Chapter 3. Sysadmin Configuration Differences

Solaris 11 has significant changes in the way sysadmins interact with it, even in areas that have not changed since Solaris was first released, or even back to SunOS days. This chapter will get you oriented for the new basic day-to-day ways of doing things.

Welcome to the new normal

The OS configuration has moved further towards the *adm tools and away from the traditional "edit a text file" approach. The three areas of configuration difference that a sysadmin will mostly notice are mentioned in this chapter:

• Host identity

• Driver configuration

• Network configuration

There are also a handful of other minor changes mentioned in the Miscellaneous differences in system-level configuration section at the end of this chapter.

Host identity: the sysconfig command

Earlier, if a sysadmin didn't feel like editing the handful of host identity-related files manually, there was the sys-unconfig command.

The new, more modern replacement is sysconfig, which contains three modes:

• configure

• unconfigure

• create-profile

sysconfig configure

This mode essentially brings up a standard Solaris 11 initial, manual installation screen. It prompts you for the usual things, such as hostname, network configuration, and also root account information. Once the information is validated, it reconfigures the system.

Tip

Warnings

• Your only chance to back out of host-level changes is when the initial "Do you want to continue?" type prompt appears. If you do proceed, it will unconfigure various things on the live system before asking you your preferences for the hostname and so on.

• Regardless of where you start the program, it will start a new process to ask configuration questions on the system console.

The program claims to create /system/volatile...

Driver configuration: /etc/driver/drv

Right from the start of Solaris' first release, the kernel driver configuration was handled in an odd location. The driver.conf files were edited under variations of /kernel/drv or /usr/kernel/drv, rather than under the usual /etc tree.

In Solaris 11, the location has finally been standardized to join the rest of the file-based configuration, under /etc. The new official location for the sysadmin-tuned kernel.conf files is in /etc/driver/drv.

It should be noted that most of the default versions of the driver.conf files are still provided in /kernel/drv; however, if you choose to modify them, you should place the modified versions under /etc/driver/drv.

There are two things to note about this new layout that are of benefit:

1. The original and new .conf files are merged. Therefore, you only need to add changes rather than duplicating the whole file.

2. This preserves your system tuning across driver patches and upgrades more cleanly.

In contrast, something that...

Network address configuration: ipadm and dladm

IP address configuration is now primarily handled by /usr/sbin/ipadm. Oracle is trying to consolidate all IP administration into this tool. Manual configuration above the basic physical interface is almost exclusively handled by ipadm, which controls both IP address assignments, as well as TCP and IP tunables, in a consistent and persistent fashion.

Solaris 11 has attempted to virtualize and automate a bundle of assorted sysadmin tasks, one of which is network configuration. It provides a pair of tools named netadm and netcfg, which follow rule sets for automatically and dynamically managing IP addresses. For now, please ignore the commands that we just mentioned. This section primarily addresses the manual configuration of IP addresses via ipadm.

If your host is currently under automatic network address control and you wish to manually set your network information, you will need to use netadm to change your host to manual network mode (which...

Wireless configuration: Stick to the GUI if you can

In the unlikely event that you are configuring a wireless networking device manually, you will need to use ipadm in conjunction with another adm tool: dladm (Data Link Administration).

Normally, if you are using wireless networking, you would be on a laptop. If so, you would be better off using the automatic network configuration tools, aka NWAM, via the GNOME network GUI. It has a very functional Wi-Fi configuration tool built in, similar to what you will experience on a laptop running Red Hat and GNOME. However, for completeness' sake, and possibly to aid in debugging, here we will configure wireless networking manually on Solaris 11 using the dladm and ipadm commands.

Unfortunately, this is one area where the new generic naming of interfaces does not normally come into play. Because of this, the first step is to find the name of your wireless network interface. Whenever we wish to deal with physical network device names, we will usually...

Miscellaneous differences in system-level configuration

Certain things that used to be in files have been moved into the SMF repository of properties and services.

Some have specialized tools to assist in administration. However, some rely only on the basic SMF property tools, such as svcprop and svccfg.

Name service related

The following is a table of "name service" related, legacy file-based information and the corresponding SMF location:

Filename	SMF location
/etc/nsswitch.conf	svc:/system/name-service/switch:default
/etc/nscd.conf	svc:/system/name-service/cache:default
/etc/resolv.conf	svc:/network/dns/client:default
/etc/defaultdomain	svc:/network/nis/domain:default
/var/ldap/*	svc:/network/ldap/client:default

Each of the old-style file's information in the left column can be imported manually into SMF via the nscfg command. It is also possible to do one-shot exports of the information. The sample usage of each action is as follows:

nscfg import -f svc:...

Summary

This chapter attempts to address some of the more common system administration changes that a sysadmin might encounter and that have new interfaces in Solaris 11. The network-level coverage here is more of a tactical level, rather than an architectural one. For a more in-depth view of the Solaris 11 network tools, and a better understanding of the new network kernel architecture in general, be sure to read Chapter 4, Networking Nuts and Bolts.

One thing that is not mentioned, is the day-to-day type operations dealing with ZFS. If you are not already familiar with it, you should also be sure to read Chapter 6, ZFS – Now You Can't Ignore It! carefully.

Most other daily sysadmin chores that are not mentioned in this chapter have not changed since Solaris 10.

The rest of the chapter is locked

Summary

This chapter attempts to address some of the more common system administration changes that a sysadmin might encounter and that have new interfaces in Solaris 11. The network-level coverage here is more of a tactical level, rather than an architectural one. For a more in-depth view of the Solaris 11 network tools, and a better understanding of the new network kernel architecture in general, be sure to read Chapter 4, Networking Nuts and Bolts.

One thing that is not mentioned, is the day-to-day type operations dealing with ZFS. If you are not already familiar with it, you should also be sure to read Chapter 6, ZFS – Now You Can't Ignore It! carefully.

Most other daily sysadmin chores that are not mentioned in this chapter have not changed since Solaris 10.