Archive
Posts from 2005
Enabling jumbo frames with Solaris and Cisco CatOS
While performing some network throughput testing, I wanted to see how much additional throughput could be gained by using Ethernet jumbo frames. Before beginning my testing, I checked the compatibility matrix to make sure my switch (Cisco Catalyst) and NIC (Sun CE gigabit Ethernet adaptor) supported jumbo frames. Once I knew jumbo frames were supported, I logged into my Solaris server and used the ndd(1m) and ifconfig(1m) utilities to enable jumbo frame support on ce instance 0: The ce device drivers "accept-jumbo" option will enable jumbo frames and instruct the upper layer protocols that the device is capable of processing jumbo frames. The documentation indicates that some older releases of Solaris will not set the mtu (maximum transmission size) when jumbo frame support is enabled…
$ read more →Jerry Cantrell's Boogy Depot CD
I am a huge Alice In Chains fan, and have followed their lead guitarist Jery Cantrell since the band parted ways. I recently picked up Jerry's Boogy Depot CD, and am kicking myself for not purchasing this album sooner! This album is incredible, and I think "My Song" and "Cut You In" are two of his best works ever. If you like Alice In Chains, I highly recommend picking up this CD.
$ read more →Logging connections to inetd services
When a Solaris server is configured to support network services, it is valuable to know which clients are connecting to these services. If the network service is controlled by inetd(1m), each connection can be logged by setting ENABLE_CONNECTION_LOGGING to "YES" in the /etc/default/inetd configuration file: If you are using Solaris 10, you can also use the new inetadm(1m) utilities “-Mâ€? (change the values of the specified inetd default properties) option to enable connection logging: This will enable connection logging for all inetd-based services, and is identical to setting "ENABLE_CONNECTION_LOGGING=YES" in the /etc/default/inetd configuration file. If you are using Solaris 10, you can verify that connection logging is enabled by checking for "tcp_trace=TRUE" in the inetadm(1m) "-p" (lists all default inet service property values provided by inetd in the form of name=value pairs) output: Once connection logging is enabled, a system logfile entry similar to the following will be created for each new connection: This lists the IP address, TCP source port, and the service (imaps in this example) the client tried to connect to…
$ read more →Processing files with awk
I have used awk(1) for years to tokenize strings and to extract specific lines fom files. To tokenize a string, you can use awk(1)'s positional parameters when processing a file: When awk(1) processes the file /etc/services, each line will be split into tokens based on the value of IFS and placed into positional parameters (e.g., $1 ... $N). The awk(1) print function is then used to print all of the values passed as an argument…
$ read more →Automating Solaris recommended bundle retrieval
I use Solaris Recommended patch bundles to patch my production servers, and like to use the following shell function to retrieve the latest bundle (it saves some typing): getpatch will grab the patch bundle identifed by the $RB variable, and place it in the directory passed as an argument: This should work for any bourne shell derivative.
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