New solaris 9 install on home network

[marvc]

I have a Sun UltraSparc that I'm trying to learn. I ust downloaded Solaris 9 and I have it and the system configured with internet access. Can someone advise me on how I can use it on my home network? Mainly from accessing windows shares and security.

TIA

[swangods]

Originally posted by marvc
I have a Sun UltraSparc that I'm trying to learn. I ust downloaded Solaris 9 and I have it and the system configured with internet access. Can someone advise me on how I can use it on my home network? Mainly from accessing windows shares and security.

TIA

Well, I downloaded Solaris 8 a while ago but never got around to installing it. I've used Solaris 9 on a sparc machine at work, but never had to configure anything. Sounds like I'm useless!

I was just curious though where you got the machine...?

[rustskull]

There's lots of help out there. You are picking the right way to go about it, having a box at home to "break" and "fix" the OS is the best way to learn how to do stuff in a real world environment. Personally, if you're doing this as an educational exercise, I would go about it in a minimalist way and add only the services/applications you need, as you need them. This way the knowledge will transfer to any hardware that Solaris runs on. Some problems are hardware/platform specific, but if you understand what sections of the OS deal with what pieces of HW, and what the relationships are you will be able to isolate the source of any issues and then deal with it.

http://docs.sun.com/
For official documentation

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/
for administration forums and assistance with tasks

http://www.enteract.com/~lspitz/armoring.html
is a good starting place to learn how to minimalize a system and get directly at the internals. there's lots of links here pointing directly at really good, concise sources of info.

http://www.cotse.com/
is good for miscellaneous info, and security updates.

If you learn how the system is put together you will be able to go out and be useful. Any idiot can shove a cd in a drive and tell it to go. A person that can add a lot of value to an organization (and of course have a better chance at raises, keeping their job, etc) is one who can set-up, maintain, diagnose, and repair a system efficiently and effectively, with minimal downtime.

In any *nix style system, identifying exactly what the problem is is %99.99 of the solution. Once you do that, even if there isn't a fix yet, if it's a real showstopper there are hundreds of people out there whose jobs it is to work on issues as such and thousands more that work with such things as a hobby.

I've had fixes that took me a week to diagnose, and 5 seconds to fix.

HTH

-rust

[marvc]

Thanks for that reply. My next step was to remove it and install it again. I'm a tinker by heart so I'm itching to look around on the inside to see what's with this OS.
My approach is that of a true novice/admin. I believe in as much hands on "real-world" type learning as possible followed with detailed documentation. From what I've read so far, the documentation isn't approached from a newbie's perspective, neither are the processes. I can say that it's a relief to see the gui tools in 9; makes it just that much easier to grasp. Other than that it's all greek.

Here's my first question/problem/task.
Configuring network access with existing w2k network.
I've done this with a linux server, ver7.3, that I'm also trying to learn. Is it the same with Solaris? Installing Samba? I'm sure I'll run across it in my readings, just figured I'd ask on it now.

thanks again...

[rustskull]

Recommended install for a typical solaris system is a truly philosophical topic. The best admins I know will divide up the disc in a decent fashion. Do not use the defaults suggested by solaris.

I don't have a solaris box at home, but I manage a ultra-60 at work.

use a gig or so for the root partition, about 500Mb for the swap partition, and then div the rest up according to usage. A lot of temporary items are gonna spool through var (printing, mail, etc) so make it a decent size but don't over do it. make separate partitions for /usr, /opt, and /export. I end up with all partitions used except one. Partition 2 is always going to hold an image of the whole disk, it's solaris legacy, and I think IIRC that it stemmed from BSD somewhere, but that's not important now.

Make your /export or /export/home directory the largest. Don't use /home on a Solaris system unless it's linked to /export/home. This will save you TONS of time later if you decide to move your directories off that machine to a different server. This is how Solaris likes to do it, will want to do it, just do it that way unless you have other reasons to do so. Anyhow, this will be the largest because in a properly setup/maintained system, nearly all data, or a copy of it, created or used by each user will end up in here. Again, this allows hard tweaking of the system without risking data.

