test

What's New in the Solaris 8 Operating Environment

Chapter 2 What's New: A Closer Look

This chapter describes new features of the Solaris 8 release in detail. For a list of features with brief descriptions, see Chapter 1, What's New at a Glance.

The Solaris 8 operating environment includes advanced technologies for multithreading, symmetric multiprocessing, integrated TCP/IP-based networking, large file handling on the 64-bit operating environment, and centralized network administration tools. This Solaris release provides many new features that improve an already powerful, stable, operating environment.

Some of the key features are:

IPv6

The Internet Protocol (IP), version 6 (IPv6), is an evolutionary step from the current version, IPv4. Deploying IPv6, using defined transition mechanisms, does not disrupt current operations. 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.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

Native LDAP

Native Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) provides the Naming Service switch back-end support for LDAP based directory service. With the Solaris 8 operating environment, network administrators can now specify LDAP as the desired name service to directory entry access by copying the nsswitch.ldap template file to /etc/nsswitch.conf.

For more information, see the Solaris Naming Administration Guide and the Solaris Naming Setup and Configuration Guide.

Java 2 SDK for Solaris

The Java 2 SDK, Standard Edition version 1.2.1_04, provides substantially increased scalability and performance compared to the 1.1 releases, especially for server-class applications. The Java 2 SDK for Solaris includes these enhancements:

Java 2 has replaced JDK 1.1 as the default JDK in the Solaris 8 operating environment. JDK 1.1.8_09 is still available for applications that encounter incompatibility with the default Java 2 JDK.

For more information, see the Java 2 SDK for Solaris Developer's Guide.

Installation and Management

The Solaris operating environment is a large, feature-rich environment; its structure gives customers the flexibility to meet their needs. New features enable customers to easily install and manage the Solaris environment.

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. Solaris Web Start also now includes an upgrade capability and the "Kiosk," a browser-based environment in which information such as documentation, web pages, and other content is displayed as the user installs the Solaris operating environment.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Guide or the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Guide.

Booting a System Over the Network With DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) support for booting a system over the network has been added to this Solaris release.

A system on the network can now use DHCP to acquire boot parameters and network configuration information needed to boot over the network. DHCP booting is supported on certain SPARC systems and IA based systems.

Previously, a system was booted over the network using Reverse Address Resolution Protocol (RARP) by default. Now you can choose either DHCP or RARP for network booting.

A DHCP server must be installed and configured for your network prior to using DHCP to boot a system over the network. For information on setting up a DHCP server, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

For information on booting a system over the network, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 1.

IA: Boot Partition in Solaris 8

Users running Solaris Intel Platform Edition can now designate a separate IA boot partition. This boot partition, which requires 10 Mbytes of disk space, can be installed on a disk separate from the rest of the Solaris operating environment, thus enabling the user to install more than one operating system on a machine. Only the boot partition needs to be located on the boot disk.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide.

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.

The BIOS on most IA based motherboards manufactured since late 1997 supports the "El Torito" standard and thus recognizes CD-ROM drives as boot devices. To turn on this capability, the user runs the system's BIOS setup tool.

DHCP Manager

DHCP Manager provides a Java-based graphical interface for configuring and managing the Solaris DHCP server and DHCP databases. It enables 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.

DHCP Manager can be used instead of the Solaris DHCP command-line utilities, or in combination with them.

DHCP Manager provides the following benefits:

For more information about DHCP Manager, see the dhcpmgr(1M) man page and the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

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. Previously, only the first 8 Gbytes of any IDE disk could be used by Solaris Intel Platform Edition; also, only the first 8 Gbytes could be used for a root slice by either SCSI or IDE disks. Both of these restrictions have been removed on systems with improved BIOS interfaces.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Guide.

Solaris WBEM Services

Solaris WBEM Services software is an implementation of Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) on the Solaris 8 operating environment. WBEM is an industry-wide initiative that includes standards for web-based management of systems, networks, and devices on multiple platforms. Solaris WBEM Services software makes it easier for software developers to create management applications that run in the Solaris operating environment and makes the Solaris operating environment easier to manage. Solaris WBEM Services sofware provides secure access and manipulation of management data. The product includes a built-in Solaris provider that enables management applications to access information about managed resources (devices and software) in the Solaris operating environment.

