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Solaris 10 7/07 HW What's New

Chapter 3 What's New in the Solaris 10 6/06 Release

This chapter summarizes all the new features in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

System Administration Features

The following system administration features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The Solaris ZFS File System

This file system enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This Solaris update release includes Solaris ZFS, a new 128-bit file system. Solaris ZFS provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. Solaris ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology. Rather, Solaris ZFS is a fundamentally new approach to data management.

Solaris ZFS uses a pooled-storage model that completely eliminates the concept of volumes. Thus, Solaris ZFS eliminates the associated problems of partition management, provisioning, and growing file systems. Thousands of file systems can all draw from a common storage pool. Each system consumes only as much space as actually needed. The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all file systems at all times.

All operations are “copy-on-write” transactions, so the on-disk state is always valid. Every block has a checksum, so silent data corruption is impossible. In addition, the data is self-healing in replicated configurations. This feature means that if one copy is damaged, Solaris ZFS detects the damage and uses another copy to repair the damaged copy.

Solaris ZFS Easy Administration

For system administrators, the greatest improvement of Solaris ZFS over traditional file systems is the ease of administration.

Solaris ZFS takes a single command to set up a mirrored storage pool and file system. For example:


# zpool create home mirror c0t1d0 c1t2d0

The preceding command creates a mirrored storage pool named home and a single file system named home. The file system is mounted at /home.

With Solaris ZFS, you can use whole disks instead of partitions to create the storage pool.

You can use the /home file system hierarchy to create any number of file systems beneath /home. For example:


# zfs create home/user1

For more information, see the zpool(1M) and zfs(1M) man pages.

In addition, Solaris ZFS provides the following administration features:

For more information, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.

ZFS Web-Based Management

The Solaris 10 6/06 release includes the Solaris ZFS web-based management tool, which enables you to perform much of the administration that you can do with the ZFS command line interface. You can perform the following administrative tasks with the Solaris ZFS administration console:

You can access the Solaris ZFS administration console through a secure web browser at the following URL:


https://system-name:6789

If you type the appropriate URL and are unable to reach Solaris ZFS administration console, the server might not be started. To start the server, run the following command:


# /usr/sbin/smcwebserver start

If you want the server to run automatically when the system boots, run the following command:


# /usr/sbin/smcwebserver enable
Note –

You cannot use the Solaris Management Console (smc) to manage ZFS storage pools or file systems.

ZFS and Solaris Zones

The Solaris Zones partitioning technology supports Solaris ZFS components, such as adding Solaris ZFS file systems and storage pools into a zone.

For example, the file system resource type in the zonecfg command has been enhanced as follows:


zonecfg:myzone> add fs
zonecfg:myzone:fs> set type=zfs
zonecfg:myzone:fs> set dir=/export/share
zonecfg:myzone:fs> set special=tank/home
zonecfg:myzone:fs> end

For more information, see the zonecfg(1M) man page and the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.

Solaris Installation Tool Support of ZFS File Systems

This release supports the following Solaris installation tools:

New Solaris ACL Model

Solaris ZFS implements a new ACL model. Previous versions of the Solaris OS only supported an ACL model that was primarily based on the POSIX ACL draft specification. The POSIX-draft based ACLs are used to protect UFS files. A new model that is based on the NFSv4 specification is used to protect Solaris ZFS files.

The new ACL model :

The recently revised chmod(1) man page adds many new examples that demonstrate usage with Solaris ZFS. The acl(5) man page has an overview of the new ACL model. In addition, the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide provides extensive examples of using ACLs to protect ZFS files.

Predictive Self-Healing for x64 Systems

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Starting with this release, the Solaris OS includes a set of predictive self-healing features to automatically capture, diagnose, and respond to hardware errors detected on your system.

The Solaris Fault Manager now provides support for CPU and Memory errors detected on x64 systems, including:

The Solaris Fault Manager automatically diagnoses failures in x64 hardware. The Solaris Fault Manager also attempts to automatically offline or isolate a faulty CPU, cache, or DRAM memory region. Diagnostic messages are reported by the fmd daemon.

For more information about Fault Management in Solaris, see:

Predictive Self-Healing Support for SNMP Notification

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Starting with this release, the Solaris OS includes a set of predictive self-healing features to automatically capture, diagnose, and respond to hardware errors detected on your system. The self-healing diagnosis results are reported to the syslogd service.

