Solaris, Sun Stuff

Backups Under Solaris

2005-11-18T16:11:00.000-05:00

Backups Under Solaris
Other Backup Utilities

In addition the basic Unix backup utilities, Solaris offers ufsdump
and ufsrestore. These two commands function as a pair. ufsrestore can
only restore from tapes created by ufsdump. Both are called from the
command line and follow the syntax:

ufsdump options arguments filenames

ufsrestore options argument filenames

ufsdump only copies data from a raw disk slice. It does not copy free
blocks. If a directory contains a symbolic link that points to a file
on another disk slice, the link itself is copied. When ufsdump is used
with the u option, the /etc/dumpdates file is updated. This file keeps
a record of when filesystems were last backed up, including the level
of the last backup, day, date and time. ufsdump can be used to back up
individual files and directories as well as entire filesystems.

If ufsdump is run without options or arguments the following defaults
are assumed:

ufsdump 9uf /dev/rmt/0 filenames

This means that ufsdump will create a level 9 incremental of the
specified file, update /etc/dumpdates, and dump the files to
/dev/rmt/0.

ufsdump also supports an S option to estimate the amount of space, in
bytes, that the backup will require before actually creating it. This
number can then be divided by the capacity of the tape to determine
how many tapes the backup will need.

A series of tape characteristics and options can also be specified.

* c=cartridge
* d=density
* s=size
* t=number of tracks

These options can be given in any order as long as the arguments that
follow are in the same order, i.e.

ufsdump cdst 1000 425 9

This specifies a cartridge tape with a density of 1000, 425MB, and
nine tracks. In terms of tape options the syntax is as follows:

ufsdump 9uf /dev/rmtXAbn filenames

Where

* X=the number of the drive beginning with 0.
* A=optional density.
o l=low
o m=medium
o h=high
o u=ultra
o c=compressed
* b=specifies Berkeley SunOS 4.X compatibility.
* n=no rewind option, which allows other files to be appended to the tape.

ufsrestore has an interactive mode which can be used to select
individual files and directories for restoration. It also supports an
option to read the table of contents from the archive file instead of
the backup media.

Limits of ufsdump:

* It does not automatically calculate the number of tapes needed
to backup a filesystem.
* It does not have a built in error checking mechanism.
* It does not enable the backing up of files that are remotely
mounted from a server.

Solaris also supplies volcopy, a utility to make an image or literal
copy of a file system.
Tips and Quirks

The Solaris version of tar includes extra options. The -I option
allows a list of files and directories that are backed up to be put
into a text file. The -X option allows an exclusion file to be
specified that lists the names of files and directories that should be
skipped.

The Solaris version of mt supports an asf subcommand which moves the
tape to the nth file. n being the number of the file.

QLC + QLA

2005-11-04T16:58:00.000-05:00

QLC + QLA

Hi all.
Sorry for my english.
I have E4800 server, T3 array and SAN. My server have 2 FC adapters.
One for T3, other for SAN (HP EVA5000, QLA2300). After reboot I see:
qlc driver trying attach to both FC adapters, but cannot attach to
QLA2300. I installed driver qla2300 from HP.com, but not initialized.
Always qlc driver trying to attach to FCA 2300. What do I need to do ?

Re: QLC + QLA

Maybe you must look and configure the qla.conf.
The best is, you look here for answers:

http://www.qlogic.com/knowledgecenter/

Re: QLC + QLA

The qlc driver can not attach to the QLA2300 card because the QLA2300
card does not with with the QLC driver. This is normal.

However, you should be able to install the qla driver and run both
drivers at the same time.

Re: QLC + QLA

The first thing to check is who's HBA each is by looking at the PCI identifiers.

Look at the output of the "prtconf -vpD" command.

Each HBA will have two lines that are important. The first to appear
is "compatible:" and the second is "name:"
compatible: 'pci1077,2.1077.2.5' + 'pci1077,2.1077.2' + 'pci1077
,2' + 'pci1077,2200.5' + 'pci1077,2200' + 'pciclass,10000' + 'pciclass,0000'
###SNIP###
name: 'QLGC,qla'

Now the OS will then look for a "name" listed in the
/etc/driver_aliases to match a driver to the HBA. If a "name" is not
found the OS starts using each of the compatible entries and will
match drivers to those entries.

What you could do is run the following commands and post their output
here and I'll tell you what's wrong:

prtconf -vpD | grep 1077
grep ql /etc/driver_aliases

Chesapeake

Re: QLC + QLA

Did you ever get a resolution for this? I have almost the exact same
situation and have been unable to get the QLA driver to attach to the
2300.

Re: QLC + QLA

402) root@cohuxfs27:/etc/cfg/fp> prtconf -vpD | grep 1077
compatible: 'pci1077,2300.1077.106.1' + 'pci1077,2300.1077.106' +
'pci1077,106' + 'pci1077,2300.1' + 'pci1077,2300' + 'pciclass,0c0400'
+ 'pciclass,0c04'
subsystem-vendor-id: 00001077
vendor-id: 00001077
compatible: 'pci1077,2200.1077.4082.5' + 'pci1077,2200.1077.4082' +
'pci1077,4082' + 'pci1077,2200.5' + 'pci1077,2200' + 'pciclass,010000'
+ 'pciclass,0100'
subsystem-vendor-id: 00001077
vendor-id: 00001077
compatible: 'pci1077,2200.1077.4082.5' + 'pci1077,2200.1077.4082' +
'pci1077,4082' + 'pci1077,2200.5' + 'pci1077,2200' + 'pciclass,010000'
+ 'pciclass,0100'
subsystem-vendor-id: 00001077
vendor-id: 00001077
compatible: 'pci1077,2200.5' + 'pci1077,2200' + 'pciclass,010000' +
'pciclass,0100'
vendor-id: 00001077
(403) root@cohuxfs27:/etc/cfg/fp> grep ql /etc/driver_aliases
qlc "pci1077,2200"
qlc "pci1077,2300"
qlc "pci1077,2312"
qla2300 "pci1077,9"
qla2300 "pci1077,100"
qla2300 "pci1077,101"
qla2300 "pci1077,102"
qla2300 "pci1077,103"
qla2300 "pci1077,104"
qla2300 "pci1077,105"
qla2300 "pci1077,109"
qla2300 "pci1077,116"
qla2300 "pci1077,115"

Re: QLC + QLA

I extracted the file adapter.properties from the QLogic SCLI utility.
It has an index of the identities of the QLogic cards. That first one
of 1077,106 is a Sun Amber-2 X6767, not an HP card as you thought.

The two 1077,4082 cards are Sun Amber HBA ports.

Lastly the 1077,2200,5 is probably either a generic qlogic card or a
fibre down if this is a SB100/280R...

how many file descriptors does the Xnewt process have open?

2005-11-04T16:56:00.000-05:00

> When this happens, how many file descriptors does the Xnewt
> process have open? ('ls -l /proc/<pid>/fd' or something
> similar.)
>

With ls -l /proc/<pid>/fd | wc -l

227 for a fresh GNOME session and one gnome-terminal window open
222 for a fresh XFCE4 session and one xterminal window open

(different PIDs for each of these checks)

A given process is:

root 10091 9074 2 12:09 ? 00:00:00 /usr/X11R6/bin/Xnewt :26
-auth /var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:26-AY24Hr -dpms

This is interesting, because here is some of the 'ls -l /proc/10091/fd'
output.

lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 10 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:12-d8mxzX (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 100 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:11-QHkbcU (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 101 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:11-bbVcHq (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 102 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:27-FVil3v (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 103 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:9-1iqtPQ (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 104 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:28-ZcO3OP (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 105 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:11-65HZQD (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 106 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:16-J7pYyu (deleted)
lrwx------ 1 root root 64 Mar 16 12:11 107 ->
/var/lib/wdm/authdir/authfiles/A:11-RYJlqJ (deleted)

httpd processes each with a size of 148M... is the top "size" display directly related to memory

2005-10-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

> When I run top on this box, I can see 6 httpd processes each with a
> size of 148M... is the top "size" display directly related to memory?

Yes, it's the amount of virtual memory used by this process. You should
see a similar number (with much greater detail) by doing pmap -x on the
process.

> If it is, how can I possibly be running 6x148M processes just on apache
> alone?

Every page used by the process is not necessarily private to that
process. Read-only portions of the Apache binary may be shared among
all 6, and system libraries (like libC) may be shared by many programs.

The 'pmap -x <pid>' output shows that more explicitly.

Then you might also want to know that there are even a lot more
that offer detailed information regarding system state and performance:
e.g.
sar, vmstat, iostat, trapstat, cpustat, mpstat, cputrack, busstat, kstat

Darren already gave a good answer, but I wanted to elaborate a little.
(Or, after looking back on this after I've written the whole post,
apparently more than a little...)

On a simple computer, there is just a certain amount of RAM available
and every address that a program uses (in a pointer, in an address
register, or whatever) simply corresponds to part of that RAM. And
every program executes in the same address space, which means a given
address refers to the same thing whether it's in the context of one
process or another.

But on Solaris, there is virtual memory, and every process has its
own address space. Using the MMU hardware, the system maps several
different ranges of the process's address space to different things.
Some of the address ranges are private areas that only the process
itself has access to. Any memory you allocate with malloc() will be
in a private address range. Some address ranges correspond to regions
of files on disk. (In Solaris, executables are loaded by setting up
address ranges in the process's address space that correspond to
parts of the executable file. And the same thing is done when an
executable runs against a shared library.) Some address ranges
correspond to other things (sometimes even things like address ranges
that are used to communicate with hardware other than RAM).

Now to make things even a bit more complicated, just the existence
of an address range within a process's address space does not imply
that any RAM is used for that range. For example, if an address
range corresponds to a region of a file and if you've never either
read from or written to any addresses in that range, Solaris doesn't
need to waste time or memory putting that data into RAM. And to
make things yet more complicated, even if Solaris does need to use
RAM for (part of) an address range, if two processes are using the
same region of the same file, Solaris can use the same RAM for
both processes, even if the addresses that would be used within
the processes to access that data aren't the same addresses. And
to make things even yet more complicated, if a process has an
address range that contains private data and that process does a
fork(), then the twin processes that result can both use the same
RAM (or swap space) for that data until the time when one of them
tries to change the data (at which point a copy must be made so
they have their own separate copies).

So, when you run top, and you see the "SIZE" of the process, what
you're seeing is the size of all the address ranges that have been
created for that process. Most (but not all) of these address
ranges could correspond to data in RAM, but even if they do, it
might be data that is shared with another process. So when you
see 148M for an Apache process, that just means that there are 148M
worth of addresses that the Apache process could theoretically
access if it wanted to.

The "RES" column of top's output is a lot closer to the RAM usage
of a process, but it's still not exactly the same thing. The "RES"
column just tells you, of all the addresses that a process could
potentially access, how many of them are currently connected to a
particular spot in physical RAM. That is, how many of those pages
are resident in physical memory. It doesn't say how many of those
are shared with other processes. It's tempting to say that the
"RES" column tells you how much memory the process is using, but
that's not entirely accurate. It's totally possible for a process
to be totally dormant and not running have its resident size increase.
This could happen if the dormant process's address space refers to
some region of a file that some *other* process just accessed and
thus forced into memory.

And in fact, this type of thing partly accounts for why you see such
high numbers, even in the "RES" column. You could have a process
which only accesses a tiny portion of some file that's mapped into
its address space, but if a bunch of other processes also access
tiny portions of the same file, that will make increase the resident
size of all the processes that map the (whole) file bigger. That
may seem a little unlikely, but actually it is quite common because
things like libc.so (the C shared library) are used by a bunch of
processes, and even though each process might only use a few functions,
still when you count the total number of functions that are actively
used from that library, a significant portion of the library ends up
being resident, and that means that it inflates the resident size
numbers of all processes that use it.

> So I learned yesterday that the native stat tool for Solaris is
> prstat.. So I'm guessing from your posting Logan that in prstat, the
> SIZE column is the total amount of memory that each process can use and
> the RSS is the actual amout thats used..

"can use" and "that's used" as a description of memory seem incorrect to
me.

The difference is between Virtual Memory Pages that are actually
resident in RAM (RSS) and those that are allocated (whether currently in
RAM or not (SIZE). I don't think that "in use" and "in RAM" are quite
the same thing...

> "In a virtual memory(1) system, a process' resident set is that part of
> a process' address space which is currently in main memory. If this
> does not include all of the process' working set, the system may
> thrash."
> That makes sense to me except for one thing... If the SIZE is the total
> amount, how come it fluctuates?

Processes allocate memory while they run. Most programs will grow, but
not shrink, but both are possible.

> Whoah.. I just looked at pmap.... thats insane.

Don't try to interpret everything. Most bits are just mappings from
other shared objects. In an average program, the most common place for
it to consume memory directly is in the [heap].

However the breakdown of shared/private/RAM/total can be useful.

If I can't map SIZE and RSS to whats available and whats in use, how
> can I tell when the memory needs to be upgraded?

I was making the distinction between "in use" (which is a little fuzzy
for me when talking about pages) and "in RAM" (which is well-defined).

You can map SIZE and RSS to what pages are in RAM at any one time, which
will probably be all you need.

What "in use" means, and whether or not that has anything to do with RAM
residency is a different question.

The top part of the display of top shows memory usage. The 'swap -s' command
shows how much swap is in use. I think both of these include swap as
backed up by the executables and shared images on disk as well as the
swap backed up by the swap file. The 'swap -l' command will show how much
of the actual swap space is in use. A rule of thumb is that when the amount
of swap in use starts to be as big as your memory, you need to add memory.
If you have a lot of mostly inactive programs in use, you can allow more
swap to be used without hurting performance.

One way is to look at the pi and po (page in and page out) columns
in the vmstat output. Assuming you're not starting lts of new programs,
high values here could indicate low memory. You should check out
Adrian Cockcroft's book, Solaris Performance Tuning (aka the Porche
book).

Frequent complaints form users about poor performance can also be an
idicator of too much paging. :-)

Subject: V210 BGE0@1000FDX

2005-10-28T14:12:00.000-05:00

Hi,

When connecting a server to a Gig interface you need to enable autoneg
on the server. It will pick up the correct speed automatically. It
becomes a problem when trying to force it especially if using Cisco
switches.

Normally I run the following script

ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_autoneg_cap 1
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_1000fdx_cap 1
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_1000hdx_cap 0
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_100fdx_cap 0
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_100hdx_cap 0
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_10fdx_cap 0
ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_10hdx_cap 0

Hope that it resolves your problem.

Regards
Musa

SUMMARY: Tracking down system calls on Solaris 9

2005-10-21T14:21:00.000-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY: Tracking down system calls on Solaris 9

Hi all,

Many thanks to everyone who responded - Aleksander Pavic, francisco, and
Darren Dunham. My original email is attached below, along with the
replies I got - but to summarise : I was seeing a very high sysload on a
Solaris 9 web server, and vmstat confirmed that a large number of system
calls were being generated. I wanted to track these down and find out
what was being called, but couldn't use Dtrace. Yet another argument for
moving to Solaris 10 :)

As Darren said in his response: "The limitations on existing tools like
'truss' are part of what drove
dtrace, so I don't know that there's any magic out there."

He then went on to suggest I analyse all the Apache processes with
truss, send the output to a file and then analyse that. This was also
the path suggested by Aleksander, who quite correctly pointed out that
truss can be made to follow any child processes generated via forking,
so I could therefore truss the main Apache process and follow all it's
children. He also suggested I send the output to a file, and
post-process it with awk or perl. Francisco also suggested the useful
lsof tool to see what files are open, as my original hypothesis was that
there were a large number of file handles being opened and closed.

In the end, I trussed every "httpd" process, and generated a summary
using "truss -c". I let this run for 20 seconds, and saw that there were
a very large number of resolvepath() and open() calls being generated,
roughly half of these calls returned with an error.

I then narrowed my search down, and examined what was actually being
passed as arguments to these calls. This is easily done with "truss -t
open,resolvepath". It turns out that a huge number of the
resolvepath()'s and open()'s were being generated by PHP scripts running
under Apache. They were using an inefficient include_path, and so when
most files were being included, PHP generated many resolvepath() and
open() calls which returned in error before finally finding the correct
location of the file.

We fixed the PHP include_path and also modified some of the scripts to
use an absolute path in include() or require() functions, and as
expected, the number of syscalls being generated halved itself.

There were a number of other code-related problems on that server as
well, but these were unrelated to my original request for help.

Once again, many thanks to those that responded. Problem resolved !

-Mark

Configuring Qlogic HBA card

2005-10-21T14:20:00.000-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY Configuring Qlogic HBA card

I found the solution. Thanks to those who replied!

At OBP:

ok> show-devs
...
<QLGC entry>
...
ok> select <QLGC entry>
ok> show-children
<Lists info about card such as WWN, LoopId Lun>
ok> show-connection-mode
Current HBA connection mode: 2 - Loop preferred,
otherwise point-to-point

(Possible connection mode choices:
0 - Loop Only
1 - Point-to-point only
2 - Loop preferred, otherwise point-to-point)

ok> set-connection-mode (0, 1, or 2)
ok> show-data-rate
Current HBA data rate: One Gigabit rate

Possible data rate choices:
0 - One Gigabit rate
1 - Two Gigabit rate
2 - Auto-negotiated rate

ok> set-date-rate (0, 1, or 2)
To set the data rate.

More info can be found at
http://download.qlogic.com/boot_code/23020/Readme.txt

John

Original Question:

I have a QLogic 2300 card in a SF V440. I am trying to
install SecurePath but the card is not seen by Solaris
8. (It is seen at OBP level)
At my last job I had a similar problem which I fixed
by setting the speed at the OBP level. *The card is
set to autoneg but I need to force it to 1 gig)
Unfortunately I could not keep my notes from that job
and cannot for
the life of me remember how to set the speed.
Has anyone got notes on how to do it. I have spent 2
hours scouring google with no luck.
Thanks,
John

How do I install Sun Explorer

2005-10-21T14:19:00.001-05:00

4. How do I install Sun Explorer?

After downloading the SunExplorer.tar.Z file from sunsolve.sun.com:

cp SunExplorer.tar.Z /var/tmp

cd to /var/tmp

uncompress SunExplorer.tar.Z

tar xvf SunExplorer.tar

or, if you have gzip installed,

zcat SunExplorer.tar.Z | tar xvf -

This will extract the contents of the archive into two directories,
SUNWexplo and SUNWexplu, located in the current directory.

As superuser, type the following command:

# pkgadd -d . SUNWexplo SUNWexplu

Ethernet card woes

2005-10-21T14:19:00.000-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY: Ethernet card woes

Thanks to everyone to replied!
It turns out that /etc/inet/ipnodes had the old IP address
set - thanks to Dale Hirchert for pointing that out.
Also if I ran sys-unconfig it would have caught it aswell -
thanks Dominic Clark

So for future reference either change the following files :
/etc/inet/hosts
/etc/inet/netmask
/etc/inet/ipnodes

or run sys-unconfig.

Thanks again!

Will

read/ write performance on the volumes.

2005-10-21T14:17:00.000-05:00

Hi Greg,

I can't offer any suggestions , but I am interested in knowing how you
are measuring the read/ write performance on the volumes. HDS tool? or
something more common.

Thanks, V

> Hello,

> Just a quick info gathering. I am at a customer site installing a new
> HDS 9990. The high level config overview:

> HDS 9990 (Open V 40GB LUNS)
> HDS 9200 (Legacy Array)
> Sun Fire v880
> Brocade 4100's (2 Fabrics)
> QLogic 2GB Cards (375-3102) to new SAN
> JNI FCE2-6412 cards to old HDS 9200 Array
> MPXIO enabled and configured for Round Robin
> VxVM 4.1
> Oracle 9i

> During this phased implementation, we are in the date migration stage.
> We are mirroring the old storage, which is from a HDS 9200 to the new
> LUNS on the TS (9990).
> Once the mirroring is complete, we will break of the plexes from the
> old array and be fully migrated to the new Hitachi.

> The customer decided not to break the mirrors yet. We have noticed a
> decrease in write and read performance on all the volumes on the host.
> I would expect a slight decrease in write performance, however, we are
> seeing upto a 1/5 milli-second increase in read time as well on each of
> the volumes. My assumption is that because of the double writes to two
> different (types) of LUNS, that is impacting our reads.

> Suggestions?

I am using vxstat -g 'diskgroup' -i 1 (the -i is the interval I am
polling, in this case every one second). This output is giving me a
format like this:

OPERATIONS BLOCKS AVG TIME(ms)
TYP NAME READ WRITE READ WRITE READ WRITE

vol ora00 39364 388 4931856 6208 1.8 0.1
vol ora00 39585 389 4950704 6224 1.9 0.0
vol ora00 39571 391 4954960 6256 1.8 0.1

As for Solaris LUN metrics, I generally use iostat -xnpz 1, which is
giving me the disk & tape I/O data and excluding any zero's. It's a
lot of information, so what I do is grep out what I am looking for, for
example, iostat -xnpz 1 | grep c5t0d0.

Thanks,

Greg

cannot create /etc/foo: Operation not applicable

2005-10-21T14:14:00.001-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY: cannot create /etc/foo: Operation not applicable

Original question:

> On a Solaris 8 system running fine for two months, I suddenly get this:
>
> # touch /etc/foo
> touch: cannot create /etc/foo: Operation not applicable
>
> Truss says:
> creat("/etc/foo", 0666) Err#89 ENOSYS
>
> I also noted truncated files in /etc.
>
> There is nothing interesting in the system log. System is a V210 running
> Solaris 8 with recommended patches from feb. 28 2005. Root filesystem is
> mirrored using SVM.

The responses I received include:

- Are you out of disk space
- Are you out of inodes
- Do you have the same problem on other partitions like /var or /opt
- Are you running the automounter
- Are the permissions wrong on /etc
- Is the "touch" command malfunctioning
- Is the root filesystem mounted read-only
- Are you also unable to modify files in /etc
- Does your metastat output show weird things
- Do you already have a file name "foo" in /etc

The answer is "no" to all these points. So I requested downtime with the
customer to bring the system into single-user mode to do a filesystem check.
As expected, many errors showed up, but it was able to repair the root
filesystem and the system is running fine now.

