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Creating Solaris Containers

Whilst there is an abundance of documentation on creating containers, the goal here is to create a container in the fewest number of steps.

Solaris 11 Patch History

Using the pkg history command you can take a look back and see what happened on your image.

Solaris Crash Dumps

If a Solaris system crashes (panic) it is possible to write the entire contents of memory to disk for later analysis.

Repairing a Damaged ZFS Device

This article describes how to determine ZFS device failure types, clear transient errors, and replace a device.

Repairing a Missing ZFS Device

If a device cannot be opened, it displays as UNAVAILABLE in the zpool status output.

Changing the default Solaris 11 locale

In Solaris 10 you had to edit the /etc/default/init file to chance the default locale, now with Solaris 11 it is defined in SMF.

Adding a permanent static route in Solaris

When adding routes persistently care should be taken to make sure that routes that you add do not already exist in the persistent configuration.

ZFS Raid and RAIDZ techniques

With ZFS filesystem, RAIDZ is very popular as it gives the best tradeoff of hardware failure protection versus storage.

Creating an LDOM step-by-step

This article acts like a demo showing step-by-step instructions on the creation of a new LDOM, assigning resources and installation of the Solaris OS.

Solaris LDOM overview

A simple posts giving a brief overview on the Solaris LDOM hardware virtualisation.

Enabling the Solaris Auditing subsystem

To configure the Solaris Auditing subsystem on Solaris 9 or Solaris 10 we simply run the bsmconv command-line utility from the /etc/security directory

Installing and Administrating NIS+

NIS+ is a network information service enables system administrators to manage a group of servers from a central location

Solaris Boot Process

The Solaris boot process in a nutshell is the process of boot loading RC scripts to reach single or multiuser level

Using the Solaris getent command

The advantage of getent is that the command searches the information sources in the order in which they are configured in the name service switch file.

Adding a SAMBA user

This is a short how-to post to provide simple steps to add users to a SAMBA environment.

Solaris patch return codes - patchadd

When installing patches on Solaris, you may often see error codes or Exit/Return codes when the patch installation fails. These are the return codes.

fssnap of / (root) fails under Solaris

Using fssnap we can quickly take a temporary snapshot of any UFS file system and then use that snapshot for backup operations.

Solaris 10 and 11 differences for sysadmins

Describes multiple topics for transitioning from the Solaris 10 operating system to an Oracle Solaris 11 release.

Solaris Raid Level and Array Type Primer

A simple article highligting the raid levels and arry types available for the Solaris operating system

Preventing a Solaris 'Ping of Death' attack

The Ping of Death attack, first seen in 1996, is achieved using the Internet control message protocol, or ICMP (hence the name ?Ping of Death?).

Sending a ZFS snaphot

You can use the zfs send command to send a copy of a snapshot stream and receive the snapshot stream in another pool

Solaris Deferred Activation Patching (DAP)

With DAP the reboot is deferred until all patching is completed unlike non-DAP kernel patches which forced reboot before other patches can be applied.

Sun Management Center - A Technical Overview

Integrates and scales from single to thousands of servers and desktops, storage components and applications running on Solaris

Solaris to AIX - A Quick Reference guide

An updated quick reference quide for sysadmins to contrast the Solaris 8 and AIX 4.3.3 operating systems.

Solaris Fault Management Architecture

Solaris Fault Management Architecture (FMA) introduces a new software architecture and methodology for fault management across Sun's product line.

How to use zlogin to Shutdown and Start a zone

You must be the global administrator or a user with appropriate authorization in the global zone to perform these procedures.

Patching Solaris with Sun Patch Manager 2

Sun have decided to terminate (end-of-support) Patch Manager 2.0 support. You are now recommended to use Sun Update Manager instead.

Solaris Run Control Scripts

Run Control (rc) scripts are used to start and stop processes at boot up and shutdown.

Introduction to Solaris Live Upgrade

The Solaris Live Upgrade revolutionises the way that you add patches to Solaris products and can save you hours of time and effort.

beadm quick reference

The beadm command enables users to manage their boot environments. This article provides a snapshot of the more command beadm subcommands.

