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There are two ways to configure a network in OpenSolaris, one is nwamd and the other is using the graphical network tool once nwamd is killed. To get networking to work with nwamd enabled, you have to modify /etc/resolv.conf so that it has the correct DNS servers listed. In my installation on a Pentium IV rig, the DNS servers were wrong and the /etc/nsswitch.conf file was not modified to use DNS and files. Edit /etc/resolv.conf and add the right DNS servers (if they are wrong) and /etc/nsswitch.conf, make sure the hosts entry reads hosts files dns. Once the is done, you should be able to access the Internet.

Why not just fix it so it works as reasonably expected?

They wanted something in OpenSolaris that works most of the time automagically without user intervention. That's NWAM. The problem is, the UI side's not done yet.

As a long time Linux fan... I understand. They'll get there. Solaris paved the server highway for us. Maybe we can return the favor on the desktop highway.

Actually it does work, but it depends on DHCP which I do not use. So, OpenSolaris tries to come up with a configuration that will work using what it finds in the initial network probe. It found my router just fine and assigned an appropriate IP address for my network, it is just that the DNS servers were for hr.cox.net, not east.cox.net.

My soultion was to modify the resolv.conf and nsswitch.conf so I could get a working configuration, which I know does work with Solaris/Solaris Express and now OpenSolaris.

Not to make fun of anything at all, but I had a similarly peculiar experience with FreeBSD PPC on my Apple Powerbook 12"...

Everything worked but the keyboard and touch pad...
This was due to these parts being connected via an old type of interface, named Apple Desktop Bus, with no drivers available as opposed to USB on all other Powerbooks...

With a USB keyboard and mouse attached, everything worked like a charm ...

Somewhat off topic, but these are the little things that serve to frustrate people, so I hope it'll be fixed in Solaris!

The ZFS ARC is the new Superfetch.

Try to understand this:

If your memory isn't used by applications, ZFS uses it for caching.

Linux has that philosophy, and I think it is a good one. But what I keep hearing about ZFS is: "Don't use ZFS with less than 2GB of memory, or on 32 bit hardware. And if you do try it don't complain".

I find that shocking. I have used OpenSolaris 2008.05 and it performed just fine. But I have 2GB of RAM and 64 bit hardware. I would never have expected to have to worry about filesystem memory requirements, for the gods' sake!

Edited 2008-05-15 18:13 UTC

That's unreasonable, Steve. You're making it seem as if ZFS is some sort of another FAT32 - but that's ridiculous. It offers A LOT of advanced features, and those features come at a price. You are always free to choose another less advanced filesystem.

No. I was reporting my perceptions as to what I hear about ZFS, and also my experience with ZFS, which happens to be at the recommended hardware level.

I've certainly read my share of "Linux is a memory hog posts" from people coming from windows and looking at "top" output for the first time. I'm receptive to explanations of ZFS's memory and processor recommendations, or clarifications as to what the recommendations actually mean.

Linux has that philosophy, and I think it is a good one. But what I keep hearing about ZFS is: "Don't use ZFS with less than 2GB of memory, or on 32 bit hardware. And if you do try it don't complain".

I find that shocking. I have used OpenSolaris 2008.05 and it performed just fine. But I have 2GB of RAM and 64 bit hardware. I would never have expected to have to worry about filesystem memory requirements, for the gods' sake! "

I don't know who said the 32bit thing, because I've got it running on a Dimension 8400 w/ 2.5GB ram very nicely.

Kawai, are you serious about not having heard that? It's all over the place. I, personally, doubt the claim. But whenever I see a complaint about ZFS performance, valid or not, someone, usually advocating ZFS, calls the poster foolish for trying to run it on 32 bit hardware with less than 2GB of RAM. Not the best advocacy strategy. But there it is.

BTW, the link to mplayer, et. al for OpenSolaris from your blog helped make my stroll into OpenSolaris-land a more pleasant experience. Thanks for that.

