Learn how to perform preinstallation planning
Estimate disk space requirements for installation
Perform a Web Start Wizard installation
Configure a Solaris system for first time operation
Solaris 9 provides more installation methods than ever before. These include the Web Start Wizard, JumpStart, suninstall, and Live Upgrade. The Web Start Wizard is the easiest method used to install Solaris 9: it uses a Java-based front end that presents a series of configuration choices. For those who prefer a command-line installation, the suninstall program is also available. This is particularly useful for installing servers that are attached to a simple terminal on the console port, using tip, rather than a high-resolution monitor. Large organizations are more likely to create a JumpStart configuration to install a standard operating environment (SOE) on all Solaris 9 systems. Using JumpStart ensures that all systems have an identical installation base, making it easy to manage patches and maintain production systems. Live Upgrade is a new innovation, which minimizes the downtime of production servers: a new boot environment is constructed while the server is still operating under its existing operating environment release. Once the second boot environment has been installed, the system is quickly rebooted into the new operating environment, and the previous version is uninstalled in the background.
Preinstallation Planning
The basic process of installing Solaris remains the same, regardless of the installation method selected. A number of planning tasks must be performed prior to installation. These tasks include:
Choosing the appropriate installation method from the Web Start Wizard, JumpStart, suninstall, and Live Upgrade.
Deciding whether or not to upgrade an existing installation or install the operating system cleanly. If your system is currently running Solaris 2.6, 7, or 8, an upgrade can be performed. If your system is running Solaris 2.5.1 or earlier, or if it is not running Solaris at all, you need to perform an initial installation. An upgrade preserves many of the system settings from a previous installation, and generally takes less time to complete than a completely new install. If an upgrade is being performed, the current system should be backed up by using ufsdump or something similar so that it can be restored in the event of an upgrade failure.
Analyzing your existing hardware devices to determine whether or not Solaris 9 will run on your system without an upgrade. For example, Solaris 8 on SPARC would run with only 64MB RAM, but at least 96MB of RAM is required to run Solaris 9. To perform an upgrade installation, extra RAM would need to be added to an existing Solaris 8 system with only 64MB RAM.
Determining whether your storage devices have sufficient capacity to install Solaris 9 and all required third-party applications. A complete Solaris 9 installation requires 2.4GB of disk space, if OEM support is included, and 2.3GB if OEM support is excluded. A Developer installation requires at least 1.9GB, while the End User installation requires 1.6GB. In addition, an amount of swap space equivalent to twice your physical memory should be factored into the sum, along with third-party and user disk space requirements. This is not a requirement, but a sound practice.
Choosing an appropriate installation medium. Possibilities include a JumpStart, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, or net-based installation from a remotely mounted CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. For large organizations, it’s often convenient to set up a single network server with an NFS-exported DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive that is publicly available for mounting. In addition, large organizations might also choose a customized JumpStart installation, which also requires network access to a centralized boot server. Smaller organizations will almost certainly use a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive attached to the local system to be installed.
Gathering all of the necessary system configuration information. This includes the system hostname, IP address, subnet mask, name service type, name server IP address, default router IP address, time zone, locale, and proxy server IP address. These values, and when they are required, will be discussed next.
By undertaking a comprehensive preinstallation review, a successful installation can be assured. In addition to making decisions about the installation type and gathering basic system data, it’s important to understand the network context in which the system will operate. The network context can be defined by answering several key questions:
Will the system be networked? If so, you will need an IP address, subnet mask, and default router (unless the system itself is intended to be a router).
Will the system use the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol? If so, you will not need to supply an IP address, as a lease over an IP address will automatically be granted to you at boot time.
Will the system use IPv6, the newest version of the Internet Protocol?
Will the system form part of a Kerberos v5 realm, to allow centralized authentication? If so, you will need the name of the realm, the administration server’s IP address, and the address of the primary KDC.
Will the system use the Domain Name Service (DNS)? If so, you will need the IP address of a primary and secondary DNS server, which is authoritative for the local domain.
Will the system use Network Information Service (NIS) or NIS+? If so, the IP address or the hostname of the local NIS or NIS+ server will need to be supplied.
Will the system make use of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) for centralized authentication and authorization? If so, you will need to supply the profile server’s IP address or hostname.
Will the system use a proxy server to access the Internet? If so, the IP address or hostname of the proxy server will be required.
Answers to these questions will be required to completely configure the system during installation.
Disk Space Planning
The question of how much disk space you require to install Solaris 9 can only be answered by examining the purpose of the server. For a SPARC system, with 512MB RAM, a complete installation will require 2.6GB for software and 1024MB for swap, as well as space for user data and applications. Extra disk space must be set aside for special features, such as internationalization, and an estimate needs to be made of the size of print and mail spooling directories which lie under /var. Although the default size of /var is usually small in the installation program, mail and print servers will need to increase this, by allowing for a reasonable allocation of spooling space per user.
Caution Since a full /var file system caused by a large print job can affect other tasks such as mail, it’s important to overestimate rather than underestimate the size of /var.
In terms of applications, an Oracle database server, for example, will require at least 1–2GB of disk space, for software packages, mount points, and table data. For a development system with multiple users, a projection based on the maximum quota for each user should be computed. For example, if 50 users are allowed 100MB disk space each, then at least of 5GB of disk space must be available for their exclusive use—as a rule, if users have quotas imposed on them, they should always be guaranteed access to that space. If data on a server is mission critical, consideration should be given to installing some volume management software, as described in Chapter 21.
