ACS UNIX Support Services Evaluates Solaris 2.6 Beta Release

        By Dianna Laakso, UNIX System Administrator (dianna@unt.edu)

        UNIX Support Services began evaluation of the Beta Early Access Release of Solaris 2.6 in June. Solaris 2.6 includes many new features that enhance and improve on earlier versions. Major changes in the 2.6 release are related to a more robust developer environment, support for large files, and enhancements in ease-of-use and management. This article summarizes the major improvements to look forward to as ACS upgrades its UNIX hosts to Solaris 2.6 in upcoming months.

        Solaris Installation and System Management Enhancements

        • Binary Compatibility. Sun's documentation claims that upgrades to the Solaris 2.6 environment are risk free in terms of binary compatibility with earlier releases. Our testing confirms this for Solaris 2.4, 2.5 and 2.5.1 binaries.
        • Common Desktop Environment (CDE). Solaris 2.6 features CDE as the default desktop, replacing Open Windows. This change is an example of Sun's ongoing migration of Solaris towards the ONC standard. New features in the desktop include Web tools, spell checkers built in to Text Editor and Enterprise Mailer, and Power Management. Power Management allows users to be more frugal with desktop resources while they're not in use.
        • Printing. Solaris 2.6 has new print software that is an improvement over the old LP software. Print clients can now be managed via the NIS or NIS+ name services, making it possible to centralize network printing administration. The SunSoft Print Client, which was previously released as an unbundled product, is now part of the Solaris 2.6 release.
        • Changes in System Administration. Many new network management and system administration features have been added to the 2.6 release. The new features include, but are not limited to, the following:
          • Processor Sets - Processor sets allow a set of processors to be allocated for the exclusive use of one or more applications.
          • NIS Server - Solaris 2.6 natively supports the NIS server.
          • Patch Tools - Patch installation and removal tools are now shipped with Solaris, rather than delivered with each patch shipped.
          • AutoFS - Mounts file systems as needed, and unmounts them when they are not being used.
          • NFS Client Failover - Failover provides consistent availability of read-only file systems by allowing the client to mount a replica of the filesystem from another server.
          • Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) - DHCP allows a host to get its IP address and configuration parameters without preconfiguration.
          • Variable Length Submit Mask (VLSM) - VLSM allows multiple netmasks for a given network number and tailors each mask to the size of each subnet. Solaris uses the longest matching netmask when routing IP packets.

        New Security Features

        Solaris 2.6 includes Sun's Automated Security Enhancement Tool (ASET). ASET performs automated security audits, and includes a C2 level security model, Basic Security Model, for Solaris. Under Solaris 2.6, Access Control Lists are incorporated directly into the operating system to provide a greater degree of control over file access at the user level.

        Changes in the Developer Environment

        • Large Files Support. Solaris 2.6 includes support for large files up to 1 Terabyte on NFS, UFS and CacheFS filesystems. New interfaces have been added to perform asynchronous I/O to large files. There is a new option to the mount command to disable large file support on UFS filesystems, to help ensure that large files are not accidentally opened by older applications that are not able to handle large files. Solaris 2.6 offers both C and C++ support for large files.
        • Restructured /proc. The /proc partition has been restructured from a flat into a hierarchical filesystem used to store state information and control functions. Additionally, it provides a watchpoint facility to monitor data in the address space of a process.
        • Process Scheduling. Preemption control has been added to allow applications to give scheduling instructions to the kernel to prevent preemption for short periods of time.
        • LDAP Support. The Federated Naming Service (FNS) under Solaris 2.6 supports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and offers improved support for files and NIS back ends.

          • Improvements in Networking

          WebNFS is now included to make filesystems accessible on the Web via the NFS protocol. The main advantage of WebNFS is that files can be made public without the overhead associated with an anonymous FTP site. Additionally, PPP server software is bundled with Solaris 2.6.

          Improvements in Multiplatform Support

          Solaris 2.6 is based on a single source code base, which ensures that future releases of Solaris will share the same features and functionality across platforms.

          • IPX Support. New multiplatform support in the 2.6 release includes support for Novell's IPX/SPX protocol stack for connectivity to Netware LANs.
          • PCMCIA Support. Solaris 2.6 for Intel has added support for the PCMCIA card.
          • Macintosh Application Environment (MAE). Machintosh applications can be run under Solaris 2.6<@146>s MAE. MAE allows Macintosh application to be run without requiring any modification to the applications.
          • UltraSPARC Support. Sun's UltraSPARC hardware is supported by Solaris 2.6. New system functions utilize the Ultra's high performance capabilities, while maintaining binary compatibility with existing SPARC applications.


          Previous Article <== ==> Next Article

          If you have any problems or questions about this server, contact us as soon us as soon as possible. You can send mail to the following address: www@unt.edu