Solaris Tips and Tricks

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• Solaris 10 allows you to lockout accounts after a certain number of failed logins.
• Solaris 10 has new features to manage non-login accounts and locked accounts which is no longer dainbread.

• How can I use fssnap to take file-system snapshots of active UFS file-systems?
• One technique for poor man's disk mirroring using ufsdump/ufsrestore.
• Another technique for poor man's disk mirroring that allows the 2nd disk to be usable (read hands off as in no messing with vfstab).

• Solaris 10 has a new feature boot -m verbose which allows you to customize boot console output.
• If you haven't sat down and figured out what all those scripts do, here is an analysis of Solaris 8 Startup Files.
• Ever wonder what the box is doing before the banner and OBP prompt is displayed?

• What is the CD-ROM called on this box?
• How can I create a bootable CD-ROM for Solaris? Another method.
• How to burn things to a CD-R with Solaris 8.

• How can I allow/prevent users from giving files away to someone else?

• Want to do something to multiple machines at once? Use the Oracle Cluster Console Tool.
• Need help with disk contention problems in a "shared" storage configuration?

• wgrep is a windowing grep that is useful for grabbing X number of lines before and after a match.

• Here are some great resources for the Oracle CoolThreads servers such as kernel params, FAQ, app tuning settings, etc.
• Here are the required kernel params for the T2000 server.
• T2000 IPGE Ethernet tuning parameters
• Richard McDougall has LOTS of links to more CoolThreads info
• The CoolThreads Selection Tool allows you to see if your software will be a good candidate for a T-series server.
• If you are planning on using the T-series servers to consolidate several other servers, the Consolidation Tool will help simplify Solaris Zone creation, Resource Pools and Psets.
• Sun has written several Blueprints articles on the T1000/T2000
• The CoolThreads servers come bundled with a FREE cryptographic accelerator.

• GCC has been optimized for Sparc servers
• Lost your uninstall file and need to uninstall your old version of Sun Workshop?

• Can't remember what field is what? Just add this header to your crontab.
• Want to see if your cronjob is running without errors?

• How can I get the current date/time for yesterday?

• Solaris Modular Debugger (mdb) cheatsheet (PDF)

• Why doesn't my hostname get set when using DHCP?

• Find several good documents on Solaris 10 at Oracle Technical Articles and White Papers
• Less Known Solaris Features Tutorials

Scripts
• Solaris Internals DTrace scripts
• OpenSolaris.org DTrace scripts
• iotop.d - prstat-like tool for showing the most I/O hungry processes
• Top 10 DTrace scripts
• Lots of DTrace tools/scripts
  
  Articles
• DTrace cheat sheet (PDF)
• Introduction to DTrace (PDF)
• DTrace aggregation functions

• Having problems booting from your DVD drive in Solaris?

• How can I prevent my mail server from being used as a third-party relay?
• Why doesn't my .forward file work?

• Emacs cheatsheat

• How can I remove a file with a wierd character in the name?

• If you are having some problems like cannot determine current directory even if the perms look ok...there is a fix.
• How many inodes are being used in a particular filesystem?
• Is there a way to quickly determine which filesystems are over 90% full?

• Autogenerate your /etc/ftpusers file so you don't have to remember to modify it.
• How do I setup an anonymous FTP server the long way or the Oracle script way?
• How can I create an account that only allows FTP access?
• How can I change the ftp daemon's banner?
• Why can't I ftp to the box if I can telnet to it?

• Oracle Systems Handbook
• Oracle now has a utility to store your Chassis Serial Number in EEPROM with a utility called Sneep. Ok, so it isn't perfect...but is a step in the right direction.
• Article on Solaris device mappings.
• suntype is a script to help determine what model of Oracle box you have.
• SunBlade 100 FAQ's and pictures.

• How can you replace your nvram chip or change your hostid?

• How can I log all telnet/ftp connections?

• Solaris 10 has a new Reduced Networking Software Group that you can build up to have exactly what you want in it.
• Article on how to boot off CD-ROM to do Jumpstart installations. (PDF)
• Great Blueprints article on Customizing JumpStart Framework for Installation and Recovery (PDF)
  
  
• UberJS is designed to help with jumpstarting w/o RARP'ing over the network.
• Method for having a self-contained jumpstart/flash DVD.
• The JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit helps simplify the JumpStart process.
• The MR System for Rapid Recovery Toolkit helps you create a mini-root (via JumpStart) that will allow you to access VxVM, Networker, NetBackup, etc.
• There are several very good Oracle BluePrints for setting up Jumpstart and customizing it for a recovery mini-root.
  
