Under the Solaris 10 system – or the open Solaris as well,
the service management have been upgraded, and there are great new tools to handle the sysadmin
work on the services.

The long detailed explanation can be found here:
Solaris Service Management Facility – Quickstart Guide

But for the fast paced sysadmin – here is the short version

To see the detailed boot sequence with all the services notices use:

boot -m verbose

Stopping and starting services

stop a running service as well as make sure it wont come back after booting the server:

svcadm disable service_name

Bring the service back up and make sure it starts after boot as well:

svcadm enable service_name

The new and improved services system will also watch over the service, and restart it if it suddenly stop.
but don’t worry – if the service loops and can’t start, after a couple of time the SMF will stop trying to bring it up, and will send you an error for the service.

To stop or start the service temporarily without impacting the startup status of the service use:

svcadm -t enable/disable service_name

Getting information about the services

List all active services:

svcs

List all available services:

svcs -a

List all failing services:

svcs -x

to get more details on a specific failing service, use:

svcs -x service_name

to add verbosity to the svcs commands just add “-v”

the services logs are located at:
/var/svc/log
or:
/etc/svc/volatile

List all the processes this service is running, even if they have a different name:

svcs -p service_name

Viewing Dependencies

List all the services this service is depended upon, if any of these services fails, our service will fail too:

svcs -d service_name

List all the services that depend on our service, if our service fails, they will fail too:

svcs -D service_name

Service Names

the explanation for the service names im taking straight from the SUN bigadmin site:

Solaris uses a URI string called an FMRI (Fault Managed Resource Identifier) to identify system objects for which advanced fault and resource management capabilities are provided. Services managed by SMF are assigned FMRI strings prefixed with the scheme name “svc“, as shown in the following examples for the Solaris service syslogd(1M):

• svc://localhost/system/system-log:default
• svc:/system/system-log:default
• system/system-log:default

Notice that these service FMRIs used by SMF can be expressed in three ways: first as an absolute path including a location path such as “localhost“; second as a path relative to the local machine; and third as simply the service identifier with the string prefixes implied. The SMF administrator tools described in the rest of this document typically describe services using the third form, as they are assumed to be operating on local services. Other management tools that operate on multiple types of resources or across machine boundaries may use one of the other forms to describe services. The SMF tools in the current release of Solaris can only manage services on the local host.

Solaris RunLevel

There are no longer run levels setting on the Solaris server, now this is called milestones.
Milestones are a group of services, which defines a state the server is in – just like single user, or multi user.
you can bring the server into a specific milestone with:

svcadm milestone milestone/single-user:default

to permanently set the server in a specific mile stone , use:

svcadm milestone -d milestone/single-user:default

and again – to list what services should be running to reach a specific milestone, use:

svcs -d milestone_name

and that’s the short explanation

next time ill explain how to add a service of your own to the system.

Network File System (NFS) is a network file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a network in a manner similar to how local storage is accessed.

So basically its a network share, it allows you to share files between remote computers
in the most easy and seamless way, once it was specifically for UNIX servers,
but today NFS is supported over MS servers as well.

Like everything else in Sysadmin life,
when its working its working well, and nobody hears about it,
but what to do when its not working?
Samba debugging for example is easier from that aspect since it has extensive logs for the sysadmin,
NFS doesn’t keep logs, and NFS issues doesn’t show up in the syslog/messages file as well.

But there are tools that allow you to get extensive information about the running NFS process,
shares, statistics, users connected etc :

Technorati Tags: Command line, NFS, samba, Solaris

There are main 2 major software companies that supply free vnc server and vnc cllient,
the first is realvnc and the second is tightvnc , from the tighvnc site:

TightVNC is a free remote control software package. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer. TightVNC is:

• free for both personal and commercial usage, with full source code available (GPL-licensed);
• useful in remote administration, remote customer support, education, and for many other purposes;
• cross-platform, available for Windows and Unix, compatible with other VNC software.

So these are 2 options for you to download a good free vnc viewer.

Solaris VNCserver configuration

and I say only viewer because now the Solaris 10 build 5 comes with the vncserver alredy inside.
all you need to do is to configure it.

This page on the SUN site will give you the detailed explanation on how to do things and what security patch you need to install fisrt ,but the instructions can be summed up in 4 lines:

mkdir -p /etc/dt/config

cp /usr/dt/config/Xservers    /etc/dt/config/Xservers

edit this file “/etc/dt/config/Xservers” and add these lines at the end:

:1  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :1 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
:2  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :2 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
:3  Local local_uid@none root /usr/X11/bin/Xvnc :3 -nobanner -AlwaysShared -SecurityTypes None -geometry 1024x768x24 -depth 24
And reboot the server.

The lines with the :1 :2 etc at the beginning, are the virtual displays you wish to server to have available for connections, you can add more by changing the numbers to :4 :5 etc.

when connecting to the server with the vnc viewer you need to express to which virtual display you want to connect by adding it to end of the server’s name or ip:

10.10.10.1:3

If you want to connect to virtual display number 3.

A security note – this configuration will allow passwordless access to the vnc screen – if someone logs in and leaves it open – the next user can just enter without a login.

A safer configuration is to require a password by using the -SecurityTypes VncAuth parameter. The Xvnc(1) man page describes password requirements.

VNC and Security

The vnc as a general is clear text, for a more secure connection there is a method of tunneling the vnc through a ssh session.
2 nice tutorials for vnc through ssh can be found here and here.
the second tutorial is using putty for the ssh connection – putty is another great freeware,
its a free ssh client for windows to connect to ssh servers.

If the server you wish to connect to through vnc is located withing your lan,
and you are relaxed about security for the users on it – if its a training server etc ,
you can just setup the vncserver without any safeguards,
but if you are connecting through an unsecured medium (AKA the internet)
you better add the ssh layer to it.

Technorati Tags: desktop, Linux, network, Solaris, windows