System Administration Tools

This section describes all system administration features in the Solaris 10 3/05 release that are new or have been enhanced since the Solaris 9 OS was originally distributed in May 2002. DTrace and Predictive Self-Healing are features of particular importance. To view system administration tools that are new in the Solaris 10 7/05 release, see System Administration Features.

Predictive Self-Healing

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/04 release. The Solaris Express 10/04 release and the Solaris 10 3/05 release provided important enhancements.

Sun Microsystems has developed a new architecture for building and deploying systems and services capable of Predictive Self-Healing. Self-healing technology enables Sun systems and services to maximize availability when software and hardware faults occur. In addition, the self-healing technology facilitates a simpler and more effective end-to-end experience for system administrators and service providers, thereby reducing costs. The first major set of new features to result from this initiative is available in the Solaris 10 OS. The Solaris 10 software includes components that facilitate self-healing for CPU, memory, I/O bus nexus components, and system services.

Specific details about the components of this new architecture are covered in the following descriptions for the Solaris Service Manager and the Solaris Fault Manager.

Solaris Service Manager

Introduced in the Solaris Express 10/04 release and enhanced in the Solaris 10 3/05 release, the Solaris Service Manager provides an infrastructure that augments the traditional UNIX startup scripts, init run levels, and configuration files. This infrastructure provides the following functions:

• Automatically restarts failed services in dependency order, whether the services failed as the result of administrator error, a software bug, or an uncorrectable hardware error.

• Makes services objects that can be viewed, with the new svcs command, and managed, with svcadm and svccfg commands. You can also view the relationships between services and processes by using svcs -p, for both SMF services and legacy init.d scripts.

• Makes it easy to back up, restore, and undo changes to services by taking automatic snapshots of service configurations.

• Makes it easy to debug. You can ask questions about services and receive an explanation of why a service isn't running by using svcs -x. Also, this process is eased by individual and persistent log files for each service.

• Enhances the ability of administrators to securely delegate tasks to nonroot users, including the ability to modify properties and start, stop, or restart services on the system.

• Boots faster on large systems by starting services in parallel according to the dependencies of the services. The opposite process occurs during shutdown.

• Enables you to customize the boot console output either to be as quiet as possible, which is the default, or to be verbose by using boot -m verbose.

• Preserves compatibility with existing administrative practices wherever possible. For example, most customer and ISV-supplied rc scripts still work as usual.

• Enables you to configure your system services in one of two modes, both represented as smf(5) profiles. The “generic_open.xml” profile enables all the traditional Internet services that were previously enabled by default in the Solaris OS. The “generic_limited_net.xml” profile disables a large number of services that are frequently disabled during the process of hardening a system. However, this profile is not a replacement for the Solaris Security Toolkit (JASS) tool. See the individual profiles for details.

See Chapter 9, “Managing Services (Overview),” in the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration for more information about this infrastructure. An overview of the infrastructure can be found in the smf(5) man page.

Solaris Fault Manager

Predictive Self-Healing systems include a simplified administration model. Traditional error messages are replaced by telemetry events that are consumed by software components. The software components automatically diagnose the underlying fault or defect and initiate self-healing activities. Examples of self-healing activities include administrator messaging, isolation or deactivation of faulty components, and guided repair. A new software component is called Fault Manager, fmd(1M). The Fault Manager manages the telemetry, log files, and components. The new fmadm(1M), fmdump(1M), and fmstat(1M) tools are also available in the Solaris 10 OS to interact with the Fault Manager and new log files.

When appropriate, the Fault Manager sends a message to the syslogd(1M) service to notify an administrator that a problem has been detected. The message directs administrators to a knowledge article on Sun's new message Web site, http://www.sun.com/msg/, which explains more about the problem impact and appropriate responses and repair actions.

The Solaris Express 6/04 release introduced self-healing components for automated diagnosis and recovery for UltraSPARC-III and UltraSPARC-IV CPU and memory systems. This release also provided enhanced resilience and telemetry for PCI-based I/O.

