> Hello People:
>
> I'm experienced sysadmin with *BSD and HP-UX background, but completely
> new to Solaris.
In that case you are in a good place. The command line is your friend and no
one needs to tell you how to do ls :-)
That's a good thing.
> I've perused various docs and "propaganda" past couple
> days and have a few q's related to install, best practices, hardware,
> etc. I can install Express Dev edition no problem so figured this was
> better choice of lists. Potential uses include both workstation and
> server boxes.
not too sure what to say here. but .. cool. Have you looked at BeleniX ?
It rocks and you don't even have to install it.
> 1) Stability: it seems the Express Dev edition is probably good balance
> between latest drivers, tweaks, etc. and stability for workstation
> use?
good call .. there is a new rev around the corner but snv_70b is damned fine.
use the command uname -a as well as maybe cat out the file /etc/release to
see where you are.
$ uname -a
SunOS charon 5.11 snv_70b i86pc i386 i86pc
$ cat /etc/release
Solaris Express Developer Edition 9/07 snv_70b X86
Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
Assembled 30 August 2007
> Or will I have issues?
Yes you will but I don't know with what :-)
It is not a production grade release. It is beta all the way and don't
confuse it with production grade Solaris. It isn't and you can't get a
support contract or patch updates etc. But it does rock.
> To be conservative should I be using
> Solaris 10, or am safe with the Express Dev edition?
There is that "safe" word again. If you wear a belt and suspenders at the
same time then you probably want Solaris 8 on an UltraSparc machine like an
SunFire 280R ... but just don't do that.
Safe and production grade is Solaris 10 which you can get at the sun.com
site and it will work like a freight train. Anything else takes you into
the zone known as "not production" and you can not get a support contract ..
yet.
> Need both my
> workstations and servers to be rock solid (spoiled by FreeBSD, sans the
> 5.x fiasco).
oh .. well now you did it.
OKay, stop whereever you are, take a deep breath and ask yourself what you
*really* want. If you really really want rock solid then you need Solaris
10 and you need to get a software update contract. Don't do one without the
other.
http://www.sun.com/service/subscriptions/index.jsp
I don't work for Sun and I'm anything but a salesman. I'm just telling you
that if you like solid as a rock then you need Solaris 10 and that patch
access and software support contract.
> 2) Boot Disk: I see folks talking about ZFS Boot setups but wonder if
> it's advisable, I mean assuming the latest upcoming release? Or should
> use volume manager to mirror? With FBSD I can just software raid1 boot
> disk via gmirror, which works out pretty nice. I haven't had time to
> read Solaris volume manager docs in any detail but assume comparable
> functionality is present? With FreeBSD I've evolved my +/- standard
> workstation and server slice and partitioning schemes. But ZFS changes
> things. Any recommendations?
Don't even bother with ZFS on your boot disk until you see it show up as a
feature in production Solaris 10. If you want to play in the beta zone then
jump onto snv Nevada releases called Solaris Express ( Express means fast
and you get it early and good luck ) or Solaris Community edition which is
built by Sun or Solaris Developer Release or BeleniX or some sort of
OpenSolaris distro.
You are in the production world with your wants/needs so that isn't ready yet.
> 3) Graphics cards: I tend to prefer ATI cards and have RV370 based
> card in the workstation I'm using now. Haven't tried installing
> OpenSolaris on this box yet, but hopefully will work? I also have to
> replace a card in another box, however, and noticed OpenSolaris
> included nVidia tools. Are nVidia the cards better supported, and if
> so, any particular models?
Try booting BeleniX first. It rocks.
If that looks sweet then go ahead with Solaris 10, it will most likely work
fine. Ultimately nothing beats a nVidia graphics card .. but thats just my
opinion.
> 4) Zones: Slick feature. Seem pretty analogous to FBSD jails? Any
> comments about how comparable in terms of security?
arghh ... zones are not like jails but hey, it is a good place to start
from. So .. okay.
This loud mouth wrote the first thing about zones :
http://www.blastwave.org/articles/DMC-0002/index.html
but really Brendan Gregg is the high priest :
http://www.solarisinternals.com/wiki/index.php/Zones
Zones rock .. make them .. play with them. ask questions.
that is all I can say for now :-)
> 5) Docs are prolific. Any particular books and/or websites you could
> recommend that distill things down to essentials and/or a bit more
> interesting read?
Anything by Brendan Gregg rocks. Find him and throw money at him.
Swim in OpenSolaris.org and ask questions .. some people will write a book
for you just to hear themselves type.
> 6) 3rd party apps; Is Blastwave the "unofficial official" repository?
> Or some others I should become familiar with?
ugg .. well gee. You can get open source stuff from all over the place.
There is the CoolStack stuff for Apache etc and you can get that here :
http://cooltools.sunsource.net/coolstack/
You can get a sweet compiler also
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/
You can still do hunt and peck at http://www.sunfreeware.com/ to get
software packages. You can also find an old thingy called the Companion
CD at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/ which will confuse
the heck out of you. Or yes, you can install pkg-get from Blastwave and
then just pkg-get -i foo to get foo and all the dependecies that you can
shake a stick at.
It is a long long story and fights break out. Really, I think that 2008
needs to be the year of the "official" distribution point but don't hold
your breath until you see a whack of software migrated into the Indiana IPS
package software.
Have I overwhelmed you ?
> and likely few others that escape me just now... Feel pretty ignorant
> asking newbie q's like this but from what I've seen thus far I'm
> favorably impressed enough to suffer through newbie learning curve.
bring on the suffering .. get in line. Others have been there before.
I think you are doing great by the way.
> fwiw- I've been checking in on this project every now and again for the
> past year and a half or so. First time I tried Solaris for i386 years
> ago (Solaris 8, 1/01) it wouldn't even install.
It is a bugger isn't it ?
$ uname -a
SunOS thor 5.8 Generic_117351-51 i86pc i386 i86pc
$ cat /etc/release
Solaris 8 2/02 s28x_u7wos_08a INTEL
Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Assembled 18 December 2001
> Now it's something
> like a 3 clicks, recognizes all my hardware, and gives me a desktop
> that pretty much jfw. Nice job, folks :)
>From 1997 with Solaris 2.5.1 on x86 until now I have seen pretty much all of
it and worked with all of it and the Solaris 10 releases these days rock in
every measurable way. Certainly installation is much easier.
Oh, you can find a step by step installation complete with sarcasm and LOTs
of pictures at :
http://www.blastwave.org/docs/s10u3_howto.html
Dennis
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