The Solaris Fault Manager, fmd, now enables you to do the following:

The Fault Management MIB is located at /etc/sma/snmp/mibs/SUN-FM-MIB.mib on the Solaris system.

For more information about configuring SNMP on Solaris, see:

SunVTS 6.2

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

SunVTSTM (Sun Validation Test Suite) 6.2 is a comprehensive software diagnostic package that tests and validates Sun SPARC and x86 hardware. This feature verifies the configuration and proper functioning of controllers, devices, and platforms to validate the hardware.

SunVTS supports the following new hardware:

If executed on unsupported hardware, SunVTS stops execution and provides appropriate warning messages. This feature is an x86 enhancement for SunVTS.

For more SunVTS 6.2 documentation, see http://www.sun.com/documentation.

Common Agent Container

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The Common Agent Container (CAC) is a stand-alone JavaTM program that implements a container for Java management applications. CAC provides a management infrastructure designed for the management functionality based on Java Management Extensions (JMXTM) and Java Dynamic Management Kit (JDMK). The SUNCacaort package installs the CAC software in the /usr/lib/cacao directory. Typically, CAC is not visible to the user or administrator.

Two occasions when an administrator might need to interact with the container daemon are:

For more information, see the Chapter 21, Troubleshooting Software Problems (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration.

iSCSI Logout Support

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The iSCSI logout support feature allows a user to logout from an iSCSI target without rebooting the host. When a user tries to remove or disable a discovery method or address and the target is not in use, then the target logs out and cleans up all related resources. If the target is in use, then the discovery address or method remains enabled and the logical unit in use message is logged. This feature introduces a new behavior to safely log out of unused devices without rebooting the host.

The following commands can be use to apply this feature:

A user is no longer required to reboot a host when an attached iSCSI storage is removed from the host.

For further information, see the iscsiadm(1M) man page. See also the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

iSCSI MS/T Support

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The iSCSI Multiple session target (MS/T) support feature enables a user to create more iSCSI session or paths to a target as needed. The additional iSCSI paths provide higher bandwidth aggregation and availability in specific configurations. The iSCSI MS/T support feature should be used in combination with MPxIO or other multipathing software.

The new iscsiadm commands are:

The iSCSI MS/T support feature enables higher bandwidth aggregation and availability to the customers with iSCSI arrays that support login redirection.

For more information, see:

The logadm Utility

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The logadm utility provides the -l option to rotate the logfile timestamps with local time. The -l option enables logadm to use the local time while naming files. This option does not change how timestamps are stored in log files.

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

The volfsUtility

This enhancement to the volfs utility is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The volume management daemon, vold, is now managed by the Service Management Facility (SMF). This means you can use the svcadm disable command to disable the following new volfs service, if appropriate:


# svcadm disable volfs

You can identify the status of the volfs service by using this command:


$ svcs volfs
STATE          STIME    FMRI
online         Sep_29   svc:/system/filesystem/volfs:default

For more information, see the smf(5), volfs(7FS), and vold(1M) man pages.

For more information about managing the volfs service, see What’s New in Removable Media? in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

Basic Registration 1.1

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Basic Registration 1.1 enables you to create a registration profile and ID to automate your Solaris software registrations. The software registration user interface and the procedure for registering Solaris software has been changed in Basic Registration 1.1.

For more information about the software registration user interface changes and step-by-step instructions on how to register your Solaris software, see the Sun Connection Information Hub at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hubs/connection/.

Sun Update Connection

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

SunSM Update Connection System Edition is now known as Sun Update Connection. Sun Update Connection product supports the default patchadd behavior from a global zone on a system where one or more non-global zones are installed.

For more information about the Sun Update Connection suite of products, see http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/coll/1320.2. See also the Sun Update Connection, System Edition 1.0 Release Notes..

Networking Features

The following networking features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

IPv6 for IPFilter

This networking feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

IPFilter for the Solaris OS has been updated to include IPv6 support. Packet filtering rules which include IPv6 addresses can be applied by using the ipf commands. IPv6 extension headers can be used to enable filtering. The IPv6 option has also been added to the ipfstat IPFilter statistics.

IPFilter can now be deployed in IPv6 networks to enhance security.

For further information see the ipf(1M) and ipfstat(1M) man pages. See also the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

UDP and TCP Performance Enhancement

This networking enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Performance of both the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) has been enhanced in this release. The enhancements result in lower latency and higher throughput for both transmit performance and receive performance. Network applications yield better performance due to system performance improvements. This feature particularly benefits applications that heavily transmit and receive UDP packets or use TCP loopback connections.