Process monitoring using prstat

The prstat statistics utility shows a top-level summary of the processes that are using system resources currently.

Troubleshooting ZFS Swap and Dump devices

If you need to adjust the size of the swap volume after installation on an active system, review the following steps. See CR 6765386 for more info

Basic VERITAS Volume Replicator Commands

Veritas Volume Replicator aides in an effective maintain a consistent copy of application data at one or more remote locations via data-replication

ZFS Send and Receive

ZFS has the ability to send and receive data. This can be used to combine snapshots, create backups, or replicate data between servers

Renaming a ZFS zpool

Renaming a zpool is not as intuitive as I would expect, but it is still pretty simple. However, we can accomplish this through a three step process.

Solaris FireEngine Project

The Solaris FireEngine project is a high performance networking framework based on an IP classifier and vertical perimeters.

Creating a Solaris Zone on ZFS

The following is a simple example of creating a ZFS filesystem and using it to hold a newly-created Solaris Zone (Solaris Container)

Solaris backup and restore utilities

A brief overview of the various backup and restore utilities available under the Solaris operating system.

Assigning a Volume Name to a Solaris disk

Having a large number of disks can be a challange for sysadmins. By giving each disk a volume name may make it easier.

Reset lost Solaris root password using kmdb

Performing a Solaris root password recovery when neither local cd/dvd or jumpstart (netinstall) options are avilable.

Creating a Flash Archive Recovery (FLAR) Image

This article provides simple instructions to create a Flash Archive image that can be loaded onto the target system to recover from a failed drive.

How to build a Solaris Branded Zone

This is a standard question for Solaris administrators who unfortunately have requirements for an older Solaris 9 kernel for a legacy application.

Solaris inode size

Inodes store information on files such as user and group ownership, access mode (read, write, execute permissions) and type of file.

Solaris tape device files and utilities

There are a number of utilities and files that come into play with tape drives in Solaris, and it is helpful to know how all the pieces fit together.

Configuring Solaris Link Aggregation

When we aggregate two or more network interfaces we are forming a new network interface on top of those physical interfaces.

Resumable ZFS Send Streams

The ability to resume an interrupted zfs send/receive data stream which is a representation of a snapshot is now part of Oracle Solaris 11.4

Monitor and Manage ZFS Shadow Migration

Using Shadow Migration is very easy; for example, we could migrate shared ZFS and UFS file systems through NFS or even through a local file system

Configurable ZFS Read and Write Throughput Limits

Setting the size of a ZFS dataset can ensure an appropriate allocation of space configuration that contains multiple volumes to service different clients

Bundled FOSS in the upcoming Oracle Solaris 11.4

The number of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), or freeware, packages delivered with Oracle Solaris 11 has increased with each update

Sun RSC Configuration

How to setup and manage a Sun RSC (Remote Serial Console) on the Sun Enterprise™ 250.

Solaris package management

Solaris 8 uses a number of commands to manage software installed on the OS. This short cheat sheet provides the basic package management commands.

Solaris NFS

NFS is a protocol which allows file systems on one system to be made available on a remote system. NFS works on a server-client model.

Troubleshooting 'too many open files'

Applications or servers can sometimes fail with an error indicating that there are too many open files for the current process. Most of the time.

Solaris SPARC Boot Sequence

Understanding the booting process is important in the sense that you can get a clear idea when a system faces a booting problem and steps involved.

Solaris reconfiguration boot

During a reconfiguration restart, a device hierarchy is created in the /devices file system to represent the devices connected to the system.

Oracle Linux and Solaris command comparison

This document explains how to use Oracle Solaris to users who have experience operating systems in a Linux environment.

Oracle Linux and Solaris runlevels

Like Oracle Enterprise Linux 6, Solaris has runlevels 0 through 6. However, the meanings are somewhat different. In OEL 7 runlevel is target.

queue max run limit reached

The cron daemon has a limit of how many jobs run simultaneously. If a new job is scheduled and the limit is reached the job will be rescheduled.

Solaris LDOM vs Zones

A Sun Logical Domain (LDom) is a full virtual machine whereas a Solaris zone is a virtual operating system.