  
• I need help automating package installs.
• Tips for automating a Solaris 8 jumpstart.
• How would I add a kernel patch to a jumpstart image?

• If you are still running Solaris 2.6, don't apply 105181-33.
• What are the different tunable kernel paramters for Solaris 2.3 - 2.6, Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10? (PDF)

• How can I disable the power/suspend key?
• How can you remove the keyboard from a running machine?

LDOM

• Answers to LDOM security questions

Libraries (or the lack of them)

• CRLE will allow you to configure your runtime linking environment from the system level.
• Accidentally removed/renamed a critical library file and can't get it back?

• coolcommands.com has a searchable database of commands or one-line scripts which provide a function in a UNIX environment.
• Celeste Stokely has information and links to just about anything and everything UNIX related.
• Sundot has real life UNIX observations and tips.
• Sunhelp - the name speaks for itself
• If you are needing used Sun equipment, Acclinet gives you a 48 month warranty on anything they sell!
• Solaris Infrequently Asked and Obscure Questions

• Dr. Live Upgrade ponders who loves to patch and how.
• Live Upgrade: Using and Abusing (PDF)
• Bob has some excellent Live Upgrade info, especially if you need to get rid of pesky Live Upgrade environments.
• Edna has put together a handy document on Patching Solaris using Advanced Live Upgrade Strategies for Zones and Clusters.

• memconf will tell you what kind of memory is in your Oracle box without opening it.
• Why do I have more free memory after I upgrade to Solaris 8?

• How can I setup my external modem to... Go directly to Celeste's serial port resources pages.

• You can now log NFS file operations.
• How can I fix the Stale NFS file handle error message?
• Having problems unmounting a busy FS in Solaris 7 or 8?

• Link aggregation vs IP multipathing
• If you need to figure out which switch port you are plugged into, the switch name and IOS version, you are in luck!
• Trying to decide what to call your servers?
• Ethernet FAQ
• How to setup more than 255 virtual ethernets on Solaris 8 (Sparc)
• nddconfig sets network driver parameters to prevent some network attacks.
• If I have multiple NIC's, how can I do outbound load spreading for Solaris 8 or have redundant network connections? Sun Answerbook (PDF)
• Where can I find a FREE firewall program for Sol 8? SunScreen is included in Solaris 9. IPF is utilized in Solaris 10.
• How can I log or limit/deny certain hosts from telnet/ftp/etc. to my box? Download tcp-wrappers from Sunfreeware.com.
• How do I manually change the hostname or IP or change the hostname via a script?
  
  
• How do I set the NIC speed/duplex?
• How can I display what my current NIC speed/duplex settings are? nic_check or dladm in Solaris 10
• What are the limitations when using multiple NIC's?
• Ok, what about setting up trunking on a QFE card?
  
  
• When multiple interfaces are installed and it complains they are not plugged in, you can stop those error messages with setenv tpe_link test false at the ok prompt.
• How can I determine if an interface is in promiscuous mode?
• How can I prevent being detected while snooping?
• How do I interpret the output of netstat -k?
• How do I turn off replies to broadcast pings?
  
  
• Where can I find information about tuning my TCP/IP stack?
• I have heard that Solaris web servers are slow to serve MS clients? How can I speed up their access?
• What if I don't want to use the /etc/defaultrouter file?
• So what do those lights on the back of my FDDI card mean?
  
  
• How do interface groups differ from trunking?
• Why should I use interface groups?
• I want to know more about interface groups?

• Some info on protecting your NIS maps.
• Here is a nice method to secure NIS.

• How can I recreate /dev/null?

• How can I reset the default boot-file (or anything else)? set-default boot-file
• Sun OBP Quick Reference Guide (PDF)

• The Solaris 2 FAQ
• Reasons you should consider upgrade to Solaris 9.
• How can I tell if I am running in 32 bit or 64 bit mode?
• Where can I find out more info about booting the 32 or 64-Bit Kernel?
• Which OS release am I running? cat /var/sadm/softinfo/INST_RELEASE OR cat /etc/release
• What is the latest version of Oracle Solaris that is available?