Solaris WBEM Services software provides the following services:

For detailed information about using Solaris WBEM Services, see the Solaris WBEM Services Administrator's Guide.

Support for DNS in System Identification Utilities

Domain name system (DNS) has been added to the list of name services that can be configured through the system identification utilities. DNS is presented as a choice if no other name services are auto-detected, but can also be specified in the sysidcfg file. DNS cannot be auto-detected without the sysidcfg file.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

Support for IPv6 in the System Identification Utilities

Systems can now be configured at install time to use IPv6 in addition to IPv4. There is currently no way to auto-detect IPv6, so users are asked at install time whether or not a system is to be configured to use IPv6 unless a user specifies that IPv6 be used in a sysidcfg file.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 Advanced Installation Guide.

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). In previous releases, only 48 pseudo-terminals were allocated by default. Solaris 8 software now allocates pseudo-terminals dynamically when they are needed, automatically adapting to the work load. This benefits desktop users and system administrators who deal with large numbers of open terminal sessions.

Reading Documentation on the Solaris 8 Documentation CD

The ab2cd script enables all users to read AnswerBook 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.

For more information about the ab2cd, see the man page, ab2cd(1M).

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

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:

For more information, see Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Guide or Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

Networking

The Solaris operating environment provides a stable and reliable networking environment. New network management and system administration features in this release expand tools for managing this environment.

SPARC: InterDomain Networks

InterDomain Networks (IDNs) enable the user to set up high-speed network connections between dynamic system domains without special hardware. Only certain SPARC servers support IDN. See your hardware manufacturer's documentation for information about whether your server supports IDNs.

For more information, see the Sun Enterprise 10000 InterDomain Networks User Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

IPsec for IPv4

The IP Security Architecture (IPsec) provides protection for IP datagrams. The protection can include confidentiality, strong integrity of the data, partial sequence integrity (replay protection), and data authentication. IPsec is the authentication and encryption mechanism that affects the IP layer and can be effective with or without the knowledge of applications.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

IPv6 NFS/RPC Compliant

This feature adds IPv6 support to NFS 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.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

LLC2 Protocol

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. The LLC2 driver, which appears as a driver to the network software, resides in the kernel and is accessed by standard UNIX STREAMS functions.

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. The Data Link Provider Interface (DLPI) to the LLC2 driver enables multiple and different protocol stacks, (including NetBIOS and SNA), to operate simultaneously over one or more local area networks.

For more information on LLC2, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3. For more information on DLPI, see the STREAMS Programming Guide and the man page dlpi(7P).

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

NIS/NIS+ Over IPv6 Transports

Users can store IPv6 addresses in the NIS, NIS+, and DNS naming services, and also use NIS and NIS+ over IPv6 RPC transports to retrieve any NIS or NIS+ data. Two new maps have been added for NIS: ipnodes.byname and ipnodes.byaddr. These maps can contain both IPv4 and IPv6 information. A new table, ipnodes.org_dir, has been added for NIS+, and it can also contain both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. While use of the new ipnodes(4) database is preferred for both IPv4 and IPv6, the hosts(4) database continues to be supported for IPv4 addresses.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

sendmail 8.9.3

This version includes a new option, MaxHeadersLength, that limits the length of the sum of all header lines in any given message, which can prevent a denial-of-service attack. Also included is a new version of mail.local that implements the Local Mail Transfer Protocol, RFC 2033. This change allows for re-queuing of mail to the recipients that did not receive a message, rather than re-sending the message to all of the recipients if an error occurs. A new file called /etc/default/sendmail can be used to store options to start sendmail, so that the options are not touched during an upgrade. In addition, a new utility called smrsh increases security by reducing the number of commands that can be run using the |program syntax of sendmail.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

Service Location Protocol

The Service Location Protocol (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 enable developers to write SLP-enabled applications, and provides system administrators a framework for ease of network extensibility.

