Solaris is the Unix variant produced by Sun Microsystems and is the result of over 20 years of continuous development. It is the only Unix variant that can run on commodityIntel PC hardware as well as Sun and Fujitsu hardware using Sparc and UltraSparc processors. Sun makes many changes to Solaris, some of them are big news and many are not. It is usually a system administrator that finds out about a new command or an undocumented command or feature (like the -k switch for netstat). This review is about two different installs of Solaris Express on different hardware to show some of the many features of the new release.
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I can only wish to read more stuff like this. Amazingly well written: correct, dry, fair and useful!
Each replica consumes 8 MB of disk space; this is a 100% increase over the replica size with Solstice Disk Suite that shipped with Solaris 8 and earlier.
This is not quite accurate: we noticed this with the firstest release of Solaris 9/Solaris Volume Manager. But in fact, this is only the default metadatabase size. If you are used to explicitly specify the metadatabase size (with the -l option), you will be fully able to specify the same size as with Solaris 8/Solstice DiskSuite. And, as far as I could tell, there is no problem with the systems I worked with, which were of up to 4 internal and 12 external physical disks and about 1500 soft partitions (!), all managed by SVM.
I did use the explicit diskspace specification with metadb, in order to maintain compatibility wiht our Sol 8 systems.
> This set of messages concerns the onboard interface (hme0) on my Ultra 30, previous to Solaris Express you had to issue ndd -get commands to see this information.
Older Solaris versions always printed link status on boot.
Did you get kernel cage enabled without even an entry in /etc/system? BUG BUG BUG!
If you could add some benchmarks (UFS filesystem, openssl speed) etc. that would be really great.
Oh, and a nice collection of boxes you've got 
$ uname -a
SunOS tmoomni 5.8 Generic_108528-13 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-1
Dec 22 10:32:30 tmoomni sbus: [ID 349649 kern.info] hme0 at sbus0: SBus0 slot 0xe offset 0x8c00000 and slot 0xe offset 0x8c02000 and slot 0xe offset 0x8c04000 and slot 0xe offset 0x8c06000 and slot 0xe offset 0x8c07000 Onboard device sparc9 ipl 6
Dec 22 10:32:30 tmoomni genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] hme0 is /sbus@1f,0/SUNW,hme@e,8c00000
Dec 22 10:32:34 tmoomni hme: [ID 517527 kern.info] SUNW,hme0 : Internal Transceiver Selected.
Dec 22 10:32:34 tmoomni hme: [ID 517527 kern.info] SUNW,hme0 : 100 Mbps Full-Duplex Link Up
So, when will you print the retraction?
Solaris is the Unix variant produced by Sun Microsystems and is the result of over 20 years of continuous development.
No, Solaris has only been in development since the early 90's. The previous version of SunOS (aka Solaris v1.x) was a BSD based derivative. Solaris 2.x has nothing to do with it.
[Solaris] is the only Unix variant that can run on commodityIntel PC hardware as well as Sun and Fujitsu hardware using Sparc and UltraSparc processors.
NetBSD and OpenBSD have held this distinction for years. You might hear folks claim this as well, but Linux is not UNIX. I've already mentioned this to the author and he acknowledges this oversight.
-fp
s/hear folks/hear Linux folks/
-fp
s/fuzzyping/fuzzytyping
Sorry, I couldn't help it!
Then again, he was probably referring to so-called "official" Unices, which neither OpenBSD, Linux or NetBSD (or FreeBSD for that matter) are.
correct, dry, fair and useful!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I'm sorry, no "dry" article can be written about Solaris. Not when the company names its network drivers "Happy Meal Ethernet!" I read your comment, then cracked up when I saw the term hme0 several times in the two comments after yours
Then again, he was probably referring to so-called "official" Unices, which neither OpenBSD, Linux or NetBSD (or FreeBSD for that matter) are.
Where do you get that from? NetBSD and OpenBSD (and FreeBSD, for that matter) are all descendants of the original BSD UNIX, which is a fully pedigreed UNIX. Perhaps you need to study your history. Just because *BSD isn't pushed by a commercial entity (although BSDi used to be) doesn't mean it's not a real UNIX.
P.S. I already said that Linux is not a UNIX. Pay attention.
-fp
Just because *BSD isn't pushed by a commercial entity (although BSDi used to be) doesn't mean it's not a real UNIX.
>>>>>>>>>>
No, but the fact that it hasn't passed the UNIX conformance tests does mean that its barred from using the UNIX trademark, just like Linux.
If something looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, what is it?
The answer, of course, depends on whether or not the name `duck' is a trademark! If it is, then the closest that something can get, without permission of the owner of the trademark, is `duck-like.'
`UNIX' is a trademark of The Open Group, and NetBSD has not been branded with that trademark. Therefore, NetBSD is not UNIX. We refer to it as `UNIX-like.'
From:
http://www.netbsd.org/Misc/call-it-a-duck.html
I think that an OS has to pass certain tests in order to be UNIX95 certified. I am by no means an expert of the field, but I know for sure that it's not as simple as you put it.
Does it come with a Bourne-compatible command shell? Can you run awk, sed, cat and grep in any of their incarnations on it out of the box? Does it have a crontab? Do you need to run x-windows to do pointy-clicky-windowy things? Guess what? It's Unix.
This stuff, even more than useless compatibility features like "POSIX compliance," indicates to a sysadmin (rather than programmer) that you're working in Unix.
NetBSD? Arguably closer to the classical ideal of Unix than Solaris is these days. Ditto Open and FreeBSDs. AIX? Yes, even though putting the config paramaters in a database rather than plaintext etsie (/etc) files is not the Unix Way. MacOS X is not really Unix at all anymore, so much as a user environment running on top of Unix (tho it's arguably better for it.)