DTrace Dynamic Tracing Facility

DTrace is a feature of key importance in the Solaris 10 OS. DTrace is new in the Solaris Express 11/03 release and was enhanced in the Solaris Express 5/04 release and the Solaris Express 11/04 release.

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing facility that gives Solaris users, administrators, and developers a new level of observability into the kernel and user processes.

DTrace helps you understand your system by permitting you to dynamically instrument the operating system kernel and user processes to record data that you specify at locations of interest, called probes. Probes are like small programmable sensors that are scattered all over your Solaris system. More than 30,000 probes are included in this release. Each probe can be associated with custom programs that are written in the new D programming language. This association enables you to access system data by using ANSI C types and expressions and easily capture stack traces, record timestamps, build histograms, and more.

All of DTrace's instrumentation is entirely dynamic and available for use on your production system. When DTrace is off, you have no performance cost. The performance impact of any tracing is limited to only those probes and actions that you enable. Moreover, DTrace is safe: you can't damage the running system because DTrace has security, complete safety, and error checking at the core of its design. These features enable you to use DTrace with confidence on your running system whenever you need the facility to help investigate a problem.

The Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide and a set of man pages, including dtrace(1M), are provided to help you learn DTrace. The guide includes a complete feature reference and examples to help you get started. You can also join the DTrace forum on BigAdmin (see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace) to learn more about DTrace, download example programs, and ask questions.

In the Solaris Express 5/04 release, user-process tracing that uses the pid provider was made available for x86 systems. This feature has been available on SPARC platforms since the introduction of DTrace in the Solaris Express 11/03 release.

The pid provider enables you to trace any instruction in any process either at the level of any function call's entry and return, or at any offset into any function. For complete details, see Chapter 27, “pid Provider,” and Chapter 32, “User Process Tracing,” in the Solaris Dynamic Tracing Guide.

In the Solaris Express 11/04 release, the plockstat(1M) utility enables you to observe user-level synchronization primitives, such as lockstat(1M) in the kernel. The DTrace plockstat provider is the underlying instrumentation methodology for plockstat(1M). Dtrace plockstat can be used to augment the data recorded by the plockstat utility. See the plockstat(1M) man page for further information.

64-bit Support on x86 Systems

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 11/04 release.

The Solaris 10 release contains support for the 64-bit computing capabilities of AMD64 and EM64T platforms. This support includes the ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications in the 64-bit computing environment.

For details about supported hardware configurations, see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl.

The Solaris 10 software already supports these platforms for 32-bit computing.

For more information about Solaris for 64-bit support on x86 systems, see the following references in the Solaris 10 documentation:

• Appendix C, “Making a Device Driver 64-bit Ready” in Writing Device Drivers

• Chapter 8, “Shutting Down and Booting a System (Overview)” in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration

• Solaris 64-bit Developer’s Guide

Kernel Selection for x86 Systems

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 11/04 release.

The Solaris 10 OS has the ability to automatically detect whether your system is 64-bit capable and then boot the appropriate kernel.

Following a new installation of the Solaris 10 software, the boot program automatically loads the 64-bit kernel if it detects your system is 64-bit capable. Otherwise, the program loads the 32-bit kernel.

Following an upgrade installation of the Solaris 10 OS on a system that is configured to load the default 32-bit kernel, the system now automatically determines whether to load the 32-bit or 64-bit kernel. If the system was configured to load a non-default kernel, the system continues to load that non-default kernel. Procedures for customizing a system to load a specific kernel are outlined in Chapter 8, “Shutting Down and Booting a System (Overview)” in System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

Further documentation about the kernel selection procedure is provided in the Solaris 10 documentation at http://docs.sun.com.

Sun Java Web Console

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

The Sun Java Web Console provides a common location for users to access web-based management applications. Users reach 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 the need to learn URLs for multiple applications. This entry point provides authentication and authorization for all applications that are registered with the console.

All console-based applications conform to the same user interface guidelines. This change enhances ease of use by enabling users to transfer their knowledge of one application to another.