For more information, see the Service Location Protocol Administration Guide.

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.

The Solaris 8 operating environment also enforces conformance to the Solaris operating environment DDI specified interfaces for the following Solaris STREAMS support functions:

Conformance to the Solaris operating environment DDI specified interfaces has been implemented by redirecting the functions listed above to the ddi.h implementations of these same functions in all cases of usage.

Caution - Caution -

This enforced conformance introduces a risk of system failure in DDI non-compliant drivers and modules that incorrectly use the functions listed above. For DDI non-compliant drivers and modules, a version update of the non-compliant driver/module is required but no code changes are necessary.

For more detailed specifications of the functions listed above, see the STREAMS Programming Guide.

Network Time Protocol (NTP)

NTP is upgraded from 3.4y to 3-5.93e and includes the following new features:

For more information, see System Administration Guide, Volume 2.

File System Enhancements

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect file system management and logging.

Universal Disk Format File System

The Universal Disk Format (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:

The UDF file system is provided as dynamically loadable, 32-bit and 64-bit modules, and contains system administration utilities for creating, mounting, and checking the file system on both SPARC and IA platforms.

When a UDF file system is mounted, users can read, write, or list files from the device, and applications can access UDF file and directories with standard system calls.

See the System Administration Guide, Volume 1 and the man page mount_udfs(1M) for more information.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

NFS Server Logging

NFS server logging allows an NFS server to provide a record of file operations performed on its file systems. The record includes information to keep track of what is accessed, when it is accessed, and who accessed it. The location of the logs that contain this information can be specified through a set of configuration options. These options also can be used to select the operations that should be logged. This feature is particularly useful for sites that make anonymous FTP archives available to NFS and WebNFS clients.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

IA: XMEM Support

Extended Memory (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.

For more information, see the man pages mount_xmemfs(1M) and xmemfs(7FS).

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

WebNFS JavaBeans Component

The WebNFS JavaBeans 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 by using NFS URL naming.

For more information, see the WebNFS Developer's Guide.

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. The default behavior is dfratime. Use the nodfratime option to disable this feature. In addition, the mount option, noatime, turns off access time recording regardless of the dfratime/nodfratime value.

For specific information about UFS mount options, see the mount_ufs(1M) man page.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

Diagnostic and Availability Enhancements

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect system configuration and troubleshooting.

Improved Core File Management

The coreadm command

This release introduces the coreadm command, which provides flexible core file naming conventions and better core file retention. For example, you can use the coreadm command to configure a system so that all process core files are placed in a single system directory. This means it is easier to track problems by examining the core files in a specific directory whenever a Solaris process or daemon terminates abnormally.

Two new configurable core file paths, per-process and global, can be enabled or disabled independent of each other. When a process terminates abnormally, it produces a core file in the current directory as in previous Solaris releases. But if a global core file path is enabled and set to /corefiles/core, for example, then each process that terminates abnormally produces two core files: one in the current working directory and one in the /corefiles directory.

By default, the Solaris core paths and core file retention remain the same.

See the System Administration Guide, Volume 2 and the man page coreadm(1M) for more information.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

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.

The /usr/proc/bin/pstack, pmap, pldd, pflags, and pcred tools can now be applied to core files by specifying the name of the core file on the command line, similar to the way you specify a process ID to these commands. For example:


$ ./a.out
Segmentation Fault(coredump)
$ /usr/proc/bin/pstack ./core
core './core' of 19305: ./a.out
 000108c4 main     (1, ffbef5cc, ffbef5d4, 20800, 0, 0) + 1c
 00010880 _start   (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0) + b8

For more information on using proc tools to examine core files, see the man page proc(1).

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.

In previous Solaris releases, device configuration was handled by drvconfig, which managed the physical device entries in the /devices directory, and five link generators, devlinks, disks, tapes, ports, and audlinks, which managed the logical device entries in the /dev directory. For compatibility purposes, drvconfig and the other link generators are symbolic links to the devfsadm utility.

Both reconfiguration boot processing and updating the /dev and /devices directories in response to dynamic reconfiguration events are handled by devfsadmd, the daemon version of the devfsadm command. This daemon is started from the /etc/rc* scripts when a system is booted.