Is Windows NT/2000/XP? No. No shell or filemunging tools come with it out of the box. Is VAX/VMS? No. CP/M? No. Netware? No.
Linux? No. Linux alone isn't an OS any more than a mach microkernel is. You need a whole lot of other stuff tacked onto it... like bourne compatible shells and incarnations of awk, sed, grep and cat. Linux-based distros? Yes, they're Unix.
Apple puts Unix in big, steel letters on their marketing documentation, and have set their legal weasels to bash the Open Group into admitting that Unix is a widely used and understood technical term rather than a trademark. Posix compatibility, everything is a file, everything comes down to open, copy, close in Unix programming, blah blah blah blah... that's mostly for codemonkeys.
For sysadmins, what it boils down to in the trenches is a multi-user, pre-emptively multi-tasking operatng system with a set of utilities (bourne shell, standard filemunging utils, etc.) that are consistent across operating systems. That's Unix. Solaris is Unix, so is NetBSD.
There used to be more similarities, mostly dealing with daemon and process management, network administration, and filesystem utilities, but AIX tossed all that out the door anyhow. Now everyone has their own volume manager and journaled filesystem... grump grump grump.
SoupIsGood Food
/rant
Just like Darwin is UNIX. Only the Sun propagandists want you to believe otherwise so that they can continue to pretend to be something special with their overpriced systems.
Just like Darwin is not UNIX. Only Linux propagandists want you to believe otherwise so that they can continue to pretend to be something special with their noobish systems.
And this one's even true!
On Feb. 9 we will see whether Unix is still a trademark.
http://www.computerweekly.com/Article122619.htm
Let's see: Apple throws money at lawyers, 'cause that's cheaper than implement true UNIX compliance. That could fly in the US judicial system, but it doesn't mean it's right. Of course, Apple does have deeper pockets than the Open Group.
Linux started with a goal of being POSIX compliant, but Linus didn't have a copy of the documentation and just made things up as he went along.
Later on, compliance was thrown to the wind in favor of hacking something that worked.
The few attempts which have been made to fix Linux and have it stamped as POSIX compliant have been met with laughs.
Linux is a free and an open implementation of Unix. There is, however, a difference between UNIX -- in upper case and Unix -- in mixed case.
UNIX -- in upper case, is/was a trademark owned by AT&T. To avoid infringement of the trademark, it became a general practice to call open and free implementations of UNIX, Unix. The *BSDs and Linux fall under this category.
There are several implementations of UNIX both proprietary and open. For political and commercially ambitious reasons, the commercial vendors and proponents of UNIX decide to differentiate themselves from their open and free counter part by ensuring the any implementation of UNIX need be certified and tested, for a ridiculous amount of cash, before it could be openly labeled a UNIX variant. Last time I checked, The Open Group conducted such tests.
For financial reasons, none of the open and free implementations of UNIX have been certified and as such, technically, they can not be termed variants or implementations of UNIX. For this reason, they are termed Unix or Unix-like
In my opinion, UNIX is more than just standards, tests and certificates. Unix is a philosophy, a tradition, and a group of methodologies of tried and tested programming practices that have withstood the test of time and that are being passed down from generation to generation.
While technically speaking, Linux can not be termed UNIX, practically speaking, it is clear that it is a modern incarnation, or rebirth, of UNIX. The same holds true for the *BSDs. Mac OS X is not Unix or Unix-like or UNIX. It is just a GUI wrapper around FreeBSD. It breaks almost every UNIX philosophy and practices I've come to observe, for better or for worse.
Ummm, okay we've debated whats Unix and what isn't. Can we move on now?
man, all this trouble over what is and isnt unix :p
cant we focus on the task at hand (solaris)?
what exactly is Solaris Express and how does it vary from Soalris 9?
what exactly is Solaris Express and how does it vary from Soalris 9?
What a stupid question! We're talking trademark semantics here, where did this qestion come from??
Actually, Solaris Express is essentially their Beta program for their OS. They let folks download the latest and greatest to try out and report back.
It was a pertinent question, seeing as though the article's title was a bit misleading, making it seem as if Solaris Express is an OS. Of course, it is, after all, a product, and as such, could be reviewed, but then it would have to be made clear that what is reviewed is a service or marketing program.
Guys you bitch left and right about the stupidist shit. This article was fantastic. You can tell the author has years of sol/sparc experience. It was a pleasure to read. In fact this is one of the few reviews I have read in recent years from someone who has a clue about the technology. Kudos to this guy he knows whats up. I hope he writes more instead of the usual lame home linux monkey crap you see on here like 'eye donnt lyke sol9 x86- it doesnt run my MAME emu proper. my x windows is all f'd up man. and my chemical brothers mp3s dont play right' What kind of shit is that. I want a real admin. A serial console cable totin datacenter badge carrying half bald vxvm disksuite knowing ssaadm running protecting the oracle instance for the love of god admin.
The use of projects in solaris 10 was a good heads up. Though I havent used the fair share scheduler yet either tbh hehe.
dennis
albany ny
>By EverQuest (IP: ---.w81-248.abo.wanadoo.fr) - Posted on >2003-12-23 10:02:16
>Just like Darwin is UNIX. Only the Sun propagandists want you >to believe otherwise so that they can continue to pretend to >be something special with their overpriced systems.
shut up you home linux monkey. go recompile your 2.6.0 kernel and get your audio card working so you can hear the audio in your bittorrent porn downloads. You might think your 486 linux box with a snap server is a SAN but I got a news flash for you walter kronkite. The world is much bigger than you. Sun does shit you just cant do on intel. Good luck backing up 700 oracle servers in an 8 hour window with proliant. yeah that PCI bus is real fat. Step into my office. Why? becuz your f(*n fired.
Dennis
Albany NY