• Info on how you can make your own Solaris packages.
• How can you determine which package a file belongs to?

• Solaris 10 has a new password history feature.

• With Oracle, you need a roadmap on how to find the latest CPU or Recommended Patch Cluster from Oracle.
• Gerry has a Patch Presentation for Customers.
• How can you determine if this is a clean install or an upgraded Solaris system?
• What are the various patch exit codes?

• If you are tired of using the switcheroo method of editing files with sed to a temp file, then moving them back, take a look at using the inplace editing function of PERL (perl -i -p -e). However, don't edit files that are really softlinks such as /etc/hosts. It breaks the softlink and makes it a real file.

• Why do I get some error message about /etc/power.conf?

• What is priority paging and why do I need it if I am running pre Solaris 8?

• How can you determine which process is using that port? Otherwise, you must use LSOF.

• Tech article on the basics of printing.

• Solaris 10 allows you to limit the display of other user's processes.
• pargs -e will display a process' environment variables

• Why is RAID 1+0 better than RAID 0+1?
• Description and summary chart of the different RAID levels.
• AC&NC describes the different RAID levels in an easy to understand format.
• RAID benchmarking tools

• Here's a great list of what's new in Solaris 10 10/2009.
• List of Solaris 10 updates and their respective calendar dates
• Gerry has a list of new packages in each Solaris 10 Update.

• How to reset the A1000/A3x00 configuration if you have been swapping disks with other A1000's or have the orange light on w/o any hardware errors.
• Here is another/quicker method to reset the A1000 configuration.
• How can you wipe the DACstore from an A1000 drive?
• Here are some instructions on how to setup an A1000 on Solaris 8
• Is it possible to swap the A1000 cache battery without powering the array off?
• Known bug with RM 6.22 results in the following error messages: "Auto configure failed" or "Wrong number of drives entered for the RAID level given".

• You can disable prompting for user or system registration reminder after installing Solaris.

• SysAdmin quick comparison of Solaris 8, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Linux, AIX
• Compares: AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, Redhat, Solaris, Tru64 (PDF)
• Compares: Everything and the kitchen sink (PDF)

• Here is how to determine which root disk you are booted from.
• Quick how-to on setting up Oracle eeprom aliases for alternative boot disks.
• The script scsiinfo will displays information about SCSI devices attached to a given system (like probe-scsi, but from the OS).
• iostat -En will also provide you with SCSI device information.
• WD converts sd instance numbers to logical device names and vice versa.
• dmap is a utility from SarCheck that also provides instance numbers/logical device names.
• Getspace is a handy little script to grab the used and free space via df -k.
• Need to add SCSI disks "hot" or make it see your cdrom (Solaris 7 and earlier)?     Starting in Solaris 8, use: devfsadm

• The Center for Internet Security has some great benchmarks for hardening Solaris, other OS's and apps.
• NSA OS configuration guides
• DISA security checklists and SRR scripts are handy, but not perfect. (SRR scripts require a CAC)
• Jim documents some issues with the DISA STIGs on Solaris 11

• Handy sed one-liners.

• How can I easily look up where this e-mail address will go?
• Need to know which version of sendmail I'm running.
• How can I change the sendmail banner?

• SMF has a new function svcs -x to help figure out what is wrong with my system.
• SMF has changed the way the system starts up and shuts down. The /etc/rc?.d/ directories are all LEGACY facilities.
• Solaris 10 has some new features with svcadm.
• SMF quickstart guide
• Solaris 10 allows enabling and disabling of services using the svc* commands.
• Here's the SMF developer introduction.

• Where can I find the SE Toolkit?
• Please be careful when running virtual_adrian as it will make changes to the kernel following Adrian's rules.

• How can you determine if you have an interacive login?
• Lots of good info (memory refreshers) on KSH.
• KSH FAQ
• KSH examples
• How can I compile a shell script so people can't change it or strings/view the password? Francisco's home page

• Here is a nice soft partitioning doc for DiskSuite/SVM The only other docs are the man pages.
• Undocumented setting to ignore the quorum rule in DiskSuite 4.2.1.
• What to do when one of your DiskSuite mirrors went bad and you didn't use the above tip.
• If you are running Solaris 2.6/7 and want to use soft partions, you must upgrade to Solaris 8/9. The patch revision (106628-18) has a serious, silent 4 GB bug, so they have withdrawn it.
  