Since devfsadmd, the devfsadm daemon, automatically detects device configuration changes generated by any reconfiguration event, there is no need to run this command interactively.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

For more information, see the man page devfsadm(1M).

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.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

Modular Debugger

Modular debugger (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. mdb provides a completely customizable environment for debugging complex software systems, such as an operating system, for programs that are highly optimized, have had their debug information removed, or are themselves low-level debugging tools. mdb also handles customer situations where developers can access only post-mortem information.

For more information, see Solaris Modular Debugger Guide and themdb(1) man page.

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.

This feature enables you to dial in to a serial port with a modem to monitor console messages and participate in init state transitions.

For more information, see the man page consadm(1M) and the System Administration Guide, Volume 2.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

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. When an RST packet is transmitted or received, information on as many as 10 packets, transmitted or received immediately before on that connection, is logged with the connection information.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

Performance and Scalability Enhancements

This section describes new tools in the Solaris 8 operating environment for monitoring and improving system performance.

IA: Added Support for PAE Mode

With the release of Pentium Pro, Intel introduced a mode called Physical Address Extension (PAE) on its advanced processors. By using PAE, Solaris Intel Platform Edition can address up to 32 Gbytes of physical memory. Individual processes are still limited to a maximum of 3.5 Gbytes of virtual address space.

PAE mode enables the user to run multiple instances of databases and memory-intensive applications, and to support large numbers of online users on a machine.

It is best to use PCI disk controllers that support Dual Address Cycle (DAC) in your machine because they can transfer data to and from any physical location. Other cards are limited to 4 Gbytes of physical memory, and as a result performance may slow down because the system needs to copy additional memory to transfer data.

Caution - Caution -

Some device drivers are not yet able to take advantage of PAE mode. Sun has tested PCI device drivers written by Sun on IA based machines with more than 4 Gbytes of memory. Sun's OEM partners intend to test their machines with devices they supply on IA based machines with more than 4 Gbytes of memory. In some cases however, if you add a third-party device driver to your system, it may become unstable, and panics and data corruption may result. If your system becomes unstable and you need that driver, you must disable PAE mode support. For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Device Configuration Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

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.

The apptrace tool provides more reliable call-tracing than the previously available sotruss command. It also provides better display of function arguments, return values, and error cases for any Solaris library interface.

By default, apptrace traces calls directly from the executable object, specified on the command line, to every shared library the executable depends on.

For more information, see the man page apptrace(1).

SPARC: busstat

A new system monitoring tool, busstat provides command line access to the bus-related hardware performance counters in the system. It enables the gathering of system-wide bus performance statistics directly from the system hardware. The current list of supported hardware is SBus, AC and PCI devices. These are all SPARC system devices. Currently, there are no IA supported devices.

The busstat command enables the measurement of system-wide statistics such as memory bank reads/writes, clock cycles, number of interrupts, streaming DVMA read/write transfers and so on.

Superuser can use busstat to program these counters. Other users can only read counters programmed previously by superuser.

The busstat command lists the devices in a system that are found to support these hardware performance counters. If no supported devices are found in the system, the following message is displayed:


busstat: No devices available in system.

For more information on using this monitoring tool, see the man page busstat(1M).

Faster Boot for Servers

In the Solaris 8 operating environment, large servers now require significantly less time to boot. As a part of the boot performance improvement, the operating system probes for SCSI devices in parallel. Some old dual-port SCSI devices do not support parallel probing and should be removed from the system before installing or upgrading to the Solaris 8 operating environment.

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).

For more information, see the System Interface Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

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. prstat can also be used to report microstate accounting information and to summarize CPU and memory usage.

For more information, see the man page prstat(1M).

IA: Xeon Enhancements

To maximize performance, Solaris 8 Intel Platform Edition now supports the Page Attribute Table (PAT) feature of IA 32-bit processors (Pentium II and Pentium III). This support enables a device driver writer to take advantage of the write combining feature for a device that can exploit write combining, even if the BIOS does not set up the device for write combining.

