Solaris Archive

Jim wrote in to tell us about Sun posting the latest update of their Solaris/SPARC OS. The update, dated 12/02, is downloadable from the sun website here.

CNN is running a review of the latest Solaris Release, calling it "stylishly cryptic" -- as fitting a description of the leading commercial UNIX OS as I've ever heard. Oh, wait a second . . . Steven Soderbergh? Oops, never mind.

This document details the configuration, hardening, monitoring and vulnerability assessment of the Solaris OE. It can also be used as a configuration standard, providing a baseline to audit against.

Sun on Friday will announce plans to release an unbundled version of the Solaris 9 operating environment for non-Sun x86 hardware for $99 for a single CPU system. After months of indecision, Sun will now ship Solaris 9 x86, unbundled, supporting both the Sun hardware platform, for both current and future products, as well as the same list of all hardware supported for Solaris 8, according to Sun officials in Palo Alto, Calif. Early access to the Solaris 9 bits will come in the next four to eight weeks, and the final product will ship in the January time-frame, they said.

Sun Microsystems Inc.'s refusal to release Solaris 9 for non-Sun x86 hardware could backfire and drive developers and users to Linux or even Microsoft Corp. platforms, users said. Disgruntled x86 community developers and customers charge that Sun's refusal to reach a compromise is effectively making their investments in non-Sun x86 hardware obsolete. Supporters are so irked by Sun's intransigence that last week they placed an open letter in The Mercury News, of San Jose, Calif., accusing Sun Chairman, President and CEO Scott McNealy of taking the developer community for granted.

Sun Microsystems made two strategic moves Monday to answer calls from its user base, by announcing the company's first general-purpose server to run Linux and bringing back a version of its Solaris operating system that runs on Intel chips. From September, Sun will offer Solaris x86 8.0, alongside Linux on its new 'Big Bear' Intel hardware that it will announce this morning in San Francisco. And from early next year, Solaris 9.0 for Intel will be an option, too. Read the news at InfoWorld and TheRegister. Our Take: It seems that the SecretSix team made it! x86 Solaris 9 is back!

"Sun will use the LinuxWorld venue here to discuss its second change of heart -- the resurrection of Solaris for the Intel architecture, sources said. Internal friction within Sun still could prevent Solaris from returning to the Intel platform. Sun has moved its Solaris and Linux efforts under the supervision of Anil Gadre, former vice president of Solaris and now vice president of marketing and operations for software at Sun, combining the OS teams for the first time, sources said." Read the report at InfoWorld.

"Disgruntled Solaris users are pushing Sun Microsystems Inc. to decide on the fate of the operating environment on Intel Corp. processors. Sun officials in Palo Alto, Calif., have been going back and forth with the Solaris Intel user base since January, when the company said Version 9 for the x86 architecture was being "deferred" in favor of projects that were more profitable. Now the process seems stuck, and users are getting restless, according to sources familiar with the negotiations between the user community and Anil Gadre, Sun's vice president of Solaris software." Read the report at ExtremeTech.

"Sun releases Solaris 9, along with a plan to integrate its Sun One Java application server software into the operating system. Could the move change the competitive landscape in a lucrative market?" Read the extended series of articles at ZDNews about the release of Solaris 9.

Sun Microsystems announced version 9 of its Solaris operating system on Wednesday along with a Microsoft-reminiscent strategy to integrate higher-level components. Solaris 9 comes bundled with the Sun Open Network Environment (Sun ONE) directory server, used for keeping track of network information. And by the end of 2003, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based server seller also will build into Solaris its application server for e-business tasks and Web server software for hosting Web sites. Solaris 9 is available only for the SPARC platform.

In an article posted at C|Net News.com sun has announced their intentions of expanding linux with Solaris features (and continuing to expand Solaris with Linux features) to make the two "similar". Perhaps this is seriously the next step in the Intel Unix market for Sun, if they have, in the end, chosen to do without Solaris/x86. In other news, according to the article, Solaris 9 will be released May 22nd.

"An upgrade to Sun's enterprise server clustering technology is set to arrive next week alongside the company's much-anticipated new Solaris 9 operating environment. Backwards-compatible to Solaris 8, Sun Cluster 3.0 will offer features such as improved ease of management, enhanced dynamic configuration, and support for Oracle9i RAC (Real Application Clusters), according to Jim Sangster, the group manager for Sun's cluster product line, in Palo Alto, Calif." Read the story at InfoWorld.

"Solaris 8 is getting a little long in the tooth. It has been out and stable for more than a year. Most applications are certified and supported on it by the vendors. And yet many sites are still running Solaris 2.5.1, 2.6, and 2.7. There are many reasons to move, and many reasons not to upgrade. A major hurdle to performing the upgrade is the sheer complexity (and risk) of system upgrades. This month, the Solaris Companion explores the reasons to stay put and the reasons to upgrade, and provides detailed how-to-upgrade instructions." Read the article at UnixReview, while OnLamp features another Solaris-related article, titled "Optimizing Disk Subsystems for Random I/O".

Got the link at the original article from BSDForums.org: "With Sun getting ready to launch Solaris 9, the next generation of its Unix operating system, sometime between now and the end of June, everyone is scrambling to try to figure out what will make Solaris 9 different from the existing Solaris 8, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. One of the big differences, it turns out, will be substantially enhanced security mechanisms for both the operating system and its applications."