Which Sun systems have ILOM, ALOM or RSC?

Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM) is the system management firmware used to monitor, manage, and configure a variety of Sun server platforms.

Solaris UFS file system overview

UFS is the primary file system for the Solaris OS. UFS is extremely mature, very stable, and for most applications, is the file system of choice.

Solaris backup and restore command examples

Backups and Restores of Solaris UFS file systems, files and directories can be done using tar, cpio, ufsdump, ufsrestore and dd commands.

Find command examples

The find command in UNIX and Linux is a command line utility allowing you to search for files in a directory hierarchy.

Configure DNS services in Solaris 11 using SMF

The previous method of modifying a configuration file to configure naming services no longer works we now reply on SMF.

Stopping and Starting CDE

The Common Desktop Environment compatible among various workstation manufacturers, provides users with a desktop graphical interface on the Solaris OS

Recreating /dev/null in Solaris

A simple procedure to recreate /dev/null on a Solaris system using the mknod command to create a special character device.

Changing hostid under Solaris 8

To change the hostid, usually it's sufficient (and very easy) to use the hid ( or hid2 ) programs, which change the hostid of the running kernel.

Rename an existing SAM-QFS file system?

Renaming a SAM-QFS file system is a two-step process. Firstly edit the mcf file then run samfsck to update the superblock

A5x00 (photon) Cheat Sheet

This article provides a quick reference guide to the supported disk configuration on a Sun StorEdge A5x00 storage array.

Solaris MultiPathing options

Checking if any of the MPxIO, VxDMP or EMC PowerPath multipathing software is installed and active on a given Solaris system.

Solaris proc commands

These commands can be run against a specific process, but most of them can also be run against all processes on the system.

Solaris inittab

The /etc/inittab file plays a crucial role in the boot sequence. For versions of Solaris prior to version 10, the /etc/inittab was edited manually.

Scanning for new luns

This is a short article on how to rescan newly added luns in Solaris, Linux, AIX and HP-UX operating systems.

Solaris disk naming conventions

For every hard drive known to Solaris, there is a file in the /dev/dsk that is used to access that drive.

Gracefully shutdown Solaris 9

This article shows how to gracefully shut down Solaris 9 from within the CDE, and from the Console Login.

Using the OBDiag Utility

The OBDiag utility is an OpenBoot program designed to help the system administrator run extensive hardware diagnostics on a Sun SPARC system.

Securing access to a Solaris system

This document details some of the focus areas for security and provides suggestions to make it strong.

sadmind daemon vulnerability

In its default configuration sadmind uses a set of clear text Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) to authenticate between two machines.

ZFS versions in Solaris 10

This article describes available ZFS versions, features of each version, and the Solaris release that provides the ZFS version and feature

Adding fonts in Solaris 11

fontconfig is used to manage all types of fonts including PostScript and TrueType fonts in the Solaris desktop environment.

Installing Manual pages in Solaris

You need to have both the SUNWdoc and SUNWman packages installed on a Solaris system in order to view manual pages.

Resetting Oracle VM 3.x Agent Password

To facilitate the initial discovery of the Hypervisor part of the setup requires that we set the password for the root user and for the ovs-agent.

Sun StorEdge Component Manager Overview

Component Manager is a GUI application that helps manage and control Sun StorEdge A5x00 and Sun StorEdge T3 storage arrays.

Adding International Language Support in Solaris

A locale is a collection of files, data and sometimes code which contain the necessary information to adapt Solaris to a specific language.

Installing Solaris boot blocks

This post discusses how to install the boot block on a Solaris system running either the older UFS file system or the newer ZFS root file system.

Solaris CLI keyboard shortcuts

A short article providing various keyboard shortcuts for command line edit of any commands quick and easily.

Field Descriptions for the /etc/vfstab File

An entry on the Solaris /etc/vfstab file has seven fields, which are described in the following table.

Solaris Secure by Default

This project changes the default configuration of the Solaris OS such that ssh is the only network-listening service.

Solaris IP Filtering

IPF provides stateful packet filtering capabilities by IP address, network, port, protocol, network interface and traffic direction.