For more information, see Writing Device Drivers.

Security Enhancements

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect system security and file system and directory ownership.

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. Each host to be secured by Solaris Smart Cards requires a card reader. To gain access to secured desktops or applications, users first insert their smart cards into the readers and then type the PINs for their cards. Host machines use the PINs and the users' passwords embedded on their cards to verify that users are whom they claim to be.

Solaris Smart Cards supports two external card readers, the Sun Smart Card Reader I and the iButton Reader. Three smart cards are supported, the Java-based iButton and Cyberflex cards, and the Payflex smart card.

The Solaris Smart Cards Administration Guide tells security administrators how to set up smart card support for their sites. It also introduces users to the smart cards technology.

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. The default ownership and permissions changes are:

Keep the following in mind when creating a package to be added to a system running the Solaris 8 release:

These changes do not apply to all files and directories in this release; for example, the changes do not apply to OpenWindows or CDE files and directories.

Role-Based Access Control

Traditional superuser-based systems grant full superuser powers to anyone who can become superuser. With role-based access control (RBAC) in the Solaris 8 operating environment, administrators can assign limited administrative capabilities to normal users. This is achieved through three new features:

The administrator creates an execution profile containing authorizations and privileged commands for a specific task or set of tasks. That profile can be assigned directly to a user or to a role. Roles, in turn, are assigned to users. To gain access to a role, a user with the assigned role executes the su command. Roles have the advantage of being shared accounts that do not need to be updated when individual responsibilities change. The following new files support RBAC:

For more information, see System Administration Guide, Volume 2

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.

Sun Enterprise Authentication Mechanism (Kerberos V5) Client Support

This feature provides the Kerberos V5 client-side infrastructure, an addition to the Pluggable Authentication Module (PAM), and utility programs that can be used to secure RPC based applications, such as the NFS service. Kerberos provides selectable strong user or server level authentication, integrity, or privacy support. The Kerberos clients can be used in conjunction with Sun Enterprise Authentication Mechanism (SEAM) (a part of SEAS 3.0) or other Kerberos V5 software (for instance, the MIT distribution) to create a complete single network sign-on solution.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 2.

Realtime Systems Enhancements

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect real time processes.

High Resolution Timers

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.

This is the last element needed to allow traditional real-time applications to be run under Solaris.

For more information, see the System Interface Guide.

User-level Priority Inheritance

Real-time (RT) applications may run more than one thread in the real-time scheduling class at a time. It is possible for an RT thread with a low priority to get a mutual exclusion lock that then is required by an RT thread with a higher priority. The high priority thread must then wait for the low priority thread to get done with the mutex lock and release it. This condition is called "priority inversion."

The RT 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.

RT threads that use priority inheritance or priority ceiling locks should use PTHREAD_SCOPE_SYSTEM scheduling scope (or bound threads). Unbound threads use PTHREAD_SCOPE_PROCESS scheduling and are unsuitable for the needs of real-time applications.

For more information, see the Multithreaded Programming Guide.

Common Desktop Environment Desktop Enhancements

The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) provides an advanced Motif-based desktop with an easy-to-use interface. The latest release of CDE includes new comprehensive features in desktop productivity, interoperability, and desktop management.

PDA Support

The PDA Synchronization (PDASync) application synchronizes the data from Sun applications such as Desktop Calendar, Desktop Mail, Memo, and Address, with data in similar applications on a user's Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). The PDASync software also enables users to install applications and databases from their workstation or server to their PDA. PDASync supports Palm OS compatible devices.

For more information on the PDASync application, see the Help information on the PDASync software.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

Hot Key Editor

The Hot Key Editor enables users to automate repetitive tasks, such as running executables or CDE actions, by predefining a series of commands to a given function key. This feature provides a GUI that enables users to view a hot key list containing the key, context and function, as well as the ability to edit, delete, and create new hot keys.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

Java Media Framework

The Java Media Framework (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.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

SPARC: Audio Mixer

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

See also "SPARC: Audio Mixer".