The Java Web Console also provides auditing and logging services for all registered applications.

Currently, no system management applications in the Solaris OS use the Java Web Console.

For more information about the Java Web Console, see the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

Multi-Owner Disk Set Support With Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release and in the Solaris 9 9/04 release.

Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster introduces volume management features that work specifically with Sun Cluster and with applications such as Oracle Real Application Clusters. Solaris Volume Manager for Sun Cluster enables you to create and manage storage that is grouped into multi-owner disk sets. A multi-owner disk set enables multiple nodes to share ownership of a disk set. Multi-owner disk sets provide scalability because an instance of the application runs on each node in the cluster. Because each instance of the application directly accesses the shared storage, multi-owner disk sets also enhance the performance of the application.

For more information, see the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide. For information about Sun Cluster, see Sun Cluster Software Installation Guide for Solaris OS and Sun Cluster Data Service for Oracle Real Application Clusters Guide for Solaris OS.

Expanded Disk Set Support in the Solaris Volume Manager

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 1/04 release and in the Solaris 9 9/04 release.

The Solaris Volume Manager has expanded the functionality of device IDs. In addition to tracking movement in local sets, the Solaris Volume Manager now also automatically tracks disk movement within named disk sets. This enhancement ensures that Solaris Volume Manager volumes remain intact even if disks are rearranged. This device ID support also enables two hosts to share access nonconcurrently to disk sets, even with dissimilar views of accessible raw storage.

The Solaris Volume Manager has also been enhanced with the metaimport command. This command uses the expanded device ID support to enable you to import disk sets, even disk sets that were created on different systems.

See the metaimport(1M) man page for further information.

Importing Remotely Replicated Disk Sets With Solaris Volume Manager

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

Solaris Volume Manager has expanded the functionality of the metaimport command. In addition to importing regular disk sets from one system to another, you can now import replicated disk sets.

A replicated disk set is created by using remote replication software, such as Sun StorEdge^TM Network Data Replicator (SNDR) software or Hitachi TrueCopy.

For more information, see the metaimport(1M) man page and the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

Device ID Changes

This description is new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

Device ID output is displayed in a new format in the Solaris Express 10/04 release. Previously, the device ID was displayed as a hexadecimal value. The new format displays the device ID as an ASCII string. Solaris Volume Manager might display the device ID output in the new or old format, depending on when the device id information was added to the state database replica.

For more information, see the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

Multiterabyte Volume Support in Solaris Volume Manager

Multiterabyte volume support is available only for systems that run a 64-bit kernel. This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 4/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Solaris Volume Manager has been enhanced with multiterabyte volume support. With this support, the Solaris Volume Manager can create, manage, and delete large (>1Tbyte) RAID-0 (stripe), RAID-1 (mirror), RAID-5, and soft-partition volumes. In addition, this large volume support enables Solaris Volume Manager to construct volumes on large or EFI-labeled logical unit numbers (LUNs).

Solaris Volume Manager large volume support is not available for systems running a 32-bit Solaris kernel.

See also Multiterabyte Disk Support With EFI Disk Labels.

For further information, see the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

Reconfiguration Coordination Manager Support in Solaris Volume Manager

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 4/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Reconfiguration Coordination Manager (RCM) support adds to Solaris Volume Manager the ability to respond appropriately to dynamic reconfiguration (DR) requests. This addition ensures that removal of devices under Solaris Volume Manager control is blocked with an appropriate warning. This block remains in effect until the devices are no longer in use. This warning prevents system administrators from accidentally removing active volumes from a DR-configured system.

For further information, see the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

Top-Down Volume Creation in Solaris Volume Manager

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 9/03 release and in the Solaris 9 4/04 release.

The top-down volume creation feature of Solaris Volume Manager provides a new command that enables system administrators to quickly and easily create quality of service-based Solaris Volume Manager configurations. Rather than manually partitioning disks, creating stripes, and assembling mirrors, the metassist command manages the details and provides functional logical volumes. The volumes are based on the criteria that are specified on the command line or in referenced configuration files.

