This article contains my personal notes regarding "low level" configuration of Solaris hosts. I mean stuff that help the operating system boot correctly (except hardware and drivers issues to be found in this page: boot loaders, partitioning, mounting partitions, creating file systems…

GRUB

The menu to edit is in /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst. You get its location by typing bootadm list-menu

Modifying GRUB live

When the system starts and the GRUB selections shows, edit the boot entries by typing 'e'. Other commands:

'd' to delete a line
'b' to boot

Those modifications are temporary.

Restoring GRUB

To restore GRUB (and be able to boot Solaris) when @## someone/something has scratched it, do:

boot from the install CD of Solaris
For Solaris 10, select "6" for a prompt, single user mode
restore the boot loader

installgrub -m /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0d0s0

NB. installboot is now obsolete.

See more information on BigAdmin.

Updating GRUB

The command is:

/mnt/boot/solaris/bin/update_grub -R /mnt

where /mnt is the root one wants to boot.

Booting with or without boot information text

By default, OpenSolaris configures GRUB so that there is a 'nice' graphical splash screen. Unfortunately, when you're fine tuning your OS, this prevents you from seeing the messages, so you might prefer to move back to text boot.
To do so, first, locate the GRUB menu file:

$ bootadm list-menu
the location for the active GRUB menu is: /a/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst
default 0
timeout 10
0 OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86 With Splash Screen

Notice in my case, the menu file is located in /a/rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst. Edit that file with your favorite text editor so that such an entry

title OpenSolaris 2009.06 snv_111b With Splash Screen
findroot (pool_rpool,1,a)
splashimage /boot/solaris.xpm
foreground d25f00
background 115d93
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS,console=graphics
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

becomes like this:

title OpenSolaris 2009.06 snv_111b text boot
findroot (pool_rpool,1,a)
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1
kernel$ /platform/i86pc/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
module$ /platform/i86pc/$ISADIR/boot_archive

i.e remove the splashimage, foreground, background and console=graphics from the file.
It's done ! You can reboot. However, I recommend you always backup your old GRUB menu. NB. This can be modified 'live' at boot time, by typing e to edit the GRUB menu when it displays.

Select the default GRUB menu

pfexec bootadm set-menu default=3

The GRUB menu can be located using bootadm list-menu.

Boot environments

It is possible to create several boot environments and boot different versions of Solaris, using a utility named beadm. In particular, the upgrade process actually creates a new boot environment for the new upgrade. Beadm seamlessly handles the tasks of copying all relevant file systems and updating GRUB. To list boot environments

$ beadm list
BE            Active Mountpoint Space Policy Created          
--            ------ ---------- ----- ------ -------          
opensolaris   -      -          7.57G static 2009-01-03 13:18 
opensolaris-1 NR     /          3.59G static 2009-07-20 22:38

To mount an unmounted boot environment, do

$ beadm mount name /some/where

To destroy a boot environment (deletes the corresponding dataset with all files in it, but only unshared files):

beadm destroy name

For instance, if you destroy opensolaris,

$ beadm destroy opensolaris
$ beadm list
BE            Active Mountpoint Space  Policy Created          
--            ------ ---------- -----  ------ -------          
opensolaris-1 NR     /          11.80G static 2009-07-20 22:38

You can also get information on disk space using:

$ df /
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1
                      14266663   7646247   6620416  54% /

reboot

Quick reboot:

reboot -f

This command should be faster... To transition between BEs, use the init 6 / luactivate command.

Partitioning

Solaris cuts partition into slices. Those slices are numbered 0 to 7 and they correspond to the 's' of the device (c0t0d0s3 refers to slice number 3). Slice number 2 is reserved and refers to the entire disk by convention.

Slices of a given partition may be listed with format.

On Solaris 10, use the command 'print' to show the current layout of a given disk.

partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 39691 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0 unassigned    wm       0 - 27046       13.00GB    (27047/0/0) 27263376
  1 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 39690       19.08GB    (39691/0/0) 40008528
  3 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  4 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  5 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  6 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  7 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

partition> 3

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
3 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

Enter partition id tag[unassigned]: 
Enter partition permission flags[wm]: 
Enter new starting cyl[0]: 27047
Enter partition size[0b, 0c, 27047e, 0.00mb, 0.00gb]: 39690e
partition> print
Current partition table (unnamed):
Total disk cylinders available: 39691 + 2 (reserved cylinders)

Part      Tag    Flag     Cylinders         Size            Blocks
  0 unassigned    wm       0 - 27046       13.00GB    (27047/0/0) 27263376
  1 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  2     backup    wu       0 - 39690       19.08GB    (39691/0/0) 40008528
  3 unassigned    wm   27047 - 39690        6.08GB    (12644/0/0) 12745152
  4 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

  5 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  6 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0
  7 unassigned    wm       0                0         (0/0/0)            0

partition> label
Ready to label disk, continue? yes

partition> quit

format> volname
Enter 8-character volume name (remember quotes)[""]:secondar
Ready to label disk, continue? yes

On OpenSolaris, use verify.

axelle@boureautic:~# format
Searching for disks...done
AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c3d0

To show the disk partitions (not slices), use parted (or gparted).