SPARC: PC Launcher 1.0

PC launcher 1.0 for SunPCi users enables 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. By incorporating PC launcher into the Solaris CDE desktop, users can share attachments and files created by Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Lotus 1-2-3, and AutoCAD applications.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 5/99 release.

Netscape Application Launcher

The Netscape 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, thus simplifying access to Netscape applications.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

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.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

SDTImage Enhancements

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

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

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.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

ToolTips

ToolTips provides users with Balloon Help, a simple and short description of an icon function. Users can now place their cursor on an icon and the function of the icon is displayed.

For more information, see the Solaris Common Desktop Environment: User's Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

X11R6.4 Support

This new and enhanced version of XServer includes key features that increase user productivity and mobility. These new features include:

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

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

This section describes a new web server as well as new features that affect web browsing and running Java applications on Web pages.

Java Plug-in

Java Plug-in for the Solaris operating environment is an add-on product for Netscape Navigator 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.

For more information, see the Solaris Java Plug-in User's Guide.

Netscape Communicator 4.7

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

Netscape Communicator enables users to communicate, share, and access information over the Internet, and consists of the following tools:

Solaris Network Cache and Accelerator

The Solaris Network Cache and Accelerator (NCA) increases web server performance by maintaining an in-kernel cache of web pages accessed during HTTP requests. NCA provides full HTTP (up to version 1.1) protocol support by either handling the request or by passing it to the web server for processing. This feature requires a NCA-compatible web server.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 3.

Apache Web Server

Apache is an open source implementation of an HTTP web server. It is one of the most popular web servers on the Internet. The open source Apache web server is now shipped with Solaris. It includes all the standard Apache modules, including proxy server support, as well as the mod_perl module.

This product includes software developed by the Apache Group for use in the Apache HTTP server project. See their website, http://www.apache.org.

For more information, see the apache(1) man page.

Printing

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment that affect printer configuration and management.

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.

By including the printers database and corresponding sources of information in the name service switch file, print clients automatically have access to printer configuration information without having to add it to their own systems.

If you use Solaris Print Manager to set up printing in your network, the source of the printer configuration information is selected from the Select Naming Service menu rather than the printers database in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file.

The following table describes the default printers entry in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file for the files, NIS, and NIS+ environments. The nisplus keyword represents the printers.org_dir table. The xfn keyword represents the FNS printer contexts.

If Your Name Service Is ... 

The Default printers Entry Is ...

files

printers: user files

nis

printers: user files nis

nis+

printers: user nisplus files xfn

For example, if your name service is NIS, printer configuration information on print clients is looked up in the following sources in this order:

  1. user -- represents the user's $HOME/.printers file

  2. files -- represents the /etc/printers.conf file

  3. nis -- represents the printers.conf.byname table

For more information, see the man page nsswitch.conf(4) and the Solaris Naming Administration Guide.

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. You must be logged in as superuser to use this tool.

Using Solaris Print Manager is the preferred method for managing printer access instead of Admintool:Printers because Solaris Print Manager centralizes printer information when it is used in a name service environment.

Solaris Print Manager recognizes existing printer information on the printer servers, print clients, and in the name service databases. There are no conversion tasks required to use the new Solaris Print Manager as long as the print clients are running the Solaris 2.6 release or a compatible version.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 2.

Language Support

The Solaris 8 operating environment provides support for over 90 locales, a new, intuitive interface for installing languages, expanded Unicode support, and improved data interoperability utilities.

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.

The Solaris 8 Software CDs provide an English interface to input, display, and print text in a target language, including multibyte locales. In addition, the Solaris 8 Languages CD provides localized interface and documentation.

This new packaging approach greatly simplifies the development and testing of applications for international markets and eliminates the need to purchase an optional media kit to set up a non-English development or production environment.

Customers will also notice a new locale installation mechanism. In previous Solaris releases the locale support included with the operating environment depended on the software cluster installed. The new installation interface in the Solaris 8 operating environment enables users to install only those regions for which they require locale support.

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Improved Language Installation and Setup

Users will find the setup and installation to be significantly easier, whether installing only a single language or the full range of 37 languages packaged with the Solaris 8 operating environment.