In terms of specific layouts, the typical file system layout for a SPARC architecture system follows a set of customary, although not required, disk slice allocations. Slice 0 holds the root partition, while slice 1 is allocated to swap space. For systems with changing virtual memory requirements, it might be better to use a swap file on the file system, rather than allocating an entire slice for swap. Slice 2 often refers to the entire disk, while /export on slice 3 traditionally holds older versions of the operating system, which are used by client systems with lower performance (for example, Classic or LX systems that use the trivial FTP daemon, tftpd, to download their operating system upon boot). These systems may also use slice 4 as exported swap space. Export may also be used for file sharing using the Network File System (NFS). Slice 5 holds the /opt file system, which is the default location under Solaris 9 for local packages installed using the pkgadd command. Under earlier versions of Solaris, the /usr/local file system held local packages, and this convention is still used by many sites. The system package file system /usr is usually located on slice 6, while /export/home usually contains user home directories on slice 7. Again, earlier systems located user home directories under /home, but because this is used by the automounter program in Solaris 9, some contention can be expected.
The typical file system layout for an Intel architecture system also follows a set of customary, although not required, disk slice allocations. Slice 0 again holds the root partition, while slice 1 is also allocated to swap space. Slice 2 continues to refer to the entire disk, while /export on slice 3 again holds older versions of the operating system, which are used by client systems, and slice 4 contains exported swap space for these clients. The local package file system /opt is still located on slice 5, and the system package file system /usr is again located on slice 6. Slice 7 contains the user home directories on /export/home. However, the two extra slices serve very different purposes: boot information for Solaris is located on slice 8, and is known as the “boot slice,” while slice 9 provides space for alternative disk blocks, and is known as the “alternative slice.”
Device Names
Among the most challenging aspects of understanding Solaris hardware are the device names and references used by Solaris to manage devices. Solaris uses a very specific set of naming conventions to associate physical devices with instance names on the operating system. In addition, devices can also be referred to by their device name, which is associated with a device file created in the /dev directory after configuration. For example, a hard disk may have the physical device name/pci@1f,0/pci@1,1/ide@3/dad@0,0, which is associated with the device file /dev/dsk/c0t0d0. The benefit of the more complex Solaris device names and physical device references is that it is easy to interpret the characteristics of each device by looking at its name. For the disk example given above, we can see that the IDE hard drive is located on a PCI bus at target 0. When we view the amount of free disk space on the system, for example, it is easy to identify slices on the same disk by looking at the device name:
# df -k
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
/proc 0 0 0 0% /proc
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 1982988 615991 1307508 33% /
fd 0 0 0 0% /dev/fd
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 1487119 357511 1070124 26% /usr
swap 182040 416 181624 1% /tmp
Here, we can see that /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 and /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s3 are slice 0 and slice 3 of the disk /dev/dsk/c0t0d0. If you’re ever unsure of which physical disk is associated with a specific disk device name, the format command will tell you:
# format
Searching for disks...done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
0. c1t3d0 <
/pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@1/sd@3,0
Here, we can see that physical device /pci@1f,0/pci@1/scsi@1/sd@3,0 is matched with the disk device /dev/dsk/c1t3d0. In addition, a list of mappings between physical devices to instance names is always kept in the /etc/path_to_inst file. More information on device naming conventions can be found in Chapter 18.
SPARC Preinstallation
Prior to installing or upgrading Solaris on a SPARC system, it is suggested that a few basic checks of the system be performed, to obtain data necessary for installation (such as the device name of the boot disk) and to verify that all system components are functional. The three most commonly performed tasks are checking network connectivity, checking the disks that have been detected on the SCSI bus, and reviewing how much memory is installed.
If you are booting over a network, or if your system needs to access a DNS, NIS/NIS+, Kerberos, or LDAP server, and you want support for these services to be installed, your network connection will need to be operational. In order to ensure that packets are being sent and received to your system, you can use the watch-net command:
ok watch-net
Internal Loopback test - succeeded
External Loopback test - succeeded
Looking for Ethernet packets.
‘.’ is a good packet. ‘X’ is a bad packet.
Type any key to stop
......X.........XXXX.....….XX............
If a large number of packets are showing as bad, then you should check for hardware errors on your network cable, and/or use a packet analyzer to determine if there is a structural fault on the local area network. In order to check whether or not all of the disk devices attached to the system have been correctly detected, you can use the probe- scsi command to print a list of available devices.
Intel Preinstallation
To install Solaris Intel, the first step is to switch on the system and insert the Solaris 9 Installation CD-ROM into the drive. If you have a high-resolution graphics monitor attached to the system, the GUI-based Configuration Assistant will start. Alternatively, if you are using a low-resolution terminal to connect, the Configuration Assistant will be text-based.
After the BIOS messages have been displayed, the following message will be displayed:
SunOS Secondary Boot
Solaris Intel Platform Edition Booting System
Running Configuration Assistant...
The Configuration Assistant is responsible for performing a number of preinstallation tasks, and must be executed prior to the Web Start Wizard or any other installation program. At the opening screen, simply press F2 to proceed with the installation, unless you are performing an upgrade.