For further information, see the metassist(1M) man page and the Solaris Volume Manager Administration Guide.

Package and Patch Tool Enhancements

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 11/03 release under the title “Solaris Product Registry Enhancements.” This feature description was updated in the Solaris Express 8/04 and 10/04 releases.

The Solaris package and patch tools have been enhanced, providing improved performance and extended functionality.

As a part of these enhancements, the pkgchk command now provides a new option to assist you in mapping files to packages. To map files to packages, use the pkgchk -P option instead of grep pattern /var/sadm/install/ contents. The -P option enables you to use a partial path. Use this option with the -l option to list the information about the files that contain the partial path.

If you installed a previous Software Express release, your system might use a SQL format package database. The SQL database was created in one of the following ways.

• You performed an initial installation of a Solaris Express release prior to the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

• You upgraded to a previous Solaris Express release, and upgraded the package database manually by running pkgadm upgrade.

When you upgrade to the Solaris Express 10/04 release or subsequent releases, the SQL package database is automatically converted back to the ASCII text file format.

See the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration and the pkgchk(1M) man page for further information.

Enhancements for pbind and psrset Commands

These enhancements are new in the Solaris Express 10/04 release.

System administrators can now query and establish per-thread processor and processor set bindings. New options have been added to pbind and psrset commands. These new options enable you to query which LWPs on the system are bound to specified processor or processor sets. You can also clear all processor or processor set bindings.

See the pbind(1M) and psrset(1M) man pages for further information about these commands.

Solaris Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Solaris Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) service includes the DHCP Manager graphical tool and command-line tools. This Solaris release adds new options to the dhcpconfig and dhtadm commands.

With the new options for the dhcpconfig command, you can do the following:

• Enable and disable DHCP service for system starts

• Restart DHCP server

• Prompt DHCP server to read the dhcptab

• Specify DHCP server parameters

A new suboption for the dhtadm command causes the DHCP server to read the dhcptab to implement changes that were made with the dhtadm command.

The new options enable you to perform all DHCP management tasks from the command line as well as from DHCP Manager.

For more information, see the man pages for dhcpconfig(1M) and dhtadm(1M).

See also the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

DHCP Event Scripting

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release.

DHCP is a protocol for configuring systems with network information and leased IP addresses. The DHCP client is a daemon that runs on a network host and obtains configuration parameters for the host's network interfaces from a DHCP server.

The Solaris DHCP client daemon, dhcpagent, is now able to execute administrator-defined actions. The actions can be triggered after any of the following DHCP lease events occur:

• The interface is configured for DHCP.

• The client successfully extends a lease.

• The lease expires.

• The client drops the lease to remove the interface from DHCP control.

• The client relinquishes the address.

The administrator-defined actions must be initiated by an executable script or program that you provide. You can use the program to perform any action that is appropriate for your system after one of the DHCP events.

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

DHCP for Logical Interfaces

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release.

The DHCP client daemon, dhcpagent, can now be used with logical interfaces as well as physical interfaces. DHCP is started on logical interfaces by using the same methods that are used to start DHCP on physical interfaces.

However, the DHCP client has two limitations for the management of leases on logical interfaces:

• The DHCP client does not automatically manage default routes associated with logical interfaces.

• The DHCP client does not automatically generate a client identifier for logical interfaces.

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

x86: SunVTS 6.0

SunVTS is a comprehensive diagnostic tool that tests and validates Sun hardware by verifying the connectivity and functionality of most hardware controllers and devices on Sun platforms.

SunVTS support for x86 systems is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release and in the Solaris 10 3/05 release. The SunVTS infrastructure and a few core diagnostics are now available for x86 platforms. The current x86 support is for the 32-bit operating system only.

The Solaris 10 1/06 release provides SunVTS 6.1. See SunVTS 6.1.