Changes to packaging on the Solaris 8 CD have reduced the storage requirements for a mixed language installation and a redesign of the install interface makes language selection and grouping extremely intuitive.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Guide or the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Guide.

Expanded Unicode Support

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

Also, complete support for Complex Text Layout (CTL) scripts has been enabled. This allows proper rendering of text for bidirectional and also context-sensitive shaping scripts like Arabic, Hebrew, and Thai in the Unicode locale.

Unicode is often used in a mixed script environment, where it is necessary to display text from multiple languages in a single environment. In those cases where it is necessary to provide support for cultural-specific conventions such as date and time, monetary format, and collation, the multiple Unicode locales provided in Solaris are quite useful.

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Customer-Extensible Codeset Conversion (geniconvtbl)

Developers have the ability, with the Solaris 8 operating environment, to create user-defined codeset converters, enabling table driven creation and easy addition of new codeset conversions by using the geniconvtbl utility.

This permits user-defined and user-customizable codeset conversions with a standard system utility and interface like iconv(1) and iconv(3C). This new capability enhances the ability of an application to deal with incompatible data types, particularly data generated from proprietary or legacy applications. Modification to existing Solaris codeset conversions is also supported.

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Improved Data Interoperability

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

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

New Locales Added

Two new locales have been added to the Solaris 8 operating environment 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.

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

Documentation

This section describes improvements in the AnswerBook2 server software and the reorganization of the Solaris 8 Reference Manual.

For more information on changes in the Solaris 8 documentation set, see About Solaris 8 Documentation.

AB2 1.4.2 AnswerBook2 Server

The AnswerBook2 version 1.4.2 server software provides improved performance, a textual, rather than graphical, navigation interface, and the ability to view and search information by collection.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (SPARC Platform Edition) Installation Guide or the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Installation Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

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:

In addition, many of the man page suffixes have been changed to reflect the library that contains the function (for example, all man pages describing functions contained in libnsl now have the suffix .3NSL).

For more information, see the Intro(1) man page and About Solaris 8 Documentation.

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.

The audio mixing function is turned on by default and can be turned off as well as on using the new mixerctl(1)utility, or through other methods described in the man page audiocs 7D.

Note -

When running SunVTSTM the mixing function should be disabled.

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:

For more information, see the man pages audiocs(7D), audio_support(7I), and mixer(7I).

Software Developer Environment

The Solaris operating environment provides developers with the documentation, development software libraries, productivity tools, sample code, and testing tools needed to develop software applications for the Solaris runtime environments.

64-bit SPARC: 64-bit KCMS Libraries

Kodak Color Management System (KCMS) 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.

For more information, see the KCMS Application Developer's Guide and the KCMS CMM Developer's Guide.

Always Ready Power Management

The Solaris 8 operating environment provides a new automatic device Power Management framework. A device driver using the new interfaces will be automatically power managed on the appropriate platforms. Unlike previous releases, the /etc/power.conf file no longer needs to be manually updated to start power management of the device.

For more information, see Writing Device Drivers.

The cpustat and cputrack Commands

System administrators can use the new cpustat and cputrack commands to monitor the performance of a system or a process.

The cpustat command gathers system-wide CPU information. This command must be run by the superuser. The cputrack command is similar to the truss command for displaying information about an application or a process. This command can be run by regular users.

Developers can create their own versions of these monitoring tools by using the same library APIs that were used to build the cpustat command.

See cpustat(1M) and cputrack(1) for more information.

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.

For more information, see the Linker and Libraries Guide.

Perl 5

Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) 5.005_03, a powerful general purpose programming language, generally available as free software, is included in this Solaris release.

Perl has emerged as the standard development tool for complex system administration tasks, such as graphic, network, and web programming because of its excellent process, file, and text manipulation features.

Perl 5 includes a dynamically loadable module framework, which allows the addition of new functionality for specific tasks. Many modules are freely available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), at http://www.cpan.org.

Some of the core modules included with this Solaris Perl installation are CGI, NDBM_File, and Getopt. These modules reside in the /usr/perl5/5.00503 directory. The site_perl directory is initially empty and is intended to store your locally installed Perl 5 modules.

