Configuring network interfaces and addresses on Solaris 11.4 with dladm and ipadm

Goal

Inventory data links, then bring up an IP interface with a static or DHCP address on Oracle Solaris 11.4, choosing correctly between a temporary (session-only) and a persistent change.

Prerequisites

Root role or a profile with network-configuration rights; know the physical link name Solaris assigned (Solaris uses generic names such as net0, not Linux's eth0-style names). Check netadm list first: this procedure assumes the fixed network profile DefaultFixed (usual on servers); if a reactive profile such as Automatic is active, the network is managed automatically and manual ipadm changes are not the supported path.

Steps

1. Inventory hardware links: dladm show-phys lists physical network devices with media type and link state; dladm show-link lists all data links, including any VLANs or aggregations layered on top of physical links.
2. Create the IP interface object over a data link: ipadm create-ip <interface> (for example ipadm create-ip net1) — this only creates the IP interface, it does not assign an address. Run ipadm show-if first: on an installed system net0 usually already has an IP interface, and create-ip on it fails because it exists; go straight to create-addr then.
3. Assign a static address: ipadm create-addr -T static -a local=<address>/<prefixlen> <interface>/<addrname>, for example ipadm create-addr -T static -a local=192.0.2.10/24 net0/v4.
4. Or assign via DHCP instead: ipadm create-addr -T dhcp <interface>/<addrname>. For a static setup, add a persistent default route with route -p add default <gateway>.
5. Verify what is configured: ipadm show-addr lists every address object, its type and its state (ok, duplicate, tentative, and so on).
6. Decide persistence deliberately: every ipadm subcommand above accepts -t to make the operation temporary — active only until reboot, not written to persistent configuration. Omit -t for a change meant to survive a reboot.
7. Configure DNS resolution through SMF, not by hand-editing /etc/resolv.conf (it is regenerated): svccfg -s network/dns/client setprop config/nameserver = net_address: '(<addr1> <addr2>)' and svccfg -s network/dns/client setprop config/search = astring: '("example.com")' (quotes needed on the shell command line), then svcadm refresh svc:/network/dns/client:default. Make sure svc:/system/name-service/switch has config/host = astring: "files dns" and that dns/client is enabled (svcadm enable dns/client).

Expected result

ipadm show-addr shows the new address object in the ok state and reachable; after a reboot, a persistent (non--t) configuration is still present, while a -t one is gone. DNS queries resolve using the search list and name servers just configured.

Limits and test basis

Test a static address change with -t first on a host you cannot easily console into, so a wrong address does not survive a reboot; a temporary object cannot be converted in place, so once verified remove it with ipadm delete-addr <interface>/<addrname> and recreate it without -t; ipadm delete-addr/ipadm delete-ip is also the undo for a persistent change. Changing an IP interface used for your own SSH session can drop that session immediately — have console or out-of-band access before doing this remotely. This is specific to Oracle Solaris 11.4's ipadm/dladm model.