You must install the x86 version of the SunVTS packages in order to use SunVTS on x86 platforms. The software packages use the same names as in the SPARC environment. A new package, SUNWvtsr, is provided for both the SPARC and x86 packages for this release. The SUNWvtsr package contains the SunVTS framework configuration files in the root partition. The x86 packages are located in the /sol_10_x86/s0/Solaris_10/ExtraValue/CoBundled/SunVTS_6.0 directory of the Solaris Software media. The SPARC packages are located in the /sol_10_sparc/s0/Solaris_10/ExtraValue/CoBundled/SunVTS_6.0 directory of the Solaris Software media.

Refer to the SunVTS user documentation available at the following web sites for detailed information about x86 system support: http://docs.sun.com or http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/hardware/docs/.

Kernel Modular Debugger

Kernel Modular Debugger (KMDB) is an MDB-based kernel debugger. In the Solaris Express 8/04 release, KMDB replaced the existing kernel debugger (kadb) as the standard Solaris kernel debugger.

KMDB brings all the power and flexibility of Modular Debugger (MDB) to live kernel debugging. KMDB supports the following:

• dcmds – Debugger commands

• dmods – Debugger modules

• Access to kernel type data

• Kernel execution control

• Inspection

• Modification

KMDB can be loaded at boot time or after the system has already booted.

For more information, see the kmdb(1M) man page. See also the Solaris Modular Debugger Guide and the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

Solaris Process Accounting and Statistics Improvements

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release.

In this release, changes have been made to the internals of the load averaging, cpu usr/sys/idle, and accounting functions. Microstate accounting has replaced the old accounting mechanism and is enabled by default. As a result, you might notice slightly different process usage and timing statistics.

Switching to microstate accounting provides substantially more accurate data about user processes and the amount of time they spend in various states. In addition, this information is used to generate more accurate load averages and statistics from the /proc file system.

For more information about process accounting and statistics, see the System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration. See also the proc(4) man page.

Enhancements to ls Command

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 8/04 release.

The ls command can now display file times to the second or to the nanosecond. Use the -e option for seconds and the -E option for nanoseconds. The following example illustrates these new options:

% ls -l foo
-rw-r--r--   1 jpk    staff   0 Aug  6 15:08 foo
% ls -e foo
-rw-r--r--   1 jpk    staff   0 Aug  6 15:08:28 2004 foo
% ls -E foo
-rw-r--r--   1 jpk    staff   0 2004-08-06 15:08:28.776641000 -0700 foo

See the ls(1) man page for further information about this command.

New psrinfo Option to Identify Chip Multithreading Features

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/04 release and in the Solaris 9 12/03 release.

In the Solaris 10 OS, the psrinfo command has been modified to provide information about physical processors, in addition to information about virtual processors. This enhanced functionality has been added to identify chip multithreading (CMT) features. The new -p option reports the total number of physical processors that are in a system. Using the psrinfo -pv command lists all the physical processors that are in the system, as well as the virtual processors that are associated with each physical processor.

The default output of the psrinfo command continues to display the virtual processor information for a system.

For more information, see the psrinfo(1M) man page. For information about the procedures that are associated with this feature, see the System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration.

Enhancements to pfiles Tool

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/04 release.

The /proc file system has been enhanced to include file name information in the /proc/<pid>/path directory. This information is used by pfiles(1) to display file names for each file in the process. This enhancement creates an entirely new form of observability that provides new insight into process behavior. This new observability benefits both administrators and developers.

Solaris IP Filter

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 2/04 release.

Solaris IP Filter is a host-based firewall that is based on the open source IP Filter. Solaris IP Filter provides packet filtering and network address translation (NAT), based on a user-configurable policy. Packet filtering rules are configurable in either a stateful or stateless manner. All configuration and management of Solaris IP Filter is performed through a command-line interface.

For further information, see the ipfilter(5) man page. Also, refer to the ipf(1M), ipfs(1M), and ipfstat(1M) man pages. In addition, see the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

Core File Content Enhancements

The Solaris Express 12/03 release introduced new enhancements to the coreadm, gcore, and mdb utilities. These changes improve management of core files as described in the following three sections. Further enhancements to the coreadm command were made in the Solaris Express 1/04 release.

