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Posts in Solaris
More Solaris smpatch chaos
I have written several times about the deficiencies in Sun's smpatch utility. While attempting to use the broken sconadm utility to register a new server this weekend, I got the following error: The Solaris patch management forums seem to indicate that a fair number of people are running into this problem, but unfortunately no solutions are available to address this. I can understand having bugs creep into software, but I am starting to wonder if anyone at Sun is actually doing QE on the patchrpo utilities? Anyone care to wager a guess at what that java stack trace means…
$ read more →Viewing the environment of a Linux or Solaris process
Each process that is started on a Linux and Solaris hosts contains a default environment. This environment contains several variables such as the PATH to search for executables, a HOME variable to indicate where a users home directory is located, and variables such as LANG to describe the locale in use. The variables are unique to the shell in use (I recently learned that not all shells set HOSTNAME), and can be adjusted with the the bash export command, or the csh setenv command. After a process starts, it is sometimes useful to be able to view the environment of a process…
$ read more →Displaying Solaris kernel memory usage
The mdb utility that ships with Solaris 10 is amazing, and allows you to view a wide array of kernel data. Mdb ships with numerous commands (also referred to as dcmds) to view information, and one of my personal favorites is '::memstat': As you can probably tell by it's name, memstat displays how a system is using memory, and is typically the first place I look to see how memory is allocated. To see how the kernel is using the memory listed in the '::memstat' output, you can use the '::kmastat' dcmd: If you are trying to figure out how mdb works, check out the sample mdb chapter from the next revision of Solaris kernel internals.
$ read more →FMA support for AMD Opteron processors
Gavin Maltby has an awesome blog entry about the FMA support that is presently in Nevada, and soon to be in Solaris 10 update 2: < I have written about FMA before, and still think it's my favorite Solaris 10 feature.
$ read more →Using IPMI to retrieve platform characteristics
Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) is an industry standard protocol used to monitor and manage various platform characteristics. This includes the ability to print FRU information, remotely control the power of the chassis, and read a variety of sensors built into the hardware platform. If you are running a Solaris host, you can use the ipmitool utility to access IPMI platform data on a local or remote host. The following example shows how to use ipmitool to print the overall status of a server that supports IPMI: In addition to printing high level status information, you can use the "sensor" and "sdr" options to print the operational status of each components in a server: ipmitool can also be used to print the FRUs in a server: There are tons of other useful features, which you can read about in the ipmitool(1m) manual page.
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