I also logged a case with Sun Support about this issue. They sent me two
documents from SunSolve that describe common reasons for filesystem
corruption. Since the call is closed now I cannot retrieve the document
ID's, sorry for that. The only two reasons that remain after reading these
documents are:

- Applications use the unlink(2) system call without checking if the
directory is empty. This is a classical UNIX problem.
- Bugs in the O.S.

I have no idea how to check if some of the running processes are misusing
unlink(2). Maybe dtrace can do this, but this is a Solaris 8 system. As for
bugs in the OS, I haven't found applicable ones on SunSolve.

Thanks to all who replied.

--
Koef.

Question about Sun patch: How to find out what patches I've just installed

2005-10-21T14:14:00.000-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY: Question about Sun patch: How to find out what
patches I've just installed

Many thanks to everybody who replied. You know who
you are :-)

Original quesiton:
I need to install a bunch of Sun patches into a
Solaris 8 system. How do I find out the list of Sun
patches I just installed (using patchadd patch#)

Answers:
1. #ls -ltr /var/sadm/patch|tail -xx
where xx is the # of patches I've just installed
(ie if I installed 20 patches, then the xx number
will be 20; for example)

2. #showrev -p|egrep 'patch #1|patch #2|patch #3'
etc..
where patch #1,2,3 are the 3 patches I've just
installed

"showrev -p" alone won't cut it (but otherwise is
technically correct) because the output
includes too many previous patches. It will be kind
of hard to verify which one.

logical volume problem

2005-10-21T14:13:00.000-05:00

logical volume problem

Hi all,
I am using veritas VM 3.5. When I want to create a raid 5 volume by the
following command,

bash-2.05# vxassist -g diskgroup make vol-1 10m layout=raid5
vxvm:vxassist: ERROR: Too few disks for striping; at least 4 disks are
needed
bash-2.05# vxdisk -g diskgroup list
DEVICE TYPE DISK GROUP STATUS
c2t1d0s2 sliced diskgro02 diskgroup online
c2t2d0s2 sliced diskgro03 diskgroup online
c2t3d0s2 sliced diskgro01 diskgroup online

I get the error "ERROR: Too few disks for striping; at least 4 disks".
Raid 5 only need 3 disk. Why?

Because there are some interesting failure modes where a crash can occur
in the middle of a write, leaving you not knowing if parity is right or
wrong. Combined with a disk error, you can have problems.

To get around that failure mode, the default for a raid5 construction
with vxassist is to create an additional log device which is not on any
disk shared with the raid5 data. It's small, but must be on a separate
disk. There might be a way of using the same disk but replicating it.

If you don't want the log disk, you can specify 'nolog' or 'noraid5log',
then it will only need 3 columns.

vxassist -g diskgroup make vol-1 10m layout=raid5,nolog

log, nolog
Creates (or does not create) dirty region logs
(for mirrored volumes) or log plexes (for RAID-5
volumes) when creating a new volume. This attri-
bute can be specified independently for mirrored
and RAID-5 volumes with the raid5log and regionlog
layout specifications. The current implementation
does not support the creation of DCM logs in the
layout specification.

raid5log, noraid5log
Creates (default) or does not create log plexes
for RAID-5 volumes.

restored filesystem - comparison to original

2005-10-21T14:12:00.000-05:00

restored filesystem - comparison to original

Having devised and operated a backup scheme and schedule since the start of the
month, I'd quite like to perform a restoration in order to test it.

I will restore the file system to a separate disk than the original,

But what's the "best" way to compare the two so I can be sure the scheme I have
devised is capable of backing up properly, but also my proposed restore
mechanism, restores properly.

The fs in question is only 1GB at present. So any suggested comparison can be
time consuming in nature.....

I'd obviously like to check for missing files/directories and errors with
ownerships, permissions, ACLs, and timestamps...

How do I go about this?

Cheers

> Rob

running tripwire on the orignal and the copy comes to mind.
then compare the output tripwire databases.

> with ownerships, permissions, ACLs, and timestamps...

You could try the filesync tool with the "-n" option, which will make
it just find the differences and not attempt to make changes. If you
back up /foo and restore it into /restore/foo, then the filesync command
would be something like this:

filesync -n -ame -fsrc -s / -d /restore foo

The "-n" means not to make any changes, the "-aem" means to check
ACLs and modification times and flag everything found (even if it
can't be changed, the "-fsrc" means to consider the source directory
to be the authoritative one, "-s" specifies the directory that
CONTAINS the source thingy to be synchronized, "-d" specifies the
directory that contains the destination thing to be synced, and
"foo" is the thing to be synced.

If you wanted to compare all of "/" against something contained
in "/" (such as "/restore"), you could type this in ksh or bash:

cd /
filesync -n -ame -fsrc -s / -d /restore ./

Then when the cursor is at the end of the line, do ESC then "*" in
vi mode or Meta-"*" in emacs mode, and it will expand the list of
files, at which point you can delete "restore" from the list. (If
you don't delete "restore" from the list, it will think everything
in "restore" should be in "restore/restore", which make will cause
the output to be filled with extraneous stuff.)

- Logan

>I will restore the file system to a separate disk than the original,

The best way is to use "star" to compare both filesystems
as it is the only known program that is able to compare _all_
file properties and meta-data (except for Extended attribute files).

As I currently know nobody who uses Extended attribute files, I am
sure that this will fit your needs.

Call:

star -c -diff -vv -dump -acl -sparse diffopts=!atime,ctime,lmtime -C
fromdir . todir

BTW: This is also the fastest known method and if you like to copy
a filesystem, a similar method will copy the fs very fast.

Also have a look at star when doing incremental dumps.
It might be more interesting for you than ufsdump/ufsrstore.

ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/star/alpha/

How to free virtual memory

2005-10-21T14:11:00.000-05:00

Re: How to free virtual memory

Looks like some process is leaking memory continously. The process
needs to fix it, use some open source tool like valgrind to find out
which process is leaking memory

Regards,
Chinmoy
For free software books visit http://geocities.com/freesoftwarebooks

we deployed a Seebeyond project in Unix Machine in that
i have problem of excceding the virtual memory,the virtual memory is
keep on incresing ,at some point it is strucking up the unix server,

is there any way to free the virtual memomry faster,
and can we stop the incresing of virtual memory

i need some urgently

Regards
Rambabu.Y

Tuning the I/O Subsystem

2005-10-21T14:10:00.001-05:00

Tuning the I/O Subsystem

I/O is probably one of the most common problems facing Oracle users.
In many cases, the performance of the system is entirely limited by
disk I/O. In some cases, the system actually becomes idle waiting for
disk requests to complete. We say that these systems are I/O bound or
disk bound.

As you see in Chapter 14, "Advanced Disk I/O Concepts," disks have
certain inherent limitations that cannot be overcome. Therefore, the
way to deal with disk I/O issues is to understand the limitations of
the disks and design your system with these limitations in mind.
Knowing the performance characteristics of your disks can help you in
the design stage.

Optimizing your system for I/O should happen during the design stage.
As you see in Part III, "Configuring the System," different types of
systems have different I/O patterns and require different I/O designs.
Once the system is built, you should first tune for memory and then
tune for disk I/O. The reason you tune in this order is to make sure
that you are not dealing with excessive cache misses, which cause
additional I/Os.

The strategy for tuning disk I/O is to keep all drives within their
physical limits. Doing so reduces queuing time—and thus increases
performance. In your system, you may find that some disks process many
more I/Os per second than other disks. These disks are called "hot
spots." Try to reduce hot spots whenever possible. Hot spots occur
whenever there is a lot of contention on a single disk or set of
disks.
Understanding Disk Contention

Disk contention occurs whenever the physical limitations of a disk
drive are reached and other processes have to wait. Disk drives are
mechanical and have a physical limitation on both disk seeks per
second and throughput. If you exceed these limitations, you have no
choice but to wait.

You can find out if you are exceeding these limits both through
Oracle's file I/O statistics and through operating system statistics.
This chapter looks at the Oracle statistics; Chapter 12, "Operating
System-Specific Tuning," looks at the operating system statistics for
some popular systems.

Although the Oracle statistics give you an accurate picture of how
many I/Os have taken place for a particular data file, they may not
accurately represent the entire disk because other activity outside of
Oracle may be incurring disk I/Os. Remember that you must correlate
the Oracle data file to the physical disk on which it resides.

debugging RC scripts. solaris9

2005-10-21T14:10:00.000-05:00

debugging RC scripts. solaris9

I can remember how to debug the startup scripts. Can someone help me
out here. I just want Solaris to report what startup script it is
currently executing. I thought it was as simple as adding a "+" to the
/etc/rc* script but that didnt work.

There's no really simple way to do this. You may be thinking of adding
set -x to /etc/rc?, but that gets overly verbose for me.

Often I've made a small edit to /etc/rc?. There's a startup loop in
there where it runs /bin/sh $f start or so for each of the scripts.
Just add a "echo starting $f" and a "echo done starting $" inside the
"if" and outside the "case" statements. (and make a backup!). Then you
can tell what it's trying to do and where it hangs.

Once there, you can make that one script more verbose.

If you were running Solaris 10, you could use 'boot -m verbose'.

statvfs / df bug?

2005-10-21T14:09:00.000-05:00

statvfs / df bug?

Hi all,
I am trying to get the filesystem information using statvfs/df. I have
an automounted partition mounted on /mntauto. I am running SunOS 5.8

If I say 'df -k /mntauto', I get the following output:
--------
bash-2.03# df -k /mntauto
Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
cpsupsun1:/mntauto 482455 10 434200 1% /mntauto
--------

I have written two different programs using 'statvfs' to print the
filesystem information. Following is the putput fron these two
different programs:

Program 1:
main() {
struct statvfs info;

access("/mntauto",F_OK);

if (-1 == statvfs("/", &info))
perror("statvfs() error");
else {
puts("statvfs() returned the following information");
puts("about the ('/mntauto') file system:");
printf(" f_bsize : %u\n", info.f_bsize);
printf(" f_blocks : %u\n", info.f_blocks);
printf(" f_bfree : %u\n", info.f_bfree );
printf(" f_bavail : %u\n", info.f_bavail);
printf(" f_files : %u\n", info.f_files);
printf(" f_ffree : %u\n", info.f_ffree);
printf(" f_fsid : %u\n", info.f_fsid);
printf(" f_flag : %X\n", info.f_flag);
printf(" f_namemax : %u\n", info.f_namemax);
printf(" f_basetype : %s\n", info.f_basetype);
printf(" f_fstr : %s\n", info.f_fstr);

}

Output:
statvfs() returned the following information
about the ('/mntauto') file system:
f_bsize : 8192
f_blocks : 4129290
f_bfree : 3026760
f_bavail : 2985468
f_files : 512512
f_ffree : 507103
f_fsid : 8388608
f_flag : 4
f_namemax : 255
f_basetype : ufs
f_fstr :

Program 2:

main() {
struct statvfs info;
struct stat sb;

if (stat("/mntauto/log", &sb) < 0)
printf("stat failed\n");

if (S_ISDIR(sb.st_mode))
printf("Dir\n");
else
printf("Not a dir\n");

if (-1 == statvfs("/mntauto", &info))
perror("statvfs() error");
else {
puts("statvfs() returned the following information");
puts("about the ('/mntauto') file system:");
printf(" f_bsize : %u\n", info.f_bsize);
printf(" f_blocks : %u\n", info.f_blocks);
printf(" f_bfree : %u\n", info.f_bfree );
printf(" f_bfree : %u\n", info.f_bavail);
printf(" f_files : %u\n", info.f_files);
printf(" f_ffree : %u\n", info.f_ffree);
printf(" f_fsid : %u\n", info.f_fsid);
printf(" f_flag : %X\n", info.f_flag);
printf(" f_namemax : %u\n", info.f_namemax);
printf(" f_basetype : %s\n", info.f_basetype);
printf(" f_fstr : %s\n", info.f_fstr);
}

}

Output:
Dir
statvfs() returned the following information
about the ('/mntauto') file system:
f_bsize : 8192
f_blocks : 964910
f_bfree : 964890
f_bfree : 868400
f_files : 247296
f_ffree : 247290
f_fsid : 80740364
f_flag : 0
f_namemax : 4294967295
f_basetype : nfs
f_fstr :

Could anyone please explain me the differences between the above
outputs? I assume all of the above should print the same answer...Is
this a know bug of statvfs?

Thanks in advance,
Tushar.

My apologies.
I got the error!
It was a typo...

I would say everything is working okay.
Program 1 does a statvfs of "/" and program 2 calls statvfs for "/mntauto".

use telnet command in a shell script

2005-10-21T14:07:00.001-05:00

Re: use telnet command in a shell script

I would use ssh instead of telnet setup a connection with keys so that
the connection does not require a password (man ssh to find out how)
then call it as follows

ssh hostname -l username "command" | tee -a output.txt

fsck

2005-10-21T14:07:00.000-05:00

> Our system is backed up to tape each night. Unfortunately our Sys Eng
> is on holidays and I do not know how to recover from tape.

> Could you walk me through it please.

There are lots of ways to do it. Without knowing which your system
admin chose, it's really hard to give you any useful information.

The most likely thing is that you need to use something like
"mt -f /dev/rmt/0n asf 2" to move to file #2 on the tape (the
number 2 is just a random number picked; you'll have to determine
where the backup of the filesystem you need is located on the
tape and use that number instead). Then you'd change to some
directory (like /tmp or some place with lots of space) and do
a "ufsrestore ivf /dev/rmt/0n". Then use "cd", "ls", and "pwd"
to navigate, "add" and "delete" to select which files to extract,
and "extract" (whose prompt you should answer with "1") to extract
them from the tape. Oh, and then "mt -f /dev/rmt/0n offline" to
rewind and eject the tape.

Of course, this assumes that the administrator chose to use ufsdump
to back up the files, which is definitely not a given. Also, it is
quite possible that the administrator chose to do incremental
backups, so if that is the case, you may need to restore from a full
backup tape *and* an incremental backup tapem, which makes things
even more complicated. It's really hard to know what the right
thing to do is without knowing what backup scheme the administrator
chose for that system.

if I do a metadb -a /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4

2005-10-21T14:06:00.000-05:00

i.e. if I do a metadb -a /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4 will it just add another
> database replica into the slice?

No. You'll have to delete all the replicas in one slice, then create
all the replicas at one time.

metadb -d /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4
metadb -a -c 2 /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s4

Tape Control -the mt Command:

2005-10-21T14:05:00.000-05:00

Tape Control -the mt Command:

This assume that the device is at the 0 address.

Shows whether device is valid, whether tape is loaded, and status of tape

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status:

Rewinds tape to start

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 rewind:

Shows table of contents of archive. If tar tvf produces an error, then
there are no more records on the tape.

tar tvf /dev/rmt/0:

Advanced to the next archive on the tape.

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 fsf:

Moves the tape to the end of the last archive that it can detect.

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 eom:

Erases the tape. Use with care.

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 erase:

Ejects the tape, if the device supports that option.

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 offline:

To extract lengthy archives even if you plan to log out, use the nohup
command as follows:

nohup tar xvf /dev/rmt/0 &

Identify the tape device

dmesg | grep st

Check the status of the tape drive

mt -f /dev/rmt/0 status

Tarring files to a tape

tar cvf /dev/rmt/0 *

Cpioing files to a tape

find . -print | cpio -ovcB > /dev/rmt/0

Viewing cpio files on a tape

cpio -ivtB < /dev/rmt/0

Restoring a cpio

cpio -ivcB < /dev/rmt/0

To compress a file

compress -v some.file

To uncompress a file

uncompress some.file.Z

To encode a file

uuencode some.file.Z some.file.Z

To unencode a file

uudecode some.file.Z some.file.Z

To dump a disk slice using ufsdump

ufsdump 0cvf /dev/rmt/0 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0
or
ufsdump 0cvf /dev/rmt/0 /export/home

To restore a dump with ufsrestore

ufsrestore rvf /dev/rmt/0

To duplicate a disk slice directly

ufsdump 0f - /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s7 |(cd /home;ufsrestore xf -)

Mirror Removal

2005-10-21T14:04:00.002-05:00

How To: Mirror Removal

To remove a mirror from a volume (i.e., to remove one of the plexes
that belongs to the volume), run the following command:

vxplex -o rm dis

Any associated subdisks will then become available for other uses. To
remove the disk from Volume Manager control entirely, run the
following command:

vxdisk rm

For example, "vxdisk rm c1t1d0s2".

How To: Mirror Backup

The following techniques can be used to backup mirrored volumes by
temporarily taking one of the mirrors offline and then reattaching the
mirror to the volume once the backup has been run.

1. Disassociate one of the mirrors from the volume to be backed up:

vxplex dis

2. Create a new, temporary volume using the disassociated plex:

vxmake -g -U gen vol tempvol plex=

3. Start the new volume:

vxvol start tempvol

4. Clean the new volume before mounting:

fsck -y /dev/vx/rdsk//tempvol

5. Mount the new volume and perform the backup

6. Unmount the new volume

7. Stop the new volume:

vxvol stop tempvol

8. Disassociate the plex from the new volume:

vxplex dis

9. Reattach the plex to the original volume:

vxplex att

10. Delete the temporary volume:

vxedit rm tempvol

To display the current Veritas configuration, use the following command:

vxprint

To monitor the progress of tasks, use the following command:

vxtask -l list

To display information related to plexes, run the following command:

vxprint -lp

Fixing Corrupted Files and wtmpx Errors

2005-10-21T14:04:00.001-05:00

Fixing Corrupted Files and wtmpx Errors

Unfortunately, system accounting is not foolproof. Occasionally, a
file becomes corrupted or lost. Some of the files can simply be
ignored or restored from backup. However, certain files must be fixed
to maintain the integrity of system accounting.

The wtmpx files seem to cause the most problems in the daily operation
of the system accounting. When the date is changed manually and the
system is in multiuser mode, a set of date change records is written
into the /var/adm/wtmpx file. The wtmpfix utility is designed to
adjust the time stamps in the wtmp records when a date change is
encountered. However, some combinations of date changes and reboots
slip through the wtmpfix utility and cause the acctcon program to
fail.
How to Fix a Corrupted wtmpx File

Become superuser.
2.

Change to the /var/adm directory.
3.

Convert the wtmpx file from binary to ASCII format.

# /usr/lib/acct/fwtmp < wtmpx > wtmpx.ascii

Edit wtmpx.ascii to delete the corrupted records.
5.

Convert the wtmpx.ascii file back to a binary file.

# /usr/lib/acct/fwtmp -ic < wtmpx.ascii > wtmpx

See fwtmp(1M) for more information.

Is there a way to determine the PID associated with a socket ?

2005-10-21T14:04:00.000-05:00

lsof

> Is there a way to determine the PID associated with a socket ?

Or using native commands without using lsof is to use pfiles.

cd /proc
pfiles * > /tmp/pfiles.out

search through pfiles.out for the process that has the socket open you
are interested in. i.e. there will be entries such as:

3771: /export/home/archiver/bin/myprocess
Current rlimit: 256 file descriptors
0: S_IFCHR mode:0666 dev:85,0 ino:191320 uid:0 gid:3 rdev:13,2
O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE
1: S_IFCHR mode:0666 dev:85,0 ino:191397 uid:0 gid:0 rdev:24,2
O_RDWR|O_LARGEFILE
2: S_IFREG mode:0644 dev:85,5 ino:17 uid:104 gid:1 size:139436
O_WRONLY|O_LARGEFILE
3: S_IFDOOR mode:0444 dev:293,0 ino:58 uid:0 gid:0 size:0
O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE FD_CLOEXEC door to nscd[200]
4: S_IFSOCK mode:0666 dev:287,0 ino:19574 uid:0 gid:0 size:0
O_RDWR
sockname: AF_INET 10.1.1.1 port: 9001
peername: AF_INET 10.1.1.2 port: 9001

pid 3771 has port 9001 open locally.

snapshot error: File system could not be write locked

2005-10-21T14:03:00.000-05:00

Thomas wrote:
> Is there anyway to fssnap the root file system? I would like to use a
> snapshot for backup, but when I try to do that I get the error:
> snapshot error: File system could not be write locked

Are you running ntp/xntp? By default that program runs in the realtime
processing class, and has a current directory in the root filesystem.
You can't write lock the filesystem while that's true.

>> Yes, we are running ntp. I will try killing that and see what happens.
>> I am thinking that it might be better to repartition the disk rather than
>> to take ntp down and up for every backup.
> Why? Simply create a script that stops xntpd, creates a snapshot, starts
> xntpd and perform backup. No need to repartition.

But that's not kind to ntp, which wants to keep running to remain
stable.

The only problem here is that it's working directory is in root. I see
two possible workarounds.

#1 Have it run in a non-RT class. You can use priocntl for that. I
don't think it'll have a dramatic effect on the timekeeping, but you
might not want to do this if you need very accurate time on this
machine.

$ pgrep ntp
302
$ /usr/bin/ps -o class,pid -p 302
CLS PID
RT 302
$ priocntl -s -c TS 302
$ /usr/bin/ps -o class,pid -p 302
CLS PID
TS 302

Thus taking it from the realtime class to the timesharing class. (I
suppose I should have tried a fssnap at that point, but didn't...)

#2 Run it with the working directory not in root. I don't see any
reason it couldn't run in /tmp or /var/run, unless you wanted to
retain any core files that might be generated. I'm not certain how
best to achieve that, but I saw a post that suggested someone had
good luck using chroot.

Problems with port forwarding using SSH[R]

2005-10-14T15:56:00.001-05:00

Port forwarding feature using SSH is failing.
Resolution: Top

Confirm these configuration settings in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file:

AllowTcpForwarding yes
GatewayPorts yes

Then execute:

# ssh -g -L 8080:webserver:80 webserver

In this example, systems connecting to http://webserver:8080 will be
forwarded to the web server daemon httpd listening on TCP port 80 on
the host webserver.