The first task performed by the Configuration Assistant is determining the bus types supported by your system, and collecting data about the devices installed in your system. During this process, the following message will be displayed on your screen:
Determining bus types and gathering hardware configuration data ...
After all of the devices have been discovered by scanning, a list of identified devices is printed on the screen:
The following devices have been identified on this system. To identify
devices not on this list or to modify device characteristics, choose Device
Task. Platform types may be included in this list.
ISA: Floppy disk controller
ISA: IDE controller
ISA: IDE controller
ISA: Motherboard
ISA: PS/2 Mouse
ISA: PnP bios: 16550-compatible serial controller
ISA: PnP bios: 8514-compatible display controller
ISA: PnP bios: Audio device
ISA: System keyboard (US-English)
If you are satisfied that the devices required for installation have been correctly detected (for example, video card and RAM size), you may press F2 again to proceed with booting. Alternatively, you may perform several other tasks on this screen, including:
Viewing and editing devices
Setting the keyboard type
Saving the current configuration
Deleting a saved configuration
Setting the default console device
If your system does not already have a UFS file system installed, or if it is a completely new system, you will need to use fdisk to create new partitions at this point so that your system may be installed. However, if you have an existing Linux system that you wish to dual boot with Solaris, you must ensure that the Linux swap partition is not confused with a Solaris UFS device, because they have the same type within fdisk. You should be able to distinguish Linux swap partitions by their maximum size (127MB). The following page will be displayed during booting and prior to the execution of fdisk:
<<<<<< Current Boot Parameters >>>>>>
Boot path: /pci@1,0/pci-ide@6,1/ide@2/sd@1,0:a
Boot args: kernel/unix
<<<<<< Starting Installation >>>>>>
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Solaris Web Start installer
English has been selected as the language in which to perform the install.
Starting the Web Start Solaris installer
Solaris installer is searching the system’s hard disks for a
location to place the Solaris installer software.
No suitable Solaris fdisk partition was found.
Solaris Installer needs to create a Solaris fdisk partition
on your root disk, c0d0, that is at least 395 MB.
WARNING: All information on the disk will be lost.
May the Solaris Installer create a Solaris fdisk [y,n,?]
You should heed the warning that all data will be lost if you choose to overwrite it with fdisk.
Disk Partitions
If you consent to using fdisk, you will see a screen similar to the following:
Total disk size is 2048 cylinders
Cylinder size is 4032 (512 byte) blocks
Cylinders
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ==== ===== ==== ====== ===
1 UNIX 0 1023 1024 50
2 DOS 1024 2047 1024 50
SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. Create a partition
2. Specify the active partition
3. Delete a partition
4. Exit (update disk configuration and exit)
5. Cancel (exit without updating disk configuration)
Enter Selection:
In this example, we can see that there are two existing partitions occupying 1,204 cylinders each. Partition 1 is a UNIX partition (perhaps from SCO UNIX), while partition 2 is an MS-DOS partition. If we want to use the entire disk for Solaris, we would need to select option 3 on this menu twice, to delete each existing partition in turn. Alternatively, if we wished to retain the UNIX partition but delete the MS-DOS partition, we would use option 3 only once, and select partition 2 for deletion.
After you have freed up space, if necessary, you will be required to select option 1 to create a partition. You will then be required to select option A from the following menu to create a Solaris partition:
Select the partition type to create:
1=SOLARIS 2=UNIX 3=PCIXOS 4=Other
5=DOS12 6=DOS16 7=DOSEXT 8=DOSBIG
A=x86 Boot B=Diagnostic 0=Exit?
Note that it is not possible to run Solaris from a non-UFS partition; however, it is possible to mount non-Solaris file systems after the system has been installed. Next, you need to specify the size of the partition, in either the number of cylinders or the percentage of the disk to be used. In this example, we would enter either 100% or 2048 cylinders:
Specify the percentage of disk to use for this partition
(or type "c" to specify the size in cylinders).
Next, you will need to indicate whether or not the target partition is going to be activated. This means that the system will attempt to boot the default operating system loader from this partition. If you are going to use the Solaris boot manager, you may activate this partition. However, if you are using Boot Magic or LILO to manage existing Microsoft Windows or Linux partitions, and you wish to continue using either of these systems, you should answer no.
After you have created the partition, the fdisk menu will be updated and displayed as follows:
2 Active x86 Boot 8 16 9 1
Total disk size is 2048 cylinders
Cylinder size is 4032 (512 byte) blocks
Cylinders
Partition Status Type Start End Length %
========= ====== ========= ===== ==== ====== ===
2 Active x86 Boot 0 2047 2048 100
SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. Create a partition
2. Specify the active partition
3. Delete a partition
4. Exit (update disk configuration and exit)
5. Cancel (exit without updating disk configuration)
Enter Selection:
At this point, you should select option 4. You will then be prompted with the following message:
No suitable Solaris fdisk partition was found.
Solaris Installer needs to create a Solaris fdisk partition
on your root disk, c0d0, that is at least 395 MB.
WARNING: All information on the disk will be lost.
May the Solaris Installer create a Solaris fdisk [y,n,?]
Since you’ve just created the appropriate partition using fdisk, you should type n here. You will then see the following message:
To restart the installation, run /sbin/cd0_install.
After restarting the installer, you will see the formatting display shown in the next section.
