Appendix A summarizes features in the Solaris 8 operating environment.
This appendix includes only features that were in the initial Solaris 8 software release.
Features that were added in the Solaris 8 Update releases are documented in the Solaris 9 chapters.
Feature Description |
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IPv6 IPv6 adds increased address space and improves Internet functionality by using a simplified header format, support for authentication and privacy, and autoconfiguration of address assignments. IPv6 also enables new quality-of-service capabilities. |
Feature Description |
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Native Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) Native LDAP provides the Naming Service switch back-end support for LDAP-based directory service. |
Feature Description |
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SPARC: InterDomain Networks (IDNs) IDNs enable the user to set up high-speed network connections between dynamic system domains without the need for special hardware. |
IP Security Architecture (IPsec) for IPv4 IPsec provides protection for IP datagrams. The protection can include confidentiality, strong integrity of the data, partial sequence integrity (replay protection), and data authentication. |
IPv6 NFS/RPC Compliant This feature adds IPv6 support to NFS and RPC in a seamless manner. No changes are made to existing commands that are related to NFS. Most RPC applications can also run over IPv6 without any change. Some advanced RPC applications with transport knowledge might require updates. |
Logical Link Controller 2 (LLC2) The Class II logical link control driver (LLC2) acts as an interface between network software (NetBIOS, SNA, OSI) that runs under the Solaris operating environment and a physical LAN network that is controlled by one of the supported communications adapters. This version of the LLC2 driver includes support for both connectionless and connection-oriented LLC2 operations for Ethernet, Token Ring, and FDDI adapters when the support is accessed through the appropriate Solaris MAC layer driver. |
NIS/NIS+ over IPv6 Transports This feature enables users to perform NIS and NIS+ operations over IPv6 RPC transports, and to store IPv6 addresses in the NIS, NIS+, and DNS naming services. |
Enhancements to sendmail 8.9.3 New options and utilities improve the storage and security functionality of sendmail. |
Service Location Protocol (SLP) 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. |
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. |
Network Time Protocol NTP provides precise time and network clock synchronization for use in distributed computing environments. The Solaris 8 release has been upgraded to include the 3-5.93e version. |
Feature Description |
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coreadm Command The coreadm command provides flexible core file-naming conventions and better core file retention. |
Examining Core Files with proc Tools The proc tools are utilities that can manipulate features of the /proc file system. Some of the proc tools have been enhanced to examine process core files as well as live processes. |
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. |
Improved System Error Messages The system boot and error message format now provides a numeric identifier, module name, and timestamp to messages that are generated by the syslog(1M) logging facility. In addition, messages that were previously lost after a system panic and reboot are now saved. |
Modular Debugger (mdb) 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. |
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. |
TCP/IP Internal Trace Support TCP/IP now provides internal trace support by logging TCP communications when a connection is terminated by a reset (RST) packet. |
Feature Description |
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IA: Added Support for Physical Address Extension (PAE) Mode With the release of Pentium Pro, Intel introduced a mode called PAE on its advanced processors. By using PAE, Solaris Intel Platform Edition can address up to 32 Gbytes of physical memory. |
New Application Debugging Tool: 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 might show the series of events leading up to a point of failure. |
SPARC: New System Monitoring Tool: busstat A new system monitoring tool, busstat, provides access to bus-related performance counters on supported SPARC platforms. Viewing these performance counters with busstat enables you to measure hardware clock cycles and bus statistics including DMA and cache coherency transactions on a multiprocessor system. |
Faster Boot for Servers Large servers now require significantly less time to boot. |
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 but does not replace poll(2). |
New Utility: 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. |
IA: Xeon Enhancements To maximize performance, Solaris 8 Intel Platform Edition now supports the Page Attribute Table (PAT) feature of IA32-bit processors (Pentium II and Pentium III). |
Feature Description |
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Solaris Smartcards The Solaris Smartcard 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. |
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. |
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Traditional superuser-based systems grant full superuser powers to anyone who can become superuser. With RBAC, administrators can assign limited administrative capabilities to normal users. |
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. You no longer need to set up the audit events for a user on each system to which the user has access. |
Feature Description |
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High-Resolution Timers The high-resolution timers (HRTs) bypass the traditional 10ms 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 multiprocessor system) and operate to any required degree of precision in timing events. |
User-Level Priority Inheritance The real-time 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. |
Feature Description |
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Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) Support The PDA Synchronization (PDASync) is a Java based application that enables users to easily synchronize their desktop calendar, mail, address book, and memos with their PDA. |