Specify Core File Content With coreadm

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 12/03 release. The -i and -I options have been further enhanced in the Solaris Express 1/04 release.

In the Solaris Express 12/03 release, the coreadm command lets you specify which parts of a process are present in the core file during a crash. You can see the system's configuration by running coreadm with no arguments.

You can specify the global core file content and the default per-process core file content by using the -G and -I options respectively. Each option requires a set of content specifier tokens. You can also set the core file content for individual processes by using the -P option. Core dumps that correspond to the global settings no longer honor the per-process, core file-size resource control.

In the Solaris Express 1/04 release, the -i and -I options to the coreadm command now apply to all processes whose core file settings are using the system-wide default. Use the -p and -P options to override the default.

For further information, see the coreadm(1M) man page.

gcore Core File Content

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 12/03 release.

The gcore utility creates core files from a running process without damaging that process. The gcore utility now supports variable core file content. Use the -c option to specify the content or the -p or -g options to force gcore to use the coreadm settings.

See the gcore(1) man page for further information.

mdb Supports Text and Symbol Tables in Core Files

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 12/03 release.

Text is now in core files by default. Also, symbol tables can now be in core files by default. The mdb utility has been updated to support this new core file data. This support means you can now debug your old core file without needing the original binary or the libraries that are linked to that file.

See the mdb(1) man page for further information.

System Management Agent

This feature is new in the Solaris Express 12/03 release.

The System Management Agent is a Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) agent that provides SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3 functionality to the Solaris 10 environment. The agent is based on the Net-SNMP open source implementation, with some customizations for the Solaris environment. The agent has all the necessary base functionality that is required by an SNMP agent. The agent includes support for standard SNMP operations and numerous standard Management Information Bases (MIBs), including MIB-II, Host Resources MIB, and Notification MIB. Additionally, the agent supports the User-based Security Model (USM) and View-based Access Control Model (VACM), as well as AgentX.

The System Management Agent is configured to be the default SNMP agent, but coexists with the Solstice Enterprise Agents^TM software in this release.

For further information, see the netsnmp(5) man page.

For further information, see also the Solaris System Management Agent Administration Guide and the Solaris System Management Agent Developer’s Guide.

SPARC: 64-bit Package Changes for System Administrators

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

In Solaris software, packaging has been simplified with most 32-bit components and 64-bit components being delivered in a single package. For further information, see SPARC: 64-bit Package Changes.

NIS-to-LDAP Transition Service

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 12/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The NIS-to-LDAP transition service can be used to enable a network transition from using NIS to using LDAP as the primary naming service. By using this transition service, administrators can utilize the Sun Java System Directory Server, which works with LDAP naming service clients.

For more information, see System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP).

Signed Packages and Patches

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 12/03 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Solaris software enables you to securely download Solaris packages and patches that include a digital signature by using the updated pkgadd and patchadd commands. A package or a patch with a valid digital signature ensures that the package or patch has not been modified after the signature was applied to the package or patch.

In previous Solaris releases, you could only add signed patches to your system if you used the Solaris patch management tools with PatchPro 2.1.

Additional software management features in this Solaris release include the following:

• You can add a digital signature to a package with the updated pkgtrans command. For information about creating a signed package, see the Application Packaging Developer’s Guide.

• You can download a package or patch from an HTTP or HTTPS server.

A signed package is identical to an unsigned package except for the signature. The package can be installed, queried, or removed with existing Solaris packaging tools. A signed package is also binary-compatible with an unsigned package.

Before you can add a package or patch with digital signatures to your system, you must set up a keystore with trusted certificates that are used to identify that the digital signature on the package or patch is valid.

For information about setting up the package keystore and adding signed packages or patches to your system, see the System Administration Guide: Basic Administration.

For information about booting and retrieving Solaris installation images from an HTTP or HTTPS server, see WAN Boot Installation Method.