-Steve

Sun's people themselves have said that ZFS is simply not designed to run on 32-bit systems. You may not experience any problems, yet, but that doesn't mean that you won't.

Also, from the work the FreeBSD guys have done there is ample evidence that ZFS will grow unbounded to any task you throw at it.

When someone says that, it's referring to the recommendations for running traditional Solaris with ZFS, both in their intended scenarios, the enterprise. Since those were the only real available "metrics", they've been parrotted all across the web.

As far as 64bit goes, ZFS is faster in 64bit mode because the various checksum and parity algorithms work faster in that mode. Remember that everything's checksummed left and right.

I don't see any significant memory utilization on my Pentium IV machine, and I created a ZFS mirror of the rpool (root) disk using the two 250 GB drives I have installed in the machine. Something I might have to investigate when I get home.

Well, the whole system was super slow. Starting simple application took ages. I guess if you have less than 1.5 GB of RAM you can forget about doing anything usefull with ZFS.

Unused RAM is wasted money. I prefer my RAM doing something useful, like a good ZFS file cache. That said, ZFS probably isn't very helpful to any system with less than 1Gb RAM, but RAM is cheap, so this isn't a problem on any remotely recent hardware.

My position on this is probably unpopular, but here goes:

I do not care how much memory an OS appears to use, period, as long as it allows me to address what I've got.

I think this because:

* 8 GB of registered ECC server RAM is less than $750 these days and 8 GB of desktop ram is probably $200.

* Actually sorting out the difference is pretty tough; RAM usage numbers for the OS are not directly comparable in Solaris or 2003 or Vista or RHEL3 or RHEL4--they report different metrics. Figuring it out is possible if you are very careful, but most of us looking at TEH FREE RAM!! don't actually know what it means in a given instance, or how that would translate to another OS.

So I look it this way: If you are not swapping, you are OK. If you are, and you can fit more ram, get it. If you can't fit more, well, that's why they pay us the medium bucks--you need to change some element of the solution.

What does upset me is the Microsoft solution, artificially capping ram addressing on 32 bit platforms. Asking people to pay an extra $3k for Enterprise, just to turn on PAE and address the RAM they already own, is asking too much for my taste.

OK RAM misers, I've vacated the soapbox, now flame away like it's 1995!

It depends a lot upon how hard money is to come by.

But:

What color is the sky on your planet? This is not an "unpopular position". It is an "unrealistic assertion".

What color is the sky on your planet? This is not an "unpopular position". It is an "unrealistic assertion". "

Still blue, last I checked.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134632

But you are correct, $200 is unrealistic. NewEgg wants $37 each for those 2 GB sticks...

Just how are you measuring how much memory is being used? Try this (as root) to see your actual utilization:

mdb -k

At the :: prompt type memstat and you should see a display like this:

robert@apophis:~# mdb -k
Loading modules: [ unix genunix specfs dtrace cpu.generic cpu_ms.AuthenticAMD.15 uppc pcplusmp scsi_vhci zfs random ip hook neti sctp arp usba uhci s1394 lofs audiosup sppp ptm ipc ]
> ::memstat
Page Summary Pages MB %Tot
------------ ---------------- ---------------- ----
Kernel 96724 377 30%
Anon 38710 151 12%
Exec and libs 11827 46 4%
Page cache 1229 4 0%
Free (cachelist) 5139 20 2%
Free (freelist) 171633 670 53%

Total 325262 1270
Physical 325261 1270
>

To exit mdb, use Ctrl-D. The results I just posted is the current state of my Gateway laptop with an Athlon 64 CPU and 1.25 GB of memory.

What do you want this server to run?

Web servers for example... what about scalability and threads concurrency's performances? Is this better than recents 2.6 Linux kernels?

That would depend on several factors including how apache was compiled, quality of the network and the speed of the storage the content is on (I am assuming a web farm as opposed to individual web servers). Are these servers going to be sending data to a backend database?

Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to your question without asking more questions to narrow down what you are specifically looking for.