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What's New in the Solaris 8 Operating Environment

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.