• BluePrints article on SVM Performance Best Practices.
  
  
• Nice doc on how to replace a mirror gone bad. PDF
• Quick method for mirroring your root disk with DiskSuite (Solaris Volume Manager) and an example of how the SVM root disk could be laid out.
  
  
• How do I increase the number of metadevices? Check the DiskSuite FAQ
• How do I remove the boot disk from DiskSuite control? Check the DiskSuite FAQ

• Sort can be used to generate a list sorted by the first field, with only the highest valued second field for each first field value.

• ClusterSSH allows you to control a number of xterm windows via a single console.
• How do I get trusted-host authentication working?
• How can I get hostbased authentication to work with SSH2?

• How can we prevent the Stop-A key from being used if we don't have a keyswitch?
• How can we create an alternate keyboard sequence for the BREAK signal on a dumb terminal?
• How do I prevent a spurious BREAK (includes terminal server reboot) signal from halting my Oracle server? Cisco method (Workaround section) or the Stokely method
• How the different terminal servers stack up on this issue.
• How do I send the break sequence (aka STOP-A or L1-A) using my terminal program?
• Here is the explanation of the resistor between the pins fix and where it came from.

• Storage Array helpful tips

• How to prevent syslog from accepting remote messages.

• Need to log when someone uses su? Use this dummy su program instead.

• Is your sys-unconfig broken in Solaris 8?

• Show me the easiest way to move files between directories using tar.
• Oops, I accidentally created a tar file with an absolute path.
• How can I use wildcards when extracting only certain files from a tarfile?
• Trying to use tar with include/exclude lists? Use /dev/null as the destination.

• How can I create an account that only allows telnet/login access (no FTP)?
• How can I change the default telnet banner?

• How come my server won't boot until I connect my terminal to it?

• How do I change the timezone my Oracle server is in?

• Top is very handy at getting a snapshot of your server.

• What are all the options to uadmin?

• If your DBA is running Oracle datafiles on UFS, please take a look at enabling directio for the relevant filesystems.
• The performance of UFS logging improves or exceeds the level of performance of nonlogging file systems in Solaris 08/2003.
• How can I enable UFS logging on Solaris 7 and later?
• Why aren't you logging?

• VxFS quick reference guide

• Basic VxVM commands quick reference sheet (PDF)
• Advanced VxVM quick reference sheet (PDF)
• Here is the best way to mirror your root disk with Veritas.
• How to disable and re-enable VERITAS Volume Manager (VxVM) at boot time when the boot disk is encapsulated.
• How do you replace an E3500 internal FCAL disk?
• How can I replace a failing/failed primary rootdisk?
• How do I add a disk "hot" to Veritas?

• VVR quick reference guide

• VI Cheatsheet PDF
• VI lovers home page
• How can I reverse a text file with vi?
• Can I delete blank lines in a file using vi?
• If I wanted to make the same change several times in file, use vi.

• How can I print a list of all possible resolution/refresh rates for your screen?
• Would you like to set your display to 24 bit color?
• Where can I find the cable adapters that will let me use my PC's monitor on a Oracle box?
• How to connect a SUN monitor to a PC.

• Want to automatically play audio cd's or mount your Jaz drive?

• I need to add a login warning message when logging into CDE.
• How can I keep my Oracle server from announcing that it will serve as an X server?

• Getting a bunch of error messages in syslog related to Xaserver?

• ZFS Best Practices Guide
• ZFS Configuration Guide
• ZFS for Databases
• Oracle document on configuring ZFS for an Oracle database.
• FAQ About SSDs and ZFS
• Richard's ZFS Tutorial from LISA09
• ZFS and FMA work together to help you fix problems ASAP.
• ZFS Evil Tuning Guide
• Great article and script on ZFS ARC Statistics
• ZFS cheat sheet
• Some great ZFS scripts: zilstat zcksummon iopattern
• You are upgrading your ZFS and zpools after determining your system is stable after patching and you do not need to roll back to a previous version?

• The Solaris 10 Container Guide is quite possibly the nicest one-stop-shop document on zones.
• Zany for Zones presentation. (PDF)
• Zone Cloning
• Zone statistics with zonestat