The Boot Command
The easiest way to boot a system from the powered-down state is, of course, to turn it on. When you turn a system on, the system locates the boot device using information stored in its NVRAM and starts loading various boot software, as described earlier. If you interrupt this process with a Stop-A or your auto-boot NVRAM parameter discussed later in this chapter is set to false, you can choose to boot from a different device or explore the OpenBoot environment. The full syntax of the boot...
The SOA record
SOA is the start of authority record. It contains the information that other name servers querying this one will require, and will determine how the data will be handled by those name servers. Each primary file pointed to in named.boot should have one and only one SOA record. The two fully qualified names listed after the SOA label are the primary name server for the domain, and where to send problems with the zone or domain via e-mail. HNOUE Because signs cannot be used in this field, the...
Automounter Configuration Files
Automounter uses one or more files usually two or three to control which file systems are mounted and when. The etc auto_master file details the other files and maps that are used. The other two maps that you'll generally find in use are etc auto_home and etc auto_direct. The existence and configuration of these files depends on how automounter is used at a particular site. In this particular etc auto_master file, the net entry tells automounter i.e., automountd to manage the mounting of file...
The Automounter
Automounter is a standard Solaris feature that streamlines the management of shared file systems and reduces network traffic. Automounter also helps avoid file system problems in environments with many servers and many more clients by timing out on file system mounts instead of freezing one system's resources when a server from which it has mounted a file system becomes unavailable. In addition to the material presented here, we suggest that you refer to anything written by Hal Stern see...
Troubleshooting with nslookup
Next, type nslookup at a command prompt. If nslookup connects to your name server as shown in the following example , you have at least verified that named is up and running. If nslookup cannot connect, make sure that in.named is running, and, as should be routine, check for messages pertaining to named in your var adm Within the nslookup program, try a few simple queries such as the name of the name server and localhost. Both of these should resolve without a problem. If you are connected to a...
netstat s
The netstat -s command provides a summary of TCP IP counters. Though, as with so many performance commands, the amount of data that this command provides is quite overwhelming and you would have to be quite a TCP IP ace to understand what all the parameters represent , there are some simple commands that you can use to highlight certain aspect of your server's network performance. One way to extract some data for a quick analysis is to run the netstat -s command and pipe the output to a grep...
Recovering from Crashes
Now for the fun part what does one do when all of this wonderful technology has utterly and messily failed All machines are wont to do this at some point, so it is best to be armed with the proper information beforehand to ensure a quick and smooth recovery. Before diving into situations, here is a look at the tools you can use. These should obviously be used with caution they can and will perform their functions on a running domain as invoked. These commands all affect the domain set as...
What Is Grid Computing
Grid computing provides a method of sharing resources across a group of users from a small work group to one that is globally distributed in a manner that is transparent to the users. The object of a grid is to maximize use of these resources. In the networks that the authors have managed in the past, resources were almost always allocated in a way that did not maximize their use. Some servers were overused and required nearly constant attention, while others housed resources that were rarely...
VCS Service Groups
Veritas Cluster Server manages service groups composed of hardware resources such as disk drives and or network interface cards, and software resources such as the Web server process httpd and or file server process nfsd . Administrators have the responsibility of defining service groups that are to be monitored and controlled by VCS so that the services within those service groups will have maximum availability. As an example, consider a system that provides a database service. In order to...
The ufsrestore Command
The ufsrestore command is similar in syntax to its counterpart, ufsdump. Because it works with an existing dump file, however, the arguments you need to supply are reduced. Note the following command This restores the backup from the specified device into the current directory. If you're restoring the home file system, you'll want to do this The arguments rvf specify a complete restore, verbose operation displays the names and inode numbers of the files as they are restored , and the specified...
Sun Fire Administration
Administering a Sun Fire server can be anything from an easy task to one that is quite daunting, depending on the type of server you are administering and how well you know the commands available to help with this task. Many of us have never before managed a system running multiple independent copies of Solaris, for example, and may have to adjust our thinking to accommodate the possibilities that this opportunity provides. In this section, we discuss administration commands for each of the...
CPU States
The way to think about the CPU statistics is this Every time the CPU is examined i.e., 100 times a second , the data structures reflecting how the CPU is spending its time are updated. If the CPU is quiescent, idle is incremented. If the CPU is busy with a user process, user also referred to as usr is incremented. If the CPU is handling an interrupt or running the clock handler, kernel in some commands, this is sys is incremented. If the CPU is running the idle thread, idle or iowait in some...