Disk Formatting and Virtual Memory
If your system already has a UFS partition, or if you have just created one, you will see a screen similar to the following:
<<<<<< Current Boot Parameters >>>>>>
Boot path: /pci@1,0/pci-ide@6,1/ide@2/sd@1,0:a
Boot args: kernel/unix
<<<<<< Starting Installation >>>>>>
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Solaris Web Start installer
English has been selected as the language in which to perform the install.
Starting the Web Start Solaris installer
Solaris installer is searching the system’s hard disks for a
location to place the Solaris installer software.
The default root disk is /dev/dsk/c0d0.
The Solaris installer needs to format
/dev/dsk/c0d0 to install Solaris.
WARNING: ALL INFORMATION ON THE DISK WILL BE ERASED!
Do you want to format /dev/dsk/c0d0? [y,n,?,q]
At this point, you simply enter y, and the disk will be formatted as required, so that new partitions may be created. You will then be prompted to enter the size of the swap partition:
NOTE: The swap size cannot be changed during filesystem layout.
Enter a swap partition size between 384MB and 1865MB, default = 512MB [?]
You will then be asked to confirm that the swap slice can be installed at the beginning of the partition:
The Installer prefers that the swap slice is at the beginning of the
disk. This will allow the most flexible filesystem partitioning later in the
installation.
Can the swap slice start at the beginning of the disk [y,n,?,q]
After creating the swap partition, the other slices can be created on the target disk, since the installation program requires a UFS file system to install correctly. However, the system must first be rebooted clean to perform the layout:
The Solaris installer will use disk slice, /dev/dsk/c0d0s1.
After files are copied, the system will automatically reboot, and
installation will continue.
Please Wait...
Copying mini-root to local disk....done.
Copying platform specific files....done.
Preparing to reboot and continue installation.
Need to reboot to continue the installation
Please remove the boot media (floppy or cdrom) and press Enter
Note: If the boot media is cdrom, you must wait for the system
to reset in order to eject.
After you press the ENTER key, you will see the standard Solaris shutdown messages, including:
Syncing file systems... 49 done
rebooting...
Boot Manager
After ejecting the installation CD-ROM from your drive, you will see the standard Solaris boot manager menu:
SunOS - Intel Platform Edition Primary Boot Subsystem
Current Disk Partition Information
Part# Status Type Start Length
=======================================
1 Active X86 BOOT 0 2048
Please select the partition you wish to boot:
After you enter 1 and hit the ENTER key, you will see the following message:
SunOS Secondary Boot
Solaris Intel Platform Edition Booting System
Running Configuration Assistant...
Autobooting from boot path: /pci@1,0/pci-ide@6,1/ide@2/sd@1,0:a
If the system hardware has changed, or to boot from a different
device, interrupt the autoboot process by pressing ESC.
A few seconds later, the boot interpreter is initialized:
Initializing system
Please wait...
<<<<<< Current Boot Parameters >>>>>>
Boot path: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@7,1/ata@1/cmdk@0,0:b
Boot args:
Type b [file-name] [boot-flags] <
or i <
or <
<<<<<< timeout in 5 seconds >>>>>>
Select (b)oot or (i)nterpreter:
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Next, you will need to use kdmconfig to set up your graphics card and monitor, so that the Web Start Wizard can display its windows correctly. To start kdmconfig, press F2, after which you will be taken to the kdmconfig introduction screen. After pressing F2 again, you will be asked to perform the kdmconfig view/edit system, configuration window. Here, you can make changes to the settings detected for your system. If your system is listed on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), you won’t have any problems with hardware detection.
Web Start Wizard Installation
To use the Web Start Wizard installer using a local DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive, you need to bring the system to run level 0 so that commands can be entered into the PROM boot monitor (for more information about the boot monitor, see Chapter 3). The following command can be used from a root shell to bring the system to run level 0:
# sync; init 0
Once the system has reached init level 0, the following prompt will be displayed:
ok
Next, you need to place the Solaris 9 Installation CD-ROM or DVD-ROM into the local drive, and type the following command:
ok boot cdrom
Note that the command is the same whether a DVD or CD-ROM is used as the source. If you have a Solaris Intel system, you cannot upgrade from 2.6 and 7 to 9 by using the Web Start Wizard from the CD-ROM: you must use either a DVD-ROM, JumpStart, or net-based installation. In addition, your BIOS and hard disk controller for the boot device must support logical block addressing (LBA) to work with Solaris 9.
Soon after the system has started booting, you will see output similar to the following:
Boot device: /sbus/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@6,0:f File and args:
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Solaris Web Start installer
English has been selected as the language in which to perform the install.
Starting the Web Start Solaris installer
Solaris installer is searching the system’s hard disks for a
location to place the Solaris installer software.
Your system appears to be upgradeable.
Do you want to do a Initial Install or Upgrade?
1) Initial Install
2) Upgrade
Please Enter 1 or 2 >>
If the following message appears in the boot messages, you may elect to perform an upgrade of the existing Solaris installation. However, most administrators would back up their existing software, perform a fresh install, and then restore their data and applications once their system is operational. In this case, we will choose to perform an Initial Install, which will overwrite the existing operating system.
After you enter 1 and hit ENTER, you will see a message like this:
The default root disk is /dev/dsk/c0t0d0.
The Solaris installer needs to format
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0 to install Solaris.
WARNING: ALL INFORMATION ON THE DISK WILL BE ERASED!
Do you want to format /dev/dsk/c0t0d0? [y,n,?,q]
Formatting the hard drive will overwrite all existing data on the drive—you must ensure that if you previously installed an operating system on the target drive (c0t0d0), you have backed up all data that you will need in the future. This includes both user directories and application installations.
After entering y, the following screen will appear:
NOTE: The swap size cannot be changed during filesystem layout.
Enter a swap slice size between 384MB and 2027MB, default = 512MB [?]
Just hit the ENTER key to accept the default on 512MB if your system has 256MB physical RAM, as the sample system has. However, as a general rule, you should only allocate twice the amount of physical RAM as swap space; otherwise, system performance will be impaired. The swap partition should be placed at the beginning of the drive, as the following message indicates, so that other slices are not dependent on its physical location:
The Installer prefers that the swap slice is at the beginning of the
disk. This will allow the most flexible filesystem partitioning later in the
installation.
Can the swap slice start at the beginning of the disk [y,n,?,q]
After entering y to this question, you will be asked to confirm the formatting settings:
You have selected the following to be used by the Solaris installer:
Disk Slice : /dev/dsk/c0t0d0
Size : 1024 MB
Start Cyl. : 0
WARNING: ALL INFORMATION ON THE DISK WILL BE ERASED!
Is this OK [y,n,?,q]
If you enter y, the disk will be formatted and the mini root file system will be copied to the disk, after which the system will be rebooted and the Web Start Wizard installation process can begin:
The Solaris installer will use disk slice, /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s1.
After files are copied, the system will automatically reboot, and
installation will continue.
Please Wait...
Copying mini-root to local disk....done.
Copying platform specific files....done.
Preparing to reboot and continue installation.
Rebooting to continue the installation.
Syncing file systems... 41 done
rebooting...
Resetting ...
SPARCstation 20 (1 X 390Z50), Keyboard Present
ROM Rev. 2.4, 256 MB memory installed, Serial #456543
Ethernet address 5:2:12:c:ee:5a HostID 456543
Rebooting with command: boot /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/
esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:b
Boot device: /sbus@1f,0/espdma@e,8400000/esp@e,8800000/sd@0,0:b
File and args:
SunOS Release 5.9 Version Generic 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Configuring /dev and /devices
Using RPC Bootparams for network configuration information.
Configuration
The Web Start Wizard proceeds by asking a number of configuration questions that are used to determine which files are copied to the target drive, and how the new system’s key parameters will be set. Many of the questions involve network and software configuration, because these are the two foundations of the Solaris installation. In the following sections, we will review each of the configuration options and cover examples of appropriate settings.
Network Support
The Network Support screen gives users the option to select a networked or non- networked system. Some examples of non-networked systems include stand-alone workstations and offline archives. If you don’t want or need to install network support, however, you will still need a unique hostname to identify the localhost.
DHCP Server
Network users must first identify how their system is identified using the IP. One possibility is that the system will use Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), which is useful when IP addresses are becoming scarce on a class C network. DHCP allows individual systems to be allocated only for the period during which they are “up.” Thus, if a client machine is only operated between 9:00 A.M. and 5:00 P.M. every day, it is only “leased” an IP address for that period of time.
Tip When an IP address is not leased to a specific host, it can be reused by another host. Solaris DHCP servers can service Solaris clients, as well as Microsoft Windows and Linux clients.
Hostname
A hostname is used to uniquely identify a host on the local network, and when combined with a domain name it allows a host to be uniquely identified on the Internet. Solaris administrators often devise related sets of hostnames that form part of a single domain. For example, names of the planets, minerals, and jewels are commonly used. Alternatively, a descriptive name, such as “mail,” can be used to describe systems with a single purpose, such as mail servers.
IP Address
If your network does not provide DHCP, you will need to enter the IP address assigned to this system by the network administrator. It is important not to use an IP address that is currently being used by another host, because packets may be misrouted. Like a hostname, the IP address needs to be unique to the local system.
Netmask
You will next need to enter the netmask for the system, which will be 255.0.0.0 (class A), 255.255.0.0 (class B), or 255.255.255.0 (class C). If you’re not sure, ask your network administrator.
IPv6 Support
Next, you need to indicate whether IPv6 needs to be supported by this system. The decision to use or not to use DHCP will depend on whether your network is part of the mbone, the IP-v6-enabled version of the Internet. As proposed in RFC 2471, IPv6 will replace IPv4 in the years to come, as it provides for many more IP addresses than IPv4. Once IPv6 is adopted worldwide, there will be less reliance on stopgap measures like DHCP. However, IPv6 also incorporates a number of innovations above and beyond the addition of more IP addresses for the Internet—enhanced security provided by authenticating header information, for example, will reduce the risk of IP spoofing and denial of service attacks succeeding. Since IPv6 support does not interfere with existing IPv4 support, most administrators will want to support it.
Kerberos Server
Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that is designed to provide centralized authentication for client/server applications by using secret-key cryptography, which is based around tickets. Once a ticket has expired, the trust relationship between two hosts is broken. In order to use Kerberos, you’ll need to identify the name of the local KDC.
