Now available for download, Solaris 9-4/04 has left the nest, SunHelp.org reports.Some of the new features include the addition of “metassist” in SVN for top-down volume creation (this has been in Solaris-10 for a while), Internationalized Domain Name support API additions, the Standard Type Services Framework, and Sun Remote Services (SRS) Net Connect 3.1 has been added to the Solaris bundle. Also, on the JumpStart front the add_install_client is now avalible for x86 PXE boots, and an exciting update, already found in Solaris10, is 2 new JumpStart keywords “filesys” and “metadb” which allow for boot disk mirroring during a JumpStart without using post-install scripts.
Solaris 9-4/04 Released as a Free Download for SPARC and x86
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I was wondering if this is truely free or limited?
Well it depends if you accept free as in free of cost along with 99% of the world, or free as in GPL(TM).
Power to the servers =)
The link to the download page has an extra “S” in it that make the link not work. Just remove it…
Thanks Sun!
Downloading it now, finaly, gonna see `The` Solaris
Finally a Unix, As Unix is Unix, Solaris is Unix, FreeBSD is NOT Unix and Linux is Not Unix =]
I’ll compare them… Now deleting some unnesecery soft…
BSD was forked from the Unix tree before Solaris/SunOS was. Maybe you weren’t aware, but one of the founders of Sun was one of the original developers of BSD. FreeBSD == BSD and BSD == Unix.
ok. ok. Don’t start that FreeBSD is Unix, but Not UNIX(R)
but Solaris is UNIX(R) and Unix, In Fact SunOS[aka Solaris] was Suns implementation of BSD
What I meant to say is: BSD was UNIX® and Unix before BSD/Lite [Which is Unix, but not UNIX®]
It’s really a shame AT&T couldn’t have open sourced it since, on one hand the Berkeley version of it is alive and well and open sourced, and the System V is left to the mercy of the courts.
Can we atop talking about bsd, the article is about Solaris after all, alright there is some truth that SunOs was a BSD Unix and that Solaris is a marriage of BSD (sunos) and SysVR4 but it’s beside the point.
What’s the current hardware support for Solaris x86 like?
i just downloaded Solaris 9 12/03 two days ago!!!! arrghh… does anyone know how to get the updates? are they available as patches to previous release of Solaris 9? or would i have to download the full ISOs?
04/04 is a release. To get patches you can either download them from sunsolve.sun.com as a big patch or install patchpro, start init.wbem and use smpatch update -u root to install patches.
Here we have a chance to download a real System V UNIX, one that lets us see why Sun paid all that money to SCO.
Of course it could be that Sun are clueless but lets not go there now…
Holy crap!
Any one set up a Torrent???
Is there like a Solaris for Dummies book or something. Perferably a site somewhere on the Internet? Because I’m lame and can’t figure out how to set the damn hostname. Yeah, I’m a Solaris newb.
I can set a hostname on OpenBSD and FreeBSD no problem. But Solaris is just plain foreign to me. Any help locating some “new” user friendly documentation would be much appreciated. Oh, I’m running Solais on Intel by the way.
Thanks!
How are the fonts looking with the new STSF support? how does GNOME and other packages look? screenies please
Yes, because the downloads off one of the largest server companies in the world will be frightfully slow.
can i install it using floppy bootdisk ? because my pc cannot boot from cdrom. Can it be installed in one disk with Linux or Windows, because i have read somewhere ( i forgot the link) that it will refuse to install in the same disk with linux.
Btw i have the 12/03 version for intel
I’m actually new to Solaris also, just installed it on my E250. I’ve been playing around with it, found a site with study guides for a Solaris admin test. These are your best bet, they walk you through simple tasks. Of course I’ve also found some PDFs of things I couldn’t even dream of ever using (i.e 800 pages on solaris and tcp multicasting).
Just google for a bit and eventually you’ll find something. There isn’t much of a support community like OSS software because you’re supposed to buy it, and have someone on-board who knows what they’re doing. It’s rough getting up the first steep slope, but after that it levels out some. You’ll find your OBSD knowledge will serve you well.
nt
sys-unconfig will allow you to redo some of the setup, including entering the hostname. You will also need default route, ip address, subnet mask, dns servers, etc.
Yup, there’s a floppy image on the 2nd sfw cd, /Solaris_9/Tools/d1_image; see http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/drivers/dca_diskettes/ for older releases.
The newish to solaris pxe boot stuff could also get around needing a boot floppy. (in exchange for needing a boot server)
fdisk type 82 is used by solaris as its partition (you slice within that like the bsds) and is used by linux as swap. This grumps the solaris install routines if there’s a preexisting linux swap on the disk you’re trying to install to. http://multiboot.solaris-x86.org/ describes lots of ways around this.