$ parted /dev/dsk/c5t1d0p0
GNU Parted 1.8.8
Using /dev/dsk/c5t1d0p0
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print                                                            
print
Model: Generic Ide (ide)
Disk /dev/dsk/c5t1d0p0: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End    Size   Type      File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  106MB  105MB  primary   ntfs         boot 
 2      106MB   115GB  115GB  primary   ntfs              
 3      115GB   273GB  157GB  primary                     
 4      273GB   500GB  227GB  extended               lba  
 5      273GB   377GB  105GB  logical                     
 6      377GB   500GB  123GB  logical   solaris

ZFS

ZFS is awesome !

Pools

Pool creation

The good news about ZFS is that it's as great as expected. Storage units may span over partitions: several disks, devices, partitions and even files can be gathered in a single zfs pool, and then, from that pool virtual disk spaces can be provided the way you want.

zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0d0s7

Devices can easily be set for mirroring or RAIDZ. It's as simple as adding a keyword to the command. However, make sure mirroring or raidz is what you need. For instance, my c0d0s6 slice has 15G and c0d0s7 has 17G. If I mirror them, I basically "lose" 2G in the second array. That's not something I want at home (at work, the answer might be different).

zpool create -f pool raidz c0d0s6 c0d0s7
zfs list
NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool    87K  15,3G  24,5K  /pool
zfs destroy pool
zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0d0s7
zfs list
NAME   USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
pool    87K  32,5G  24,5K  /pool

Trying ZFS on simulated disks

Don't have any available disk slices but want to try ZFS ? It's possible to simulate pools with a file:

mkfile 100m /disk1

Compression

It's very easy to set compression

zfs set compression=on pool

For example:

# zpool create -f pool c0d0s6 c0d0 s7
# zfs create pool/axelle
# zfs create pool/opt
# zfs set mountpoint=/opt pool/opt
# zfs set compression=on pool
# zfs set mountpoint=/export/home/axelle pool/axelle

Note before creating the pool, the two slices c0d0s6 & c0d0s7 should be backuped, unmounted and removed from /etc/vsftab. Then, once the pool is created, the original content can be restored. Also, mountpoints are acceptable only if they exist: make sure /export/home/axelle exists first. To see if a given pool has compression on,

$ zfs list -o name,compression
NAME                           COMPRESS
backup                              off
backup/backup1                       on
rpool                               off

Quota, Reservations

To see if there is a quota on a ZFS pool:

$ zfs get quota rpool
NAME   PROPERTY  VALUE  SOURCE
rpool  quota     none   default

It's a good idea to set quotas to make sure your partitions are not 100% full which is a problem (I tested...). To do so, ZFS talks of "reservations": you reserve a given amount on the partition that should always be free.

$ pfexec zfs set reservation=500m rpool
$ zfs get reservation rpool
NAME   PROPERTY     VALUE   SOURCE
rpool  reservation  500M    local

Share a pool on NFS

To share a pool on NFS:

zfs set sharenfs=on mypool
zfs get sharenfs mypool
sharemgr show -vp

Pool Status

$ zpool status
  pool: rpool
 state: ONLINE
status: The pool is formatted using an older on-disk format.  The pool can
        still be used, but some features are unavailable.
action: Upgrade the pool using 'zpool upgrade'.  Once this is done, the
        pool will no longer be accessible on older software versions.
 scrub: none requested
config:

        NAME        STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
        rpool       ONLINE       0     0     0
          c3d0s0    ONLINE       0     0     0

Listing file systems

This is the configuration I currently use on OpenSolaris:

# zfs list
NAME                       USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool                     41.3G  6.71G  1.42G  /a/rpool
rpool/ROOT                5.78G  6.71G    18K  legacy
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris    5.78G  6.71G  5.32G  /
rpool/dump                 895M  6.71G   895M  -
rpool/export              32.3G  6.71G    19K  /export
rpool/export/home         32.3G  6.71G   551M  /export/home
rpool/export/home/axelle  31.7G  6.71G  31.3G  /export/home/axelle
rpool/swap                 895M  7.50G  88.3M  -

The REFER column is the size of the file system if it stood alone.
The MOUNTPOINT column indicates where the file system is to be mounted. It does not indicate the file system is actually mounted. To list more options, such as whether the file system is mounted or not, mountable or not etc, do:

$ zfs list -o name,mountpoint,canmount,mounted
NAME                      MOUNTPOINT           CANMOUNT  MOUNTED
rpool                     /a/rpool                   on      yes
rpool/ROOT                legacy                    off       no
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris    /                      noauto       no
rpool/ROOT/opensolaris-1  /                      noauto      yes
rpool/dump                -                           -        -
rpool/export              /export                    on      yes
rpool/export/home         /export/home               on      yes
rpool/export/home/axelle  /export/home/axelle        on      yes
rpool/swap

Snapshots

This is a great feature of ZFS:

Setting up snapshots: time-slider-setup
Mounting a ZFS pool:

zfs import -r <poolname>

Listing snapshots in a given pool:

zfs list -t snapshot

or even: zfs list -t snapshot -o name,used

Destroying a given snapshot (if your system is 100% full and you absolutely need some space):

zfs destroy thesnapshot

Restoring a given snapshot:

zfs rollback -rRf <name>

Troubleshooting ZFS pools

If disks in the pool have changed names (sda, sdb...), the pool won't be available. To fix, that:

export the pool: sudo zpool export pool

get the id of the disk (if you want to import by disk-id):

$ sudo zpool import
   pool: pool
     id: 12116846563890507123
  state: ONLINE
 action: The pool can be imported using its name or numeric identifier.
 config:

        pool                                               ONLINE
          ata-WDC_WD5000AADS-00S9B0_WD-WCAV90510116-part6  ONLINE

import the disk by id:

$ sudo zpool import -d /dev/disk/by-id 12116846563890507123

System crash dump

$ pfexec dumpadm
      Dump content: kernel pages
       Dump device: /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/dump (dedicated)
Savecore directory: /var/crash/boureautic
  Savecore enabled: no

To set the size for the dump on ZFS

zfs set volsize=2G rpool/dump

Swap

$ swap -l
swapfile             dev    swaplo   blocks     free
/dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap 182,2         8  1832952  1832952

Mounting partitions

To mount existing partitions:

UFS: default file system for Solaris, no need to specify file system type: mount /dev/dsk/… /mountpoint
FAT: use 'pcfs' file system type. If the partition is located in a primary partition (number N - for PCs between 1 and 4), you can simply mount that partition:

mount -F pcfs /dev/dsk/c0d0pN /mountpoint

where p0 means the whole disk and p1 to p4 refer to the primary fdisk partitions.

However, there's another way to mount that partition: c0d0p0:<letter or number>. The letter ranges from c to z, and the number starts at 1. To select the first FAT partition: c0d0p0:1 or c0d0p0:c will do the trick. To select the second partition: c0d0p0:2 or c0d0p0:d. Note it's always p0. Beware: the letter won't always match the Windows unit drive. If your first unit drive (C:\) is a NTFS, then D:\ is FAT and E:\ is FAT, the first FAT partition is D:\ ... but to mount it in Solaris use c0d0p0:1 or c0d0p0:c !

This method is particularly useful to mount partitions located within extended partition, because there's no way to address the partition directly with a c0d0pN.

NFS: useful command: sharemgr show -vp
NTFS: not supported by Solaris

For automatic mounting, add an entry to /etc/vfstab:

/dev/dsk/c0d0p3 /dev/rdsk/c0d0p3        /mnt/win_e      pcfs    3       yes

To mount a file as a filesystem, use lofiadm (loopback file driver). I haven't tried that yet, but see instructions here.

Samba: this is a nice solution to mount remote Windows shares.

pfexec mount -F smbfs -o uid=username //host/share /mntpoint

The partition will be mounted for the specified username.

To do so, the samba client service must be started:

pfexec svcadm enable svc:/network/smb/client:default

NB. Samba uses the following packages:

system      SUNWsmbau     samba - A Windows SMB/CIFS fileserver for UNIX (Usr)
system      SUNWsmbfskr   SMB/CIFS File System client support (Kernel)
system      SUNWsmbfsr    SMB/CIFS File System client support (Root)
system      SUNWsmbfsu    SMB/CIFS File System client support (Usr)

for server:

system      SUNWsmbskr    SMB Server (Kernel)
system      SUNWsmbsr     SMB Server (Root)
system      SUNWsmbsu     SMB Server (Usr)
system      SUNWsmbau     samba - A Windows SMB/CIFS fileserver for UNIX (Usr)

Mounting a USB card

Plug it in, and then check where it has been mounted using df -h. My mobile phone is mounted in /rmdisk/noname .

Mounting a USB IOMEGA drive

Plug it in. It automatically mounts in /media/IOMEGA_HDD on my system.

Zones

Zones are sorts of virtual environments. You can run different 'branded' OS in each zones, in particular other Solaris or... a Linux. The zones (normally) don't communicate with each other, so it's a safe (or safer) way to isolate systems. This page explains how to install a Linux Zone on OpenSolaris. Below, I shall rather detail a few common zone commands. Listing zones:

$ zoneadm list -vc
  ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP    
   0 global           running    /                              native   shared
   - lzonelinux       installed  /a/rpool/zones/lzonelinux      lx       shared
...
$ zoneadm list -vc
  ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP    
   0 global           running    /                              native   shared
   1 lzonelinux       running    /a/rpool/zones/lzonelinux      lx       shared

running: means the OS in the zone is up and running
installed: means the zone is operational, but it is not running currently

Viewing the configuration for a zone:

$ zonecfg -z lzonelinux
zonecfg:lzonelinux> export
create -b
set zonepath=/rpool/zones/lzonelinux
set brand=lx
set autoboot=false
set ip-type=shared
add net
set address=x.y.z.w/24
set physical=yukonx0
end
add attr
set name=kernel-version
set type=string
set value=2.6
end