Name Services
A name service allows your system to find other hosts on the Internet or on the local-area network. Solaris supports several different naming servers, including the Network Information Service (NIS/NIS+), the Domain Name Service (DNS), or file-based name resolution. Solaris supports the concurrent operation of different naming services, so it’s possible to select NIS/NIS+ at this point, and set up DNS manually later. However, since most hosts are now connected to the Internet, it may be more appropriate to install DNS first, and install NIS/NIS+ after installation.
DNS Server
The Domain Name Service maps IP addresses to hostnames. If you select DNS as a naming service, you will be asked to enter a domain name for the local system. This should be the fully qualified domain name (for example, cassowary.net). If you selected DNS, you will either need to search the local subnet for a DNS server or enter the IP address of the primary DNS server that is authoritative for your domain. You may also enter up to two secondary DNS servers that have records of your domain. This can be a useful backup if your primary DNS server goes down. It is also possible that, when searching for hosts with a hostname rather than a fully qualified domain name, you would want to search multiple local domains. For example, the host www.buychapters.com belongs to the buychapters.com domain. However, your users may wish to locate other hosts within the broader cassowary.net domain by using the simple hostname, in which case you can add the cassowary.net domain to a list of domains to be searched for hosts.
NIS/NIS+ Server
NIS/NIS+ is a network information service that is used to manage large domains by creating maps or tables of hosts, services, and resources that are shared between hosts. NIS/NIS+ centrally manages the naming and logical organization of these entities. If you choose NIS or NIS+ as a naming service, you will need to enter the IP address of the local NIS or NIS+, respectively.
LDAP Server
LDAP is the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol, which provides a “white pages” service that supersedes existing X.500 systems and runs directly over TCP/IP. The LDAP server is used for managing directory information for entire organizations, using a centralized repository. If you wish to use an LDAP server, you will need to provide both the name of your profile and the IP address of the LDAP server.
Router
To access the local area network and the Internet, you will need to supply the IP address of the default router for the system. A router is a multihomed host that is responsible for passing packets between subnets. More information about routers is provided in Chapter 35.
Time Zone and Locale
The next section requires that you enter your time zone, as specified by geographic region, the number of hours beyond or before Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), or by time zone file. Using the geographic region is the easiest method, although if you already know the GMT offset and/or the name of the time zone file, you may enter that instead. Next, you are required to enter the current time and date, with a four-digit year, a month, day, hour, and minute. In addition, you will need to specify support for a specific geographic region in terms of locales, if required.
Power Management
Do you want your system to switch off automatically after 30 minutes of inactivity? If you can honestly answer yes to this question (for example, because you have a workstation that does not run services), then you should enable power management, because it can save costly power bills. However, if you’re administering a server, you’ll definitely want to turn power management off. A case in point: once your server has shut down in the middle of the night, and your clients cannot access data, you’ll understand why disabling power management is so important.
Proxy Server
A proxy server acts as a buffer between hosts on a local network and the rest of the Internet. A proxy server passes connections back and forth between local hosts and any other host on the Internet. It usually acts in conjunction with a firewall to block access to internal systems, thereby protecting sensitive data. One of the most popular firewalls is squid, which also acts as a caching server. To enable access to the Internet through a proxy server, you need to enter the hostname of the proxy server and the port on which the proxy operates.
64-bit Support
Solaris 9 provides support for 64-bit kernels for the SPARC platform. By default, only a 32-bit kernel will be installed. For superior performance, a 64-bit kernel is preferred because it can natively compute much larger numbers than the 32-bit kernel. In the 64-bit environment, 32-bit applications run in compatibility mode. The installation program will automatically select the appropriate kernel for your system.
Disk Selection and Layout
If you are performing an upgrade or installing a new system, you will need to decide whether or not to preserve any preexisting data on your target drives. For example, you may have five SCSI disks attached, only one of which contains slices used for a previous version of Solaris. Obviously, you will want to preserve the data on the four nonboot disks. However, partitions on the boot disk will be overwritten during installation, so it’s important to back up and/or relocate files that need to be preserved. Fortunately, if you choose to perform an upgrade rather than a fresh installation, many system configuration files will be preserved.
The Web Start Wizard will also ask you if you want to autolayout the boot disk slices, or if you want to manually configure them. You should be aware that the settings supplied by the installation program are very conservative, and trying to recover a system that has a full root file system can be time-consuming, especially given the low cost of disk space. It’s usually necessary to increase the size of the / and /var partitions by at least 50 percent over what the installer recommends. If you have two identical disks installed, and you have more space than you need, you can always set up volume management to ensure high availability through root partition mirroring—thus, if your primary boot disk fails, the system can continue to work uninterrupted until the hardware issue is resolved.
Finally, some client systems use NFS to remotely mount disks on central servers. While this can be a useful way of accessing a centralized home directory from a number of remote clients (by using the automounter), database partitions should never be remotely mounted. If you need to access remote partitions via NFS, you can nominate these partitions during the installation program.
Root Password
An important stage of the installation process involves selecting the root password for the superuser. The root user has the same powers as the root user on Linux, or the administrator account on Windows NT. If an intruder gains root access, he or she is free to roam the system, deleting or stealing data, removing or adding user accounts, or installing Trojan horses that transparently modify the way that your system operates.
One way to protect against an authorized user gaining root access is to use a difficult-to-guess root password. This makes it difficult for a cracker to use a password-cracking program to guess your password to be successful. The optimal password is a completely random string of alphanumeric and punctuation characters.