Just set it up so you only have to destroy the system partition on upgrade. Nobody I know has enjoyed updating from one rev to the next, they simply overwrite the root partition and install new system/patches. This is also helpful if you f*** up your system so badly you figure it's quicker to just reinstall than try and fix it. You'll learn more if you figure out what you gimped, even if you still melt it down, for cleanliness and expediency's sake.

Sun has a cool compilation of GNU apps/utilities that are proven to run on Solaris, my recommendation would be use those whenever possible, instead of the default ones...the GNU community grows ever larger...

To tell you honestly, it's actually a lot easier and quicker to do most administrative work outside the GUI, but use it until you know where the conf files are at. If you set up your system sensibly (comes with experience)

Get yourself a copy of the FHS for *nix. Solaris will eventually come to understand that this is the right way to do things, create your habits accordingly. Then you will be able to maintain things quickly and easily with a few commands and a tex editor. The immediate effect will be to totally demystify the *nix filesystem arrangement, and why it is the way it is...it puts all the conventions down on paper.

Learn to use vi or emacs, just enough to get around. This is a must, and will save you great amounts of time when something is jacked and you can only pull up a terminal. You would not believe how many problems are instigated by the xwindow system and how crippled you are if you can't at least surf around the system files without it. What if you suddenly cant get to level 5 or 6? That's where most *nix have their GUI firing up. Some sysadmin work CAN'T be done except in single user mode, and then you're f***ed.

Now, to answer your question. Yes, samba is what you want to do. It's up to you whether or not you want to run your print services through it. It works for that as well, and pretty damn good. We run multiple modes throughout our network at work, Linux, Solaris, and Win2k/NT/98, and we manage to get everything done, so there's no reason for you not to be able to do it...there's just easier ways to do things. Most problems I see happening are usuallly due to people not doing their homework and making things more difficult/complex than they have to be.


Heh, if you were using a linux box, though, you could directly mount VFAT/FAT32 partitions (NTFS coming soon, if not already here...still some file corruption issues, but you can READ NTFS no problem with linux). Sun is also releasing linux servers on thier and intel hardware. The new sparc processers are insane, though. They're built on .13 Cu low-k fabrication processes (www.chips.ibm.com), and they SMOKE.

Apparently DHCP has some issues between solaris and M$, but M$ and my linux boxes at home and at work play very nicely. My linux box also plays well with solaris...I think M$ is culprit here...but Solaris and M$ are both intentionally slightly non-standard compliant and less than documented.

At least with linux, you can dig down and find what you want in plain fscking english. You'll find that most configurations in any *nix are just a text file and/or script hack. That's what sells me. I don't have to hunt for that hidden check box or cryptic file setting in M$. Solaris didn't have to make their partition naming conventions so damn cryptic, either.

As usual, more info than was needed ;-)

HTH

-rust

PS I forgot to mention the NVRAM or boot console. One cool thing about Sun hardware is that there are a pile of cool diagnostic and config junk you can do from the boot screens. Find a reference somewhere for the boot console and keep it handy (get a pdf and print up the critical commands on a sheet, and their syntax..often people will put up the most useful things on the web, find one of those pages and just print it...). This too will save you uncountable hours of time. Don't forget to enable filesystem logging of your boot partition in your filesystem table. Your system will dick around every time you boot it and fsck a couple times if you don't. Logging keeps a record of what you're doing with the filesystem so the system isn't faced with a complete mystery everytime you reboot and has to search for everything all over again. Takes negligible space and I haven't seen it detract from performance yet.

[sol-dude]

Samba is already installed in Solaris 9. If you have the entire configuration, it's there. Do a man on smbclient to confirm
or a which smbclient.

Check your lan settings with ifconfig -a and use commands like prtconf, dmesg and /usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag -v