Solaris 11 – Getting Started HowTo

I’m writing this from the perspective of a naive Linux admin so I may not be doing everything right and I certainly don’t address issues such as Zones, ZFS … I just spent a few hours to get some basic services running on an old T2000 box.

Installation

• Downloaded Solaris 11 from Oracle – Text Install Option. I needed to use my Oracle email address and password combination
• Burned the iso to a CD and inserted the CD into the Sun T2000
• Halted the T2000 to the ok prompt and typed: boot cdrom
• I chose option 1 to install Solaris 11 and followed the install answering the questions for network settings, partitioning and user passwords
• After installation and reboot I could log in with my non-privileged user account and subsequently was able to su to root

Services

• svcs – lists all currently installed services
• svcadm enable mysql – Enable a newly installed service
• svcadm restart mysql – Restart the service

Package Management

The Solaris package management IPS is not nearly as developed or comprehensive as the equivalent Gnu/Linux ones (Apt/Yum) but it does make some things a bit easier. For packages unavailable from the Oracle Repos check out the OpenCSW section below:

• pkg refresh – Get the current list of packages from the repos
• pkg list – List all currently installed packages
• pkg search dhcp – Search for packages
• pkg install service/network/ftp – Install a package from the repo

Installing (S) AMP

After initial installation I could see that the apache22 package was already installed but I needed to enable the service to get it running (svcadm enable apache22). To install the Apache with MySQL and PHP (AMP) :

• pkg install amp
  
• svcadm restart apache22 OR svcadm restart http
• svcadm enable mysql
• Create a PHP file under /var/apache2/2.2/htdocs and load it in a web browser

Installing FTP

• pkg install service/network/ftp [may already be installed]
• svcadm enable ftp
• svcs ftp
• Test an ftp connection with an existing user or create a new user with useradd

Configure NTP (Client)

• cd /etc/inet
• cp ntp.client ntp.conf
• chmod 644 ntp.conf
• vi ntp.conf
• Add some server or pool lines
• svcadm enable ntp
• svcadm restart ntp
• svcs ntp
• ntpq -p

Changing the IP Address

• ipadm show-addr
• ipadm delete-addr net0/v4 && ipadm create-addr -T static -a 123.111.123.111/24 net0/v4
• After deleting the IP address you may need to start a new session to the new IP address if using SSH
• ipadm

Package Management with OpenCSW

First install OpenCSW (Open Cashew) and install wget:

• pkgadd -d http://get.opencsw.org/now
• /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -U
• /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -l  [shows lists of packages installed/managed by CSW)
• /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -i CSWwget
• /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -l
• /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -a  [shows list of packages available from OpenCSW]

Now edit root’s $PATH environment variable to include the binaries installed by OpenCSW :

• vi /root/.profile
• export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/opt/csw/bin:/opt/csw/sbin

Installing FreeRadius

•  /opt/csw/bin/pkgutil -i CSWfreeradius
• groupadd radiusd
• useradd radiusd
• Edit the files under /opt/csw/etc/raddb especially the bind address in radiusd.conf
• While playing with the configuration files you may need to examine the output in /opt/csw/var/log/radius/radiusd.log and you may also try running the daemon directly with /opt/csw/sbin/radiusd
• When things are running smoothly:
• svcadm disable radius && svcadm enable radius && svcadm restart radius && svcs radius