Solaris 64-bit Operating Environment
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64-bit operating environment (SPARC
only)
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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.)
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Web Browser
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Netscape Communicator
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Solaris 7 software now ships with Netscape
Communicator.
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Network Management and System Administration
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UFS logging
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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.
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-o noatime UFS
mount option
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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).
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LDAP
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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.
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Dynamic reconfiguration
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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.)
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New commands: pgrep
and pkill
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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.
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sendmail 8.9
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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.
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Traceroute utility
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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.
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System crash dump utility
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The system crash dump features include
the following:
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Network Performance
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TCP with SACK
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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.
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Network Security
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RPCSEC_GSS
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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.
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NIS+ extended Diffie-Hellman
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NIS+ enhances NIS+ security by increasing
the authentication key length from 192 bits to 640 bits.
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BIND 8.1.2
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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).
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Ease-of-Use and Management Improvements
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Installation
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SPARC: Installing a 64-bit operating
environment
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The Solaris
7 installation programs have a new check box for selection of 64-bit support;
it is selected by default when installing on UltraSPARCTM
platforms.
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Installing AnswerBooks with Solaris
Web Start
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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.
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More locale selections
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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.
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Documentation
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Man pages available in AnswerBook2
format
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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.
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Running an AnswerBook2 server
directly from the Documentation CD
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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.
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Ability to use CGI-based web servers
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The AnswerBook2 server
can run on top of an existing web server, such as Sun WebServerTM, rather than requiring an additional web server run on the system
solely for AnswerBook2 support.
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Ability to control display of
style sheet errors
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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."
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Language Support
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Enhanced language framework
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Desktop Font Downloader enables users to download, remove,
re-encode and convert fonts, check status, and perform other administrative
tasks on a PostScriptTM printer.
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Expanded locale support
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-
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.
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Standards
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UNIX 98 branding
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Solaris 7 software is branded UNIX® 98.
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Software Developer Environment
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64-bit developer environment (SPARC
only)
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The Solaris 7 operating
environment provides developers with complete 32-bit and 64-bit development
environments.
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Runtime linker
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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.
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man utility
now displays SGML code
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The man utility is now able to display man pages that are
coded with SGML, as well as the traditional nroff.
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Solaris 64-bit X Window libraries
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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.
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Java Development Kit for Solaris
performance improvements
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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.
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WebNFS Software Development Kit
included
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The WebNFS Software
Development Kit (SDK) provides remote file access for Java applications using
WebNFS. Since it implements the NFSTM protocol directly,
it requires no NFS support on the host system.
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truss now performs
function-call tracing
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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.
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Improved device configuration
library
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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).
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Graphics/Imaging
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XILTM
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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.
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Desktop
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Common Desktop Environment, (CDE)
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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.
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Printing
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Enhanced Font Management
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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.
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Intel Platform Edition Hardware Support
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SCSI disk driver sd
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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.
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Intelligent I/O framework support
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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).
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