Just guessing you’ve run up against the oddball dhcp client implementation.
http://www.rite-group.com/consulting/solaris_dhcp.html
Otherwise, the hostname’s held in /etc/nodename.
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/
http://solaris-x86.org/documents/
http://www.sunhelp.org/
Might not be explicitly for newbies but have a bunch of links faqs and tidbits.
http://docs.sun.com & http://www.sun.com/blueprints have more in depth stuff.
I’m a real noob with solaris so i have one or two questions…
Does applying all the patches on 12/03 give you the same result that installing 04/04 ?
If not, is there a way to upgrade from 12/03 to 04/04 or do u have to install the full release again ?
thx for the help.
Well I have been running an older version of Solaris 9 on a dual 400Mhz Ultra 2, aside from a older version of Netscape it runs pretty damn good. Once the big rush has subsided I’ll download the latest version.
Mere mortals, I laugh at your 32 bit clunkers….
Craig
The patch cluster should pretty much bring you up to date. Sometimes when Sun releases a new machine it will not boot older vesions of the software.
It’s kind of like buying a cd from Microsoft with WinXP sp1a applied already, or sp2 when it comes out.
legume, thanks for the links. I’ll take a look at those.
Also, thanks to the guys that helped me look in the right direction.
A couple of the sites I have checked out was http://www.bolthole.com and sunfreeware.com just as an FYI. I really didn’t find what I was looking for though.
Anyways, I’ll keep lookin.
Hi,
I’m trying to figure out how to update from “Solaris 9 12/03” to “04/04” myself but have not found any answer yet. 8-(
I don`t think applying a Patch Cluster provides new features that are included in Solaris 9 04/04.
As far as I have understood the different documents a Patch Cluster simply updates *installed* packages.
http://www.sun.com/service/support/sw_only/pmstrategies10.02.pdf
As the above document (written in 2002!) points out there used to be “Updates” and “Maintenance Updates” only available to customers with a support contract, but I haven’t found further information about that.
Are there any suggestions, besides purchasing such a contract?
I didn’t see anything new on Sun’s site that did not revolve around installation or features that wouldn’t be installed already (USB2). Except for maybe the Standard Type Services Framework.
I’m guessing that can be installed from a package on the cd.
Information on what’s new:
http://docs.sun.com/db/doc/817-3801/6mjcck32a?a=view#whatsnew-updat…
You should be able to boot from the cd and try an upgrade, but I’ve never gone through that on Solaris.
I doubt that would be legal, Sun usually have quite restrictive licenses.
Is it worth the time and effort to try it out on x86 or will I just regret the whole thing and should keep FreeBSD from the begining?
(btw, my ports are fucked up, anyone else had problems lately? Seems like ruby 1.8 core dumps..)
I’ve only tried solaris 8 on my old ultra 30s and didn’t liked it there, hard to get all the programs i wanted installed and so on.. More precompiled packages nowadays? More stuff which actually compiles? Does kde, mplayer, firefox and others runs? After how much tweaking? ;D. How’s the performance? Humm, better stay with the BSDs…
Btw, do I really want an os from some company which fix it’s disputes with Microsoft and pays SCO?!
Concerning the Slowlaris bit, I don’t think its all that slow. I instead and played with Solaris 9 12/03 on a Sparcstation 10 (32-bit Sparc, only 64 megs of RAM, quite old) and found it reasonably responsive for my purposes. I didn’t run any benchmarks or any server apps (want more RAM first) but I was pleasantly suprised. Naturally it swapped alot with that little of RAM, but even when it was loading a big freaking app (like SMC) I could click on something and, after a pause, get feedback. Yes, theres a pause – but it felt far better then I would have assumed.
Sun’s had twenty plus years experience, their VM and schedulers must be very polished by this point. Very old hardware, slow HD, limited RAM and despite struggling to load SMC (my god that took forever to load!) I could still use the thing, if you don’t mind pauses. Windows XP under simular hardware and conditions would not be as nice I suspect. Hell, my work machine is a PIII 1 ghz with 256 megs of RAM (running XP) and it can be very unresponsive at times.
How does it compare to Linux or *BSD on the same hardware? Dunno yet, Aurora crashed on install but NetBSD installed quickly and without complaint. GUI felt simular, if not faster in many ways (Blackbox no doubt, being ultra light tho CDE is very resource friendly too compared to GNOME). *shrugs* Solaris powers some very impressive machines, if it was truely all that slow no one would use it. Is Linux or *BSD faster in some areas? Probably, and Solaris is likely faster in others. Oh, and NetBSD’s ports-like package collection is availible for Solaris –
http://netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packages.html#platforms
Use it and be happy. 😀
I must be exhausted, despite previewing before I posted I put “I instead and played with” instead of “I installed and played with” – my bad. Oh, and btw Aurora is a Sparc Linus distro, based off of Red Hat 7.3.