If you allow root access with this setting in /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

PermitRootLogin yes

You can use privileged or reserved ports (range 1-1023) with the above command.
Temporary Workaround: Top

Additional Information: Top

SSH Frequently Asked Questions Keys

2005-10-14T15:56:00.000-05:00

1.1. General troubleshooting hints

In order for us to help you, the problem has to be repeatable.
*

When reporting problems, always send the output of

$ ssh -v -l <user> <destination>

If you have a root account on the destination host, please run

# /usr/sue/etc/sshd -d -p 222

or (on Linux)

# /usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 222

as root there and connect using

$ ssh -v -p 222 <user> <destination>

(the sshd server will exit after each connection, and you may
run into trouble with a local firewall that prevents you from
connecting from a different machine. Same-machine connections to
"localhost" should work)
*

If you do not have root access on the server, you can generate
your own "server" key pair and run on an unprivileged port:

$ ssh-keygen -P "" -f /tmp/sshtest
$ pagsh -c "/usr/sue/etc/sshd -d -p 2222 -h /tmp/sshtest"

or (on Linux)

$ pagsh -c "/usr/sbin/sshd -d -p 2222 -h /tmp/sshtest"

Then connect using

$ ssh -v -p 2222 <user> <destination>

1.5. log in using RSA keys

Do you really want to do this? Using RSA for login means you will not
get an AFS token, so you cannot access most of your home directory on
the public servers. There is no way to "translate" between RSA key and
AFS tokens.

If you want to give it a try, check the following common errors:

the UNIX permissions must be correct: 0600 for
~/.ssh/authorized_keys, 0755 for ~/.ssh (and AFS read access for
everybody!), home directory not writable by anybody but you.

Warning

Please make sure that your private key is somewhere safe (e.g.
in ~/private, with a symlink to ~.ssh), and encrypted using a good
pass phrase.
*

in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys, there has to be one key per line (no
linebreaks allowed)

The debugging tips at the beginning of this chapter (running the
server in debug mode) should point out the reason for failure pretty
quickly.

1.6. New warning messages

OpenSSH stores both the host name and the IP number together with the
host key. This leads to some new messages:

Warning: Permanently added 'lxplus001,137.138.161.126' (RSA) to
the list of known hosts.
Warning: Permanently added the RSA host key for IP address
'137.138.161.126' to the list of known hosts.

If these annoy you, use "CheckHostIP no" in your $HOME/.ssh/config
file. However, please be aware that you are turning off an intentional
security feature of ssh.

Some warning that may appear while connecting to the PLUS servers
under their common DNS name (e.g. RSPLUS, HPPLUS) is due to the fact
that for load-balancing purposes, these servers' DNS entry is
constantly changing. This is detected and reported by ssh (as it
should be).

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: POSSIBLE DNS SPOOFING DETECTED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
The RSA host key for rsplus has changed,
5 and the key for the according IP address 137.138.246.82
is unknown. This could either mean that
DNS SPOOFING is happening or the IP address for the host
and its host key have changed at the same time
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
10 @ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!
Someone could be eavesdropping on you right now (man-in-the-middle attack)!
It is also possible that the RSA host key has just been changed.
15 Please contact your system administrator.
Add correct host key in /afs/cern.ch/user/i/iven/.ssh/known_hosts
to get rid of this message.
Offending key in /afs/cern.ch/user/i/iven/.ssh/known_hosts:246
Password authentication is disabled to avoid Trojan horses.
Agent forwarding is disabled to avoid Trojan horses.

To avoid these, use qualified hostnames like rsplus01, hpplus01 etc..
(LXPLUS and SUNDEV are not prone to this problem, since a common host
key is used on all the servers in the cluster)

An alternative is to (manually) insert into $HOME/.ssh/known_hosts the
PLUS name after each qualified machine name that belongs to this PLUS
service:

rsplus01,rsplus 1024 37 15457042575...
rsplus02,rsplus 1024 37 10734479336...

To remove the above error message, simply edit the file
~/.ssh/known_hosts (or ~/.ssh/known_hosts2 for the SSH-2 protocol) and
remove the line (which should start with the hostname and/or IP
address). Be careful not to break the long lines, it has to have one
line per host/key. Next time you connect, ssh should ask you whether
you actually want to connect, etc..
1.7. Statistics options for scp

OpenSSH scp does not support a few of the command line options from
ssh-1.2.26. Besides, the statistics output is different. The
environment variables controlling statistics output (SSH_SCP_STATS,
SSH_NO_SCP_STATS, SSH_ALL_SCP_STATS, SSH_NO_ALL_SCP_STATS) are not
supported, either. The changed options are

ssh-1.2.26 option meaning OpenSSH option
-a Turn on statistics display for each file (on by default) (on by default)
-A Turn off statistics display for each file. This appears to be a
no-op for ssh-1.2.26 (n.a., use -q to turn off all statistics)
-L Use non privileged port -o UsePriviledgedPort=no (works as well on
ssh-1.2.26)
-Q Turn on statistics display (on by default)

Sample statistics output from OpenSSH scp (no explicit options)

junk 100% |*****************************| 22867 00:00
zeroes 100% |*****************************| 512 KB 00:00

and output from ssh-1.2.26 scp:

junk | 22 KB | 22.3 kB/s | ETA:
00:00:00 | 100%
zeroes | 512 KB | 512.0 kB/s | ETA:
00:00:00 | 100%

If you actually parse this output in scripts, you would have to change them.
1.8. Errors on exit regarding X11 applications

Since the ssh client does forwarding for the X11 traffic from the
remote host, it won't exit until the last X11 application has been
closed. It appears that this mechanism sometimes fails, and the ssh
program will report errors like below even if all remote X11
applications are done:

(logout)
Waiting for forwarded connections to terminate...
The following connections are open:
X11 connection from xxxxx.cern.ch port 2352

The session will appear to hang. It can be closed by typing "~."
(without the quotes), and this should return you to your previous
shell. You could use "~&" as well to leave the current connection as a
background process.

If you are sure that there are no X11 windows or icons from the remote
server around, and if you can reproduce the problem, please contact
ssh.support@cern.ch.

A current suspicion is that the regular network scanning mechanism
plays a role in this: by opening a connection to the remote X11 port,
but failing to connect through the forwarded channel, this could mess
up the internal bookkeeping done by ssh. To be confirmed.

Problem replacing disk in StorEdge T3

2005-10-14T15:55:00.000-05:00

Problem replacing disk in StorEdge T3

At work we have a T3 where all disks are configured for RAID5. One of
the disks has failed, which means that accessing the data on the T3 is
really slow.

When I entered the replacement disk, it seemed to be taken in use
automatically (proc list showed some progress), but then it failed with
a 0D status (see vol stat, fru stat etc below).

I noticed that the disk is not exactly the same as the other, could this
be the reason? It is a proper replacement disk bought from Sun with the
proper bracket and everything, so it should work or what? What can I do
to fix this?

--
- Erlend Leganger

T300 Release 1.17b 2001/05/31 17:47:22
Copyright (C) 1997-2001 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

bigdaddy:/:<1>vol stat

v0 u1d1 u1d2 u1d3 u1d4 u1d5 u1d6 u1d7 u1d8
u1d9
mounted 0D 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

bigdaddy:/:<2>fru list
ID TYPE VENDOR MODEL REVISION SERIAL
------ ----------------- ----------- ----------- -------- --------
u1ctr controller card SLR-MI 375-0084-02- 0210 022813
u1d1 disk drive SEAGATE ST336605FSUN A338 3FP0H63D
u1d2 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0VFBL
u1d3 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0T89W
u1d4 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0VCZ4
u1d5 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0VF5L
u1d6 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0TG33
u1d7 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0TT8G
u1d8 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0VD4T
u1d9 disk drive SEAGATE ST336704FSUN A42D 3CD0TXQF
u1l1 loop card SLR-MI 375-0085-01- 5.02 Flash 033179
u1l2 loop card SLR-MI 375-0085-01- 5.02 Flash 030038
u1pcu1 power/cooling unit TECTROL-CAN 300-1454-01( 0000 028800
u1pcu2 power/cooling unit TECTROL-CAN 300-1454-01( 0000 028799
u1mpn mid plane SLR-MI 370-3990-01- 0000 021282
bigdaddy:/:<3>fru stat
CTLR STATUS STATE ROLE PARTNER TEMP
------ ------- ---------- ---------- ------- ----
u1ctr ready enabled master - 30.5

DISK STATUS STATE ROLE PORT1 PORT2 TEMP VOLUME
------ ------- ---------- ---------- --------- --------- ---- ------
u1d1 ready disabled data disk ready ready 30 v0
u1d2 ready enabled data disk ready ready 33 v0
u1d3 ready enabled data disk ready ready 34 v0
u1d4 ready enabled data disk ready ready 32 v0
u1d5 ready enabled data disk ready ready 33 v0
u1d6 ready enabled data disk ready ready 33 v0
u1d7 ready enabled data disk ready ready 36 v0
u1d8 ready enabled data disk ready ready 32 v0
u1d9 ready enabled data disk ready ready 32 v0

LOOP STATUS STATE MODE CABLE1 CABLE2 TEMP
------ ------- ---------- ------- --------- --------- ----
u1l1 ready enabled master - - 27.0
u1l2 ready enabled slave - - 27.5

POWER STATUS STATE SOURCE OUTPUT BATTERY TEMP FAN1 FAN2
------ ------- --------- ------ ------ ------- ------ ------ ------
u1pcu1 ready enabled line normal fault normal normal
normal
u1pcu2 ready enabled line normal fault normal normal
normal
bigdaddy:/:<4>exit
Connection closed by foreign host.

> to fix this?

I'd say, complain @ Sun.
Searching google, I found the documentation from Seagate. Among other
things, it lists this:
ST336605: 29,549 cyl / 4 heads / 71,687,371 data blocks
ST336704: 14,100 cyl / 12 heads / 71,687,369 data blocks
I don't know whether these differences are a problem in this case. Sun
should be able to tell...
Maybe the issue can be fixed with a firmware update on the new drive (or
on all the old ones)?

You need to take a look at the syslog file right after the rebuild
fails. There should be more information in there. I have had this
happen before where the rebuild fails because of a read error on
another disk...

1) Your boot firmware is very old.
2) Your disk firmware is way out of date.
3) Both the batteries in your PCUs are expired.

The latest boot firmware is 1.18.04 and you're at 1.17b.
That's at least 3 years out-of-date!

The latest disk firmware for the ST336605FSUN is A838
The latest disk firmware for the ST336704FSUN is AE26

If you're lucky you'll be able to recover. The 'proc list' command will show
if the new disk is being reconstructed to. Otherwise hopefully you have a
way to backup the data. If so you can get the batteries replaced, upgrade
all the firmware and reinitialize the volume and restore the data.

> another disk...

Thanks for the tip. I have now learnt that the disk should be OK, so I
will try this again tomorrow and watch the syslog as you suggest. I will
be back with the result.

--
- Erlend Leganger

> all the firmware and reinitialize the volume and restore the data.

I guess this is what happens when you have a device that works OK, you
just forget about it... The batteries have been replaced though, we had
ordered them in.

I was able to copy the data from the T3 to other disk areas on the
server, so I'm OK with the files (I also have a backup on tape made
before it failed). I haven't RTFM yet, but are there any tips I should
be aware of when upgrading boot and disk firmware? What to do first?
Where do I get hold of the firmware updates?

> ordered them in.

You have to do more than just replace the batteries or the T3 won't know
anything has changed. Commands need to be ran to reset the dates back to
zero so the errors will go away.

This InfoDoc should explain the procedures:

http://www.sunshack.org/data/sh/2.1/infoserver.central/data/syshbk/co...

Also the batteries should now last 3 years instead of 2 years per Sun.

In the same patch you would use to upgrade the boot and disk firmware:

http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/pdownload.pl?target=109115-17&method=h

there is a T3extender program that will run commands to set the battery
expiration life to 36 months instead of 24 months.

> another disk...

You were 100% correct. The warning light was lit on disk u1d1, so this
disk was replaced and attempted rebuilt. The rebuild failed after a
while, with a note of multiple disk errors in the syslog - it seems as
u1d4 has a problem as well. I was fooled by vol stat only showing error
on on u1d1 - I will check the syslog more carefully in the future.

--
- Erlend Leganger

> http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/pdownload.pl?target=109115-17&method=h

Excellent, thank you. I need to wait for my second replacement disk, but
after reading up on the patch installation method, it doesn't seem too
difficult to do.

> there is a T3extender program that will run commands to set the battery
> expiration life to 36 months instead of 24 months.

I had a look at the T3extender program code and I decided that using
this patch is an extreme overkill (creating a long perl script and even
include perl itself in the patch) to do a small job: I only made two
".id write blife <pcu> 36" commands which seems to do the trick (see
below). Of course, if you have a room full of racks fully populated with
T3s, the script would be handy...

--
- Erlend Leganger

bigdaddy:/:<48>
bigdaddy:/:<48>id read u1pcu1
Revision : 0000
Manufacture Week : 00442000
Battery Install Week : 00412005
Battery Life Used : 0 days, 2 hours
Battery Life Span : 730 days, 12 hours
Serial Number : 028800
Battery Warranty Date: 20051010082149
Battery Internal Flag: 0x00000000
Vendor ID : TECTROL-CAN
Model ID : 300-1454-01(50)
bigdaddy:/:<49>
bigdaddy:/:<49>id read u1pcu2
Revision : 0000
Manufacture Week : 00442000
Battery Install Week : 00412005
Battery Life Used : 0 days, 2 hours
Battery Life Span : 730 days, 12 hours
Serial Number : 028799
Battery Warranty Date: 20051010082152
Battery Internal Flag: 0x00000000
Vendor ID : TECTROL-CAN
Model ID : 300-1454-01(50)
bigdaddy:/:<50>
bigdaddy:/:<50>
bigdaddy:/:<50>.id write blife u1pcu1 36
bigdaddy:/:<51>.id write blife u1pcu2 36
bigdaddy:/:<52>
bigdaddy:/:<52>
bigdaddy:/:<52>id read u1pcu1
Revision : 0000
Manufacture Week : 00442000
Battery Install Week : 00412005
Battery Life Used : 0 days, 2 hours
Battery Life Span : 1095 days, 18 hours
Serial Number : 028800
Battery Warranty Date: 20051010082149
Battery Internal Flag: 0x00000000
Vendor ID : TECTROL-CAN
Model ID : 300-1454-01(50)
bigdaddy:/:<53>
bigdaddy:/:<53>
bigdaddy:/:<53>id read u1pcu2
Revision : 0000
Manufacture Week : 00442000
Battery Install Week : 00412005
Battery Life Used : 0 days, 2 hours
Battery Life Span : 1095 days, 18 hours
Serial Number : 028799
Battery Warranty Date: 20051010082152
Battery Internal Flag: 0x00000000
Vendor ID : TECTROL-CAN
Model ID : 300-1454-01(50)
bigdaddy:/:<54>
bigdaddy:/:<54>
bigdaddy:/:<54>

Secure remote tasks with ssh and keys

2005-10-14T15:54:00.000-05:00

Secure remote tasks with ssh and keys

Takeaway:
If you want to set up another administrator on your server or execute
remote tasks securely, learn to use ssh with keys. Vincent Danen tells
you how in this Linux tip.

Often, if you're administering a server, you'll find you need to
execute some small task on the server, or you want to delegate a task
to another administrator, but you don't want to give them full access.
Perhaps you want to execute a remote backup or status test. This can
all be accomplished using ssh with keys so that it can be unattended,
but still secure.

The first step is to create the ssh key using the ssh-keygen utility.
This is extremely straightforward. If you plan to have the task
unattended, be sure to not give it a password. To increase security,
make a special account to execute the task; make sure it can't log in,
and make sure that the ssh public key is used only on a particular
server or set of servers.

On the remote server, copy the user's ssh public key into
~/.ssh/authorized_keys. You will need to make some modifications to
the line in authorized_keys. To begin, you should set a "command"
keyword to ensure that only one particular command can be executed by
that key. The syntax looks like:

<code>

command="" KEY

</code>

where command could be something as simple as "/usr/bin/rsync" or
"/usr/local/bin/foo.sh". To enhance and secure this further, add the
following options to authorized_keys:

<code>

command="/usr/local/bin/foo.sh",no-port-forwarding,no-X11-
forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-pty KEY

</code>

This ensures that anyone connecting cannot do any port forwarding, X11
forwarding, agent forwarding, and ssh doesn't allocate a pseudo-TTY
which prevents the issuing of commands through an interactive session.

If the client system is adequately secured to protect the
password-less key, and the availability of commands is restricted on
the server, using SSH to execute remote commands is a breeze.

plumb and unplumb

2005-10-14T15:53:00.001-05:00

> Basically it seesm its unplumbed but still existing in the running system
> so commands like
> arp -a
> netstat -i
> should show it,

No. Unplumbed devices do *NOT* appear in either of those two lists.
Unplumbed devices are simply unknown to IP and ARP.

> If you dont want to reboot, try plumbing and unplumbing it, might do the
> trick.

Very likely not.

Driver loading and operation is only indirectly related to plumbing.
"Plumb" means that IP opens the driver (triggering it to load into
memory if necessary) and begins using it.

"Unplumb" means only that IP closes the driver stream. If the driver
itself is still in memory (and a driver that manages multiple
instances and has one instance still plumbed, as in the original
poster's stated configuration, is certainly in that state), then --
depending on how the driver itself is designed -- may still be
fielding interrupts from the underlying hardware.

Plumbing and unplumbing IP will do nothing in that case.

005 11:01 am Subject: directio

2005-10-14T15:53:00.000-05:00

directio
n

I have a running process which does io:

last pid: 22838; load averages: 0.94, 0.91, 0.82
17:54:29
103 processes: 100 sleeping, 1 zombie, 2 on cpu
CPU states: % idle, % user, % kernel, % iowait, %
swap
Memory: 4096M real, 256M free, 7188M swap in use, 3392M swap free

PID USERNAME LWP PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME CPU COMMAND
7335 root 2 20 0 1223M 1164M cpu/2 24.7H 49.53%
clemserv_9_0

truss -p 7335

/1: read(15, "020301\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192
/1: lseek(15, 0x8F48CA00, SEEK_SET) = 0x8F48CA00
/1: read(15, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192
/1: lseek(15, 0x8F48CB20, SEEK_SET) = 0x8F48CB20
/1: read(15, "020301\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192
/1: lseek(15, 0x8F48CA00, SEEK_SET) = 0x8F48CA00
/1: read(15, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192
/1: lseek(15, 0x8F48CB20, SEEK_SET) = 0x8F48CB20
/1: read(15, "020301\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192
/1: lseek(15, 0x8F48CA00, SEEK_SET) = 0x8F48CA00
/1: read(15, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0".., 8192) = 8192

When i monitor the system , both for directIO and normal - cached io ,
i see the following patterns.I will ve appreciated if someone can
comment in order to eplain this:

The program reads data from the /data filesystem. This is ufs - on emc
disk array . ( i have 1 hba - fibre channel)

mount -o remount,noforcedirectio /data

# sar 30 10000

SunOS verdenfs1 5.9 Generic_117171-12 sun4u 10/05/2005

17:53:42 %usr %sys %wio %idle
17:54:12 14 37 0 49
17:54:42 13 38 0 48
17:55:12 14 39 0 47
17:55:42 13 38 0 49

extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
1.4 0.1 1206.1 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.1 44.8 0 7 c2t16d65
0.1 1.2 1.1 9.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 9.2 0 1 c1t1d0
0.0 1.0 0.0 7.8 0.0 0.0 15.2 35.4 0 0 c1t0d0
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
1.2 0.1 1183.2 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.1 48.7 0 6 c2t16d65
0.3 1.2 2.7 9.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 7.7 0 1 c1t1d0
0.0 2.4 0.0 19.3 0.1 0.1 29.6 26.9 0 1 c1t0d0
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
7.2 0.1 1227.7 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.0 11.1 0 8 c2t16d65
0.1 1.2 1.1 9.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 7.4 0 0 c1t1d0
0.0 0.4 0.0 2.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 11.1 0 0 c1t0d0
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
1.3 0.1 1264.0 0.4 0.0 0.1 0.1 44.9 0 6 c2t16d65
0.3 1.1 2.7 9.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 8.0 0 1 c1t1d0
0.0 0.2 0.0 1.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 11.4 0 0 c1t0d0

verdenfs1@root/tmp #vmstat -p 30
memory page executable anonymous
filesystem
swap free re mf fr de sr epi epo epf api apo apf fpi
fpo fpf
7402800 1789416 73 89 10 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 2626
11 9
3474096 262832 158 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1207
0 0
3474120 262520 187 249 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1216
0 0
3474072 262304 166 33 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1188
1 1
3474208 262144 159 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1269
0 0

mount -o remount,forcedirectio /data

# sar 30 10000

SunOS verdenfs1 5.9 Generic_117171-12 sun4u 10/05/2005

%usr %sys %wio %idle
17:57:12 8 24 23 46
17:57:42 2 10 39 49

extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
257.8 0.0 62434.5 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 3.1 1 77 c2t16d65
0.1 1.2 1.1 9.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 8.3 0 1 c1t1d0
0.4 0.4 3.2 3.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 8.8 0 0 c1t0d0
extended device statistics
r/s w/s kr/s kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
244.4 0.0 64447.9 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 3.3 1 78 c2t16d65
0.3 1.2 2.7 9.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 7.7 0 1 c1t1d0
0.7 2.7 4.8 15.6 0.0 0.1 7.1 15.8 0 2 c1t0d0

verdenfs1@root/tmp #vmstat -p 30
memory page executable anonymous
filesystem
swap free re mf fr de sr epi epo epf api apo apf fpi
fpo fpf
3474064 263456 31 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 61924
0 0
3474192 263440 25 8 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 63965
0 0
3474064 263088 43 88 0 0 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 63966
0 0

1.When i use noforcedirectio , sar reports no wio but 38 %sys , on the
other hand iostat shows about 1MB. read per second with 44.9 msec
service time.This io utilized the disk only 6 or 8 percent. And ,
vmstat -p shows that the system does pagins for file io only for 1MB.

2.But when i force directio , i have %39 wio , io rate grows
significantly (65MB per second) , the disks are utilized at 77 percent
and service time is 3.1 msec. At the same time , i see 65MB. of fpi.

1. Why does the low io rate in 1 (noforcedirectio) create 44.9 msec
service time while the high io rate create only 3.1 msec? Isnt it
logical to expect to see more io more service time.

2. Since the option 2 uses forcedirectio , how can i explain the large
fpi value? (If directio is in use , why does the operating system cache
file data?)

3. comparing the %38 sys with %39 wio , which one of them is better ?

Kind Regards,
tolga
n
I think the output is related with the IO's type of your application.

If IO is through "dd" command, the output is just what you think
right, that is to say,1)using "noforcedirectio" option, IO is using
more cpu power, and cached io(fpi) ,IO thoughput is higher;2)using
"forcedirectio" option, opposite to the former.
"dd" command is using "read/write" system calls.

Rn
Is there any progress about it?

To confirm whether using the filecache or not, you can install the
tool bundle "memtool" to assist you.
http://www.solarisinternals.com/si/tools/memtool/index.php
As a command from "memtool", "memps -m" can tell you which file is in
cache and how much cache the file occupy.

PS, another tool "directiostat" could be also helpful.
http://www.solarisinternals.com/si/tools/directiostat/index.php

n
>Is there any progress about it?

I dont understand, if cache is turned off, physial disk IO increases.
This is natural, and the perfomance problems are to be found elsewhere.

/wfr
n
The applications such as oracle, which has own file IO management
system, will be benefit from directio (file cache disabled);but the
performance of the normal file system IO will get an impact.

n
The applications such as oracle, which has own file IO management
system, will benefit from directio (file cache disabled);but the
performance of the normal file system IO will get an impact.

graphics monitor and serial console on V440

2005-10-14T15:52:00.000-05:00

Subject: Re: graphics monitor and serial console on V440
n
> We have a V440 running Solaris 9. The system has an XVR-100 graphics
> card and CRT monitor attached. Currently the CRT monitor is acting as
> the console. Is there any way to continue to utilize the CRT monitor
> for logging in and windowing (i.e. continue to see the dtgreet login
> screen and login to CDE) while having another device attached to the
> serial management port act as the console for the system?

Yes, that's pretty common.

Force the console to the device you want via 'input-device' and
'output-device' in the eeprom.

Then cp /usr/dt/config/Xservers to /etc/dt/config (if you don't have one
there already). Read the examples at the top for the "if no character
device is associated" example and use that at the bottom instead of the
existing line. It'll probably look something like this when you're
done.

:0 Local local_uid@none root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner

The monitor should come alive when dtlogin launches.

Sun warns against putting raw data on s2

2005-10-14T15:51:00.001-05:00

It should be noted though, that Sun warns against putting raw data on s2,
since block zero contains the disk label, and labelling will overwrite the
beginning of your raw data.

Finally, I'll mention that I saw an interesting case many years ago, where
a disk with s0 consisting of the entire disk got unmounted rather abruptly
to say the least. fsck on s0 complained about a bad superblock, even with
any of the alternate superblock locations. However, I was able to fsck s2
with success, and then mount cleanly. Don't know enough about the guts of
the disk layout to know why this worked, but it did.

On the other hand, changing the length of s2 to something other than the
entire disk is an explicit no-no, according to Sun.

Understanding Data Link Errors

2005-10-14T15:51:00.000-05:00

Understanding Data Link Errors
Many performance issues with NICs can be related to data link errors.
Excessive errors
usually indicate a problem. When operating at half-duplex setting,
some data link errors
such as Frame Check Sequence (FCS), alignment, runts, and collisions are normal.
Generally, a one percent ratio of errors to total traffic is
acceptable for half-duplex
connections. If the ratio of errors to input packets is greater than
two or three percent,
performance degradation may be noticed.
In half-duplex environments, it is possible for both the switch and
the connected device
to sense the wire and transmit at exactly the same time and result in
a collision.

Collisions can cause runts, FCS, and alignment errors due to the frame
not being completely copied to the wire which results in fragmented
frames.
When operating at full-duplex, FCS, Cyclic Redundancy Checks (CRC), alignment
errors, and runt counters should be minimal. If the link is operating
at full-duplex, the
collision counter is not active. If the FCS, CRC, alignment, or runt
counters are
incrementing, check for a duplex mismatch. Duplex mismatch is a
situation where the
switch is operating at full-duplex and the connected device is
operating at half-duplex, or
vice versa. The result of a duplex mismatch will be extremely slow performance,
intermittent connectivity, and loss of connection. Other possible
causes of data link errors
at full-duplex are bad cables, faulty switch port, or NIC
software/hardware issues.

Explanation of Port Errors Counter Description

Troubleshooting NIC Compatibility Issues on ISUnet

Alignment Errors
Alignment errors are a count of the number of frames received that don't end
with an even number of octets and have a bad CRC.

FCS(Frame Check Sequence)
FCS error count is the number of frames that were transmitted/received
with a bad
checksum (CRC value) in the Ethernet frame. These frames are dropped and not
propagated onto other ports.

Xmit-Err
This is an indication that the internal transmit buffer is full.

Rcv-Err
This is an indication that the receive buffer is full.

UnderSize
These are frames which are smaller than 64 bytes (including FCS) and have a
good FCS value.

Single Collisions
Single collisions are the number of times the transmitting port had
one collision
before successfully transmitting the frame to the media.

Multiple Collisions
Multiple collisions are the number of times the transmitting port had more than
one collision before successfully transmitting the frame to the media.

Late Collisions
A late collision occurs when two devices transmit at the same time and
neither side
of the connection detects a collision. The reason for this occurrence
is because the
time to propagate the signal from one end of the network to another is
longer than
the time to put the entire packet on the network. The two devices that cause the
late collision never see that the other is sending until after it puts
the entire
packet on the network. Late collisions are detected by the transmitter
after the first
"slot time" of 64 byte times. They are only detected during transmissions of
packets longer than 64 bytes. Its detection is exactly the same as for a
normal collision; it just happens late when compared to a normal collision.

Excessive
Excessive collision are the number of Collisions frames that are
dropped after 16 attempts
to send the packet resulting in 16 collisions.

Carrier Sense
Carrier Sense occurs every time an Ethernet controller wants to send data
and the counter is incremented when there is an error in the process.

Runts
These are frames smaller than 64 bytes with a bad FCS value.

Giants
These are frames that are greater than 1518 bytes and have a bad FCS value.

Possible Causes for Incrementing Port Errors
Counter Possible Cause

Alignment Errors
These are the result of collisions at half-duplex, duplex mismatch, bad hardware
(NIC, cable or port), or connected device generating frames that do
not end with on
an octet and have a bad FCS.

FCS (Frame Check Sequence)
These are the result of collisions at half-duplex, duplex mismatch, bad hardware
(NIC, cable, or port), or connected device generating frames with bad FCS.

Xmit-Err
This is an indication of excessive input rates of traffic. This is
also an indication
of transmit buffer being full. The counter should only increment in situations
where the switch is unable to forwarded out the port at a desired
rate. Situations
such as excessive collisions and 10 megabit ports will cause the transmit
buffer to become full. Increasing speed and moving link partner to full-duplex
should minimalize this occurance.

Rcv-Err
This is an indication of excessive output rates of traffic. This is
also an indication
of the receive buffer being full. This counter should be zero unless there is
excessive traffic through the switch. In some switches, the outlost
counter has a
direct correlation to the Rcv-Err.

UnderSize This is an indication of a bad frame generated by the
connected device.

Single Collisions
This is an indication of a half-duplex configuration.

Multiple Collisions
This is an indication of a half-duplex configuration.

Late Collisions
This is an indicationof faulty hardware (NIC, cable, or switch port) or duplex
mismatch.

Excessive Collisions
This is an indication of over-utilization of switch port at
half-duplex or duplex
mismatch.

Carrier Sense
This is an indication of faulty hardware (NIC, cable, or switch port).

Runts
This is an indication of the result of collisions, duplex mismatch, dot1q, or
ISL configuration issue.

Giants
This is an indication of faulty hardware, dot1q, or ISL configuration issue.

Additional Troubleshooting for 1000BaseX NICs
Gigabit Auto-Negotiation (No Link to Connected Device)
Gigabit Ethernet has an auto-negotiation procedure that is more
extensive than what is
used for 10/100 Mbps Ethernet (Gigabit Auto-negotiation spec: IEEE Std
802.3z-1998).
The Gigabit Auto-negotiation negotiates flow control, duplex mode, and
remote fault
information. You must either enable or disable link negotiation on
both ends of the link.
Both ends of the link must be set to the same value or the link will
not connect.
If either device does not support Gigabit auto-negotiation, disabling
Gigabit auto-
negotiation will force the link up. Disabling auto-negotiation "hides"
link drops and other
physical layer problems. Only disable auto-negotiation to end-devices
such as older
Gigabit NICs that do not support Gigabit auto-negotiation. Do not disable auto-
negotiation between switches unless absolutely required as physical
layer problems may
go undetected and result in spanning-tree loops. The alternative to
disabling auto-
negotiation is contacting the vendor for software/hardware upgrade for
IEEE 802.3z
Gigabit auto-negotiation support.

Network Configuration configure the driver

2005-10-14T15:45:00.000-05:00

Network Configuration

This section describes how to configure the driver after it has been
installed on your system.
To Configure the Host Files

After installing the Sun GigabitEthernet adapter driver software, you
must create a file for the adapter's Ethernet interface. You must also
create both an IP address and a host name for the Ethernet interface
in the /etc/hosts file.

At the command line, use the grep command to search the
/etc/path_to_inst file for ge interfaces.

For Sun GigabitEthernet/P:

The following example shows the device instance from an adapter
installed in slot 1.

# grep ge /etc/path_to_inst
"/pci@1f,4000/network@1" 0 "ge"

For Sun GigabitEthernet/S:

The following example shows the device instance from an adapter
installed in slot 0.

# grep ge /etc/path_to_inst
"/sbus@1f,0/network@1" 0 "ge"

Create an /etc/hostname.ge<num> file, where num is the instance
number of the ge interface you plan to use.

If you wanted to use the adapter's ge interface in the Step 1
example, you would need to create a /etc/hostname.ge0 file, where 0 is
the number of the ge interface. If the instance number were 1, the
file name would be /etc/hostname.ge1.
*

Do not create an /etc/hostname.genum file for a Sun
GigabitEthernet adapter interface you plan to leave unused.
*

The /etc/hostname.genum file must contain the host name
for the appropriate ge interface.
*

The host name should have an IP address and should be
entered in the /etc/hosts file.
*

The host name should be different from any other host name
of any other interface: for example, /etc/hostname.ge0 and
/etc/hostname.ge1 cannot share the same host name.

The following example shows the /etc/hostname.genum file
required for a system called zardoz that has a Sun GigabitEthernet
adapter (zardoz-11).

# cat /etc/hostname.ge0
zardoz
# cat /etc/hostname.ge1
zardoz-11

Create an appropriate entry in the /etc/hosts file for each
active ge interface.

For example:

# cat /etc/hosts
#
# Internet host table
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
129.144.10.57 zardoz loghost
129.144.11.83 zardoz-11

If your system does not support Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), reboot.

Ethernet Jumbo Frame Configuration Procedure

2005-10-14T15:44:00.001-05:00

Ethernet Jumbo Frame Configuration Procedure

No configuration changes are required in the iSCSI driver or in the
Solaris operating system to support jumbo frames. Instead,
configuration changes must be made in the Network Interface Card
(NIC), through the use of the configuration interface and tools that
are provided by the NIC manufacturer. Not all NICs support jumbo
frames, so check with your manufacturer to verify that this feature is
supported. Also, the network equipment (Ethernet switches, routers,
and so forth) between the host and the SN 5400 will have to be
configured to accept jumbo frames, because most equipment does not
support this capability by default.
Performance Improvement Techniques

These are the most likely reasons that iSCSI network performance is
lower than expected:

Flow control has not been enabled on the NIC card in the host.
*

Flow control has not been enabled on one or more of the switches
in the Ethernet network that is between the host and the SN 5400.

To see these problems, observe either the retransmit timeout or the
data packets retransmitted counters in the SN 5400. You can also
observe the TCP segments retransmitted counter: issue the netstat -s
command in Solaris.

Many NICs and switches are shipped with pause frames (flow control)
disabled. If you enable pause frames on all Gigabit Ethernet
interfaces (the host system and all network switches), then you will
help reduce dropped packets: a source of significant performance
degradation. By default, pause frames are enabled on the SN 5400 and
are not user-configurable.

If your server uses a Sun Gigabit Ethernet adapter NIC, then use this
procedure to enable flow control (by default, receive flow control is
disabled for the Sun adapter):

Add this line to the /kernel/drv/ge.conf file (by default, this
file does not exist):

adv_pauseTX=1;

Reboot the Solaris host.
3.

Issue this command to verify that adv_pauseTX is set properly:

ndd/dev/ge adv_pauseTX

The NIC should respond with a value of 1.

Troubleshooting Difficulties Network

2005-10-14T15:44:00.000-05:00

Troubleshooting Difficulties
Disabling autonegotiation can result in physical layer problems going
undetected.
Link partner, cable problems, and other Data Link layer issues are
hidden from the
administrator and manual examination of driver statistics is required.
s
Unable to detect bad cables
s
Unable to detect link failures
s
Unable to check link partners capabilities
s
Unable to move systems from one port to another or to another switch or router
s
Unable to determine performance issues on higher layer applications
s
Unable to implement Pause Frames (Flow Control)
s
Difficulties in determining where system has forced setting configured
(/etc/system and driver.conf using ndd in startup script
Link syncing between link partners may not happen and the link may not come up
when autonegotiation is absent on 100BASE-T (UTP) copper.
Example of hme interface with duplex mismatch:
hme0 has negotiated and failed back to HDX and experiencing crc babble and
late_collisions.
Console> show port negotiation 4/1
Port
Link Negotiation
----- ----------------
4/1 enabled
# kstat -p hme:0::'/collisions|framing|crc|code_violations|tx_late_collisions/'
hme:0:hme0:code_violations
0
hme:0:hme0:collisions
16720
Page 14
12
Ethernet Autonegotiation Best Practices • July 2004
Example of hme interface with duplex mismatch:
hme1 is forced to FDX and experiencing framing, crc, and code_violation errors.
Example of switch port with duplex mismatch:
Port 11/22 has been forced to FDX (Full Duplex) but link partner is in HDX (half
duplex), resulting in FCS (Frame Check Sequence) and runt errors.
Check that port negotiation is enabled on the switch:
hme:0:hme0:crc 0
hme:0:hme0:framing
0
hme:0:hme0:tx_late_collisions 5706
# kstat -p hme:1::'/collisions|framing|crc|code_violations|tx_late_collisions/'
hme:1:hme1:code_violations
147
hme:1:hme1:collisions 0
hme:1:hme1:crc 283
hme:1:hme1:framing
8
hme:1:hme1:tx_late_collisions 0
Console> show port counters 11/22
Port Align-Err FCS-Err Xmit-Err
Rcv-Err
UnderSize
----- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------
11/22
0
572968
0
0
0
Port Single-Col Multi-Coll Late-Coll Excess-Col Carri-Sen Runts
Giants
----- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- --------- --------- ---------
11/22
0
0
0
0
0 9765322
0
Console> show port negotiation 4/1
Port
Link Negotiation
----- ----------------
4/1 enabled
Console> show port negotiation 4/1

Strange fsck behaviour with alternated superblock

2005-10-14T15:42:00.001-05:00

Subject: Re: Strange fsck behaviour with alternated superblock

JBR wrote:
> Why is it asking "FREE BLK COUNT(S) WRONG IN SUPERBLK SALVAGE?" when doing
> fsck with alternated superblock ?
> Is this normal behaviour?

Yes, this is normal. The dynamic data is only updated (or only
regularly updated) in the main superblock I think, so the other ones
get stale pretty fast. Really, they're a repository of layout
information about the FS so you can find things like cgs &c in
emergency.

--tim

> I'am using Solaris 9 on a V440 with a Sun Storedge 3310.
> I have a strange behaviour with using fsck with a alternated supperblock:

> First make a filesystem:

> # newfs /dev/md/rdsk/d21
> newfs: /dev/md/rdsk/d21 last mounted as /afs7
> newfs: construct a new file system /dev/md/rdsk/d21: (y/n)? y
> /dev/md/rdsk/d21: 1430192192 sectors in 65533 cylinders of 64
> tracks,
> 341 sectors
> 698336.0MB in 13107 cyl groups (5 c/g, 53.28MB/g, 6528 i/g)
> super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
> 32, 109504, 218976, 328448, 437920, 547392, 656864, 766336, 875808,
> 985280,
> Initializing cylinder groups:
> ............................................................................
> ...
> ............................................................................
> ...
> ............................................................................
> ...
> ........................
> super-block backups for last 10 cylinder groups at:
> 1429159104, 1429268576, 1429378048, 1429487520, 1429596992, 1429706464,
> 1429815936, 1429925408, 1430034880, 1430144352,
> Do normal fsck:

> # fsck -F ufs /dev/md/rdsk/d21
> ** /dev/md/rdsk/d21
> ** Last Mounted on /afs7
> ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
> ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
> ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
> ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
> ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
> 2 files, 9 used, 704125298 free (10 frags, 88015661 blocks, 0.0%
> fragmentation)

> Mount de filesystem:

> # mount /afs7

> Umount without doing something on the filesystem:

> # umount /afs7

> Do fsck with alternated superblock:

> # fsck -F ufs -o b=109504 /dev/md/rdsk/d21
> Alternate super block location: 109504.
> ** /dev/md/rdsk/d21
> ** Last Mounted on
> ** Phase 1 - Check Blocks and Sizes
> ** Phase 2 - Check Pathnames
> ** Phase 3 - Check Connectivity
> ** Phase 4 - Check Reference Counts
> ** Phase 5 - Check Cyl groups
> FREE BLK COUNT(S) WRONG IN SUPERBLK
> SALVAGE? y

> 2 files, 9 used, 704190842 free (10 frags, 88023854 blocks, 0.0%
> fragmentation)

> ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

> Again same fsck without mounting fs:

> ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

> Modified , without asking something!

> When doing normal fsck everything is ok, but when using alternated
> superblock (makes no difference which one) it is always asking the
> salvage
> question. Makes also no difference if filesystem is mounted or not
> mounted
> between fsck's.

> Why is it asking "FREE BLK COUNT(S) WRONG IN SUPERBLK SALVAGE?" when
> doing
> fsck with alternated superblock ?
> Is this normal behaviour?

yes, the alternate SB's are only updated during mkfs_ufs(1M),
tunefs(1M) and growfs(1M) - they are not kept updated during
regular use as far as dynamic changes to allocations is concerned.

---
frankB

Veritas Volume Manager ! Changing Hostname

2005-10-14T15:42:00.000-05:00

Veritas Volume Manager !

What are the effects of a *hostname change* on a server
which has all of it's drives including root/swap
encapsulated by Veritas Volume Manager ??

I have had a worst experience with LSM ( Digital version of
Veritas Volume Manager ) very recently.

Gopala,

Veritas VM assigns ownership to objects based on hostname, if you change
the hostname, the system will no longer own the objects.

Ron

> Ron

If you forget to export the volume group, you can manually change
the volume group ownership to allow it to be reimported.

> > Any discussion on this will be highly appreciated.

It's not clear what the problem that you ran into was. Encapsulated
volume groups aren't the cleanest part of Veritas volume manager.
Worst case, don't start the volume manager, manually delete anything
you can find of the encapsulated root volume group, restart the volume
manager and re-encapsulate the root volume group. Can't give you
specifics since I don't have a volume manager running currently.

If you had a stand alone boot disk w/ a copy of the volume manager on
it, you could use it to change host ownership.

If it turns out that Veritas can't handle hostname changes, you could
have always delete the root volume group before hand. Deleting volume
manager entities doesn't delete the actual data.

Offhand, based on what you haven't told us, that's all I can think
of.

I have changed the host name of a machine running VM 2.6 (under Solaris 2.6)
and nothing happens except that some processes are running with the old name,
but all works fine.

Check out man vxdctl

The commannd is vxdctl init newname

vxdctl init new_name

To confirm the change (and you may want to save the file before the
change, just in case ...), look in /etc/vx/volboot
(This is the name veritas is going to use during imports).

Good Luck.

Jeff Robinson / HDG

I
> encapsulated by Veritas Volume Manager ??

None at all. VxVM doesn't care a whit what the hostname is.
Now, if your hostid changes, you'll have licensing issues and
diskgroup attachment issues, but that's not what you asked.

K
[Doug Hughes]

> None at all. VxVM doesn't care a whit what the hostname is.

Oh, if only that was true. VxVM didn't find the A1000 until we
changed the hostname into non-FQDN. Now, why it cares is a mystery.
I wouldn't take any chances with that software...

> diskgroup attachment issues, but that's not what you asked.

Changing the hostname will not affect the volumes you've previously
installed unless you
issue a vxdctl init command which will change the output of vxdctl
list (hostid in there) this will cause VxVM to
think the disks are
owned by someone else.

Now, if your hostid changes, you'll have licensing issues and
 diskgroup attachment issues, but that's not what you asked.</blockquote>

Changing the hostname will not affect the volumes you've previously
installed unless you
 issue a vxdctl init command which will change the output of vxdctl
list (hostid in there) this will cause VxVM to think the disks are
 owned by someone else.
<
> I wouldn't take any chances with that software...

That is a problem with rm6, the software that manages the A1000, not
with VxVM.