Solaris Auditing

Solaris auditing helps to detect potential security breaches by revealing suspicious or abnormal patterns of system usage.

Cryptographic Services Management on Solaris

The Solaris Cryptographic Framework provides cryptographic services to users and applications through user-level and kernel-level commands.

Using psradm to enable/disable a processor on Solaris

The psradm utility changes the operational status of processors. The legal states for the processor are on-line, offline, spare, Faulted, and no-intr

Sun Diskless Workstation Boot Sequence

To boot diskless workstations need to determine who they are, locate their boot server, locate their kernel and mount file systems from the server

Changing the WWN on a SPARCstorage Array

There are times when it is advantageous to change the World-Wide Number (WWN) for a particular SPARCstorage Array, such as after replacing the battery

Solaris SCSI Tape Configuration (st.conf)

The st.conf is the configiuration file for the st (SCSI Tape) driver on the Solaris Operating System.

Automated Security Enhancement Tool (ASET)

ASET allows you to monitor and restrict access to system files. It can be configured for three security levels: low, medium, and high.

Sun EEPROM Security

On Sun workstations and servers you can interact with the boot EEPROM (NVRAM) at any time by holding down the STOP (L1) key and pressing the "a" key

SunOS 4.1x and 5.x Administrative File differences

This article provides a list of the important files that have changed between SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x) based systems

SunOS 4.1x and 5.x Administrative Command differences

This article provides a summary of the SunOS administrative command differences between SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.x (SunOS 5.x) based systems

Solaris vs RHEL differences

The purpose of this document series is to introduce the system and network administration features of Red Hat Linux for Solaris Administrators.

Solaris vs RHEL - NetAdmin differences

The following sections detail the differences between the Solaris 9 OS and Red Hat Linux with respect to network administration tasks

Solaris vs RHEL - Advanced SysAdmin differences

The following sections detail the differences between the Solaris 9 OS and Red Hat Linux with respect to advanced system administration tasks

Solaris vs RHEL - SysAdmin differences

The following sections detail the differences between the Solaris 9 OS and Red Hat Linux with respect to system administration tasks.

Solaris vs RHEL - UNIX Essential differences

The following sections detail the differences between the Solaris 9 OS and Red Hat Linux with respect to basic tasks and component

Autosave Oracle VM configuration

The autosave feature is to ensure a copy of the current configuration is automatically saved whenever the Logical Domains configuration is changed.

Firefox scrolling on Solaris

Solaris will try to paste the top most thing in your clipboard when you click your middle mouse button.

NIS+ Credential Setup

To gain authorisation to change NIS+ databases you need to create your security credentials for the NIS+ principals

System Logging across different UNIX systems

This post provides brief differences in the log files used for System Logging of the most common versions of UNIX.

Common sysadmin tasks across multi-OS environments.

This article provides a brief overview of common differences in system configuration, management and security across multi-OS environments.

Creating a DiskSuite RAID5 device

Creating a RAID 5 metadevice with DiskSuite is extremely simple. Unlike creating mirrors which involves several steps.

Reloading st.conf without rebooting

To make an updated /kernel/drv/st.conf file active, it is necessary to reload the st (SCSI Tape) kernel module

A simple Disk Wipe procedure on Solaris

Overwriting a disk with the format command is usually enough for most purposes, because it greatly reduces the chance that any data can be recovered.

Determining a File System type (updated)

This is a simple post to answer the question ... How do I identify my file system type? and covers various falvours of UNIX and Linux

Veritas Cluster Server (VCS) cheat sheet

In VCS configuration, each Cluster contains systems, Service Groups and Resources. Service Groups contain a list of systems belonging to that group.

NIS and NIS+ cheat sheet

This quick reference guide provides a crib sheet style listing for administrating NIS and NIS+ environments.

Creating a Solaris FLAR image

A Solaris FLAR image can be used for reinstalling the OS one the original host and other systems.