For more information, see the ip(7P), tcp(7P), and udp(7P) man pages. See also the Solaris Tunable Parameters Reference Manual.

IP_NEXTHOP Socket Option

This networking enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The IP_NEXTHOP is a new IP-level socket option that specifies the address of the next hop for the traffic that originates from the socket. An application that has the IP_NEXTHOP option set bypasses the routing table lookups on the destination and sends packets directly to the specified onlink nexthop.

Note –

The thread that sets the IP_NEXTHOP option must have the PRIV_SYS_NET_CONFIG privilege.

TCP_INIT_CWND Socket Option

This networking enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The new TCP socket option, TCP_INIT_CWND, enables an application to override the settings in the initial TCP congestion window, as described in RFC 3390, “Increasing TCP's Initial Window.” By default, TCP sets the initial congestion window at connection set up time and after an idle period. (An idle period is when no traffic occurs between the two ends of the TCP connection. An application can use the TCP_INIT_CWND socket option to set the initial congestion window to a specified number of TCP segments. So the value of this new socket option is used both at the connection start time and after an idle period to set the initial congestion window. The process must have the PRIV_SYS_NET_CONFIG privilege if a number greater than that calculated by RFC 3390 must be specified.

For further information, see the tcp(7P) man page.

Security Features

The following security features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Enhancements for pktool Object Migration and Interoperability

These security enhancements are new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The pktool command enables users to manage PKCS#11 objects. New subcommands have been added to move, display, and delete PKCS#11 objects and to show available PKCS#11 tokens. The new pktool subcommands help migrate cryptographic objects to or from the default Sun Software PKCS#11 Softtoken or other PKCS#11-compliant tokens.

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

SSL Proxy Module

This security enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

A kernel-level SSL proxy server has been added in this release. The proxy simplifies and accelerates the SSL/TLS protocol implementation by pushing handshake and records processing to the kernel. The proxy supports the most commonly used cipher suites. You can configure applications, such as web servers, to offload the handling of the SSL operations with those cipher suites to the proxy, and seamlessly fall back to their existing user-level SSL library for the others.

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

AES Counter Mode

This security enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) is a block cipher recommended by the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST). When used in counter mode, a counter block is encrypted and the result is XOR with a block of plain text to produce cipher text. The counter mode is useful with block devices because the encryption or decryption of a block does not depend upon the prior encryption or decryption of any other block. The counter mode has been approved by NIST. This feature is only available to kernel consumers.

For more information, see the libpkcs11(3LIB) man page.

PKCS #11 v2.20 Support in the Solaris Cryptographic Framework

This security enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This feature adds RSA PKCS #11 v2.20 support to the Solaris Cryptographic Framework, including the stronger SHA2 algorithms.

For a list of mechanisms that v2.20 provides, see the pkcs11_softtoken(5) man page. For a list of mechanisms that are available to users, see the digestp(1) and mac(1) man pages.

Kerberos Cred Auto-Renew

This security enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

In the Solaris 10 6/06 release, the Kerberos Cred Auto-Renew feature can automatically renew an user's credentials rather than sending a warning. The user is also not required to manually renew the credentials using the kinit -R command.

For more information, see ktkt_warnd(1M) and warn.conf(4) man pages.

Device Management Features

The following device management features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

iSNS Client Support for iSCSI

This device management feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The Internet Storage Name Service (iSNS) client feature adds a new discovery option to the Solaris OS iSCSI software initiator. This option enables user to use iSNs to handle Internet Protocol (IP)-SAN device discovery. This feature is off by default and is not a platform-specific feature. The iSNS client feature introduces several iscsiadm command additions, modifications, and driver changes to handle iSNS discovery.

IT customers who use iSCSI to build block-based IP-SAN need a scalable way to manage device discovery and configuration for their SANs as they grow. The iSNS client feature supports a scalable method for device discovery in a large IP-SAN configuration that uses a minimal configuration.

For further information about the new and modified command-line options, see the iscsiadm(1M) man page. See also the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.

cdrecord, readCD, and cdda2wav Available

This device management feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Previously, cdrecord was available on a companion CD. In this release, cdrecord is now available in the Solaris OS. cdrecord is a powerful tool for burning CDs. cdrecord supports more burners than cdrw. cdrecord works better with USB and 1394 external burners. cdrecord is, however, limited to DVD images that are less than 2 Gbytes.