In addition, the root password should never be written down, unless it is locked in the company safe, nor should it be told to anyone who doesn’t need to know it. If users require levels of access that are typically privileged (such as mounting CD-ROMs), it is better to use the sudo utility to limit the access of each user to specific applications for execution as the superuser, rather than giving out the root password to everyone who asks for it. Role-based access control (RBAC) can also be used for this purpose.
The root password must be entered twice—just in case you should happen to make a typographical error, as the characters that you type are masked on the screen.
Software Selection
After all of the configuration settings have been entered, the following message will be seen on the screen:
Please wait while the system is configured with your settings...
The installation kiosk will then appear on the screen. The kiosk is primarily used to select the type of installation that you wish to perform. To begin the software selection process, you need to eject the Web Start CD-ROM, and insert the Software (1) CD-ROM. Next, you have the option of installing all Solaris software using the default options or customizing your selection before copying the files from the CD-ROM. Obviously, if you have a lot of disk space and a fast system, you may prefer to install the entire distribution, and delete packages after installation that you no longer require. This is definitely the fastest method. Alternatively, you can elect to perform a customized installation.
You are then presented with a screen of all the available software groups. Here, you may select or deselect individual package groups, or package clusters, depending on your requirements. For example, you may decide to install the Netscape Navigator software, but not install the NIS/NIS+ server for Solaris. After choosing the packages that you wish to install, you are then required to enter your locale based on geographic region (the U.S. entry is selected by default). You may also elect to install third-party software during the Solaris installation process—this is particularly useful if you have a standard operating environment that consists of using the Oracle database server in conjunction with the Solaris operating environment, for example. You would need to insert the product CD-ROM at this point so that it could be identified.
After selecting your software, you will need to lay out the disks. This involves defining disk slices that will store the different kinds of data on your system. The fastest configuration option involves selecting the boot disk and allowing the installer to automatically lay out the partitions according to the software selection that you have chosen. For example, you may wish to expand the size of the /var partition to allow for large print jobs to be spooled, or web server logs to be recorded.
Finally, you will be asked to confirm your software selections and proceed with installation. All of the packages will then be installed to your system. A progress bar displayed on the screen indicates which packages have been installed at any particular point, and how many remain to be installed. After you have installed all of the software, you will have to reboot the system. After restarting, your system should boot directly into Solaris unless you have a dual-booting system, in which case you will need to select the Solaris boot partition from the Solaris boot manager.
After installation, the system will reboot and display a status message when starting up, which is printed on the console. A sample console display during booting will look something like this:
ok boot
Resetting ...
SPARCstation 20 (1 X 390Z50), Keyboard Present
ROM Rev. 2.4, 256 MB memory installed, Serial #456543
Ethernet address 5:2:12:c:ee:5a HostID 456543
Boot device: /iommu/sbus/espdma@f,400000/esp@f,800000/sd@1,0
File and args:
SunOS Release 5.9 Version generic [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
Copyright (c) 1983-2001, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
configuring network interfaces: le0.
Hostname: server
The system is coming up. Please wait.
add net default: gateway 204.58.62.33
NIS domainname is paulwatters.net
starting rpc services: rpcbind keyserv ypbind done.
Setting netmask of le0 to 255.255.255.0
Setting default interface for multicast: add net 224.0.0.0: gateway client
syslog service starting.
Print services started.
volume management starting.
The system is ready.
client console login:
By default, the CDE login screen is displayed.
Network Installation
Although we’ve looked in detail at CD-ROM and DVD-ROM installation from a local drive, it’s actually possible to set up a single install server from which installation clients read all of their data. This approach is quite useful where a number of different clients will be using the same disk to install from, and/or if installation is concurrent. Thus, it’s possible for a number of users to install Solaris from a single server, which can be very useful when a new release of Solaris is made. For example, the Solaris 9 beta was distributed in a form suitable for network installation, allowing multiple developers to get their systems running as quickly as possible. For existing install servers, this reduces administration overhead, because different versions of Solaris (Solaris 8 and 9, for example) can be distributed from the same server.
The install server reads copies of the installation CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs and creates a distributable image, which can then be downloaded by remote clients. In addition, it’s possible to create images for both SPARC and Intel versions that can be distributed from a single system; thus, a high-end SPARC install server could distribute images to many Intel clients. The install server uses DHCP to allocate IP addresses dynamically to all install clients. Alternatively, a name server can be installed and used for allocating permanent IP addresses to install clients.
To create SPARC disk images on the install server, the setup_install_server command is used. For a SPARC DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, this command is located in /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_9/Tools. For an Intel DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, this command is located in /cdrom/cdrom0/Solaris_9/Tools. The only parameter that needs to be supplied to the command is the path where the disk images should be installed. You should ensure that the path can be exported to clients, and that the partition selected has sufficient disk space to store the images.
When creating Intel disk images, the same command is used, but the path is different: for a SPARC DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, the command is located in /cdrom/cdrom0/ Solaris_9/Tools, while for an Intel DVD-ROM or CD-ROM, the command is located in /cdrom/cdrom0/s2/Solaris_9/Tools.