System V IPC Configuration

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

In the Solaris software, all System V IPC facilities are either automatically configured, or the facilities can be controlled by resource controls. These facilities might be shared memory, message queues, or semaphores. Resource controls allow IPC settings to be made on a per-project or per-user basis on the local system or in a name service environment. In previous Solaris releases, IPC facilities were controlled by kernel tunables. You had to modify the /etc/system file and reboot the system to change the default values for these facilities. Because the IPC facilities are now controlled by resource controls, their configuration can be modified while the system is running. Many applications that previously required system tuning to function might now run without tuning because of increased defaults and automatic allocation of resources.

The following table identifies the now obsolete IPC tunables that are described in the Solaris Tunable Parameters Reference Manual and their replacement resource controls.

Obsolete parameters might be included in the /etc/system file on this Solaris system. If so, the parameters are used to initialize the default resource control values as in previous Solaris releases. However, using the obsolete parameters is not recommended.

The following related parameters have been removed. If these parameters are included in the /etc/system file on this Solaris system, the parameters are commented out.

• semsys:seminfo_semmns

• semsys:seminfo_semvmx

• semsys:seminfo_semmnu

• semsys:seminfo_semaem

• semsys:seminfo_semume

• semsys:seminfo_semusz

• semsys:seminfo_semmap

• shmsys:shminfo_shmseg

• shmsys:shminfo_shmmin

• msgsys:msginfo_msgmap

• msgsys:msginfo_msgseg

• msgsys:msginfo_msgssz

• msgsys:msginfo_msgmax

For more information about using the new resource controls, see System V IPC and Other Resource Controls.

Optional Interval for netstat Command

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The netstat command displays the contents of certain network-related data structures in various formats, depending on the options that you select. The -s, -i and -m options now support an “interval.” With the specification of an optional interval, the output is continuously displayed in interval seconds until interrupted by the user. If a “count” is specified after “interval,” the output iterates for “count” times only. The “interval” and “count” must both be positive integers.

For further information, see the netstat(1M) man page.

GMT-offset Quoted Time Zones

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The Solaris Install program installs a quoted time zone as the system default time zone, if a GMT-offset style time zone is selected. Previously, an unquoted time zone was installed.

Note that quoted time zones behave differently than unquoted time zones. When the time zone name is displayed by the date command, for example, quoted time zones display the offset from GMT. Unquoted time zones display only the string “GMT,” without the offset from GMT.

Combine Data Address and Test Address for Single IP Network Multipathing Group

This feature is new in the Software Express pilot program and in the Solaris 9 12/02 release. This feature is included in the Solaris 10 3/05 release.

The use of a dedicated test IP address for failure detection on single-adapter IP network multipathing groups is no longer required. Sometimes, failover is not possible because only one network interface card (NIC) is in an IP network multipathing group. In this situation, you can now combine the test address and the data address. The in.mpathd daemon uses a data address to detect failure when a test address is not specified.

For further information on Solaris IP multipathing, see Part VI, “IPMP,” in the System Administration Guide: IP Services. See also the in.mpathd(1M) man page.

LDAP Command Changes

These command changes were made in the Solaris Express 12/03 release.

Several LDAP commands are updated to include full SSL support and extended support for SASL. The modifications also provide support for managing smart referrals, using virtual list views (VLVs), and establishing stronger authentication when binding to the LDAP server.

This upgrade aligns the Solaris LDAP command functionality with Sun's LDAP directory server commands. All Solaris functionality is preserved for backward compatibility. The updated commands are ldapdelete, ldapmodify, ldapadd, ldapsearch, and ldapmodrdn.

Several changes have been made to the LDAP commands. Those changes include the following:

• The -M authentication option is obsolete. This option has been superseded by the stronger -o option. The -M option is now used for managing smart referrals.

• Search results are now displayed in LDAP Data Interchange Format (LDIF) by default. Use the -r option to display results in the old format, for backward compatibility.

See the ldapdelete(1), ldapmodify(1), ldapadd(1), ldapsearch(1), and ldapmodrdn(1) man pages for details.

For further information, see the System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS, NIS, and LDAP).