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Information Library for Solaris 2.6 (SPARC Platform Edition)

Network Management and System Administration

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.

Network Time Protocol (NTP)

This Solaris release 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 Enterprise Agents (SEA)

Based on the new extensible agent technology or Master/subagent technology, SunSoft provides the solution Solstice Enterprise Agents (SEA). The agents consist of a Master Agent and subagents. The Master Agent receives and responds to Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or Desktop Management Interface (DMI) requests. The responses are sent after retrieving the appropriate values from the respective subagents. The subagents manage information bases (MIBs or MIFs) designed for specific components and applications. Enterprise Agents also enable users to integrate and use SNMP-based Legacy Agents.

SEA is for both component developers and system and network managers who want to develop custom SNMP or 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 (IP) address and other system configuration parameters preconfigured by the administrator on the DHCP sever. DHCP also enables the host to give up this address when it is no longer required, or when the designated period for its use ends. This protocol improves on the traditional IP address allocation where the system administrator must assign or change each IP address individually. Both DHCP server and client-side support are provided.

For more information, see TCP/IP Network Administration Guide.

NFS Client Failover

Client failover provides for a high level of availability of read-only file systems by allowing the client to mount files from another server as needed. The failover is transparent to the client, so work is not disturbed if one server has problems as long as there is a replica available.

More information about NFS client failover can be found in NFS Administration Guide.

Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM)

Previously, the Solaris operating environment supported the use of a single netmask for each network number in use on a network. The netmask determines which bits of an IP network number represent the subnet, and which represent the host number. Using variable-length subnet masks (VLSM) enables more efficient use of IP addresses in large networks. With VLSM, the TCP/IP administrator can now use multiple netmasks for a given network number, tailoring each mask according to the size of each individual subnetwork. When deciding how to route an IP packet, Solaris automatically uses the longest matching netmask.

For example, in prior releases an administrator could subdivide the network 192.168.1.0 into eight subnets by using a netmask of 255.255.255.224. By using VLSM, this network number can instead be broken into

In addition, the use of VLSM allows supernetting or aggregation of network numbers, which can result in substantial savings in the sizes of routing tables carried by network routers. These two techniques make it possible to implement Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) as described in RFC1519.

To fully utilize VLSM in a network, CIDR-aware protocols such as OSPF, BGP-4, or RIPv2 must be used.

For more information, see TCP/IP and Data Communications Administration Guide.

Routing Sockets

The Solaris operating environment now conforms to the de facto routing socket interface as implemented by 4.4 BSD. This interface enables netmask information to be shared between routing protocol implementations and the kernel. It can also be used by implementations of CIDR-aware routing protocols.

Although the Solaris software does not deliver a routing daemon that implements these protocols, TCP/IP administrators are advised to contact the Merit GateD Consortium (http://www.gated.org/) for information on Gated. Gated is a program that implements these and other routing protocols and uses the routing socket interface.

Processor Sets

Processor sets allow a group of processors to be allocated for the exclusive use of one or more applications. The /usr/sbin/psrset command gives a system administrator control over the creation, management, and binding of processes into processor sets.

See the psrset(1M) man page for more information.

autofs

autofs is a file system that automatically mounts file systems as needed and unmounts them when they are not being used. The new automount daemon is now fully multithreaded. This enables concurrent servicing of multiple mount requests. The new functionality makes the service more reliable.

The autofs service now supports browsability of indirect autofs maps. All mountable entries under an autofs mount point can be visible without the overhead of mounting them first. By default the /home and /net autofs mount points will have browsing disabled, but all other indirect mount points will be browsable. The ability to browse can be administered at the host level with the automount command and at a name-space level through the autofs maps.

In addition, better on-demand mounting of hierarchically related file systems is included. Previous releases automounted an entire set of file systems if they were hierarchically related, even if only one file system was referenced. Now, the file system that is referenced is dynamically mounted without the other file systems in the hierarchy.

For more information, see NFS Administration Guide.

NIS+ backup and Fast restore

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

For more information, see Solaris Naming Administration Guide.

NIS+ Over a Wide Area Network (WAN)

NIS+ administrators can now 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). The order in which the client seeks out other servers when it cannot obtain information from its preferred server can be specified. This feature is particularly useful when a NIS+ domain spans a Wide Area Network (WAN) link. 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+ administrators can also specify what a client does when no preferred server is available.

For more information, see Solaris Naming Administration Guide.

NIS Server

The Solaris operating environment now natively supports the NIS server. In previous Solaris releases, the NIS server was supported under emulation mode by the NIS+ server or by an unbundled product named NSkit. Bundling the NIS server is intended to aid the transition from the SunOS 4.x to the Solaris 2.6.

CFS Boot

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

For more information, see System Administration Guide.

Patch Tools

In previous releases, patch installation and removal tools and their corresponding documentation were delivered as part of each patch shipped. These tools are now part of the Solaris software, which provides the following benefits:

New Patch Commands

The patchadd and patchrm commands are used to add and remove patches from a Solaris 2.x system. They cannot be used to manage patches on a Solaris 1.x system.

You can add one or more patches to a system, client, service, or a net install image.

A patch is added to the local system by typing, for example:


# patchadd /var/spool/patch/104946-02

A patch is added to a client by specifying the client's root directory on a server, for example:


server# patchadd -R /export/root/client1 /var/spool/patch/104946-02

A patch is added to a service area (a usr file system, from any Solaris release setup on a server that is usually mounted as read only by the clients the server serves) by specifying the service area on the server, for example:


server# patchadd -S Solaris_2.3 /var/spool/patch/104946-02

If a patch contains both root and usr packages in the patch, the patchadd command must be issued twice: once with the -R option to apply the patch's root package, and once with the -S option to apply the patch's usr package.

See the patchadd(1M) and patchrm(1M) man pages and System Administration Guide for more information.

Isalist

Isalist is a set of utilities for SPARC systems that enables users to find out which instruction sets are supported on their machines and also to determine which one will perform the best for them. The set of utilities include:

Currently there are many variations of the SPARC processor, some of which can be treated as separate instruction sets. An application binary that is compiled for one variation may not run, or may run with performance degradation, or may run normally on a machine implementing a different variation. The Isalist utilities provide a standard interface so users can choose their application binary correctly to obtain maximum performance. For example, a system administrator can write a wrapper script and use the output of isalist and optisa to choose the appropriate binary for a given application.