I believe that the latest rm6 fixes this, not 100% sure though.
--

Actually what is happening is:
As I said it is called LSM ( logical storage Manager,
digital VxVM )
I start the server in single user mode, then I can see the
contents of the /etc/vol/tempdb directory ( which contains
all the disk groups listed ). Once I start the Veritas
services it locks out this directory. And every service
depends on the contents of this directory. Thus all
Diskgroups disappear from the picture, including vold ( on
Sun VXLD )daemon which is needed by all services and tools
on veritas.
My question is: Did it ever happen to anyone, wherein some
directories/file systems, encapsulated by VxVM, are not
accessible in *run level 3* and are accessible in *run
level 1* or when mounted as ReadOnly ??

Effective throughput can I expect on a Gigabit Ethernet link with UltraSparc-3 CPU

2005-10-14T15:38:00.000-05:00

As there were many various interesting answers, I will quote all of them.
Basically, I could expect near 100 Mbytes/s with Jumbo Frames under SunFire
(This does not take the disk backend into account, just memory-to-memory
transfer speaking...).
Thank you all.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Fletcher's answers:
On a V880 8x900 we did some basic tests using ftp which gave us about
45MB/s.
This put about a 10-15% overhead on the machine (ie it takes about a whole
UltraIII cpu to drive the card in any serious sense). This is dumping data
from an FC array down separate HBAs to another array volume.
...
Just checked some old results from another site I used to run. Probably not
very interesting to you but on an Alpha ES40 4xEV6 serving a group of Intel
clients we managed to get about 80MB/s. The Alpha was linked into a 3COM
switch via gigabit with the clients each on a 100FD port on the same switch.
Each client was tranferring a different set of files, some via ftp, some
via the SMB server software (ASU). We could get similar results using two
Alphas with memory filesystems mounted which allowed us to get the storage
out of the picture. Not representative of real world particularly but we
just wanted to see how fast it was capable of going. I suspect the file
caching helped quite a lot where the PC clients were concerned.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Christophe Dupre's answer:
What ethernet card do you have in your server ? Sun has at least two
chipsets used in gigabit cards: GEM (with interface as ge0) and Cassini (sun
gigaswift, ce0 interface).
The GEM is older and pretty much all the processing is done by the CPU, and
the throughput isn't that great. The Cassini is much better and offload some
processing (IP CRC and TCP CRC) to the card, yielding much better
throughput.
Note that GEM is only 1000BaseSX, while Cassini does both fiber and copper.
What do you use to compute the throughput ? I use iperf and between two
servers (both ultrasparc -2 400MHz, both dual CPU), both having GEM-based
cards connected to a Cisco 4506 switch I get 85Mbit/s for a single
connection, and an aggregate of 94Mbit/s with about 40% kernel time
according to top. This is using an MTU of 1500 (the GEM and Cisco switch
don't do jumbo frames). The TCP Window size was 64KByte.
By comparison, iperf runs between a Sun ultraSPARC3 with a Sun gigaswift and
a Dell PowerEdge 2650 with a Broadcom 1000TX card connected using the same
Cisco catalyst and 48KByte TCP windows yield 480MBit/s.
So before upgrading the CPU you should make sure you have a card that
offloads the CPU like the gigaswift. Next, jumbo frames don't matter much -
support is not standardized, not much equipment supports it, and you can get
pretty good performance without.
I'm not sure how much the CPU speed is needed, though. I'll install a
gigaswift in an ultraSPARC2 soon, I can tell you the performance difference
then.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Santos's answer:
I would suspect that your bottleneck on the E10K would be the SBUS
interface, not CPU speed. With a gem or GigaSwift PCI card in a 750MHz
6800, we get about 60MB/s over NFS with a single thread. Raw UDP or TCP
throughtput would be much higher, although I never tested it.
Let me test now, stand by...
This is a quick test from a 4x750MHz 6800 to a 4x1200MHz V880 (no network
tuning, single thread):
ttcp-t: buflen2768, nbuf 48, align384/0, portP01 tcp ->
nbmaster
ttcp-t: socket
ttcp-t: connect
ttcp-t: 1073741824 bytes in 23.59 real seconds = 44441.28 KB/sec +++
ttcp-t: 1073741824 bytes in 23.16 CPU seconds = 45275.30 KB/cpu sec
ttcp-t: 32768 I/O calls, msec/call = 0.74, calls/sec = 1388.79
ttcp-t: 0.1user 23.0sys 0:23real 98% 0i+0d 0maxrss 0+0pf 3756+261csw
ttcp-t: buffer address 0x74000

The fastest Gigabit transfers I have ever seen were from an IBM x345 (dual
Intel Xeon 2.4GHz) over NFS to a NetApp FAS960, I was able to get over
100MB/sec, which is 80% of the theoretical max of 125MB/sec.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Theodoropoulos's answer:
Sun's 'Rule of Thumb' from the UltraSPARC II era was that you should have
300Mhz of ultraSPARC II horsepower per gigabit adapter. That's 'dedicated'
horsepower - if you had one 300Mhz cpu and one gigabit adapter, you'd have
no horsepower to spare for your applications. In practice of course, the
gigabit gets throttled down and the horsepower shared. But i would expect
approximately the same performance requirements with ultrasparc III,
frankly.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Alex Madden's answer:
http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0203/817-1657.pdf
<http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0203/817-1657.pdf>
--------------------------------------------------------------
JV's answer:

#2) Throughput may depend more on the underlying storage architecture's
ability to READ. You will get better with Hardware RAID 0/1 than software
RAID like Disksuite or VXVM.
#3) copper or optical gigE? I use optical, but I just got v240s last month
so I am beginning to experiment with their ce interfaces. #4) On optical
ge, with 14 column Veritas stripes, on large-ish dbf files (1.5-2GB),
6x336Mhz cpus, I can get 45 MB/sec with 35% sys. I haven't had a chance to
tune and test my 10-12 cpu UltraS-II (optical) or 2 cpu UltraS-III v240
(copper ce) boxes.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Chipman's answer:
You might want to use " ttcp " utility to test tcp bandwidth throughput. It
is more likely to represent " best case scenario " throughput that is
in-keeping with statements like " gig-ether can do 100Mbytes/sec " :-)
we did a bit of testing here a while back, and I'm appending the info below
as a general reference, for what use it may be.
test boxes were,

athlon MP running either Solaris x86 OR linux
ultraSparcII running solaris8

note, based on my experience, it seems unlikely you will ever get " real
world data xfer " much above 50-55Mbytes/sec over gig-ether. " ttcp "
benchmarks are one thing, but real-world protocols are another.
NOTE: testing done here using two dual-athlon systems, identies as follows:
wulftest = redhat 8 (dual-1800mhz, 1 gig ram, 64-bit PCI)
wulf2 = redhat 8 (dual-2000mhz, 1 gig ram, 64-bit PCI)
thore = solaris8x86 (dual-2000mhz, 1 gig ram, 64-bit PCI)
(note - Wulf2 & Thore are actually the same system with 2 different HDDs to
boot the alternate OS'es)
ultra5 = 270mhz Ultra5 (nb, 32-bit PCI bandwidth only)

Gig-ether NICs being tested are all 64-bit PCI / Cat5 cards:
Syskonnect SK-9821
3Com 3C996B-T (BroadCom chipset)

(note, we had 2 x SK nics and 1 x 3com on-hand, so didn't test 3com<->3com
perfo rmance.)

Software being used for testing was (1) TTCP and (2) Netbackup (for info on
TTCP, visit the URL: http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/pcattcp.htm
<http://www.pcausa.com/Utilities/pcattcp.htm> )

Parameters tuned include Jumbo Frames (MTU of 1500 vs 9000) ;
combinations of NI
C<-> NIC and system<->system

Connection between NICs was made with a crossover cable, appropriately wired
(al l strands) such that Gig-ether was operational.

Note these ##'s are NOT " comprehensive ", ie, NOT every combination of
tuneable p arameters has been attempted / documented here. Sorry about that.

Hopefully, " so
mething is better than nothing ".

[TTCP results]
SysKonnect <-> SysKonnect = 77 MB/s
* Wulftest with Syskonnect (Redhat 8)
* Thore with Syskonnect (Solaris x86)
* Jumbo frames don't affect speed,
but offload the systems by around 20-40% for CPU loading.
SysKonnect <-> 3COM = 78 MB/s
* Wulftest with Syskonnect (Redhat 8)
* Wulf2 with 3com (Redhat 8)
* MTU = 1500

SysKonnect <-> 3COM = 97 MB/s
* Wulftest with Syskonnect (Redhat 8)
* Wulf2 with 3com (Redhat 8)
* MTU = 9000

ULTRA5 <-> Wulftest tests with TTCP:
(SysKonnect <-> Syskonnect NICs)
with JumboFrames:
* 25% CPU load on Ultra5, 29 MB/s

without JumboFrames:
* 60% CPU load on Ultra5, 17 MB/s

[Netbackup results]
Large ASCII file (5 gigs) = 50 MB/s
* Wulftest with SysKonnect (Redhat 8)
* Thore with 3COM (Solaris x86)
* MTU 1500

System backup (OS files, binaries) = 11 MB/s
* Wulftest with SysKonnect (Redhat 8)
* Thore with 3COM (Solaris x86)
* MTU 1500

ORIGINAL QUESTION :

Hi,

Basic question is : What effective throughput can I expect on a Gigabit
Ethernet link with UltraSparc-3 CPU, with or without Jumbo Frame support,
with or without multithreaded transfer ?

I ask this because with UltraSparc-2 CPU (E10K) and GE link (without Jumbo
Frame support) we couldn't get more than :
- 15 Mbytes/s with monothreaded transfer
- 55 Mbytes/s with multithreaded transfer (the best rate was reached
with 10 threads)

(We measured application throughput, that is to say TCP throughput).

As you see the CPU overhead with 1500 MTU was so high (truss showed 80%
kernel), that we had to multithread the transfer to reach the best
throughput (55 Mbytes/s).
Unfortunately we were far from the theoretical limit (100 Mbytes/s ?), even
if there were still CPU resources free (50%), and I can't determine if it
was caused by the small MTU, the poor US-2 throughput or both ?

I think that Jumbo Frame could increase the throughput and lower the CPU
overhead, but how much ?
Will the US-3 throughput help much ?
Is there any chance to reach the 100 Mbytes/s limit ?

Thanks for your feedback, I will summarize.
---
Sebastien DAUBIGNE

Tuning the Sun Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

2005-10-14T15:37:00.000-05:00

Appendix B: Tuning the Sun Gigabit Ethernet Adapter
a. Create a file named /etc/rc2.d/S99netperf
b. Add the following lines:
i.
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/ge instance 0
ii.
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/ge adv_pauseTX 1
iii.
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/ge adv_1000autoneg_cap 0
iv.
/usr/sbin/ndd -set /dev/ge adv_1000fdx_cap 1
c. If you have more than one "ge" adapter on your server, you can
either omit item b.i. and
the settings will affect all instances, or specify the instance you
want to refer to

Disk Failure 880

2005-10-14T15:36:00.001-05:00

A number of failures on a new machine with a number of disks is quite
common. If this is a two disk V880, I'd say you have a problem. If its
a 12 disk V880, I'd call Sun, swap out the disk and shrug it off.

If you look at the probability of disk failure over time, there is an
initial peak as new disks spin in, then several years of low
probability, then a ramping as they get towards the end of servicable
life.

directio shouldn't make a difference. However, I would check the
ambient temperature inside and around the machine (emphasis on
temperature stability rather than value), ensure that it not being
bumped or subject to (excess) vibration, note the humidity of the room
and check for dust.

High Kernel Usage

2005-10-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

Bernd Haug <h...@berndhaug.net> wrote:
> sean...@yahoo.com <sean...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> TOP shows Kernel has been using over 55% CPU.
>> How can we find what are those kernel's processes? why do those use a
>> lot of CPU? Normally i only see about 10%.
> Wouldn't spending some time in syscalls be pretty normal on a DB
> server?

Not that much.

> I rather think it's funny that you have 0 iowait.
> Maybe something went wrong and now your top conflates the two into
> kernel time?

Remember that IOwait is only a subset of idle time. If you have no idle
time, then you can't display any IOwait (even if the disks are slow).

I'd look to see if the "last PID" is increasing rapidly. A constantly
forking program that creates new processes which are quickly reaped will
eat up tons of system time. Difficult to trace directly (well, without
Solaris 10 and dtrace).

Take some guesses and run 'truss' looking for forks.

corelation between %iowait from top and %busy or avwait from sar -d

2005-10-14T15:35:00.000-05:00

MikeHT <mike2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to know from the list if there is any corelation between
> %iowait from top and %busy or avwait from sar -d # #?

No, not necessarily.

> Do it mean if
> %busy is high, then the %iowait
> will be high too?

No.

%busy is a description of what's happening on a disk (or the driver
talking to the disk). %iowait is a description of what's happening on
the CPU.

In some cases they may be correlated, but that's not necessarily true.
There are many cases where they would not be.

> But that corelation is not consistent based on the
> data captured from
> machines A & B. Machine B's devices's %busy is high, but %iowait is
> lower.

Right.

> How is %iowait calculated in top? Any insights? Thanks.

%iowait is the average fraction of time that the CPU is busy and that
the system has at least one outstanding I/O request. The outstanding
I/O may or may not have anything to do with your %busy disk.

Note that a system may be completely I/O swamped while no individual
disk is all that busy. Also, you could have a disk that shows 100%
busy, but it is meanwhile able to keep up with requests very rapidly.

So these numbers may not mean a lot in isolation. They're most useful
when looking at changes over time, or relationships between components.

Note the iowait is a subset of 'idle'. If you can keep the CPUs busy by
working them harder, they'll never display iowait. That's a major
difference between A and B below. B may be more swamped while at the
same time doing more CPU jobs (so that it has less idle time).

Thanks Darren for the reply.

High %iowait could also indicate that path to the disk devices (EMC
symmetric in this case) could be problematic? We are using EMC
powerpath.

MikeHT <mike2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks Darren for the reply.
> High %iowait could also indicate that path to the disk devices (EMC
> symmetric in this case) could be problematic?

It *could*, but it probably doesn't.

%iowait is a very visible number that doesn't often indicate a problem.
A well-tuned, perfectly reasonable machine may still have somewhat
elevated iowait figures during normal operation. Many admins try to
"fix" it when they shouldn't. (Note that because of this and a few
other reasons, Solaris 10 apparantly does not track this any longer, so
it will always appear as zero).

Look for problems by analyzing performance, not by looking at iowait.
Does the application work? Does it respond in good time? Are the
throughput and latency figures on your storage what you expect?

The iostat figures are much more likely to be relevant than the system
iowait number.

/var fills when using pkgadd... query

2005-10-14T15:34:00.000-05:00

/var fills when using pkgadd... query

soplaris 8 on a sparc 20 (!)

i have a psarc 20 that will do a very nice job for me - I just need to
install samba on it. It has a 1 Gb disk that is carved up (historical
installation).
When I attempt to install the samba package it fails becaus ethe fairly
small /var partition fills.

I added a 4 Gb disk I had jandy and created a 4gb parttion (/data) to
play with... I have shelved off varuious areas of /var to /data to
leave more sopace in /var but even this doesn't solve the matter.

So - the crux of my query. Although samba is being installed into a
completely seperate parttion to /var, what is it in /var that is
filling (ie being used?). I've hived off /var/spool/pkg to /data
utilising a soft link, but that doesn't solve it.

1) what is being used in /var anyway

2) is there anything I can do with my pkgadd to avoid use of /var at
all? (-R doesn;t solve it for instance...)

> 1) what is being used in /var anyway

/var/tmp

> 2) is there anything I can do with my pkgadd to avoid use of /var at
> all? (-R doesn;t solve it for instance...)

set $TMPDIR to a location where you have an adequate amount of space.

See pkgadd(1M), 2d paragraph under DESCRIPTION.

>utilising a soft link, but that doesn't solve it.

/var/sadm

Casper

ufsdump warning

2005-10-14T15:33:00.001-05:00

> lolo wrote:
>> When a make ufsdump
>> /usr/sbin/ufsdump 0uf Server1:/dev/rmt/On /export/home

>> I have this message

>> DUMP: Dumping (Pass IV) [regular files]
>> DUMP: Warning - block 1543503872 is beyond the end of `/dev/md/rdsk/d3'
> that's a typical error when you try to backup a filesystem that is
> active. Either unmount /export/home or check "man fssnap"

I've never seen that error on simply an active filesystem.
If the filesystem is larger than d3, you can get that message.

To the OP, can you post 'metastat d3', and 'fstyp -v /dev/md/rdsk/d3 |
grep size', and prtvtoc info for the disk or disks holding d3?

Password Aging, Part 2

2005-10-14T15:33:00.000-05:00

Password Aging, Part 2

If you're starting with a group of users who have been active for a
long time and not had their passwords aged, how should you go about
introducing password aging?

To start, you might first take a look at the dates on which your
users' passwords were last changed. To view the dates by themselves,
you might use a command such as this (run as root):

# cat /etc/shadow | awk -F: '{print $3}' | sort -n | uniq -c

This command sorts the lastchg (last time the password was changed)
field numerically and prints out the number of records with each
particular date value.

Of course, the dates in this command's output are going to be
presented to you as a list of numbers (rather than recognizable
dates). You will see something that looks more or less like this:

7 6445
1 11289
2 11632
53 11676
5 11677
2 11683
1 11849
2 12038
23 12345
1 12881
1 13062

These numbers are a little hard to interpret, but the range of values
and the "popular" values suggest that most users on this system have
not changed their passwords in a very long time and that many of them
might have last changed their passwords in response to a request to do
so (since two groups of people changed their passwords on the same two
days).

But let's try to pin these numbers down and get an idea what dates we
are really looking at. How do you do this? Well, if you have the GNU
date command installed on your system, you can view today's date with
a command such as this:

% expr `date +%s` / 86400

Alternately, you can package this date conversion command in in a
script such as that shown below, call it "today" and run it whenever
you want to know what the current date looks like in the
days-since-the-epoch format. If you're reading this column on the day
that it was first published, that value would be 13062.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# today: a script to print date in days-since-epoch format

$now=`/usr/local/bin/date +%s`;
$_=$now / 86400;
($today)=/(\d+)./; # number of days since 01/01/1970

print "$today\n";

In both the command and the "today" script, we use the "date +%s"
command to produce the current date/time as the number of seconds
since midnight on January 1, 1970. We then divide this value by the
number of seconds in a day (86,400) to convert this value to the
number of days since January 1, 1970. The commented line lops off the
digits on the right side of the decimal point (along with the decimal
point itself). This gives us a value for today.

To determine how long ago one of the other dates in the lastchg list
above happened to be, we can use an expr to calculate the number of
days between today and the date the password was last changed. Let's
choose the most popular value (line 4) for this:

# expr 13062 - 11676
1386

That's 1,386 days ago -- nearly four years! NOTE: The shadow records
with 6445 in the lastchg field are disabled accounts and, thus, don't
factor into our password aging concerns.

If the bulk of your users have the same last-set date, they have
probably never changed their passwords -- or never changed them since
they were last required to do so. Whenever you change a user's
password or one of your users changes his own password, that field in
the /etc/shadow file will be updated.

So, how do you introduce password aging in a situation such as this?
If you add a max value when a user's password hasn't been reset for
nearly four years, chances are that his password will already be
expired and he will not be able to log in.

A better approach would be to initiate password aging by modifying the
lastchg date in your shadow records and then selecting a max value
that will give your users time to change their passwords before they
run out of time. You should also publish notices explaining the change
and focusing your users attention on the need to change their
passwords from time to time.

For example, if you make the lastchg date of a record five months in
the past and then require that the user change his password every six
months, this would give him a month to change his password before he
is locked out. And, from that point forward, he would need to change
his password every six months.

Five months in the past would roughly put the (fictitious) lastchg
date at 12912 (13062 - (5 * 30)). A shadow entry such as that shown
below would, therefore, force sbob to change his password within the
month and would give him a month's worth of warnings before he's
locked out of his account:

sbob:dZlJpUNyyusab:12912:30:180:30:::

On login, sbob would see something like this:

Your password will expire in 30 days.
Last login: Wed Oct 6 16:28:34 2005 from corp.particles.com
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.8 Generic February 2005

If you've never used password aging before, it's probably a good idea
to get your users' attention to the fact that passwords are going to
expire. The one-line warning above may not be enough to get your
users' attention. Perhaps a notice like this in your /etc/motd file
would be more effective:

>>> Passwords must be changed every 6 months <<<
>>> Look for password expiration information <<<
>>> in the system output above <<<

When a message like this is displayed on login for a month, your users
are likely to notice and take action before their passwords expire.

You can also change the default settings for password aging in the
/etc/default/passwd file. For example, if you want users to be
required to keep a password for a month and change it every 6 months,
your values might look like this:

MAXWEEKS=26 MINWEEKS=4 PASSLENGTH=6

Next week, we will look at a script that analyzes the aging parameters
in the /etc/shadow file and warns you about users who are getting
close to their password expiration dates.

Disk performance

2005-10-14T15:32:00.001-05:00

UNIX Museum wrote:
> Hi there,

> I am trying to understand why my SB1K gives me abysmal performance on
> sequential read/write...

> So, it appears to me that the culprit is the scratch filesystem... I
> tried to mount the drive with forcedirectio, but it looks like it made
> things even worse... Does anybody have any suggestion?

Yepp, forcedirectio is for databases that do their own caching.

If you are doing verylargefiles you should :

1. make the filessystem with fragsize set equal to blocksize
2. set cylinder group size to 32.
3 set the "maxbpg" to 50% or 99% of the amount of blocks
in a cylinder group

Look at fstyp(1M) and tunefs(1M) and newfs(1M)

//Lars

Apache installation

2005-10-14T15:32:00.000-05:00

Greetings,
>
> I know this is a Solaris forum, but I'm having problems installing
> apache on Solaris 9; maybe someone on solaris-l has experience
> installing apache. I've done an exhaustive search using Google; no
> useful information was returned. Listed below are the system specifics:
>
> Apache version: 2.0.48
> Compiled Apache source using gcc 3.4.4
> OS: Solaris 9
>
> I used the following commands to compile the apache source:
>
> 1. ./configure --prefix=/mp1/software/apache-2.0.48 --enable-module=so
> 2. make
> 3. make install
>
> The above three steps completed without error. The configure option of
> "--enable-module=so" was listed in my installation guide (not apache
> doc.) as being necessary.
>
> When I attempt to start apache by using, "apachectl start", the
> following error is returned:
>
> Illegal instruction - core dumped
>
> The error is being generated when attempting to run the "httpd" command.
> All of the other commands in $APACHE_HOME/bin load and run without
> errors.
>
> Any help to get apache up and running would be greatly appreciated.
>
> Mike Badar

Re: Apache installation
Posted By Luis Hansen

Im using apache 2.054 with Solaris 9
I compiled:
/configure --enable-module=so --enable-module=all --with-mpm=worker
--enable-shared=max --prefix=/usr/local/apache2054

with mpm=woker apache works in fork & thread ,mpm its an hybrid.

Check if in /usr/local/lib if some library is missing

the user must be nobody as group too in the httpd.conf file

check your configuration with ./apachectl configtest

regards

Replacing Multiple Failed Disks on StoreEdge T3 Array

2005-10-14T15:31:00.001-05:00

Replacing Multiple Failed Disks on StoreEdge T3 Array

You had a double failure, the data is lost, so the system cant reenable it
on its own, the simplest is to remove the volume and rebuild it so that it
can create the parity correctly.

With a single failure it would have recovered on its own when you replaced
the drive, if it doesnt you recover it with

vol recon <drive> [from Standby]

if you didnt have a standby it can recover anyway, it just takes longer.

Also see to that you have the latest firmware for the array and that no
disk in the log has given the "disk error 03" code which might indicate
that they will be kicked out of config during an upgrade of firmware or
very soon after.

running the command

vol verify <volume>

once a week is a good practice since it will test for read failures
hopefully before you have double ones, check the log for the test result.

Cisco Counters meaning

2005-10-14T15:31:00.000-05:00

Counters

* Packets input - Total number of error-free packets received.
* Broadcasts - Total number of broadcast or multicast packets received.
* Runts - Number of packets discarded because they are smaller
than the medium's minimum packet size.
* Giants - Number of packets that are discarded because they
exceed the medium's maximum packet size.
* Throttle - This counter indicates the number of times the input
buffers of an interface have been cleaned because they have not been
serviced fast enough or they are overwhelmed. Typically, an explorer
storm can cause the throttles counter to increment. It's important to
note that every time you have a throttle, all the packets in the input
queue get dropped. This causes very slow performance and may also
disrupt existing sessions.
* Parity - Number of parity errors on the HSSI.
* RX Disabled - Indicates inability to get a buffer when accessing a packet.
* Input Errors - Sum of all errors that prevented the receipt of
datagrams. This may not balance with the sum of the enumerated output
errors, because some datagrams may have more than one error and others
may have errors that do not fall into any of the specific categories.
* CRC - Cyclic redundancy checksum generated mismatch. CRC errors
also are reported when a far-end abort occurs and when the idle flag
pattern is corrupted. This makes it possible to get CRC errors even
when there is no data traffic.
* Frame - Number of packets received incorrectly having a CRC
error and a noninteger number of octets.
* Overrun - Number of times the serial receiver hardware was
unable to hand received data to a hardware buffer because the input
rate exceeded the receiver's ability to handle the data.
* Ignored - Number of received packets ignored by the interface
because the interface hardware ran low on internal buffers.
* Abort - Number of packets whose receipt was aborted.
* Bytes - Total number of bytes, including data and MAC
encapsulation, transmitted by the system.
* Underruns - Number of times that the far-end router's
transmitter has been running faster than the near-end router's
receiver can handle. This may never happen (be reported) on some
interfaces.
* Congestion Drop - Number of messages discarded because the
output queue on an interface grew too long.
* Output Errors - Sum of all errors that prevented the final
transmission. This may not balance with the sum of the enumerated
output errors, because some datagrams may have more than one error and
others may have errors that do not fall into any of the specific
categories.
* Interface Resets - Number of times an interface has been completely reset.
* Restarts - Number of times the controller was restarted because of errors.
* Carrier Transitions - Number of times the carrier detect signal
of a serial interface has changed state.

solaris 9 ssh ahangs on exit ?

2005-10-14T15:30:00.000-05:00

solaris 9 ssh ahangs on exit ?

On solaris 9, recommended patches as of Dec 5th applied.

On occasion, exiting from an ssh session to another machine hangs. Is there
a fix for that ? We're using solaris' ssh.

Thanks

> On occasion, exiting from an ssh session to another machine hangs. Is there
> a fix for that ?

It usually happens when you start a background process and it doesn't
properly close its stdin/out/err. Adding >/dev/null and 2>&1 to command
line usually helps. Keyword here is "usually" -- if you run a program
that does something funny, like piping its stdout to child's stdin
with dup(), all bets are off.

The real problem is in SSH protocol and that can't be fixed in
implementation. So the real fix is to not use ssh.

Dima
--

>The real problem is in SSH protocol and that can't be fixed in
>implementation. So the real fix is to not use ssh.

So what *do* you use, if, say, you want to go from your
cable modem connection and log into the "shell account"
you have on an isp? Everyone says that telnet way, way too
dangerous, too easy to hack into.

Thanks

> So what *do* you use, if, say, you want to go from your

You use ssh. DM was being pedantic in saying that because the
protocol is broken then the only "fix" is not to use it -- unless you
fancy improving the protocol. On the other hand, I'm guessing that
ssh handles all of your needs bar the occasional hung session. Join
the club.

Read the section on Escape Characters in the manual and when your
session hangs on exit apply:

[RETURN] ~ &

[RETURN] ~ .

as appropriate. Noting, of course, that if you've ssh'd through
several boxes you may need to increase the number of escape chars.

Cheers,

Ian

> the club.

Yep. Interactive sessions are not a problem as there's a human
there to press enter-tilde-dot if it doesn't close. It's when
you run it from e.g. cron is when you should worry.

Dima
--
Things seemed simpler before we kept computers. -- IX, Revelation

Solaris 9 sshd / ssh exit codes

2005-10-14T15:29:00.000-05:00

Solaris 9 sshd / ssh exit codes

On Solaris 9, with the latest ssh/sshd patches installed ...

114356-03: SunOS 5.9: /usr/bin/ssh Patch
113273-06: SunOS 5.9: /usr/lib/ssh/sshd Patch

... why is there inconsistent behaviour with ssh exit codes? Why are
there sporadic exit codes of 0 from the following ssh command?

% repeat 100 sh -c 'ssh -n localhost "exit 33" ; echo $?'
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
0
33
33
33
33
33
0
0
0
0
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
33
^Z
Suspended

Juergen Keil <j...@tools.de> writes:
>On Solaris 9, with the latest ssh/sshd patches installed ...
> 114356-03: SunOS 5.9: /usr/bin/ssh Patch
> 113273-06: SunOS 5.9: /usr/lib/ssh/sshd Patch
>... why is there inconsistent behaviour with ssh exit codes? Why are
>there sporadic exit codes of 0 from the following ssh command?

It's a bug which is being addressed.

(There's a race condition between processes exiting and stdin/stdout
being closed, so sshd can close the connection before it has seen
the exit status)

Casper

>>... why is there inconsistent behaviour with ssh exit codes? Why are
>>there sporadic exit codes of 0 from the following ssh command?

> It's a bug which is being addressed.

> (There's a race condition between processes exiting and stdin/stdout
> being closed, so sshd can close the connection before it has seen
> the exit status)

Is that the same bug that causes my CVS over ssh sessions to hang?

Dragan

-
>0
>33
>33
>^Z
>Suspended

Obviously your "localhost" is round-robin DNS to hosts with different
definitions of "exit" ! Have you had a visit from my SAs ?

Is it more informative to do "uname ; exit 33" to let you see
whether the remote command got run ?

>Is that the same bug that causes my CVS over ssh sessions to hang?

It happens mostly on Linux clients.... Here is what I do for my Star
backup script:

_cmd=` eval echo "$STAR -cM -time f=$RTAPE VOLHDR= $host:$i
$STAR_ARGS $STAR_EXTRA -C $i . \; r=\$\? \; sleep 10 \; exit \$\r"`
ssh -q "$host" -l root "$_cmd"
excode=$?
if [ $excode -ne 0 ]; then
echo "----> EXICODE: $excode for $host:$i"
fi

sh not ending (sometimes) from inside a script, why?

2005-10-14T15:27:00.000-05:00

ssh not ending (sometimes) from inside a script, why?

Okay I have this script file that runs from cron job (on a unix box
running solaris 9 with SSH version Sun_SSH_1.0 protocols 1.5/2.0) and
most the time it works just find. Except every so often one of the
three ssh commands I have in the script just doesn't know it's done
and that of course causes the whole thing to hang!

The ssh command has executed. I can tell this because the command is
as follows:

ssh username@hostname "ls /somedirectory" >somedir.file

and a new somedir.file has been created on the machine running the
cron script.

Also, when this happens I can use the "kill sshprocessid" command and
the cron script will continue, fat dumb and happy!

The machine I'm "ssh"ing to is a unix box with OpenSSH_3.7.1p2
protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0.9.6 on it.

I have tried running the ssh command in -v mode and looking at the out
put but can't really make much from it but can see a difference in the
order of things when the command hangs.

The –v output when ssh ended properly is as follows:

1 -debug1: Entering interactive session.
2 - debug1: client_init id 0 arg 0
3 - debug1: Sending command: ls /Rawdata/Archive2/*VCID4.tlm.gz
4 - debug1: channel 0: open confirm rwindow 0 rmax 32768
5 - debug1: channel 0: read<=0 rfd 6 len 0
6 - debug1: channel 0: read failed
7 - debug1: channel 0: input open->drain
8 - debug1: channel 0: close_read
9 - debug1: channel 0: input: no drain shortcut
10 - debug1: channel 0: ibuf empty
11 - debug1: channel 0: input drain->closed
12 - debug1: channel 0: send eof
13 - debug1: channel 0: rcvd eof
14 - debug1: channel 0: output open->drain
15 - debug1: channel: 0 rcvd request for exit-status
16 - debug1: cb_fn 267a4 cb_event 91
17 - debug1: channel 0: rcvd close
18 - debug1: channel 0: obuf empty
19 - debug1: channel 0: output drain->closed
20 - debug1: channel 0: close_write
21 - debug1: channel 0: send close
22 - debug1: channel 0: full closed2
23 - debug1: channel_free: channel 0: status: The following
connections are open: #0 client-session (t4 r0 i8/0 o128/0 fd -1/-1)

24 - debug1: channel_free: channel 0: dettaching channel user
25 - debug1: Transferred: stdin 0, stdout 0, stderr 0 bytes in 0.6
seconds
26 - debug1: Bytes per second: stdin 0.0, stdout 0.0, stderr 0.0
27 - debug1: Exit status 0

The –v output when ssh hung is as follows:

1 - debug1: Entering interactive session.
2 - debug1: client_init id 0 arg 0
3 - debug1: Sending command: ls /Rawdata/Archive2/*VCID4.tlm.gz
4 - debug1: channel 0: open confirm rwindow 0 rmax 32768
5 -debug1: channel 0: read<=0 rfd 6 len 0
6 - debug1: channel 0: read failed
7 - debug1: channel 0: input open->drain
8 - debug1: channel 0: close_read
9 - debug1: channel 0: input: no drain shortcut
10 - debug1: channel 0: ibuf empty
11 - debug1: channel 0: input drain->closed
12 - debug1: channel 0: send eof
13 - debug1: channel 0: rcvd eof
14 - debug1: channel 0: output open->drain
15 - debug1: channel 0: obuf empty
16 - debug1: channel 0: output drain->closed
17 - debug1: channel 0: close_write
18 - debug1: channel 0: send close
19 - debug1: channel: 0 rcvd request for exit-status
20 - debug1: cb_fn 267a4 cb_event 91
21 - debug1: channel 0: rcvd close
22 - debug1: channel 0: full closed2
23 - debug1: channel_free: channel 0: status: The following
connections are open: #0 client-session (t4 r0 i8/0 o128/0 fd -1/-1)

24 - debug1: channel_free: channel 0: dettaching channel user

Note I put the numbers on the trace.

I figure there is a race condition of some kind going on for the end
of command signal and once in awhile it gets missed but.... I just
don't know where else to look....

I'll take any ideas or comments, please!

http://www.snailbook.com/faq/background-jobs.auto.html

Subject: Re: ssh not ending (sometimes) from inside a script, why?

Thank you for the link. I did read through this before posting my
question but I just read through it again and wonder if the answer to
my question is not simply it is going to hang sometimes and there is
nothing I can do about it.

This is of course not the answer I was hoping for but if it is so I
guess I should move on and just write code to kill the process after a
period of time. I just don't think that this answer is very pretty :(

Again any thoughts or comments are welcome, and thanks.
Kym

End of messages

SSH Frequently Asked Questions

2005-10-14T15:22:00.000-05:00

SSH Frequently Asked Questions
Sometimes my SSH connection hangs when exiting — the shell (or remote
command) exits, but the connection remains open, doing nothing.
Quick Fix
You're probably using the OpenSSH server, and started a background
process on the server which you intended to continue after logging out
of the SSH session. Fix: redirect the background process
stdin/stdout/stderr streams (e.g. to files, or /dev/null if you don't
care about them). For example, this hangs:

client% ssh server
server% xterm &
server% logout
hangs...

but this behaves as expected:

client% ssh server
server% xterm < /dev/null >& /dev/null &
server% logout
SSH session terminates
client%

Short Explanation
This problem is usually due to a feature of the OpenSSH server. When
writing an SSH server, you have to answer the question, "When should
the server close the SSH connection?" The obvious answer might seem to
be: close it when the server-side user program started by client
request (shell or remote command) exits. However, it's actually a bit
more complicated; this simple strategy allows a race condition which
can cause data loss (see the explanation below). To avoid this
problem, sshd instead waits until it encounters end-of-file (eof) on
the pipes connecting to the stdout and stderr of the user program.

This strategy, however, can have unexpected consequences. In Unix, an
open file does not return eof until all references to it have been
closed. When you start a background process from the shell on the
server, it inherits references to the shell's standard streams. Unless
you prevent this by redirecting these, or the process closes them
itself (daemons will generally do this), the existence of the new
process will cause sshd to wait indefinitely, since it will never see
eof on the pipe connecting it to the (now defunct) shell process —
because that pipe also connects it to your background process.

This design choice has changed over time. Early versions of OpenSSH
behaved as described here. For some time, it was changed to exit
immediately upon exit of the user program; then, it was changed back
when the possibility of data loss was discovered.
Race Condition Details
As an example, let's take the simple case of:

ssh server cat foo.txt

This should result in the entire contents of the file foo.txt coming
back to the client — but in fact, it may not. Consider the following
sequence of events:

* The SSH connection is set up; sshd starts the target account's
shell as shell -c "cat foo.txt" in a child process, reading the
shell's stdout and sending the data over the SSH connection. sshd is
waiting for the shell to exit.
* The shell, in turn, starts cat foo.txt in a child process, and
waits for it to exit. The file data from foo.txt which cat write to
its stdout, however, does not pass through the shell process on its
way to sshd. cat inherits its stdout file descriptor (fd) from it
parent process, the shell — that fd is a direct reference to the pipe
connecting the shell's stdout to sshd.
* cat writes the last chunk of data from foo.txt, and exits; the
data is passed to the kernel via the write system call, and is waiting
in the pipe buffer to be read by sshd. The shell, which was waiting on
the cat process, exits, and then sshd in turn exits, closing the SSH
connection. However, there is a race condition here: through the
vagaries of process scheduling, it is possible that sshd will receive
and act on the SIGCHLD notifying it of the shell's exit, before it
reads the last chunk of data from the pipe. If so, then it misses that
data.

This sequence of events can, for example, cause file truncation when using scp.

Qlogic Driver Solaris

2005-10-07T11:24:00.001-05:00

All,

How do I get my Solaris 8 server to "see" what is attached on the
switch?

I've read the Procedure Manual (350 pages) for the Brocade 3250 as well
as the QLogic Manuals but so far I have not found any good documentation
that deals with the integration between the HBA and the Brocade switch.

I have 1 LTO2 tape drive on a 3250 Brocade switch, I have a lot more
actually, but I want to start out simple, with 1 attached device.

Also, in my cfgadm -al it shows the device that is attached to the
switch as failing...

c3 fc-private connected configured
unknown
c3::500104f00052cf22 tape connected configured
unknown
c4 fc-private connected configured
unknown
c4::500104f00052cf25 tape connected configured
unknown
c5 fc-fabric connected configured
unknown
c5::500104f00052cf1c unavailable connected configured
failing
c5::500104f00052cf1f unavailable connected configured
failing
c6 fc connected unconfigured
unknown

Note: c5 is the card/port(s) that is/are connected to the switch.

Diagram:

Sun V440:
----------------
| |HBA| |
----------------
|
|
/
/
/
| (Brocade)
-------------------
| P0 P1 P2 P3 |
-------------------
|
|
-> HPUltrium-LTO2 2GBps Drive.

Here is the switch information:

s3250:admin> nsshow
{
Type Pid COS PortName NodeName
TTL(sec)
N 010000; 3;21:00:00:e0:8b:14:12:05;20:00:00:e0:8b:14:12:05; na
FC4s: FCP
Fabric Port Name: 20:00:00:05:1e:35:78:77
NL 010155; 3;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:04;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:03; na
FC4s: FCP [HP Ultrium 2-SCSI K470]
Fabric Port Name: 20:01:00:05:1e:35:78:77
The Local Name Server has 2 entries }
s3250:admin>

I have setup a zone for this tape drive:

s3250:admin> zoneshow
Defined configuration:
cfg: myconfig001
zone1
zone: zone1 3,21; 3,50
zone: zone2 50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:04
zone: zone3 50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:03

Effective configuration:
cfg: myconfig001
zone: zone1 3,21
3,50

Here is my current qlc.conf:

# cat qlc.conf | grep -v ^# | grep . | sort
hba0-adapter-hard-loop-ID=0;
hba0-enable-adapter-hard-loop-ID=0;

# pkginfo -i | grep qlc
system SUNWqlc Qlogic ISP 2200/2202 Fibre Channel Device
Driver
system SUNWqlcx Qlogic ISP 2200/2202 Fibre Channel Device
Driver (64 bit)

# prtdiag -v | grep qlc
0 pci 66 PCI2 SUNW,qlc-pci1077,2312 (scsi-+

0 pci 66 PCI2 SUNW,qlc-pci1077,2312 (scsi-+

0 pci 33 PCI3 SUNW,qlc-pci1077,2312 (scsi-+

Yes, I know I have two dual-port cards; I am only using the first one at
the moment.

I've noticed there are actual QLOGIC HBA drivers, I have installed them
in the past but either I did not configure them properly, or something--
as I did not notice any effect with the drivers installed or not
installed.

The drivers being:

Solaris.QLogic.HBA.Fiber.Drivers$ ls
Troubleshooting\ For\ The\ QLogic\ 2342\ HBAs.pdf
qla2300-readme.txt
qla2300.sparc_pkg.Z
sansurfer2.0.30b23-1_solaris_install.bin
scli.1.06.16-15.SPARC-X86.Solaris.pkg.Z

Anyone have any clues?

Thanks,

Justin.

large file limitation Veritas

2005-10-07T11:24:00.000-05:00

Subject: RE: large file limitation

Thanks to all for your replies, obviously many options but I went with
the option below to use fsadm to reconfigure the FS to use largefiles on
the fly, Thanks to VXFS, and also thanks to James Scott for a similar
reply. Worked like a charm.

Paul

Subject: Re: large file limitation

VxFS. Good :-)

2GB not an issue, can enable on the fly without unmounting etc.
/usr/lib/fs/vxfs/fsadm -o largefiles /MOUNTPOINT

( ex: /usr/lib/fs/vxfs/fsadm -o largefiles /data1)

verify:

/usr/lib/fs/vxfs/fsadm /data1

There you are, that is why you have Veritas :-)

Cheers

Paul.Sagneri@cox.com wrote:
> Guru's
>
> I have 6gig of data that I need to tar up and move to my local drive
and
> would like to move it all in one tar file. However, my tar bombs out
> after the 2g limitation. I'm running Solaris 8 with vxfs but didn't
> make the file system using the largefiles option.
>
> Is there a way to tar up a directory structure larger than 2g at this
> point. I thought this was only a restriction in 2.6 and prior.
>
> TIA
>
> Paul Sagneri

Permissions messed in /devices - easy fix?

2005-10-07T11:23:00.000-05:00

Subject: [SUMMARY] Permissions messed in /devices - easy fix?

-----
Original Post:
Due to an errant command during a security-tightening process, I have
a Solaris 8 box that has had all of the Other Write bits turned off
on the special files in /devices.

Is there a reasonably easy method to get Solaris to regenerate
/devices from scratch?

I've tried "touch /reconfigure and reboot" - no dice - doesn't seem
to regenerate something that's needed that's already there.

Suggestion: how about nuking /devices and /dev from a script as the
last thing the OS does on the way down then boot -r?

-----

IMHO the best responses came from Casper Dik and David Foster to use
pkgchk -f SUNWcsd
to force the reinstallation (and presumably permissions) of the
devices.

Unfortunately, this advice came too late. What I did was
touch /reconfigure
rm -rf /dev /devices
from single user mode
init 0
at which point the system locked.

From this point on the system would lock sometime shortly after
reading /etc/system. I made many efforts to restore /devices to no
avail after that point. Attempts included:
*) disabled SVM - I could, after all, only really change one side of
the mirror when booting from CD.
*) boot from CD, copy /devices and /dev from the running image to the
boot drive.
*) boot from CD, use the suggested devfsadm -r /tmp/a method to
rebuild the hierarchy.
*) Last message I was getting looked like the system had loaded the
RDAC driver for my SAN disks, so I disabled it.

Basically got the same lock every boot attempt.

Interestingly enough, on all these boot attempts where the 880
locked, it would not even respond to BREAK on the ttya line (what I'm
using for console). In all attempts I had to power cycle the box.

The box is now back in production with a fresh new Solaris 9 load. It
is something we probably should have started at Tuesday noon instead
of Wednesday afternoon, but hindsight is always 20/20.

Thanks for all replies.

-----
This would generally be my experience, from Grant:
I would be careful about the /devices directory. I had to restore a
system from backup, using NetBackup and the system wouldn't boot.
After I rebuilt the system from a full backup, the system wouldn't
boot. I even tried rebooting with -r and even touch /reconfigure.
It turned out the /devices tree wasn't restored (NetBackup doesn't
back up the /devices directory). The system would hang right after
reading the system file. I finally had to boot from cdrom, run
devfsadm on the mounted /a filesystem, and then rebooted. Then it
booted. Hope this helps.
-----
From Tim:
Possibly a red herring, but wouldn't a
sudo find /dev -name '*' -exec chmod o+w \;
do the trick?
Response: Yes, but Yes. Not everything should have write permission.
-----
Remove everything *except* for your boot device, rename
/etc/path_to_inst then 'reboot -- -ra'. It'll ask you if you want to
rebuild the path_to_inst
Response: might have worked, but I didn't need path_to_inst rebuilt
as far as I knew. As stated earlier, keeping the path to the boot
device would have been useful.

Live Upgrade Help

2005-10-07T11:22:00.000-05:00

Subject: UPDATE: Live Upgrade Help
Hi Gurus,

I haven't received any response to this. I need help to resolve this as
we are planning to upgrade all our Production Servers from Solaris 2.6
to Solaris 8 by next week. Any Help will be greatly appreciated.

I tried it on a different box with same result.
One thing which i noticed is SUNWluu and SUNlur
I installed both from my Jumpstart Box Solaris 8 5/03 however live
upgrade version is:
"Live Upgrade 2.0 10/01"
I have only one version of Solaris 8 5/03 on my Jumpstart Box.
ALso i am not clear about profile which i am using
My profile file is upgrade and its content is
install_type upgrade

Here is theoutput of my Live Upgrade:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------

# lucreate -c "Solaris26" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0:ufs -m
/usr:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5:ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3:ufs -m
/opt:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4:ufs -m /home:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s6:ufs -m
-:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1:swap -m /citadon:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s7 -n "Solaris_8"
Please wait while your system configuration is determined.
No name for Current BE.
Current BE is named <Solaris26>.
Creating initial configuration for primary BE <Solaris26>.
PBE configuration successful: PBE name <Solaris26> PBE Boot Device
</dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0>.
Determining what file systems should be in the new BE.

Searching /dev for possible BE filesystem devices

Please wait while the configuration files are updated.
Please wait. Configuration validation in progress...

************************************************************
********************
Beginning process of creating Boot Environment <Solaris_8>.
No more user interaction is required until this process is complete.
************************************************************
********************

Setting BE <Solaris_8> state to Not Complete.
Creating file systems on BE <Solaris_8>.
Creating <ufs> file system on </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0>.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0: 1027216 sectors in 218 cylinders of 19 tracks, 248
sectors
501.6MB in 14 cyl groups (16 c/g, 36.81MB/g, 17664 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 75680, 151328, 226976, 302624, 378272, 453920, 529568, 605216,
680864,
756512, 832160, 907808, 983456,
Creating <ufs> file system on </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s6>.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s6: 2101552 sectors in 446 cylinders of 19 tracks, 248
sectors
1026.1MB in 23 cyl groups (20 c/g, 46.02MB/g, 11200 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 94528, 189024, 283520, 378016, 472512, 567008, 661504, 756000,
850496,
944992, 1039488, 1133984, 1228480, 1322976, 1417472, 1511968, 1606464,
1700960, 1795456, 1889952, 1984448, 2078944,
Creating <ufs> file system on </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4>.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s4: 12326592 sectors in 2616 cylinders of 19 tracks, 248
sectors
6018.8MB in 119 cyl groups (22 c/g, 50.62MB/g, 6208 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 103952, 207872, 311792, 415712, 519632, 623552, 727472, 831392,
935312,
1039232, 1143152, 1247072, 1350992, 1454912, 1558832, 1662752, 1766672,
1870592, 1974512, 2078432, 2182352, 2286272, 2390192, 2494112, 2598032,
2701952, 2805872, 2909792, 3013712, 3117632, 3221552, 3317280, 3421200,
3525120, 3629040, 3732960, 3836880, 3940800, 4044720, 4148640, 4252560,
4356480, 4460400, 4564320, 4668240, 4772160, 4876080, 4980000, 5083920,
5187840, 5291760, 5395680, 5499600, 5603520, 5707440, 5811360, 5915280,
6019200, 6123120, 6227040, 6330960, 6434880, 6538800, 6634528, 6738448,
6842368, 6946288, 7050208, 7154128, 7258048, 7361968, 7465888, 7569808,
7673728, 7777648, 7881568, 7985488, 8089408, 8193328, 8297248, 8401168,
8505088, 8609008, 8712928, 8816848, 8920768, 9024688, 9128608, 9232528,
9336448, 9440368, 9544288, 9648208, 9752128, 9856048, 9951776, 10055696,
10159616, 10263536, 10367456, 10471376, 10575296, 10679216, 10783136,
10887056, 10990976, 11094896, 11198816, 11302736, 11406656, 11510576,
11614496, 11718416, 11822336, 11926256, 12030176, 12134096, 12238016,
Creating <ufs> file system on </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5>.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s5: 4198392 sectors in 891 cylinders of 19 tracks, 248
sectors
2050.0MB in 41 cyl groups (22 c/g, 50.62MB/g, 8256 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 103952, 207872, 311792, 415712, 519632, 623552, 727472, 831392,
935312,
1039232, 1143152, 1247072, 1350992, 1454912, 1558832, 1662752, 1766672,
1870592, 1974512, 2078432, 2182352, 2286272, 2390192, 2494112, 2598032,
2701952, 2805872, 2909792, 3013712, 3117632, 3221552, 3317280, 3421200,
3525120, 3629040, 3732960, 3836880, 3940800, 4044720, 4148640,
Creating <ufs> file system on </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3>.
/dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s3: 1027216 sectors in 218 cylinders of 19 tracks, 248
sectors
501.6MB in 14 cyl groups (16 c/g, 36.81MB/g, 17664 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
32, 75680, 151328, 226976, 302624, 378272, 453920, 529568, 605216,
680864,
756512, 832160, 907808, 983456,
Mounting file systems for BE <Solaris_8>.
Calculating required sizes of file systems for BE <Solaris_8>.
Populating file systems on BE <Solaris_8>.
Copying file system contents to BE <Solaris_8>.
INFORMATION: Setting asynchronous flag on ABE <Solaris_8> mount point
</.alt.2703/var> file system type <ufs>.
INFORMATION: Setting asynchronous flag on ABE <Solaris_8> mount point
</.alt.2703/usr> file system type <ufs>.
INFORMATION: Setting asynchronous flag on ABE <Solaris_8> mount point
</.alt.2703/opt> file system type <ufs>.
INFORMATION: Setting asynchronous flag on ABE <Solaris_8> mount point
</.alt.2703/home> file system type <ufs>.
INFORMATION: Setting asynchronous flag on ABE <Solaris_8> mount point
</.alt.2703/> file system type <ufs>.
Copying of file system / directory </var> is in progress...
Copying of file system / directory </var> completed successfully.
Copying of file system / directory </usr> is in progress...
Copying of file system / directory </usr> completed successfully.
Copying of file system / directory </opt> is in progress...
Copying of file system / directory </opt> completed successfully.
Copying of file system / directory </home> is in progress...
Copying of file system / directory </home> completed successfully.
Copying of file system / directory </> is in progress...
Copying of file system / directory </> completed successfully.
Creating compare database for file system </var>.
Creating compare database for file system </usr>.
Creating compare database for file system </opt>.
Creating compare database for file system </home>.
Creating compare database for file system </>.
Updating compare database on other BEs.
Updating compare database on BE <Solaris_8>.
Compare databases updated on all BEs.
Making Boot Environment <Solaris_8> bootable.
Making the ABE bootable.
Updating ABE's /etc/vfstab file.
The update of the vfstab file on the ABE succeeded.
Updating ABE's /etc/mnttab file.
The update of the mnttab file on the ABE succeeded.
Updating ABE's /etc/dumpadm.conf file.
The update of the dumpadm.conf file on the ABE succeeded.
Updating partition ID tag on boot environment <Solaris_8> device
</dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2> to be root slice.
Updating boot loader for <SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-cEngine> on boot
environment <Solaris_8> device </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0> to match OS release.
Making the ABE <Solaris_8> bootable succeeded.
Setting BE <Solaris_8> state to Complete.
Creation of Boot Environment <Solaris_8> successful.
Creation of Boot Environment <Solaris_8> successful.
# luupgrade -u -n "Solaris_8" -s /opt/install/Solaris_28_503 -j
/opt/install/config/liveupgrade/upgrade
Validating the contents of the media </opt/install/Solaris_28_503>.
The media is a standard Solaris media.
The media contains an operating system upgrade image.
The media contains <Solaris> version <8>.
The media contains patches for the product.
Locating upgrade profile template to use.
Locating the operating system upgrade program.
Checking for existence of previously scheduled Live Upgrade requests.
Creating upgrade profile for BE <Solaris_8>.
Updating ABE's /etc/vfstab file.
The update of the vfstab file on the ABE succeeded.
Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE <Solaris_8>.
Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE <Solaris_8>.
CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment
unstable
or unbootable.
Segmentation Fault
The operating system patch installation completed.
WARNING: BE file system </dev/dsk/c0t1d0s6> not mounted.
The Solaris upgrade of the BE <Solaris_8> failed.

Hi Gurus,

I figured out the problem. It was typo in the lucreate command near /opt
(s was missing) .After rectifying that I was able to create BE but while
in upgrade process it failed with error "segmentation fault".

luupgrade -u -n "Solaris_8" -s /install/Solaris_28_503/ -j
/install/config/liveupgrade/upgrade

Snip.....

Creating upgrade profile for BE <Solaris_8>.
Updating ABE's /etc/vfstab file.
The update of the vfstab file on the ABE succeeded.
Determining packages to install or upgrade for BE <Solaris_8>.
Performing the operating system upgrade of the BE <Solaris_8>.
CAUTION: Interrupting this process may leave the boot environment
unstable or unbootable.

Segmentation Fault
The operating system patch installation completed.
The Solaris upgrade of the BE <Solaris_8> failed.

Any help/pointer will be greatly appreciated. I will summarize.

Regards

Hi Gurus,

This is my first Live Upgrade so please bear with me if my questions
sound silly.

I am trying to do live upgrade from Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 8 and ran
into following error:

# lucreate -c "Solaris_26" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0:ufs -m
/usr:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3:

ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4:ufs -m /opt:/dev/dsk/c0t1d06:ufs -m
-:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1:swap -m /home:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5 -n "Solaris_8"

Please wait while your system configuration is determined.
No name for Current BE.
Current BE is named <Solaris_26>.
Creating initial configuration for primary BE <Solaris_26>.
PBE configuration successful: PBE name <Solaris_26> PBE Boot Device
</dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0>.

Determining what file systems should be in the new BE.

Searching /dev for possible BE filesystem devices

luconfig: ERROR: Template filesystem definition failed for /opt..

ERROR: Configuration of BE failed.

I id the flowing steps to create a boot environment:

1) Install Latest patch Cluster on Target Box
2) Install SUNWluu and SUNWlur from Solaris 8 CD to target box.
3) Created partition on Target box on second Disk
4) Mount Jumstart /opt/install to target box as /install
5) Ran lucreate to create a boot environment on target box second disk
as below:

# lucreate -c "Solaris_26" -m /:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0:ufs -m
/usr:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s3:

ufs -m /var:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s4:ufs -m /opt:/dev/dsk/c0t1d06:ufs -m
-:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1:swap -m /home:/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5 -n "Solaris_8"

1) Do I need to create a file system with newfs? Or just partition will

do?

2) On Jumpstart Box what steps I need to follow besides creating a

profile file which contains - "install_type upgrade" ?

3) How do I select cluster type? Cluster SUNWCall?

4) How do I select the Patch Cluster for Solaris 8 on jumpstart Box?

Any help will be greatly appreciated

TIA

How do I tell what caused my machine to crash?

2005-10-07T11:18:00.000-05:00

Subject: 6.1) How do I tell what caused my machine to crash?

The crash messages will usually be displayed on the console, and are
usually logged to /var/adm/messages via syslog as well after a warm
reboot. In older versions of Solaris, the "dmesg" command may also
show crash messages. If your system repeatedly crashes with similar
looking errors, try searching through the patch list on the Sun
patch database for a description that matches your machine.

In versions of Solaris 2 up to and including Solaris 2.6, uncomment
the "savecore" line in the file /etc/init.d/sysetup to enable crash
dumps. As of Solaris 7 and later, crash dumps are enabled by
default; see the manual page for dumpadm(1M) for information on how
to customize system dump configuration.

To report a crash dump, you need a symbolic traceback for it to be
useful to the person looking at it. Type the following:
cd /var/crash/`hostname`
echo '$c' | adb -k unix.0 vmcore.0

The "crash" utility can be useful for analyzing crash dumps for
Solaris up to and including Solaris 8. "Crash" has been superseded
by "mdb" (modular debugger) as of Solaris 8.

What can I do if my machine slows to a crawl or just hangs?

2005-10-07T10:09:00.000-05:00

Subject: 6.2) What can I do if my machine slows to a crawl or just hangs?

Try running "ps" to look for large numbers of the duplicate programs or
processes with a huge size field. Some system daemons occasionally can
get into a state where they fork repeatedly and eventually swamp the
system. Killing off the child processes doesn't do any good, so you have
to find the "master" process. It will usually have the lowest pid.

Another useful approach is to run vmstat to pin down what resource(s)
your machine is running out of. You can tell vmstat to give ongoing
reports by specifying a report interval as its first argument.

The programs "top" and "sps" are good for finding processes that are
loading your system. "Top" will give you the processes that are consuming
the most cpu time. "Sps" is a better version of "ps" that runs much faster
and displays processes in an intuitive manner. Top is available at
ftp://ftp.groupsys.com/pub/top/. Sps is available at
ftp://ftp.csv.warwick.ac.uk/pub/solaris2/sps-sol2.tar.gz.

Doug Hughes <Doug dot Hughes at Eng dot Auburn dot EDU> has written a
small, quick PS workalike called "qps", available from his web page at
http://www.eng.auburn.edu/users/doug/second.html

Sometimes you run out of memory and you won't be able to run enough
commands to even find out what is wrong. You will get messages of the type
"out of memory" or "no more processes". Note that "out of memory" refers to
virtual memory, not physical memory. On a Solaris system, virtual memory
is generally equal to the sum of the swap space and the amount of physical
memory (less a roughly constant amount for the kernel) on the machine. The
command "swap -s" will tell you how much virtual memory is available.

You can sync the disks to minimize filesystem corruption if you have to
crash the system:

Use the L1-A sequence to crash the system. If you are on an older system,
type "g0" and you will get the message "panic: ... syncing file systems".
When you see the word "done", hit L1-A again and reboot. On systems
with the "new" prom, type "n" to get into the new command mode and type
"sync".

How do I find out how much physical memory a machine has?

2005-10-07T10:07:00.000-05:00

Subject: 6.3) How do I find out how much physical memory a machine has?

Use /usr/sbin/prtconf if the machine is running Solaris. If it's a
sun4u running Solaris 8 or previous, /usr/platform/sun4u/sbin/prtdiag
is very helpful. It's /usr/sbin/prtdiag in Solaris 9 and later.

On high-end machines, /usr/sbin/cfgadm -al can also provide memory
information.

The banner message on reboot (or type "banner" in the monitor on machines
with Openboot proms) will usually report the amount of physical memory.

Alternatively, you can open up the case and count SIMMS and/or memory
boards.

A perl script "memconf" is also available that identifies the sizes and
locations of SIMM/DIMM memory modules installed in a Sun system. It
also works on several SPARC clones and with Sun Explorer data. It is
maintained by Tom Schmidt <tschmidt at micron dot com>. Download memconf from
http://www.4schmidts.com/unix.html

How do I find out what my machine's memory is being used for? How can I tell if I need more memory?

2005-10-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

Subject: 6.4) How do I find out what my machine's memory is being used for?
How can I tell if I need more memory?

To discover how much virtual memory (i.e. swap) is free, run "swap -s" or
"vmstat". If you're using tmpfs for /tmp, "df /tmp" will also work.

Discovering how physical memory is being used can be more difficult,
however. Memory pages that are not being used by processes are used as a
sort of extended cache, storing pages of memory-mapped files for possible
later use. The kernel keeps only a small set of pages free for short-term
use, and frees up more on demand. Hence the free memory reported by vmstat
is not an accurate reflection, for example, of the amount of memory
available for user processes.

An easy way to determine whether or not your machine needs more memory
is to run vmstat and examine the po (page out) column and the sr (scan
rate) column. If these columns consistently show large numbers, this
suggests that your machine does not have enough memory to support its
current workload, and frequently needs to write pages belonging to
active processes to disk in order to free up enough memory to run the
current job.

How can my program tell what model Sun it is running on?

2005-10-07T10:05:00.000-05:00

How can my program tell what model Sun it is running on?Subject: 9.2)

On older suns, the model type is encoded in the hostid. For
suns with the "Openboot" prom (All sparcstations and the 600 series),
/usr/sbin/prtconf will reveal the model type.

"Suntype", written by John DiMarco (jdd@cs.toronto.edu) is a shell
script which does the appropriate thing on all suns. It is available
for anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp.cs.toronto.edu/pub/jdd/suntype

Alternatively, grab Michael Cooper's <mcooper at magnicomp dot com> "sysinfo"
program, which provides all sorts of information about a given system,
including the machine type. sysinfo is available on the web at
http://www.magnicomp.com/, although it is now a commercial product that is
free only for educational and non-profit organizations.

My remote ufsdump is failing with a "Protocol botched" message.

2005-10-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

Subject: 10.1) My remote ufsdump is failing with a "Protocol botched"
message. What do I do?

The problem produces output like the following:

...
DUMP: Dumping /dev/rsd0a (/) to /dev/nrst8 on host foo
DUMP: mapping (Pass I) [regular files]
DUMP: mapping (Pass II) [directories]
DUMP: estimated 8232 blocks (4.02MB) on 0.00 tape(s).
DUMP: Protocol to remote tape server botched (in rmtgets).
rdump: Lost connection to remote host.
DUMP: Bad return code from dump: 1

This occurs when something in .cshrc on the remote machine prints something
to stdout or stderr (eg. stty, echo). The remote ufsdump command doesn't
expect this, and chokes. Other commands which use the rsh protocol (eg.
rdist, rtar) may also be affected.

The way to get around this is to add the following line near the
beginning of .cshrc, before any command that might send something
to stdout or stderr:

if ( ! $?prompt ) exit

This causes .cshrc to exit when prompt isn't set, which distinguishes
between remote commands (eg. rdump, rsh) where these variables are not
set, and interactive sessions (eg. rlogin) where they are.

How do I restore to a different location the contents of a tarfile created with absolute pathnames

2005-10-07T10:03:00.000-05:00

Subject: 10.4) How do I restore to a different location the contents of a
tarfile created with absolute pathnames?

Tarfiles should not normally be created with absolute pathnames, only
with relative pathnames. Do not type "tar c /path/name" to create a tar
archive, type "(cd /path; tar c name)" instead.

Note: if you do "(cd /path/name; tar c .)", you will indeed avoid absolute
pathnames, but beware that the tarfile created may silently overwrite the
permissions of the current directory when unpacked. That's OK if you
unpack it via:
"mkdir name; cd name; tar xf /my/tarfile.tar
That's not OK if you unpack it via:
"cd /tmp; tar xf /my/tarfile.tar" -- you will change the permissions
of /tmp.

If you do have an archive created with absolute pathnames, you can unpack
it in a different location by using GNU's version of tar, which will strip
off the leading /.

Alternatively, you can use pax to strip off the leading /, as follows:

pax -r -s '/^\///' <abspath.tar

Or you can use chroot and a statically linked version of tar, as follows:

cp /usr/sbin/static/tar /tmp/restore
# cd /tmp/restore
# cat abspath.tar | chroot /tmp/restore /tar xf -

Why do both my net interfaces have the same ethernet address?

2005-10-07T09:58:00.000-05:00

Subject: 12.1) Why do both my net interfaces have the same ethernet address?

The Ethernet version 2.0 specification (November 1982) states:

The physical address of each station is set by network
management to a unique value associated with the station,
and distinct from the address of any other station on any
Ethernet. The setting of the station's physical address
by network management allows multiple multiple data link
controllers connected to a single station to respond to
the same physical address.

This doesn't normally constitute a problem because each interface will
typically be on a different subnet. If, for some reason, different
ethernet addresses are required on different interfaces (for example, to
attach two interfaces to the same subnet), a new one may be assigned
using the ifconfig command. Alternatively, for all modern Sun hardware,
you can set the "local-mac-address?" eeprom variable to "true", which will
cause each NIC to use a unique MAC address. This is needed for many
failover and trunking configurations.

How do I set my hme interface to e.g. 100Mb full duplex

2005-10-07T09:38:00.000-05:00

Subject: 12.3) How do I set my hme interface to e.g. 100Mb full duplex?

This applies only to Solaris 2.5 or later; hme interfaces are not supported
under SunOS 4.x or earlier versions of Solaris.

Sun's 10/100 network interface on the Ultra systems and on the SunSWIFT
network cards are capable of negotiating with a network switch; if this
is working, and if the other end is capable of 100Mb full duplex (FD)
operation, the hme card will automatically set itself properly. However,
this may not necessarily work with some networking gear.

If the two ends have different ideas about what mode the link is, you
may see "late collision" messages, dropped packets, or complete failure.

