Chapter 3 Managing With Solaris Management Console

The Solaris Management Console is new in the Solaris 8 1/01 release. For general information about Solaris system management, see the System Administration Guide, Volume 1.

For the most current man pages, use the man command. The Solaris 8 Update release man pages include new feature information that is not in the Solaris 8 Reference Manual Collection.

Solaris Management Console Overview

Solaris Management Console (SMC) 2.0 is a GUI-based "umbrella application" that serves as the launching point for a variety of management tools. The SMC comes complete with a default toolbox that contains the following tools:

• Processes – Suspend, resume, monitor, and control processes.

• Users – Set up and maintain user accounts, user templates, groups, mailing lists, Administrative Roles, and Rights. Grant or deny rights to users and to administrative roles—to control the specific applications each can work with and which tasks each user can perform.

• Scheduled Jobs – Schedule, start, and manage jobs.

• Mounts and Shares – View and manage mounts, shares, and usage information.

• Disks – Create and view disk partitions.

• Serial Ports – Configure and manage existing serial ports.

• Log Viewer – View application and command-line messages and manage log files.

You can also manage diskless clients, but with commands only, not through the GUI. See "Using the Command Line Interface."

You can add or delete tools from the default toolbox, or create a new toolbox to manage a different set of tools by using the SMC Toolbox Editor.

For more information about starting SMC, see Starting Solaris Management Console. Also, see the help associated with each tool.

Using the Command Line Interface

In addition to working with the GUI-based SMC, you can use the command line interface to:

• Populate security-attribute databases in a name service – smattrpop.1m

• Start the SMC – smc.1m

• Configure the SMC – smcconf.1m

You can also use commands to manage the following:

• Jobs in the crontab database – smcron.1m

• Diskless clients:

  • Available only through the command line, not the GUI – smdiskless.1m

  • List OS services for diskless clients and manage patches on all existing diskless clients – smosservice.1m

  For more information on diskless clients, see Chapter 10, Managing Diskless Clients.

• Entries in the exec_attr database – smexec.1m

• Group entries – smgroup.1m

• Email alias entries – smmaillist.1m

• Batch user operations – smmultiuser.1m

• OS services – smosservice.1m

• Profiles (rights) in the prof_attr and exec_attr databases – smprofile.1m

• Roles and users in role accounts – smrole.1m

• User entries – smuser.1m

For more information about each command, see the individual man page.

Starting Solaris Management Console

The Solaris Management Console (SMC) has three primary components:

• The Console

• The SMC Toolbox Editor

• The SMC server

The Console can be started from the command line (described in the following), from the Tools menu of the CDE front panel, or by double-clicking an SMC icon in Applications Manager or File Manager.

To Start the Console From the Command Line

1. From/usr/sadm/bin (by default), type:

   % smc

   ---

   Note –

   You can start SMC as a normal user, but some tools or applications might not load unless you log in as root, or you assume a role during SMC server login.

   ---

To Start the SMC Toolbox Editor

1. From /usr/sadm/bin (by default), type:

   % smc edit

   ---

   Note –

   You can start the SMC Editor as a normal user, but you will not be able to save a server toolbox unless you log in as root.

   ---

To Determine if the SMC Server Is Running

If you have trouble running SMC, it might be that the SMC server is not running or is somehow in a problem state. To determine if the SMC server is running, do the following:

1. As root, type:

   # /etc/init.d/init.wbem status

   If the SMC server is running, you should get a response like the following:

   SMC server version 2.0.0 running on port 898

To Start the SMC Server

1. As root, type:

   # /etc/init.d/init.wbem start

   After a short time a message should return: "SMC server started."

To Stop the SMC Server

1. As root, type:

   #/etc/init.d/init.wbem stop

   A message should return: "SMC stopped."