To access the Perl5 man pages, add /usr/perl5/man to your MANPATH environment variable. See the man page, perl(1), for general Perl information.

Role-Based Access Control for Developers

The addition of role-based access control (RBAC) to the Solaris operating environment gives developers the opportunity to deliver fine-grained security in new and modified applications. RBAC is an alternative to the all-or-nothing security model of traditional superuser-based systems. With RBAC, an administrator can assign privileged functions to specific user accounts (or special accounts called roles). Developers can now create privileged functions that check for authorizations instead of checking for specific IDs such as superuser.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 2 and the man page rbac(5).

strftime() Function Update

The %u conversion specification for the strftime() function represents a weekday as a decimal number [1,7], with 1 now representing Monday (rather than Sunday, as was the case in the Solaris 7 operating environment). This new behavior conforms to the X/Open CAE Specification, System Interfaces and Headers.

For more information, see the International Language Environments Guide.

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.

For more information, see the Linker and Libraries Guide.

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.

For more information, see the Linker and Libraries Guide.

Alternate One-level Libthread

The standard Solaris threads implementation is a two-level model, in which user-level threads are multiplexed over possibly fewer lightweight processes, (LWPs). An LWP is the fundamental unit of execution that is dispatched to a processor by the operating system.

Solaris 8 software provides an alternate threads implementation, a one-level model, in which user-level threads are associated one-to-one with LWPs. This implementation is simpler than the standard implementation and may be beneficial to some multithreaded applications. It provides the same interfaces for POSIX threads and Solaris threads as for the standard implementation.

Existing multihreaded programs can be bound with the alternate libthread at run time using the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH_64environment variable.

See the threads(3THR) man page for details of usage.

Updated DDI Interfaces for Cluster-aware Device Drivers

An overview introduces the concept of device classes and the necessary interface modifications and additions for device driver writers. The overview is found in Writing Device Drivers.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 3/99 release.

8-bit Visual Support

The 8-bit visual shared library provides a set of translation functions, enabling 8-bit visual applications to run on hardware that only provides support for 24-bit visual depth. The functions use the device driver's native 24-bit rendering function calls for applications requesting 8-bit visual support. This is done by translating 8-bit pseudocolor colormap pixel data into 24-bit truecolor colormap pixel data before rendering an image on the 24-bit hardware visual supported platform.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

IA Hardware

This section describes new features in the Solaris 8 operating environment specific to the IA platform.

IA: ACPI

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (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 a valid ACPI configuration is available on your IA based system, the Solaris 8 operating environment automatically uses it to configure the hardware. The Solaris 8 operating environment does not yet support ACPI-based power management.

IA: 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.

For more information, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 1 and Writing Device Drivers.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 11/99 release.

IA: Universal Serial Bus Support for Keyboards and Mouse Devices

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides Universal Serial Bus (USB) support for keyboards and mouse devices. USB is an emerging I/O bus standard that supports a wide variety of peripherals, such as speakers, modems, printers, and cameras, as well as keyboards and mouse devices. While a fairly new standard, USB is quickly gaining wide acceptance in the Intel market. USB ports are becoming a standard on many IA based machines, and USB support is being integrated into all Intel PCI chip sets.

IA: X Server Video Driver Enhancement

Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides support for the following video devices:

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Hardware Compatibility List.

IA SCSI Drivers

This section describes enhancements in the Solaris 8 Intel Platform Edition operating environment.

cadp Driver Enhancements

The Solaris cadp driver has been enhanced to include support for:

as well as improvements in quality and performance.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Device Configuration Guide.

This feature was first available in the Solaris 7 8/99 release.

ncrs Device Driver Enhancements

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

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Device Configuration Guide and the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Hardware Compatibility List.

symhisl Device Driver

The symhisl device driver, which supports the SYM53C896 chip and the SYM22910 and SYM21002 adapters, is now included in Solaris Intel Platform Edition.

For more information, see the Solaris 8 (Intel Platform Edition) Hardware Compatibility List.

Other Software

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 include: