Chapter 9. Miscellaneous

And then, there's this other stuff...

What's in this chapter anyway?

Every general-purpose book has a miscellaneous chapter. This is it for ours! Perhaps you might think that some of the things here belong in a different chapter. However, as Michelangelo is purported to have said:

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

Under his tutelage, I took it away from that chapter, and put it here instead!

Sadly, that may make this chapter less than perfect, but I hope you find some of the things here of interest anyway. The top three and most eye-catching ones in this chapter are:

• The return of text-based virtual consoles

• SMF transition automated alerts

• iSCSI management changes

Virtual consoles, also known as virtual terminals, are back

A few revisions ago, Solaris x86 had the popular virtual consoles code (popular with many other free OSs) shoehorned in. I, for one, was saddened when they took it out, supposedly for being inconsistent with the overall Solaris kernel tree. Happily, they have decided to bring it back. (Although not for SPARC. Boo!) Note that they are properly referred to now as virtual terminals (VTs).

If you are not familiar with the virtual consoles concept, it allows you to have multiple text-based consoles without running a window system. Picture a text-based console. Then imagine you have a few extras hidden away that you can switch between with a keyboard sequence. The sequence in question is a three-key combo, as follows:

Ctrl + Alt + (F1 through F7)

F1 switches to VT #1. F2 switches to VT #2, and so on. By default, and by convention, when you start up an X window session, it uses VT #7. Likewise, the "normal" (or original, boot-time) console...

Fast reboot

Solaris 11 is capable of doing a fast reboot, skipping the power-on style self tests that have traditionally accompanied a reboot.

On x86 machines, this will automatically happen if you use the reboot command. To force a full test cycle, and/or to get access to the boot order menu from the BIOS, use halt, followed by pressing a key.

On SPARC, the default configuration requires that you use reboot -f for a fast reboot. If you wish fast reboot to be the default on SPARC, you must override an SMF property, as follows:

# svccfg -s "system/boot-config:default" setprop\ config/fastreboot_default=true
# svcadm refresh svc:/system/boot-config:default

To temporarily override the setting and reboot the slow way, you can use reboot -p, aka "reboot to PROM".

CUPS printing

The CUPS printing system is now the standard backend printing mechanism on Solaris 11. Some old backend tools are not just deprecated but ripped out. Things such as /usr/lib/lp/bin/netpr are no longer available although certain printing filters still are. The good news is that things such as /bin/lp still look more or less the same to the user, and if you really need it, you can still enable assorted protocol bridge services to CUPS for things such as rfc1179, IPP, or PAPI.

Describing the CUPS printing system in full would not be a good use of space in this book. Oracle has a 300-page admin document entirely dedicated to CUPS printing (document ID 821-1457).

Instead, you might try reading the full documentation at http://cups.org, or you could just make your life easy by running the system-config-printer GUI tool, either from xterm or by pulling down the Oracle GNOME menus and navigating to System – Administration – Print Manager.

Power management

The old pmconfig command has been replaced by the following tool, which fits in with the new naming standards nicely:

poweradm

As might be expected, this tool stores most of its configurations in the SMF database rather than in /etc/power.conf.

To see a list of values, you can use the following command:

# poweradm list
active_control/administrative-authority   smf=platform, current=platform
suspend/suspend-enable                     smf=false, current=false
active_config/time-to-full-capacity        platform=250, current=250
active_config/time-to-minimum-responsiveness  platform=0, current=0
disabled                                      platform=false

Paraphrasing a little, the preceding output shows that "the system does not have power management disabled". It also shows that "the system does not have suspend/resume capabilities", if it has not been changed. By default, if the machine hardware is capable of suspend/resume, the value will be set to true.

The other values can be...

Notifications triggered by SMF state transitions

SMF has learned a new trick with Solaris 11; it can now tell you when services alter state. This is done via the new svccfg subcommand, setnotify.

It is possible to send notifications via SNMP or e-mail. It is also possible to set up notifications for individual services or for all services at once.

SMF notifications through e-mail, also known as SMTP

Compare the following two examples for setting up e-mail alerts:

// To email when any service goes into or comes out of maintenance state:
svccfg setnotify -g maintenance mailto:[e-mail]

// To email when just this service transitions
svccfg -s mysvcname setnotify maintenance mailto:[e-mail]

Note

-g does not mean "goes to". It is a flag for "global". Do not mix it with a line intended for an individual service, or you will get many more notifications than you have planned!

There are many other transition types and state names. It is possible to alert only transitions to a state...

Trusted Solaris extras

Solaris Trusted Extensions (what used to be known as "Trusted Solaris") isn't dead yet! Oracle is still improving and refining Solaris integration with Trusted Extensions for those spooky folks who require things such as mandatory security access levels for all data. I can't tell you what all the changes are (or I'd have to kill you!), but suffice it to say that the txzonemgr GUI tool (now available via GNOME libraries only) has had some updating for RBAC and the like, to the point where it can now be used to manage most aspects of Trusted Extensions.

COMSTAR and iSCSI

Following its general unification mantra, Oracle has decided to also attempt to unify SCSI device configuration under a new shared umbrella called the COmmon Multiprotocol SCSI TARget (COMSTAR) framework.

That's the good news. The bad news is that Oracle has departed from its hitherto intuitive naming by not fully leveraging the sensibly named iscsiadm command. Previously, that command was purposed to handle iSCSI initiators rather than all iSCSI duties. Rather than extending its duties, however, Oracle has decided to perform a sidegrade via the SCSI Target Mode Framework (stmfadm) command. The new command is meant to be a general interface for SCSI target operations, such as security for allowing access to data. That said, for iSCSI-specific target side duties, the iscsiadm command is still the way to go.

For handling the iSCSI target side of things, there is now itadm. It is exclusively for iSCSI targets. Try not to confuse the initial "i" for "initiator". It's the exact...

Summary

It's unfortunate that there doesn't seem to be a good category to group these items in, but you never know when they may come in handy. Give the chapter a quick rescan, and your brain may be tickled a few months from now that there is a solution to your curious problem du jour after all.