Performing a Solaris Live Upgrade
The live upgrade option for installing a Solaris system makes it possible for you to upgrade a system with the least amount of downtime. The technique involves setting up a duplicate boot environment while the system continues running off of the original. You then upgrade the duplicate environment or install from a Web Start Flash archive. The original environment remains unaffected. To be eligible for a live upgrade, a system must be running Solaris 2.6, 7, or 8. These systems can be...
prtdiag
The prtdiag command displays configuration, diagnostic data, and environmental information about the particular system. The contents of the output differs from one type of system to the next. Following is sample output from the prtdiag command on an E450. Note that, even if the hardware is thousands of miles away, you can get quite a bit of information about it by running this command in a Telnet or ssh session. System Configuration Sun Microsystems sun4u Sun Enterprise 450 2 X UltraSPARC-II...
watchnet and watchnetall
The watch-net and watch-net-all commands are used to test network connections. watch-net-all watches each interface, while watch-net monitors the primary network interface. Each packet that is observed by the interface results in a dot appearing on the screen, while packets arriving with errors e.g., CRC errors appear as the letter X. If no activity is seen when one of these commands is used, your network connection may be malfunctioning or your network interface may be bad. Check your cabling...
The hostid on Solaris 25 x86 and Up
Intel processor machines don't have an IDPROM. Sun uses a different mechanism to generate the hostid. When the operating system is initially installed, a pseudo-random hostid is generated. It appears that this pseudo-randomly-generated hostid will always be between 1 and 3b9aca00. The hostid is based on 8 bytes of serialization information in the kernel module kernel misc sysinit. This is in contrast to the situation on SPARC machines, where the hostid is based on the IDPROM. The file kernel...
obdiag
The obdiag tool allows you to interactively run a number of diagnostic tests on any of the following systems Sun Enterprise 420R Server Sun Enterprise 220R Server Sun Ultra Enterprise 450 Server Sun Ultra Enterprise 250 Server It not only tests the main logic board, but also these interfaces
iostat
The primary command for monitoring disk performance is iostat. Like the vmstat command, iostat first reports a line of data that summarizes activity since the system was booted. In this first iostat command, we are asking for 5-second samples of disk activity tin tout kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv kps tps serv us sy wt id 0 38 3 0 27 1 0 18 1 0 12 2 0 19 1 1 1 97 0 47 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 99 The iostat command reports on terminal I O, tape I O, and CPU activity as well as disk...
NFS Server Logging
NFS logging, available through the activity of the NFS log daemon nfslogd , logs NFS activity on the NFS server. The generated log files contain information about the files being accessed, the client system, the direction of the file activity input or output from the perspective of the server , and the number of bytes moved. This format can be extended to include directory modification operations, such as creating or removing a directory. NFS logging is new with Solaris 8 and generally used by...
PseudoFileSystems
Although pseudo-file-systems may appear as file systems to users, they are actually abstractions through which various system and process data can be accessed. Pseudo-file-systems are used to represent such things as processes, network sockets, device drivers, and first-in-first-out structures FIFOs . In our discussion of the proc file system, we will clearly show the benefits of accessing information about running processes through pseudo-file-system abstraction. Pseudo-file-systems include...
Partitioning with the format Command
Partitioning drives is done with the format command. You must be root to run it. WaRNQNG Be careful if you are working on a live system. One of the authors once mistyped a disk address the intended drive was one character different from the one she wound up using and blew a file system out from underneath a dozen or more busy users. Along with the privilege of being root goes the possibility of making The Big Mistake. Double-check every choice before you hit Enter. Table 1.5 Standard Layout for...
File Types
The classification of files in Solaris can be confusing to anyone not used to it. The first breakdown is that of regular versus special files. The classification of regular files encompasses a wide range of file types as users think about them binaries, scripts, data files, configuration files, and so on. The organizing element is this The kernel doesn't make any distinction between any of these file types. Differences between them exist only at the user level e.g., the content, whether they...
File Systems Shortcuts to Data
A file system can be said to be an interface to files a way to address files and access their contents. When a user issues an ls command, for example, the file system receives a request for the contents of a directory file. If the user has execute permissions, the contents of the directory will be displayed. If the user issues an ls -l command, additional resources must be tapped. Information stored in the associated inode must also be read and displayed. In addition, some of this information...