Resetting Solaris LDOM to factory default

If you remove the LDOM before restoring the factory default configuration, you can restore the factory default configuration from the service processor

Faster SVM mirror resync

There are two way to change block size to get quickly synchronized disks in mirrored system

Configuring OpenSSH on Solaris 8

Solaris 8 doesn't come with the SSH and SFTP like features, to enable these we have to install and configure third party packages

Disable the power/suspend key on Sun keyboard

In this post I show options to disable the power/suspend key and an alternative to reassign the key to perform screenlock instead.

Using the truss command on Solaris

The truss command is used to trace system and library calls on a Sun or Sequent system. Which is similar to strace on Linux based systems

Solaris Zone status and Configuration

This article describes how to display the Solaris Zone Status and Configuration from the global zone.

Enforcing password complexity on Solaris

Solaris 10 is the first version of Solaris to provide a complex set of variables for controlling password strength.

Setting default route on Solaris (updated)

A HowTo article to add or edit the Default Gateway or Default Router in Sun Solaris Operating System.

Listing avilable Solaris 10 services

Under Solaris 10 we use the svcs command to provide information about services, including their status.

How to allow root login on Solaris 11

After your installation of Solaris 11 has completed, you will not be able to login directly to the console as the root user

Troubleshooting common NFS errors

Over the years I have seen some of the most common NFS Error/Issues which occurs in very common now and then to most of Solaris system admins.

Oracle Parameters on Solaris 10

The table below shows the System V IPC parameter and the corresponding Soalris resource controls for Oracle on Sun Solaris 10 OS.

Repairing a corrupt SMF Repository

Without a working SMF repository the system will not be able to boot. This article provides the steps to restore a working copy of the database.

Troubleshooting various NFS errors

Identifying and solving a problem is called troubleshooting, which is arguably the most difficult task in any area of computers. NFS is no exception.

Viewing Processes with the pgrep command

The pgrep command lets you specify the criteria and then displays the information only about the processes that match the criteria.

UFS snaphots

Basically, a snapshot is read-only copy of a file system (for the purpose of backup).

Viewing Processes with the prstat command

The prstat command displays information about processes similar to ps and pgrep commands but refreshes (updates) the output in a periodic fashion

Solaris UADMIN commands

The uadmin command is tightly coupled to the system administration procedures and is not intended for general use

Solaris 11 enable_passwd_compat

how to set enable_passwd_compat for LDAP under solaris 11

Configuring puppet on Solaris 11

A short article on the introduction and how to manage Solaris 11 systems using puppet.

Using SSH login without password

An article outlining steps needed to be able to use the SSH to access a remote system without supplying a password each time that you connect.

How to check OEM agent status on Solaris

This article provides the steps necessary to check the status of the OEM agent on any given Solaris system

Installing Oracle OEM agent on a Solaris host

This post provides the simple steps necessary to install the Oracle Enterprise Manager agent on a given Solaris system.

Disabling MONLIST in NTP

NTP server prior to version 4.2.7 apparently allows for the user to query the NTP server stat

"sed -i" workaround for Solaris

The version of sed running on Solaris is not capable of saving files so a workaround using perl is possible.

UFS logging in Solaris (updated)

When enabled, all changes to file system meta-data are written to an intent log prior to being written out to the file system itself.

Clearing Password History in Solaris 10

To ensure the security of passwords on Solaris systems, you need to edit the /etc/default/passwd file to enforce password length and complexity.

NetWorker 9.0 Server supported platforms

With the release of 9.0, the NetWorker Server and Management Console will now run only on Linux 64-bit and Windows 64-bit systems.

Configure KMS encryption on a UNIX NetBackup server

This article provides the necessary actions needed to install and configure Key Management Service (KMS) encryption on a UNIX NetBackup master server.

Disable syslog "remote logging" under Solaris

syslog remote logging under Solaris by default is enabled and will listen on UDP port 514 for syslog messages from remote servers.

Solaris Branded Zones

Branded zones are Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 containers created in a Solaris 10 global zone with BrandZ framework to extend the Solaris zones.

LDOM cheat sheet

This document is designed to be a a quick platform specific cheat sheet to help engineers run important LDOM task on Sun SPARC systems

Crash Dump Configuration

A crash dump is a snapshot of the physical memory, saved on disk, at the time that a fatal system error occurs.