For further information, see the cdrecord, readCD, and cdda2wav man pages.

x86: PCI Express Support on x86 Systems

This device management feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This Solaris release provides support for the PCI Express (PCIe) interconnect. PCIe is designed to connect peripheral devices to desktop, enterprise, mobile, communication, and embedded applications.

The PCIe interconnect is an industry-standard, high-performance, serial I/O bus. For details on PCIe technology, go to the following site:

http://www.pcisig.com

The PCIe software provides the following features in this Solaris release:

The following cfgadm example output displays the hotpluggable PCIe devices on an x86 system. Note that the display below might differ from platform to platform. Check your hardware platform guide for the correct cfgadm syntax.


# cfgadm pci
Ap_Id     Type         Receptacle   Occupant     Condition
pcie1     unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie2     unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie3     unknown      empty        unconfigured unknown
pcie4     etherne/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie5     pci-pci/hp   connected    configured   ok
pcie6     unknown      disconnected unconfigured unknown

The administrative model for hotplugging PCIe peripherals is the same as for PCI peripherals, which use the cfgadm command.

For more information, see the cfgadm_pci(1M) man page and the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems. Check your hardware platform guide to ensure that PCIe and PCIe hotplug support is provided on your system. In addition, carefully review the instructions for physically inserting or removing adapters on your system. Also review the semantics of device auto-configuration, if applicable.

Solaris support for LSISAS1064 RAID Operations

This device management feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The raidctl utility creates, deletes, and displays Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks (RAID) volumes of the LSI1030 and LSI1064 controllers. This utility also updates firmware, fcode, and BIOS for LSI1030 and LSI1064 controllers. The raidctl utility requires privileges controlled by the underlying file system permissions. Only privileged users can change the RAID system configuration. If a non-privileged user attempts to create or delete a RAID volume, the command fails with EPERM.

The LSI1030 SCSI Host Bus Adapter (HBA) supports a single RAID volume. This volume is a two-disk mirror, which is also known as Integrated Mirror (IM). IM volume is a RAID 1 type volume. An IM volume can be created on an LSI1030 controller only if the secondary disk has a capacity greater than or equal to the primary disk and there are no file systems mounted on the secondary disk.

The LSI1064 HBA can enable up to two RAID volumes, IM and Integrated Stripe (IS). The IS volume is a RAID 0 type volume. To create a volume on the LSI1064 controller, member disks of the volume should not have mounted file systems because volume initialization destroys data on member disks.

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

Desktop Features

The following desktop features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

32-bit: Palm Synchronization with USB Port

This desktop feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The palm synchronization feature enables Palm device synchronization through USB ports on the Solaris OS. This feature provides support to synchronize mobile devices such as Palm tops with desktops.

For further information, see the gpilotd-control-applet(1) man page.

32-bit: The gnome-pilot Utility

This desktop feature is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The gnome-pilot utility enables Palm users to synchronize their calendars, contacts and task lists between Evolution and their devices on the Solaris OS. This feature also enables the Palm user to back up and restore their devices on the Solaris OS. The gnome-pilot feature supports synchronization with the PalmOS® 4.x and the PalmOS 5.x.

x86: Xorg X Server Version 6.9

This X11 windowing feature enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The Xorg X Server for x86 and x64 platforms has been upgraded from version 6.8.2 to version 6.9 by the X.Org Foundation and the open source community. The new version adds support for more graphics devices including new models from ATI, XGI, VIA, and Intel. The Xorg X Server version 6.9 also adds keyboard and mouse handling improvements, performance enhancements, and bug fixes.

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

Developer Tools

The following developer tool enhancement has been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release. To view developer tools that are new in the previous Solaris 10 1/06 release, see Developer Tools.

mediaLib 2.4

mediaLib 2.4 includes the following new features:

For more information, see the libmlib(3LIB) and libmlib_mt(3LIB) man pages . See also http://www.sun.com/processors/vis/mlib.html.

New and Updated Drivers

The following drivers have been added or enhanced in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

x86: SATA HBA Framework Support

This driver is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) HBA framework project delivers a generic SATA framework for the Marvell 88SX60xx, Marvell 88SX50xx, and the Silicon Image 3124 controllers. The new SATA HBA drivers and framework provide native support for accessing SATA controllers and disks. These drivers provide features, such as hot plugging and queueing of multiple commands that are unique to SATA. These SATA drivers interface with the sd (target disk) driver and support the sd functionality.