To set up individual clients, the add_install_client command must be executed on the install server—once for each client. You need to specify the name of the client to be installed, as well as its architecture. For a sun4m system named pink, you would use the following command:
# /export/install/boot/Solaris_9/Tools/add_install_client pink sun4m
On the client side, instead of using boot cdrom at the ok prompt, you will need to enter the following command:
ok boot net
suninstall Installation
To boot with the suninstall program, you don’t use the Solaris 9 Installation CD-ROM; rather, the Solaris 9 Software 1 CD-ROM, which is bootable, should be employed. The suninstall program has the advantage of not requiring high-resolution graphics to complete installation: thus, a low-resolution monitor or terminal can be used. It requires a minimal amount of RAM, and allows you the greatest flexibility in configuring your system prior to installation (including internationalization). However, it does not allow you to install third-party software as part of the installation process, like the Web Start Wizard. The order of questions and procedures followed are generally the same as for the Web Start Wizard.
When installing Solaris Intel, using the suninstall method is more reliable than the Web Start Wizard, because it relies less on graphic cards and displays that may not be compatible with the Solaris X11 server.
JumpStart
JumpStart is an installation technology that allows a group of systems to be installed concurrently, using a standard file system layout and software package selection. For sites with hundreds of systems that are maintained by a small group of staff, it is the ideal tool for upgrading or reinstalling systems. For example, when a staff member leaves, his or her workstation can be simply reinstalled by using JumpStart, rather than assuming that no system software was modified or that a Trojan horse was not installed. By enforcing a standard operating environment (SOE), there is no need to individually configure every system that needs to be installed, greatly reducing the administrative burden on system administrators.
When using JumpStart on a large number of clients, installation can be expedited by using a sysidcfg file, which defines a number of standard parameters for installation. The sysidcfg file can contain configuration entries for the following properties:
Current date and time
DHCP server IP address
Local domain name
Graphics card
Local hostname
Local IP address
IPv6 support
Locale
Security policy
Monitor type
DNS server
NIS/NIS+ server
LDAP server
Netmask
Network interface
Pointing device
Power management
Root password
Security policy
Terminal type
Time zone
The following is a sample sysidcfg file:
system_locale=en_US
timezone=US/Eastern
timeserver=192.168.34.3
network_interface=le0 {netmask=255.255.255.0 protocol_ipv6=yes}
security_policy=NONE
terminal=dtterm
name_service=NONE
root_password=5fg48;r3f
name_service=NIS {domain_name=cassowary.net name_server=nis(192.168.44.53)}
Here, we can see that the system locale has been set to standard U.S. English, the time zone set to the U.S. East coast, the time server set to 192.168.34.3, and the network interface running IPv6 is set to /dev/le0. While the default terminal and root password are also set, the name service and security policy have not been set, because these might change from system to system. In addition, the name service selected is NIS, with the NIS server set to nis.cassowary.net (192.168.44.53).
Live Upgrade
All of the installation methods reviewed so far require an existing system to be brought to run level 0 in order to start the installation process. In addition, any system undergoing upgrade can expect to be in single-user mode for a matter of hours while distribution files are copied and third-party software is reinstalled. This kind of downtime may be unacceptable for a production server. While many departmental servers will no doubt have a backup server, which can take their place during upgrading and installation testing, many high-end servers, such as the StarFire, are logically divided into domains that run on a single system. A second standby system may not be available to replace a high-end server just for the purpose of an upgrade. While it’s possible to configure each domain individually, many sites would prefer to keep all servers at the same release level.
In such cases, Solaris now offers a Live Upgrade facility. This allows a separate boot environment to be created, with the distribution of the new operating system files installed to an alternative location. Once the installation of the new boot environment has been completed, the system needs only to be rebooted once to allow the system to run the new operating environment. If the new boot environment fails for some reason (such as a missing driver or hardware incompatibility), the old boot environment can be reinstated as the default, and the system can be rebooted into its previous state. This allows operations to resume as quickly as possible in the event of a failure.
One of the nice features of Live Upgrade is that the file system layout and configuration can be quite different from your existing installation. This allows you to fine-tune your existing settings before upgrading. For example, if print and mail jobs have continually caused the /var partition to overfill on a regular basis, the size of the /var partition can be increased in the new boot environment. Changes can be made to the /, /usr, /var, and /opt partitions. Other file systems continue to be shared between the existing and new boot environments unless otherwise specified.
In order to create a new boot environment, a separate partition must be identified and formatted before the procedure can begin. This partition must have sufficient disk space to install the new boot environment. The current contents of /, /usr, and /opt are then copied to the new partition prior to upgrade. Alternatively, if you have a second disk installed on the system, the existing files can be copied to the appropriate slices on the new disk. Once these files are in place, the new boot environment is ready to be upgraded. All of these processes can occur without interfering with the current boot environment.
Upgrading typically involves overwriting the files stored on the new boot environment in /, /usr, and /opt. Once this has been completed, the new boot environment can be activated and the system booted into the new environment.
Live Upgrade operates through a terminal-based menu that allows the following operations to be performed:
Activate Activates a newly installed boot environment.
Cancel Cancels a file transfer operation.
Compare Checks for differences between the new and current boot environments.
Copy Begins a file transfer operation.
Create Initializes a new boot environment.
Current Prints the name of the current boot environment.
Delete Uninstalls a boot environment.
List Displays the file systems in a boot environment.
Rename Modifies the name of a new or existing boot environment.
Status Prints the condition of any boot environment.
Upgrade Begins the upgrade process on the new boot environment.
Help Prints the help menu.
Exit Quits the program.
