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What's New in Solaris Express

New Features in Solaris Express 8/06

This section describes all features that are new or have been enhanced in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

OpenSSL 0.9.8a

This security enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

OpenSSL 0.9.7d is upgraded to the stable OpenSSL 0.9.8a version. Some of the major changes in this version include:

Migration of Existing EMEA, Central and South American Locales to Common Locale Data Repository

This language support enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

The locale data for existing European and Middle East and African (EMEA), Central and South American, and Oceania locales has been migrated to Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) 1.3. This migration improves locale data quality and ensures consistency of locale data across code sets.

For more information about CLDR, see http://www.unicode.org/cldr.

hostname Command

This system administration tool enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, the hostname command has been re-implemented as a stand-alone binary executable program. The hostname command has also been enhanced with getopt(3C) support to detect and reject invalid command-line options.

Zone Unique Identifier

This system administration tool enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

The Solaris system automatically attaches a globally unique identifier to each non-global zone when the zone is installed. This identifier can be retrieved both in the global zone and in the non-global zone by use of the zoneadm list -p command. Users can utilize the zone unique identifier for asset tracking by treating the zone as an asset by itself. This identifier can also be used for identification of zones across the following actions:

For more information, see the zoneadm(1M) man page.

Ability to Mark Zones as “Incomplete”

This system administration tool enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, users can mark zones as “incomplete” using a new zoneadm feature. This new zoneadm feature enables the recording of a fatal or permanent zone failure state by administrative software that updates the zone contents.

For more information, see the zoneadm(1M) man page.

Changes to How $TERM Value for Console is Set

This system administration enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

The $TERM value is dynamically derived and depends on the terminal emulator that the console is using.

For more information, see the following:

Note –

This change does not impact how the terminal type is set for the serial port. You can still use the svccfg command to modify the $TERM value.

Solaris Zones Boot Enhancements

This system resource enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Solaris Zones Boot Enhancements now support boot arguments as part of boot and reboot. The following boot arguments are supported at this time:

Boot arguments can be passed in the following ways:

Boot arguments can also be persistently specified by using the new bootargs property in the zonecfg command:

zonecfg:myzone> set bootargs="-m verbose"

This setting will be applied unless overridden by the reboot, zoneadm boot or zoneadm reboot commands.

For more information on boot arguments and the bootargs property, see:

x86: Solaris Audio Driver for Ultra 20 M2 Workstation

This driver is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

The audiohd driver is a Solaris High Definition audio driver for the Ultra 20 M2 Workstation. This new driver enables users to play “high definition” audio in the Ultra 20 M2 platform.

For more information, see the audiohd(7D) man page.

ld Link Editor for Object Files

This developer tool enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, the behavior of the ld command when creating a new version of an existing output file has been changed. This change addresses a long-term issue with the way new linker output files interact with running programs that are simultaneously using the old versions of those files.

If the file being created by ld already exists, the existing file is unlinked after all input files have been processed. A new file with the specified name is then created. This behavior enables the ld command to create a new version of the file, while simultaneously allowing existing processes that are accessing the old file contents to continue running. If the old file has no other links, the disk space of the file is freed when the last process referencing the file terminates.

In releases prior to Solaris Express 8/06, the existing file was not unlinked, and was instead over-written. However, this approach had the potential to corrupt any running processes that were using the file.

For more information, see the ld(1) man page.

Note –

The new behavior of the ld command has an implication for output files that have multiple hard links in the file system. Previously, all links would remain intact, with all links accessing the new file contents. The new ld behavior “breaks” such links, with the result that only the specified output file name references the new file. All the other links continue to reference the old file. To ensure consistent behavior on any Solaris version, applications that rely on multiple hard links to linker output files should explicitly remove and re-link the other file names.

Support for iSCSI Target Devices

This file system enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

This Solaris release provides support for iSCSI target devices, which can be disk or tape devices. Releases prior to Solaris Express 8/06 provided support for iSCSI initiators. The advantage of setting up Solaris iSCSI targets is that, existing Fibre Channel devices can be connected to clients without the cost of Fibre Channel HBAs. In addition, systems with dedicated arrays can now export replicated storage with ZFS or UFS file systems.

You can use the iscsitadm command to set up and manage your iSCSI target devices. For the disk device that you select as your iSCSI target, you'll need to provide an equivalently sized ZFS or UFS file system as the backing store for the iSCSI daemon.

After the target device is set up, use the iscsiadm command to identify your iSCSI targets, which will discover and use the iSCSI target device.

For more information, see:

zfs snapshot Command

This file system enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, a new flag, -r, has been added to the zfs snapshot command. The new flag enables system administrators to take many snapshots at once. Using the -r flag, is easier than running multiple zfs snapshot commands and execution time is lessened.

For more information, see the zfs(1M) man page.

Solaris iSCSI Initiator

This device management enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, the Solaris iSCSI Initiator has been extended to support the creation of multiple iSCSI sessions to different IP addresses in the same iSCSI target portal group. This feature extends the iSCSI initiator's MPxIO support for a large number of additional storage arrays.

In releases prior to Solaris Express 8/06, the Solaris iSCSI Initiator supported the following actions:

For more information see, Chapter 14, Configuring Solaris iSCSI Targets and Initiators (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

PAPI Print Commands

This desktop tools enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

The Free Standards Group (FSG) Open Printing API (PAPI) commands replace several commonly used print commands, which include the following:

The implementations of the Open Printing API commands are layered on top of the Free Standards Group Open Printing API in the Solaris OS. This implementation enables the commands to run on top of multiple protocols or services.

Some advantages of the new print command implementations include the following:

For more information about the PAPI print commands, see the following:

Enhancements to fstyp Command

The following enhancements to the fstyp command are new in the Solaris Express 8/06 release.

Starting with this release, the fstyp command has a new option, -a, which displays the file system attributes in a consistent, name-value pair format. This command also supports DOS logical drive numbers. For example:


# fstyp /dev/dsk/c0t0d0p0:1

For more information, see the fstyp(1M) man page.

The following fstyp enhancements are also available starting with this release:

Sun Java Web Console Changes

The Sun Java Web Console provides a common location for users to work with web-based management applications. Users access the console by logging in through an HTTPS port, using one of several supported web browsers. The single entry point that is provided by the console eliminates having to learn URLs for multiple applications. The console provides authentication and authorization services for all applications that are registered with the console.

All console-based applications conform to the same user interface guidelines. The Sun Java Web Console also provides auditing and logging services for all registered applications.

Starting with the Solaris Express 8/06 release, the Sun Java Web Console includes the following changes:

For more information, see “Java Web Console” in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

Note –

Starting with the Solaris Express 4/06, the Solaris ZFS web-based management tool is available in the Sun Java Web Console. This tool enables you to perform most of the administration tasks that you can perform with the command-line interface (CLI).

For more information about using the Solaris ZFS web-based management tool, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.