Configuring Core Files

Core files are created when a program or an application terminates abnormally and are by default eritten to the current working directory.

Solaris preboot execution environment (PXE)

For standard Sparc servers the normal method of setting up a jumpstart is the be st forward, but for X86 clients PXE is the way to boot Solaris.

Removing VxVM from a Solaris root disk

This post provides an example of how to remove VxVM from a Solaris root disk. The operating system is mirrored between the two devices.

Solaris job scheduler

The Solaris Management Console (SMC) includes a graphical tool to create and schedule jobs on your system.

Solaris Software Patches

Patches are identified by unique alphanumeric strings. The patch base code, then a hyphen, and then a number that represents the patch revision number

Tuning a Solaris UFS file system

Using the tunesfs command you can modify certain parameters after creating the original file system without rebuilding the entire file system.

Components of a UFS file system

When you create a UFS file system, the disk slice is divided into cylinder groups.

Solaris non-global Zone States

This article simply provides a zone state flow chart and a table listing the state of non-global zones under Solaris.

Sun Explorer Utility (SUNWexplo)

The Sun Explorer utility gathers information and creates detailed snapshots of a systems architecture and configuration.

soft links and hard links in Solaris

A link is a pointer to another file or directory. Links provide a mechanism for multiple file names to reference the same data on disk.

Solaris file types

The file type can usually be identified by looking at the first character of the first column of information when using the ls command

Controlling User Disk Space Usage

Quotas let system administrators control the size of UFS file systems by limiting the amount of disk space that individual users can acquire.

Creating DiskSuite transaction logging metadevices

A metatrans device is identical to any other kind of metadevice. In order to configure the device it is assumed there is a free slice on each disk.

SUNW,hme network properties

Sun's Fast Ethernet card is one of the most commonly encountered pieces of hardware on a Solaris system. Internally nicknamed happy meal.

Solaris non-global Zone States (part 2)

This article simply provides addiational zone states from my previous post on the subject.

SunOS to Solaris versioning explained [updated]

SunOS is the core operating system and Solaris is the broader environment comprising SunOS, OpenWindows and networking support

Solaris run levels (updated)

A system's run level (also known as an init state) defines what services and resources are available to users.

Renaming Sun Cluster node names

Sometime hostname need to be changed especially when your customer want to make some list of server more orderly and correctly identify your machine

ZFS command line examples

ZFS uses the concept of storage pools to manage physical storage. Historically, file systems were constructed on top of a single physical device.

How to install and change locale in Solaris 11

In a default installation of Oracle Solaris 11, ten Core Locales are available. You can add support for additional locales using the pkg command.

stop/start syslogd on Solaris (updated)

syslog is an important facility need in all enterprises. We as sysadmins look at syslogs as a critical source to troubleshoot performance issues

Fixing ILOM command errors

There has been more than one instance when the Sun ILOM was not responsive to commands or were throwing errors

Securing SSH on Solaris 10

It is strongly recommended that sites abandon older clear-text login protocols and use SSH to prevent sniffing of sensitive data off the network

Solaris Security Toolkit (JASS)

The Solaris Security Toolkit simplifies and automates the process of securing Solaris OS systems and is based on proven security best practices/

Restricting Access to SSH Connections

A set of direcetives that are under used are the AllowUsers, AllowGroups, DenyUsers and DenyGroups to restrict user and groups remote access with SSH.

Useful Sun OpenBoot PROM (obp) commands

All the following commands are to be run from the ok prompt of the SPARC OBP and not the Solaris operating system.

Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)

The Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) identifies hardware that is compatible with Solaris and provides information about available software support.

How to verify if LDom services are started

A short article on troubleshooting Solaris LDoms. Most LDom issues can be easily resolved by looing at the error messages.

Managing Solaris 10 inetd services

inetadm is used in Solaris 10 to managing inetd services. If you run without any parameters you simply get a list of all services and status

Which Solaris package installed this file?

If you have a file and need to know the package that installed the file on the system then using pkgchk should help.

Restoring original Solaris file permissions

In the event of drastic file permission or ownership changes, it is possible to restore the original permissions of the file(s)

Installing a guest OS under Solaris X86

A virtual PC is basically a single file containing an operating system, which with the correct software runs inside a window in your booted OS.