For more information, see the following man pages:

USB-to-Serial Driver for Prolific Adapters

This driver is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This USB-to-serial driver supports Prolific pl2303 chipset-based adapters. With this new driver, customers can choose between Edgeport adapters and Prolific adapters.

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

Driver for IEEE 1394-Based (IIDC) Digital Cameras

This driver is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This driver enables support of IEEE 1394-based (IIDC) digital cameras. By supporting a software interface for camera control and image capture, the driver also enables development of applications that attach to these devices. This driver supports devices that implement the 1.04 version of the 1394 Trade Association 1394-based Digital Camera Specification. Support also covers devices that are backwards compatible.

For more information, refer to the dcam1394(7D) man page.

Driver Support for the New STK Tape Drive 10000 “Titanium”

This driver support is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

This release enables the st (SCSI tape) driver to support the new StorageTek tape drive T10000A Titanium.

For further information, see the st(7D) man page.

USB-to-Serial Driver for Keyspan Adapters

This driver is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

A new driver is provided in the release for Keyspan USB-to-serial adapters. This driver supports the USA-19HS model. With this new driver, customers have a choice between Edgeport adapters and Keyspan adapters.

For further information, see the usbsksp(7D) man page.

Deimos Cryptographic Accelerator

This driver support is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The DCA driver supports Sun's SCA1000 and SCA500 cryptographic accelerator cards. Additionally, the driver will support Broadcom's 5820, 5821, and 5822 cards.

All of these cards support the following operations:

The driver acts as cryptographic service provider to the Solaris Cryptographic Framework. The driver can be used by anyone who uses this framework.

x86: Driver Support for AMD64 Platform

This driver support is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

In this release, the glm driver has been ported to the x64 platform. This driver enables you to use the x4422a card on the AMD64 platform.

For further information, see the glm(7D) man page.

rge Driver

This driver support is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release. The rge driver provides support for Realtek RTL8169S/8110S Gigabit Ethernet devices.

For further information, refer to the rge(7D) man page.

Chelsio NIC Driver Support

In the Solaris 10 6/06 release, the chxge driver supports the Chelsio 10G Ethernet controller card. This support is provided on 32–bit and 64–bit architectures for both x86 and SPARC platforms. This driver supports the DLPI interface and checksum offload.

For detailed information, see the chxge(7D) man page.

HBA Drivers

These driver enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The following HBA drivers have been added to the Solaris OS to support the full family of QLogic and Emulex HBA products. These products include both Sun and non-Sun HBAs:

These HBA drivers provide a selection of choices with a single fibre-channel implementation. The supported HBAs are Solaris Ready-certified and enable PCI-X and PCIe 4-Gbyte HBA support.

For further information, refer to the following links:

Language Support

The following language support features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

New UTF-8 Locales

This language support enhancement is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Over 50 new UTF-8 locales have been introduced in this release. As a result, Unicode support is now provided for all European, Middle Eastern, and Asian (EMEA) locales which lack a UTF-8 charset variant. Furthermore, locales for Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Malta are now available for the first time. Therefore, locales for all 25 European Union (EU) member states are now supported.

Additional Software

The following software have been added to the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Watchdog Timeout

This additional software is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

The watchdog mechanism detects a system hang. The watchdog timeout is a timer that is continually reset by a user application while the operating system and user application are running. While the watchdog timer operates in application mode, an additional alarm function, Alarm 3, is available to generate alarms for critical problems in the user application.

32-bit: RealPlayer for the Solaris OS

This additional software is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

RealPlayer enables users to access and manage digital media. RealPlayer supports the following digital media formats:

The RealPlayer feature enhances the multimedia experience for Sun Java Desktop System (Java DS) users.

pilot-link Software

This Open Source software is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

Pilot-link is a suite of tools that enables you to connect your Palm or PalmOS compatible handheld with Unix, Linux, and any other POSIX-compatible machine. pilot-link works with almost all PalmOS handhelds. To sync Palm devices with Solaris by USB port, pilot-link makes use of libusb. For further information, see the libusb(3LIB).

This release of pilot-link is based on pilot-link v0.12.0-pre4.

For further information, see http://www.pilot-link.org. See also pilot-xfer(1) in the /usr/sfw/man directory.

PostgreSQL for the Solaris OS

This additional software is new in the Solaris 10 6/06 release.

PostgreSQL is a relational database system provided in the open-source community. More than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture has earned PostgreSQL a reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.

For more information, see http://www.postgresql.org.