Topic: solaris
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Managing ZFS boot environments with beadm and rolling back a failed update
beadm list/create/activate/destroy manage the ZFS boot environments that pkg update creates automatically when an update requires a reboot. Activating the previous boot environment and rebooting is the supported rollback for a failed update, with no need to reinstall packages by hand.
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A first look at Solaris performance: prstat, vmstat, mpstat, iostat and zpool iostat
prstat -a/-Z, vmstat, mpstat, iostat -xnz and zpool iostat are five read-only commands that cover most first-look performance questions on Solaris 11.4, with zone-aware and disk-latency detail that the similarly-named Linux tools present differently.
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Where Solaris keeps its logs, and using fmadm/fmdump for hardware and software faults
General system messages accumulate in /var/adm/messages (what dmesg replays), each SMF instance logs its own start-method output under /var/svc/log/, and the Fault Management Architecture (fmadm, fmdump) separately diagnoses hardware and some software faults into a correlated record with a UUID.
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Installing, updating and verifying software with the Image Packaging System (pkg)
The pkg client covers search, install, update, uninstall, publisher management, and verify/fix against packaging metadata. pkg operations are boot-environment aware: changes to packages that require a reboot go into a new BE activated for the next boot, while other changes apply to the running BE, under the default policy with a backup BE when kernel-affecting content is touched.
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Support Repository Updates and the Solaris 11.4 patching model: SRUs, CPUs, and checking what is installed
Solaris 11.4 patches through the same pkg update path as any other install; the entire incorporation's version reports the exact update level, Oracle ships fixes as roughly monthly Support Repository Updates with every third one also a Critical Patch Update, and Oracle's Premier/Extended/Sustaining phases set what each stage delivers.
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Reading and changing service state with the Service Management Facility: svcs and svcadm
SMF is the Solaris equivalent of systemd unit management. svcs -a/-x/-l read state and find problems, svcadm enable/disable/restart/refresh change it, -t makes a change temporary, and svcadm clear recovers an instance stuck in maintenance.
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Configuring network interfaces and addresses on Solaris 11.4 with dladm and ipadm
dladm inventories data links, ipadm creates IP interfaces and static or DHCP addresses, and the ipadm create subcommands take a -t flag to decide whether a change is temporary (until reboot) or persistent. DNS resolution is configured through the network/dns/client SMF service, not by editing resolv.conf directly.
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Orienting yourself on an unfamiliar Oracle Solaris 11.4 host coming from Linux
Before changing anything on a Solaris box, a short set of read-only commands establishes the exact release, the CPU/memory layout, and whether the shell is in the global zone — and flags where everyday Linux habits (shells, tool locations, package manager) do not transfer.
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Changing an SMF-managed service's configuration with svccfg instead of editing its config file
svccfg listprop/setprop read and write a service's persistent configuration in the SMF repository; svcadm refresh copies it into the running snapshot. Where SMF generates a service's config file (for example /etc/resolv.conf from network/dns/client), hand-editing that file is overwritten.
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Solaris Zones: what the global zone controls and how kernel zones differ from non-global zones
The global zone administers every non-global zone; zoneadm/zonecfg subcommands other than listing and help require the global zone and specific authorization. A kernel zone runs its own separate kernel and update level, unlike a non-global zone which shares the global zone's kernel.
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Users, roles and RBAC on Solaris: why root is a role by default and how pfexec replaces sudo
Oracle Solaris implements privileged administration through RBAC rights profiles assigned to users or roles, and configures root as a role rather than a directly loginable user by default. pfexec, not sudo, is the native command for running a single privileged command under an assigned profile.
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ZFS administration on Solaris 11.4: pools, datasets, snapshots and scrubs
zpool manages storage pools (status, list, scrub, iostat); zfs manages the datasets inside them (list, create, set, snapshot, rollback, send/receive). Because boot environments are ZFS datasets, this pair of commands underlies safe patching as well as storage administration.
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