Changing the Oracle VM Manager User Password

The Oracle VM Manager user lets you log in to the Oracle VM Manager Web UI. This article provides the steps required to change the admin password.

How to create 1GB zeroed sparse file

A sparse file is a type of file that attempts to use file system space more efficiently when blocks allocated to the file are mostly empty.

Solaris System log (syslogd) overview

Efficient event log syslog analysis reduces system downtime, increases network performance, and helps tighten security policies in the enterprise.

Basic Solaris Network Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting potential Solaris network services and issues using standard everyday tools ping, snoop, netstat and nfsstat.

Finding Solaris release and kernel info

Do you need to determine which release of Solaris you are running? Or other useful information that comes with it? The read more

Miscellaneous Solaris Commands

An assortment of miscellaneous Solaris commands that are useful to both novice and experienced Solaris administrators

Cleaning up the Live Upgrade environment

A simple process to cleanup the LiveUpgrade configuration for the solenv1 and alternative boot environments without impacting the system.

Identifying an ethernet (MAC) address in Solaris

Identifying a ethernet MAC address in Solaris as a non-root user is not as difficult as people think. arp, netstat and prtpicl are your friends.

Resizing Solaris swap partition online

A short tip on how to increate the size of swap online for a given Solaris system under zfs.

Patching Solaris 10 zones in parallel

Every sysadmin that has upgraded or patched a system running multiples zones will tell it, the upgrade was an undefinably long process.

Mounting an SMB/CIFS share on Solaris 11

This article will document how to mount a Windows CIFS file share onto the local file system on the Solaris 11 server.

Renaming an Oracle VM Guest Domain

A simple post providing the steps necessary to rename a guest domain

Disabling services in Solaris 10

To disable a service under Solaris 10 we use the svcadm command.

How to mount an ISO image under Solaris

A simple procedure to mount an ISO image under the Solaris OS and present the image to Guest zones.

Starting and Stopping Solaris services with svcadm

svcadm issues requests for actions on services executing within the SMF. Actions for a service are carried out by its assigned service agent.

Locking down your Solaris system

With later releases of Solaris, if you want to, you can manually lock down your system using the netstat, svcs and svcadm commands.

Cloning a Solaris zone

The beauty of zones under Solaris for me is the ability to clone any zone and then easily adapt it for it's new resources and function.

How much memory is in this UNIX system?

This is a relatively simple question, but alas, poor Yorick!, the answer is not plain sailing as all flavors of UNIX and Linux have different tools.

Troubleshooting ZFS

Most ZFS errors I've experienced generally fall into one of three categories. missing devices, damaged devices and data corruption.

ZFS Recommendations

Because ZFS uses kernel addressable memory, we need to make sure to allow enough system resources to take advantage of its capabilities

ZFS Internals

Max Bruning wrote an excellent paper on how to examine the internals of a ZFS data structure.

ZFS and Sun Cluster integration

A ZFS owned disk may be promoted to be a quorum disk on current Sun Cluster versions

ZFS Hardware Maintenance

Once the drive has been physically replaced, run the 'zfs replace' command against the device to allow it to be brought back online.

ZFS Data Protection

ZFS is a transactional file system. For each write request, a copy is made of the specified block protected by Copy-On-Write (COW)

ZFS Zones

If the filesystem is created in the global zone and added to the local zone via zonecfg, it may be assigned to more than one zone

ZFS Snapshots and Clones

The difference between a snapshot and a clone is that a clone is a writable, mountable copy of the file system.

ZFS Performance Monitoring

In ZFS, I/Os are scheduled similarly to how jobs are scheduled on CPUs.

ZFS Raid Levels

ZFS filesystems automatically stripe across all top-level disk devices. (Mirrors and RAID-Z devices are considered to be top-level devices)

ZFS Filesystem Management

Similar filesystems should be grouped together in hierarchies to make management easier.

Solaris Crash Dump Analysis (CDA)

Whatever the cause, the crash dump itself provides invaluable information to a support engineer to aid in diagnosing the problem.

Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF)

Under Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris the SMF has been upgraded. There are great new tools to handle the sysadmin work on the services.

Automatic home directory creation

Using the executable maps feature in Solaris automounter we can create an authenticated users home directory automatically if it does not exist.

Restoring Solaris files with NetWorker 7.x

This is a simple step-by-step guide on restoring files on a given Solaris system using the NetWorker recover command-line utility in NetWorker 7.x

Solaris Name Services

With Solaris we have five name services include local files, nis (formerly YP), nisplus (NIS+), DNS and now we have LDAP.

Verifying Solaris 11 version

To check your software to see if they meet minimum version requirements for installation you can use the uname comand, however...

Switching Solaris 11 repositories

For testing purpose you can use the release repository but production environments must use oracle support repository.

EFI and SUN Disk Labels

Have you ever got into a situation where you can't install a new system as you forgot to change the disk label from EFI prior to install?

Solaris pseudo file systems

Solaris pseudo file systems look like an ordinary file system but are actually a method whereby various system and process data can be accessed.

Solaris File Systems

Solaris supports a number of different file systems some out of the box, others by ways of additional software.

Oracle VM 3.4 Server Log Files

The Oracle VM Serverlog files you should check when troubleshooting problems with Oracle VM Server

Most commonly used XSCF commands

The eXtended System Control Facility Unit (XSCFU) is a service processor that operates and administrates both midrange servers

Detecting disks under Solaris

Ever needed to get Solaris to detect disks; the method depends on the version of Solaris. This article provides a how to

Changing the Oracle VM Dom0 Memory Size

The Oracle VM Agent password is used by Oracle VM Manager when you discover an Oracle VM Server.

Changing the Hostname in Solaris (updated)

The traditional method of changing the hostname of a given solaris system was to use sys-unconfig utility.

An introduction to Solaris Zones

This post is an introduction to the new virtual technology introduced from Sun Microsystems, namely Solaris Zones (not containers)

Solaris Volume Manager Overview

A full discussion is beyond the scope of this article, so we will focus on the most common cases, how to set them up, manage them and maintain them.

Patching Solaris with PCA

Not only does PCA generate a list of patches and downloads them, it also resolves dependencies between patches and installs them in the correct order

ZFS Quick Reference Guide

ZFS uses the concept of storage pools to manage physical storage. Historically, file systems were constructed on top of a single physical device.

Finding and Removing core files

A simple one liner to help find and remove core files from a given system.

Troubleshooting Solaris memory usage

With Solaris 9 and later, comes an extremly nice mdb command for checking how much memory is used in kernel, and how much is used in user space.

Installing EMC PowerPath on Solaris

EMC PowerPath for Solaris automates data path management, failover and recovery, and optimizes load balancing to ensure application availability.

Common Solaris and AIX sysadmin tasks

A short article providing common troubleshooting reference between Solaris 8 and AIX 4.3.3 operating systems.

Solaris Basic Audit Reporting Tool (BART)

BART is a great little alternative to Tripwire or AIDE. While not so robust or full featured, it does what you need it to do with very little impact.

pfiles versus lsof

Many people install lsof on their system as they know it from Linux. But you have a similar tool in Solaris, namely pfiles.

Solaris performance monitoring using K9 toolkit

In a nuyshell, the K9Toolkit is a collection of tools written using the KStat library on a Solaris 9 server to help locate performance bottlenecks.

Making pfexec work like sudo under Solaris

I thought I'd try out the new role based action control (RBAC) on the Solaris systems as an alternative to sudo.

How to unexpire a user login in Solaris

Using the usermod command on Solaris allows a sysadmin to unexpier/unlock a users login account

Restricting SFTP users with chrooted access

In a nutshell users will be tied-down to a specific directory which they will not be able to move from, thus prevention from seeing you entire system

ZFS Dataset Size

A simple entry on how to discover or set the size for a given ZFS dataset as occasionaly we need to increase the size of a ZFS dataset.

Setting up Solaris 10 Accounting subsystem

To configure the Solaris Auditing subsystem on Solaris 9 or Solaris 10 we simply run the bsmconv command-line utility from the /etc/security directory