Hot Key Editor The Hot Key Editor enables users to predefine a series of commands to a particular function key, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency. |
Java Media Framework (JMF) The 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 maximizes real-time video creation and broadcast functionality. |
SPARC: PC Launcher 1.0 PC launcher 1.0 for SunPCi enables users to obtain 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. |
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, simplifying access to Netscape applications. |
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. |
SDTImage Enhancements The SDTImage screen snapshot feature now enables users to easily and quickly capture a screenshot image from the command line. |
Smart Card Support CDE now supports authentication security technology for smart cards. Users can now use smart cards to authenticate their identity when they are 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. |
ToolTips ToolTips provides users with Balloon Help, a simple and short description of an icon function. |
X11R6.4 Support The X Server is upgraded to the X11R6.4 industry standard, which includes key features that increase user productivity and mobility. These features are remote execution of X applications through web browser on any web-based desktop, Xinerama, Color Utilization Policy, EnergyStar support, and new APIs and documentation for the developer toolkits. |
Extended Control Panel This feature provides a unified, consistent, and extensible launchpad for desktop customization, such as desktop controls for color, font, backdrop, and the Application Manager. |
Feature Description |
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Java Plug-In Java Plug-In for the Solaris operating environment is an add-on product for Netscape NavigatorTM that enables Java applets and JavaBeans components to run on Web pages by using Java runtime environment (JRE) 1.2 instead of the default Java virtual machine (JVM). |
Netscape Communicator 4.7 The Solaris 8 release includes Netscape Communicator 4.7 and now installs it by default on your system. |
Solaris Network Cache and Accelerator (NCA) The Solaris NCA increases web server performance by maintaining an in-kernel cache of web pages that are accessed during HTTP requests. |
Apache Web Server The open source Apache web server is now released with Solaris. This server includes all the standard Apache modules, including proxy server support as well as the mod_perl module. |
Feature Description |
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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. |
Solaris Print Manager Solaris Print Manager is a Java based graphical user interface that enables you to manage local and remote printer access. You can use this tool in the following name service environments: NIS, NIS+, and NIS+ with Federated Naming Service (FNS) files. |
Feature Description |
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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. 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 more features. |
Feature Description |
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SPARC: 64-bit Kodak Color Management System (KCMS) libraries Kodak Color Management SystemTM (KCMSTM) 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. |
Always Ready Power Management With the Solaris 8 operating environment, a device driver that uses the new device Power ManagementTM interfaces will be power-managed automatically. |
New cpustat and cputrack Commands The new cpustat and cputrack commands capture system-wide and per-process CPU statistics respectively, to monitor the performance of a system or a process. |
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. |
Practical Extraction and Report Language (Perl) 5 The popular programming language, Perl 5.005_03, is included in the Solaris 8 release. Perl is commonly used for CGI scripting as well as for automating complex system administration tasks. |
Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) for Developers The addition of RBAC to the Solaris operating environment gives developers the opportunity to deliver fine-grained security in new and modified applications. Developers can now create privileged functions that check for authorizations instead of checking for specific IDs such as superuser. |
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. |
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. |
Function Update: strftime() The %u conversion specification for the strftime() function has been changed. |
Alternate Libthread An alternate threads implementation provides a model in which user-level threads are associated one-to-one with lightweight processes (LWPs). This implementation is simpler than the standard implementation and might be beneficial to some multithreaded applications. |
SPARC: Audio Mixer Driver The audio mixer driver now allows multiple applications to play and record audio simultaneously. |
Updated DDI Interfaces for Cluster-Aware Device Drivers A documentation overview introduces the concept of device classes and the necessary interface modifications and additions for device driver writers. |
8-bit Visual Support The 8-bit visual shared library enables device drivers with only 24-bit hardware to display 8-bit visual applications. |
Feature Description |
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Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) 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 ACPI is available on your IA based system, the Solaris 8 operating environment automatically uses it to configure the hardware. |
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. |
Universal Serial Bus (USB) Support for Keyboards and Mouse Devices Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides USB support for keyboards and mouse devices. |
X Server Video Driver Enhancement Solaris Intel Platform Edition now provides support for more video devices. |
Feature Description |
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IA: Device Driver Enhancement: cadp The Solaris cadp driver now supports Adaptec Ultra2 adapters. |
IA: Device Driver Enhancement: ncrs The Solaris ncrs device driver now supports the SCSI hot-plugging functionality and Ultra2 devices, in addition to general functionality and performance improvements. |
IA: Device Driver Enhancement: symhisl The symhisl device driver, which supports the adapters SYM22910 and SYM21002, is now included in Solaris Intel Platform Edition. |