 

- Supports the 32-bit, single-precision, floating-point data type 

- Supports temporary images 

- Supports the new XIL_GENERAL storage format

- Includes Kodak Color Management System (KCMS) support 

- Supports the new XIL_BAND_SEQUENTIAL storage format for all data types

- Saves on memory use with tiled storage 

PEX^TM 3.0.2 runtime environment

The PEX application programmer interface (API) provides application portability across platforms and 3-D graphics on local and remote displays. 

KCMS multithreaded programming 

KCMS now supports multithreaded programs: it is multithread safe (MT-safe). A KCMS application using multithreaded capabilities does not require locks around KCMS library calls. 

X11R6 base window system 

The X11R6 Base Windowing System includes the latest fixes and patches from the X Consortium. 

X11 double buffer extension 

The double buffer extension (DBE) provides a standard way to use double-buffering within the framework of the X Window System. Double-buffering uses two buffers, called "front" and "back," that hold images. The front buffer is visible to the user; the back buffer is not. A detailed specification is available via an Internet browser at ftp://ftp.x.org/pub/DOCS/DBE/

Large Files Support 

Large files 

Large files are supported on UFS, NFS, and CacheFS file systems. Applications can create and access files up to one Tbyte on UFS-mounted file systems and up to the limit of the NFS server for NFS- and CacheFS-mounted file systems. A new -mount option is available to disable the large-file support on UFS file systems. This -mount option gives the system administrator a way to ensure that older applications that are not able to safely handle large files will not accidentally operate on large files.

64-bit AIO 

The Solaris operating environment provides a new set of interfaces for developers who want to do asynchronous I/O to large files. These interfaces are integrated with KAIO in an implementation technique that optimizes I/O to raw files. They are automatically selected by either the Solaris AIO interfaces or the new POSIX AIO interfaces. KAIO is the optimized path for doing I/O to raw files. When using the interfaces with KAIO to raw files, there is a significant performance improvement. 

Network Security  

NFS Kerberos 

Kerberos authentication uses DES encryption to improve security over the network. The kernel implementations of NFS and RPC network services now support a new RPC authentication flavor that is based on the Generalized Security Services API (GSS-API). This support contains the hooks to add stronger security to the NFS environment. 

RPCSEC_GSS

The user-level RPC implementation supports a new authentication flavor. This flavor is based on the GSS-API and provides the hooks to add stronger authentication, privacy, and integrity for RPC-based services. 

Authentication modules (PAM)  

The PAM framework enables you to "plug in" new authentication technologies. 

BIND version 4.9.4-P1 

Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND), the most popular DNS implementation, has been upgraded to 4.9.4-P1. It addresses many of the security problems found in earlier versions of the implementation.  

Network Management and System Administration 

Network time protocol (NTP) 

Solaris software now supports NTP, which provides both precise time and/or network clock synchronization for use in distributed computing environments. In the past, Solaris customers could use a publicly available version of NTP. The new support provides increased time precision. 

Solstice^TM Enterprise Agents^TM

Solstice Enterprise Agents (SEA) is based on the new extensible agent technology or master/subagent technology. SEA is for component developers and system and network managers who want to develop custom Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), or Desktop Management Interface (DMI) subagents, to instrument different components, subsystems, and applications within a device to enable management from an SNMP management console. 

DHCP  

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) enables a host to get an Internet protocol address and other system configuration parameters without preconfiguration by the administrator.  

NFS client failover 

Client failover provides a high level of availability of read-only file systems by enabling the client to automatically mount the file system from another server if the first server becomes unavailable. 

Variable length subnet mask (VLSM) 

VLSM enables more efficient use of IP address space by enabling the TCP/IP administrator to use Classless InterDomain Routing (CIDR) to partition this space in a flexible manner. 

Routing sockets 

Conformance with the de facto routing socket interface as implemented by 4.4 BSD, which allows use of CIDR-aware routing protocols such as OSPF, BGP-4, and RIPv2, is now included. 

autofs

The new autofs automount daemon is now fully multithreaded. This enables concurrent servicing of multiple mount requests and increases reliability.

Processor sets 

Processor sets give the system administrator control over the allocation of processes to sets of processors. 

NIS+ backup/fast restore

NIS+ backup and restore provide a quick and efficient method of backing up and restoring NIS+ namespaces.

NIS+ over a wide area network (WAN) 

Server-use customization enables NIS+ administrators to specify NIS+ server search order for clients that need naming services. Server use can be balanced among various clients by designating different servers for different clients as "preferred" (primary). If a client cannot obtain information from its preferred servers, the order in which the client seeks out other servers can be specified. This feature is particularly useful when a NIS+ domain spans a WAN link, because administrators can reduce network traffic over the WAN link by specifying that clients first try to obtain the naming service from servers on the client's side of the link. 

NIS server 

Solaris software now natively supports the NIS server. In previous Solaris releases, the NIS server was supported under emulation mode by the NIS+ server or using an unbundled product named NSkit. 

CFS boot 

CFS Boot enables AutoClient^TM systems to boot more quickly with less network traffic by booting from a local CacheFS disk cache. The first system boot populates the cache. System boots that follow are satisfied from the cache.

Patch tools 

Patch tools, including patchadd and patchrm commands to add and remove patches, are now part of the Solaris software, rather than shipping with each individual patch as installpatch and backoutpatch commands.

isalist utilities

isalist is a set of utilities that enables users to find out which instruction sets are supported on their machines and also to determine which one performs best for them.

Printing 

Printing 

The Solaris 2.6 print software offers a better solution than the LP print software in previous Solaris releases. System administrators can easily set up and manage print clients using the NIS or NIS+ name services. This means print administration can be centralized for a network of systems and printers. New features include:  

- Redesign of print packages 

- Print protocol adapter 

- Print Client 

- Network printer support 

Hardware Support 

PCMCIA PC card 

PCMCIA delivers a PCMCIA supplement into a Solaris Device Driver Kit to enable OEMs and third parties to develop PC Card device drivers that will be source-compatible across all Solaris platforms. 

Nomadic Support 

filesync

filesync ensures that data is moved automatically between a portable computer and a server.