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Posts in Solaris
Viewing Solaris security and reliability updates
I previously discussed using pca to get security updates. One thing I didn't realize at the time was pca's ability to list or install only the patches that are classified as security and reliability updates. This ability to filter patches is accomplished by adding the "r" (reliability updates) or "s" (security updates) character to one of the available patch group operands (e.g., missing, installed, all, total, unbundled, bad). The following example shows how the "r" and "s" characters can be used to list all patches that are classified as security and reliability updates: If you want to install all of the available security and reliability updates, you can specify the "r" or "s" character as part of the installation process: I wish I would have noticed this earlier, since it would have saved me having to write a shell wrapper…
$ read more →Checking swap usage on Solaris, Linux and OpenBSD hosts
Each and every operating systemI support has a different utility to report on swap usage. On my Soalris hosts, I use the swap and vmstat utilities to check utilization: total: 36176k bytes allocated + 4672k reserved = 40848k used, 1189004k available On Linux hosts, I use the free and top utilities: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 2055340 1427696 627644 0 179124 876300 -/+ buffers/cache: 372272 1683068 Swap: 1004052 0 1004052 And on my OpenBSD servers, I use the swapctl and systat utilities: Device 512-blocks Used Avail Capacity Priority swap_device 262068 0 262068 0% 0 Oh how I wish there was an administrator tool naming standard. :)
$ read more →Viewing PCI device attributes on Solaris and Linux hosts
Periodically I need to identify the vendor and model of a PCI card installed in a x86 Linux or Solaris host. To retrieve this information on Solaris hosts, I typically use the scanpci utility (prtdiag also provides some incredibly useful information): For Linux hosts, lspci provides similar information: These are invaluable commands, and can come in handy!
$ read more →Viewing the files the runtime linker is operating on
I picked up a neat trick on the Solaris linker mailing list this week. If you want to see the complete set of input files that are processed by the runtime linker, you can use the "-Dfiles" LD_OPTION: The Solaris linker provides numerous other debugging options, and the full list can be viewed by running ld with the "-Dhelp" option:
$ read more →Configuring SMF services to write to the console during boot
I like several things about the Solaris service management facility (SMF), but one thing I don't care for is SMF redirecting the output from startup scripts to logfiles in /etc/svc/volatile and /var/svc/log. Call me old fashion, but I like to view the boot progress on the console, and periodically use the console output to troubleshoot problems with the boot process. That said, it is possible to get the system services to log to the console during boot, but it requires hacking /etc/rc[0-6] to write to /dev/sysmsg instead of STDOUT. For individual startup scripts, you can add entries similar to the following to have output displayed on the console during boot: echo "Writing to the console" > /dev/sysmsg Console output is an extremely useful debugging tool, and I really wish you could pass an option ( boot -vx doesn't cut it) to the kernel to tell SMF to write to the console instead of individual logfiles.
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