Solaris Archive

"There's a problem with Solaris and Sun knows it. The installation experience of Solaris (along with other areas) could be greatly improved. The installer doesn't 'suck' as it's easy and known to Solaris administrators, but for a Linux or Windows user it could prove to be a bit challenging. For those of you that have never tried out Solaris, what we've decided to do is to show you this 'usability gap' with the installation process in Solaris compared to Linux. Is the experience really that bad?"

"It wasn't until last week during a meeting with Sun that some new light was shed on the Solaris Check Tool and as a result we decided to explore this tool further. Check Tool is a bootable CD that lets the user know whether the hardware they have installed is likely to work with Solaris or not. If a third-party driver is needed for a particular piece of hardware, the Check Tool will even provide a link to the driver needed. There are currently a few rough spots with the tool, but improvements are planned and in this article we will share more information on this program that can tell you in a matter of minutes whether you'll face a hardware compatibility nightmare or will be running Solaris/Solaris Express with ease."

Nexenta alpha 7 has been released. "OpenSolaris & NWS build 61 (non-debug); installer: new partitioning wizard, installer log (via F3), usability fixes, built-in driver availability detection; improved SVR4 compatibility (pkgadd, pkgrm, etc.); improved live upgrade - it is believed to work for all previously released alphas."

In an effort to spur adoption of Solaris, Sun has begun a project code-named Indiana to try to give its operating system some of the trappings of Linux. The project is one of the items on the to-do list of Ian Murdock, founder of the Debian version of Linux and, as of March, Sun's chief operating systems officer. Though he wouldn't confirm the name of the project, Murdock - who's from Indiana - discussed the project's essence at the JavaOne conference here Monday, and Sun spokesman Russ Castronovo confirmed the name.

"Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz loves to splatter the media with the line that Windows, Red Hat Linux and Solaris stand as the only operating systems of significance in the server kingdom. We've spent the last few years struggling to appreciate the seriousness of that claim. Sun's declining system sales failed to inspire much optimism about the company conquering the data centers of tomorrow with a deflating 'venerable' OS. A couple of recent items, however, have tweaked our view of Schwartz's favored claim. It could well be that Solaris - of all things - provides the 'iPod moment' Sun seeks." In the meantime, Sun upped the speed of some of its SPARC chips.

"Sun's Solaris JumpStart technology is used to automate the installation of the Solaris Operating System and other associated software on multiple nodes of a network. Using Solaris JumpStart software on the Solaris 10 OS for x86/x64 platforms is essentially the same as on Solaris 10 OS for SPARC platforms. However, there are some subtle differences that need to be addressed for correct operation. This document provides the steps and explanations necessary to set up a JumpStart server for Solaris 10 on a Sun x86/x64 machine, along with configuring JumpStart for two or more clients."

OSNews reader kaiwai has published a review of Solaris 10 11/06, and concludes: "Solaris Express is coming along; and for those who do want bleeding edge, ultra-super-duper features, then Solaris probably isn't your best bet, then again, assuming you're into that stuff, you'd be better catered for by the likes of Gentoo for example - for those of us who would prefer to have stability above features, then give Solaris a go and if you can make a contribution to Solaris by way of code contributions, then by all means do so."

Sun has announced a new set of products and services targeting developers, startups, and internet companies seeking to build and deploy their web infrastructure on Solaris 10. The three offerings are Solaris Express, Developer Edition, Solaris + AMP (Apache/MySQL/PERL or PHP), and an expanded Sun Startup Essentials program.

If you've got Solaris with telnet running, you could be in for a big surprise. There is a fairly trivial Solaris telnet 0-day exploit in the wild . "This was posted to Full-Disclosure. Remote root exploit in the Solaris 10/11 telnet daemon. It doesn't require any skill, any exploit knowledge, and can be scripted for mass attacks. Basically if you pass a '-fusername' as an argument to the –l option you get full access to the OS as the user specified. In my example I do it as bin but it worked for regular users, just not for root. This combined with a reliable local privilege escalation exploit would be devastating. Expect mass scanning and possibly the widespread exploitation of this vulnerability."

Sun has announced a series of updates to its flagship Solaris operating system. Solaris 10 11/06 OS enhances efficiency, safety, and reliability. New security features include Solaris Trusted Extensions, which protects sensitive data and applications using labeled security technology. Secure By Default Networking automatically configures a system to be impervious to network attacks by disabling many unused services, thus reducing the network exposure, while leaving the system fully functional for typical use. In the meantime, HP will be supporting Solaris on its systems.

Open source was behind Intel's decision to add Solaris to its list of supported operating systems, according to a top official from Intel during a teleconference with reporters. In other news, Sun returned to profitability.

"So, you're tired of Windows and thinking of trying Linux. There are lots of good distros, RedHat or Novell have all the enterprise cred you might need. And there's a support community too, it's a no brainer... Well, that's all true enough – but why not try Solaris - in its OpenSolaris form - too? It's just as available, at Open Solaris.org, where there's a pretty active community going."

"This is a step-by-step account of the method I used recently to install and configure a NIS master and slaves on servers running Solaris 8. The steps detailed should work fine on other versions of Solaris, but as I have not explicitly tested other versions (except as clients) you may encounter issues. The clients used with this setup ranged from Solaris 7 to Solaris 10. The installation was in a medium-sized Solaris-only farm (100+ hosts)."

"Solaris Cluster provides high availability and global disaster recovery to suit the evolving needs of virtually any datacenter in any industry: across local distances, campuses or metropolitan areas, and across the world, ensuring business continuity without compromise. With out-of-the box support for the largest number of commercial and open-source applications, open and flexible configurations for both horizontal and vertical scaling, integration with the Solaris kernel and support on both SPARC and x64 platforms, Solaris Cluster provides industrial-strength high availability to your applications." There's documentation too.