To force a particular mode, e.g. 100Mb FD, you can use ndd as follows:

# turn off autonegotiation
ndd -set /dev/hme adv_autoneg_cap 0
# turn on 100Mb full-duplex capability
ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100fdx_cap 1
# turn off 100Mb half-duplex capability
ndd -set /dev/hme adv_100hdx_cap 0
# turn off 10Mb full-duplex capability
ndd -set /dev/hme adv_10fdx_cap 0
# turn off 10Mb half-duplex capability
ndd -set /dev/hme adv_10hdx_cap 0

You may have to force the other end (e.g. switch) to use the same mode.
Consult the manual for your switch. NB: Fast ethernet hubs are always
100Mb half-duplex, and ethernet hubs are always 10Mb half-duplex.

If you have more than one hme card in your system, before issuing the
above ndd commands, you need to first select the specific hme card you
want to set. For example, to select hme2, type:
ndd -set /dev/hme instance 2
Subsequent ndd commands to /dev/hme will only apply to hme2.

If you want to force all the hme cards on your system to a specific
mode at machine boot, you can set hme driver variables in /etc/system.
For example, to force all hme cards on the system to use 100Mbit FD,
put the following in /etc/system:

set hme:hme_adv_autoneg_cap=0
set hme:hme_adv_100fdx_cap=1
set hme:hme_adv_100hdx_cap=0
set hme:hme_adv_10hdx_cap=0
set hme:hme_adv_10fdx_cap=0

How do I find out what process is using a particular port?

2005-10-07T09:37:00.001-05:00

Subject: 12.4) How do I find out what process is using a particular port?

Ports are held open in the same way as files are, by file handles within
the process. In most states, a port will also have a handle into another
process on the other side of that connection. If you need to find out
which process is holding open a particular port, run lsof
(ftp://ftp.cerias.purdue.edu/pub/tools/unix/sysutils/lsof) and grep for the
port number.

Thanks to Stuart Whitby <swhitby at legato dot com>

I've forgotten the root password; how can I recover?

2005-10-07T09:37:00.000-05:00

Subject: 15.1) I've forgotten the root password; how can I recover?

You need to have access to the machine's console.

1. Note the root partition (e.g. /dev/sd0a or /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0)
2. Hit STOP-A or L1-A (or, on an ASCII terminal or emulator, send a
<BREAK>) to halt the operating system, if it's running.
3. Boot single-user from CD-ROM (boot cdrom -s) or network
install/jumpstart server (boot net -s) (NB: if it asks you for a prom
password, see below.)
4. Mount the root partition (e.g. /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0) on "/a". "/a" is
an empty mount point that exists at this stage of the installation
procedure. (mount /dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0 /a)
5. Set your terminal type so you can use a full-screen editor, e.g. vi.
(you can skip this step if you know how to use "ex" or "vi" from open
mode). If you're on a sun console, type "TERM=sun; export TERM"; if
you're using an ascii terminal (or terminal emulator on a PC) for your
console, set TERM to the terminal type (e.g. TERM=vt100; export TERM).
6. Edit the passwd file (/a/etc/passwd for SunOS 4.x, /a/etc/passwd.adjunct
for SunOS 4.x with shadow passwords/C2 security), /a/etc/shadow for
Solaris 2.x and remove the encrypted password entry for root
7. cd to /; Type "umount /a"
8. reboot as normal in single-user mode ("boot -s"). The root account will
not have a password. Give it a new one using the passwd command.

Thanks to Stefan Voss <s dot voss at terradata dot de>

PROM passwords:

Naturally, you may not want anyone with physical access to the machine to
be able to do the above to erase the root password. Suns have a security
password mechanism in the PROM which can be set (this is turned off by
default). The man page for the eeprom command describes this feature.

If security-mode is set to "command", the machine only be booted without
the prom password from the default device (i.e. booting from CD-ROM or
install server will require the prom password). Changing the root password
in this case requires moving the default device (e.g. the boot disk) to a
different SCSI target (or equivalent), and replacing it with a similarly
bootable device for which the root password is known. If security-mode is
set to full, the machine cannot be booted without the prom password, even
from the default device; defeating this requires replacing the NVRAM on the
motherboard. "Full" security has its drawbacks -- if, during normal
operations, the machine is power-cycled (e.g. by a power outage) or halted
(e.g. by STOP-A), it cannot reboot without the intervention of someone
who knows the prom password.

modifying scripts with binary inside

2005-10-07T09:09:00.000-05:00

Subject: SUMMARY: modifying scripts with binary inside

Hi Managers,

Sorry for the long delay. I have just completed fixing my problem.

I want to thank you all for your responses.
At the end of this msg I have attached the 3-4 suggestions I had from ppl.
I have not tried editing the binary but I wanted you all to see the other
suggestions.

My goal was to edit the text portion of the script w/o corrupting the binary.

First of all this file did in fact have text and binary w/i one file (script).
The script removes the binary w/ the "tail" cmd and then unzips, "tar xf" and
installs the binary.
The binary contains patches and packages, so the script was huge 240MB +. That
posed another problem, the file being
too large for vi.

I attacked this problem using Brad's method. Thank you Brad.

Objective: Remove the binary, edit the text portion, and still be able to run
my script.

At first I wanted to reattach my edited text back to the binary but instead I
just made the edited script (which has no binary now) access the original
script and work with the binary from that file. This worked wonderfully.

Solution:

##Take the binary out
$ mv scriptname scriptname.yuck
$ strings scriptname.yuck > scriptname
$ vi scriptname
##Above works but the binary was turned into crazy chars and stayed inside the
file, so still too large for vi so here are the cmds to deal w/ that
##quote from Brad
Use split(1). I'd recommend

split -b 1m pre-req.install.orig.nobin chunk

This will produce about 156 one-megabyte files, named chunk.aa, chunk.ab, etc.

Then use:

for FILE in chunk.*
do
file $FILE
done > /tmp/chunkstyle

Now scan /tmp/chunkstyle for the first file that file(1) reports to be
non-text. If, for example, that one is chunk.je, edit chunk.jd to remove the
binary characters at the end (if any), then:

cat chunk.[a-i]* chunk.j[a-d] > script

Afterwards, script should contain your script.

A better way is to find out which chunk contains the last line of the script.
It's probably "exit 0", test this with:

grep "exit 0" pre-req.install.orig.nobin

If you only get one result, that's the string to use to find the end of the
file in the middle of some chunk:

grep "exit 0" chunk.*

Then edit that chunk to get rid of binary characters, and cat using wildcards
as above.

If you don't get the wildcards part, here's the scoop: chunk.[a-i]* matches
chunk.aa, chunk.ab, ..., chunk.iz. You could also use chunk.[a-i][a-z]. The
second expression (chunk.j[a-d]) matches chunk.ja, chunk.jb, chunk.jc, and
chunk.jd. This assumes that the end of the script and the beginning of the
binary data is in the file chunk.jd.

Be sure to read the man page for split(1), and of course, take great care not
to clobber your original, pre-split files.
## END quote from Brad
I just edited the chunk that contained the text script portion which was the
first one. All the other junks had crazy chars (very much readable) that
represented the binary. Like I said up top my edited script (no bin) was
modified to just access and create the tar file from the orig. text/binary
script.
Suggestions from others:
(You can use plain old Bill Joy vi just fine. vim, on the other hand,
will corrupt the binary portion.)
(You probably need a hex editor. Try this one
<http://www.hhdsoftware.com/hexeditor.html> )
(If you can replace text with the same number of characters you may get
away with using emacs. If you're not familair with emacs, play with it a
little on some othe files first. It's very powerful, but it has a bit of a
learning curve. Also, and this should go without saying, work on a copy of
the script, not the original, and test the modified version before putting
it up for general consumption.
Allan)
(Perl...but vi should work, too. )

> Subject: modifying scripts with binary inside
>
> I am just curious as to what is used to modify text scripts that also have
binaries inside of them.
> I want to modify the text only portion. I was told you can't use vi.
>
> Thank you for your time.
>
> Al

V440 hardware disk mirroring

2005-10-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

Subject: Summary: V440 hardware disk mirroring

Many thanks to every one who replied,
the builtin LSI controller does not show any progress indicator
when syncing disks, ie '% complete'; there is no extra arg to the
'raidctl' cmd that will cause a progress indicator to be displayed.

only two of the four internal disks can be mirrored with the
builtin hardware RAID controller, the other 2 internal disks
can be mirrored with SVM.

George

> I have bunch of newly bought V440 servers and am keen on using the
> Hardware Mirroring feature.
>
> One thing I have noticed that there does not seem to be any indication
> of a progress when rebuilding/syncing the disks.
>
> Q:
> o does anyone know where I can get more information on this
> hardware feature ?
>
> o is there a way to see the progress when it is syncing disks ?
>
> o after a server is built and mirroring is active, can one disk
> be pulled out and used in another server as a base for that new
> system ? I've been doing this with DiskSuite for some time now but
> an not sure how this will work under hardware mirroring.
>
> o does anyone have any good or bad things that in regards to
> hardware mirroring that might help me ?
>

file belongs to which package ?

2005-10-07T08:01:00.000-05:00

How do I know which file (such as /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so ) belongs
to which package?

% pkgchk -l -p <filename>

Summary: Sun patches cluster broke sendmail

2005-10-07T07:59:00.001-05:00

Subject: Summary: Sun patches cluster broke sendmail

Thanks to William Cole, Rob Windsor and Christ Clark. My problem was that
a patch broke my sendmail.

All told me the reason was because there was a sendmail package original
from Sun remaining in the system, while we have been using a locally
compiled sendmail (SUNWsndmu and SUNWsndmr from patch 110615-13) Hence the
mixup.
Version 8.11.7p1+Sun

I just had to
# pkginfo|grep -i sendmail
8_Recommended# find . -name 'SUNWsndm*'

Here are some lessons.

"Go look for the patches from the last batch that touched sendmail in
/var/sadm/pkg/sndmr/save and /var/sadm/pkg/sndmu/save."

"The overall lesson is that you should always work with the package
system when changing any file on Solaris that is part of an existing Sun
package. The patch tools all assume that the package database is correct,
so if you are going to modify or replace any file that already has an
entry in /var/sadm/install/contents you should start by removing whatever
package that file is part of and replacing every piece of that package,
preferably with your own packaged collection. "

Thanks all.

======= original post ==============

- Solaris 8, SunFire280R -

I applied the latest recommended patch cluster and suddenly I'm seeing
problems with my sendmail. Could anyone with similar experience help me
pinpoint the problem patch and tell me if I can remove it? If this is not
a proper forum to ask, can I get some pointers on where to look?

Problems I see are:

- We used to be on V6, but now sendmail requires V4 for the queue file
version. (unsupported qf file version error)

- rRFC line causes invalid queue format error (bad line error), and it's
"almost" the same as RPFD line, so I remove them by scripts, but I'm not
comfortable with that.

My problem is similar to what's described here.

http://www.issociate.de/board/post/213139/Force_sendmail_8.13_to_write_V2-style_qf_file
s_...._is_it_possible?.html

There's a slight complication, since we are running 3 daemons, 1st and 3rd
in the main host and 2nd in a linux box which only handles amavis
processing.

sendmail -d0.1 -bv root shows:

1) main host
Version 8.11.7p1+Sun

2) amavis host
Version 8.13.1

The "+Sun" part is really giving me a headache. That patch seems to be a
retro...

I have some customized configuration so it's not easy to upgrade sendmail
version. I had to ask for permission to apply patches for a very long time
before getting this chance. And now I find myself guilty. Which makes me
feel I can't justify the time spent on fixing them, so I'm hoping to find
the problem and take that specific patch out...

Share cdrom Jumpstart E10k

2005-10-07T07:59:00.000-05:00

After talking with a Sun Support Engineer I finally decided to share the cdrom
and run the add_install_client off the cdrom

it works

1) # share -F nfs -o ro,anon=0 /cdrom/cdrom0/s0
2) # cd /cdrom/cdrom0/s0/Solaris_2.6/Tools
3) # ./add_install_client newdomain sun4u1

and output is
<#20> ok
<#20> ok limit-ecache-size
<#20> ok boot qfe0 -sv
Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
2ee00 X
Requesting Internet address for 0:0:be:a6:a3:a9
Internet address is 192.168.42.50 = C0A82A32
hostname: banner-a
whoami: no domain name
root server: sspp-qfe2
root directory: /cdrom/sol_2_6_598_sparc_smcc_svr/s0/Solaris_2.6/Tools/Boot
SunOS Release 5.6 Version Generic_105181-05 [UNIX(R) System V Release 4.0]
Copyright (c) 1983-1997, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
whoami: no domain name
Configuring devices...
SUNW,qfe7: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe7: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe7: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe6: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe6: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe6: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe5: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe5: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe5: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe4: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe4: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe4: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe3: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe3: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe3: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe1: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe1: Link Down - cable problem?
SUNW,qfe1: Link Down - cable problem?

etc etc etc
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Saxon, Stuart
> Sent: 05 September 2005 18:02
> To: 'sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org'
> Subject: 10k jumpstart solaris 2.6 problems
>
>
>
> Can some kind soul please tell me what am I doing wrong here ..........
thanks
>
>
> 10k netcon output
> ---------------------------
> SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise-10000, using Network Console
> OpenBoot 3.2.136, 10240 MB memory installed, Serial #10920873.
> Ethernet address 0:0:be:a6:a3:a9, Host ID: 80a6a3a9.
>
>
>
> <#20> ok
> <#20> ok limit-ecache-size
> <#20> ok boot qfe0 -sv
> Boot device: /sbus@55,0/SUNW,qfe@0,8c20000 File and args: -sv
> Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
> Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
> Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
> Timeout waiting for ARP/RARP packet
> 2ee00 X
> Requesting Internet address for 0:0:be:a6:a3:a9
> Internet address is 192.168.42.50 = C0A82A32
> hostname: banner-a
> whoami: no domain name
> root server: sspp-qfe2
> root directory: /export/install/Solaris_2.6/Tools/Boot
> RPC: Timed out.
> lookup: RPC error.
> boot: cannot open kernel/unix
> Enter filename [kernel/unix]:
>
>
>
> shares on the ssp
> ---------------------------
> root@sspp # share
> - /export/install ro,anon=0 ""
>
>
> /etc/bootparams
> -----------------------
>
> root@sspp # cat /etc/bootparams
> banner-a root=sspp-qfe2:/export/install/Solaris_2.6/Tools/Boot
install=sspp-qfe2:/export/install/Solaris_2.6 boottype=:in
rootopts=:rsize=32768
>

Remove Disk Label

2005-10-07T07:57:00.000-05:00

Dave Uhring wrote:

>> And execute `suninstall` after the disks are labelled.

>Well what I now did is create my own disk type with the harddisk
>specifications from www.seagate.com and labelled the disk but still only
>8 GB is seen. I am now clueless and don't know what to do to get the 20
>GB available.
>Any other ideas ?

Did you try:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdsk/cXdYtZs2 count=16

and then restart so that it looks unlabeled.

Casper

DE/dtterm: any mouseless way to "blacken" (whole screen?)

2005-10-07T07:56:00.001-05:00

I noticed that 2-click selects word, 3-click selects line
so I tried 4-click to see what happens :-)

Subject: Re: CDE/dtterm: any *mouseless* way to "blacken" (whole
screen?)? Via key-stroke?

> >> Any key-direct way to "choose" the whole screen?

> >I don't think dtterm (or xterm) has a Select All (mouseless) feature.
> >The shortest way I can think of is to quad-click on the screen
> >to select all. It's not mouseless but beats dragging the mouse.

> A "quad-click"? 4 clicks, fast?

> What (short doc) did you read to learn that?

Actually, the quadruple click was defined in the Nextstep Human
Interface Guidelines - the reasoning was:

Single click - set insertion point
Double click - select word
Triple click - select line
Quadruple click - select all text

A somewhat logical progression. Mind you, I'm going off my memory here
(it's been a while since I've messed about with OpenSTEP).

--
Ken

Check Process

2005-10-07T07:56:00.000-05:00

Hi,
I have another request.
Simulate this problem, and then when ps is hung, take truss & pstack
output of the
process using the options for showing complete contents of buffers
while reading & writing.
That should help us to find out why ps is hanging.
Thanks,
~Amol

. srv216bdnfs# truss -eaf -o /tmp/truss_ps-eaf.txt -p 2569

srv216bdnfs# pstack 2569

rv216bdnfs# truss -eaf -o /tmp/truss_ps-eaf_other.txt ps -eaf

How Solaris[TM] Operating System calculates available swap.

2005-10-07T07:55:00.000-05:00

*Keyword(s):*swap, swapfs, swapfs_minfree, tmpfs

*Description:*

When configuring swap space on a system, it is useful to know how
Solaris[TM] Operating System calculates available swap.

*Document Body:*

Swap size is equal to all available physical memory (RAM swap) plus any physical
disk partitions dedicated for swap, plus space allocated to swap in the form of
swapfiles.

The amount of memory available for RAM swap is less than the size of physical
memory. This is because only pageable memory is available for RAM swap.
Memory that is not pageable includes most of the kernel, any memory that is
mlock()ed and intimate shared memory (ISM).

You can see the summary of memory by running "netstat -k system_pages" or
"kstat -n system_pages".

Note that the -k option to the netstat command is undocumented and its use is
deprecated. In Solaris 10 the -k option is unavailable and "kstat -n
system_pages" must be used. The output format of "kstat -n" differs from that of
"netstat -k" however all the values of interest are present in "kstat -n" output
and have the same names as they do in the output of "netstat -k" with the
exception of "pages total" which is renamed "pagestotal".

The discussion below uses "netstat -k"; similar values for "pp_kernel",
"pageslocked" and "pagestotal" would be displayed by "kstat -n system_pages".

% netstat -k system_pages
system_pages:

physmem 15153 nalloc 5931096 nfree 5868115 nalloc_calls 3092 nfree_calls
2386
kernelbase 268463432 econtig 280756224 freemem 1719 availrmem 11932
lotsfree 236 desfree 118 minfree 59 fastscan 7568 slowscan 100 nscan 0
desscan 25
pp_kernel 2773 pagesfree 1719 pageslocked 3204 pages total 15136
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The kernel on this 128MB machine is 2773 pages, or 21MB, and the
total size of locked memory (including the kernel) is 3204 pages, 25MB
(Note that on Solaris 10 and above, pp_kernel excludes pageslocked,
and thus they must be added). A page is 8KB (8192 bytes).

One would expect this machine to have a virtual swap size of: 128MB - 25MB =
103MB.
Note however that "pages total" is 15136 pages which corresponds to 118MB and
not the 128MB of physical memory installed.

During boot, some of the system's memory is used for statically-allocated
portions of the kernel, such as the kernel text, TSBs (translation storage
buffers), page structures, the page table, etc. Memory left after those
allocations is shown in the physmem above. In this case, there is 118MB (15153
* pagesize, or 8KB) memory for which page structures are created (Note that
on Solaris 10 and above, this memory is already accounted for in pp_kernel).

So, we have 118MB - 25MB = 93MB of pageable virtual memory, but there is one
last factor. The swap file system leaves a reserve of 1/8th of memory, or 118/8
= 14.6MB. The minimum for this is 2MB.

Summary:

Total Memory 128MB
- static kernel 10MB
- Kernel 25MB
- swapfs_minfree 15MB
--------------------- -----
Total Ram Swap 78MB

Total Swap space = Ram swap + disk swap

How to read df -k /tmp output:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Filesystem kbytes used avail capacity Mounted on
swap 52280 664 51616 2% /tmp

tmpfs (when mounted on /tmp) dynamically changes its size depending upon how
much memory (or swap) is available.

The "kbytes" column in "df -k /tmp" output is the amount of swap space
available, rather than the total.

The tmpfs file system also has a minfree, so the total is slightly less than the
amount of swap available. "kbytes" column of "df -k /tmp" output actually
correspond to "swap -s" output of swap available. Normally, these two numbers
are pretty close.

The difference is due to the tmpfs_minfree value, which is 2MB by default.

% swap -s
total: 120272k bytes allocated + 26696k reserved = 146968k used, 53696k
available

If some process would de-allocate some swap, and swap -s would show more swap
available, then the df -k /tmp would also show that its total file system size
has increased.

Fibre Channel

2005-10-07T07:54:00.001-05:00

Fibre Channel

Like Ethernet or ATM, Fibre Channel is a networking standard that is
designed to move data through specific devices at specific speeds.
Fibre Channel is used primarily for server backbones and as a way of
attaching a server to a storage device, such as a RAID array or a tape
backup device. In fact, Fibre Channel is the architecture of choice
for many storage area networks.

Many IT pros find that Fibre Channel is an answer to their storage
prayers. Since a company's data grows daily, each night the system is
backing up a little bit more data than the night before. Thus, the
window for completing the backup tends to shrink a little bit each
year. The only way to back up more data in less time is to get a
faster storage device and a faster medium for transmitting the data
from the server to the storage device. In production networks, Fibre
Channel products have been able to accomplish a sustained transfer
rate of 97 MB per second when backing up large files. Companies that
use Fibre Channel on database servers have reported these servers can
handle tens of thousands of I/Os per second due to Fibre Channel
technology.

Resetting NVRAM on a Sun system

2005-10-07T07:54:00.000-05:00

Document Audience: SPECTRUM
Document ID: 7047
Title: Resetting NVRAM on a Sun system
Update Date: Tue Sep 13 00:00:00 MDT 2005
Products: Solaris, Sun Blade 2000 Workstation, Sun
Blade 1000 Workstation, Sun Fire 280R Server, Sun
Fire V880 Server, Sun Fire V480 Server, Sun Fire
V890 Server, Sun Fire V490 Server
Technical Areas: NVRAM (Non-Volatile Read-Only
Memory)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keyword(s):resetting, nvram, netra 20, sun fire, sun
blade, sun, systems

Description:

This document explains how to reset the NVRAM back to
its default settings on a
Sun system.

Document Body:

NOTE: Before executing the following, it is important
and highly recommended to
note (print out) the current NVRAM settings before
changing these options back
to their default settings.

There are two ways of resetting the NVRAM:

1) At the OK prompt:

ok set-defaults resets
most parameters
ok set-default 'parameter' resets
that one parameter
for example: ok set-default auto-boot?

2) At boot
This is helpful when an improperly created device
alias for a monitor has
been created and no display is going to the screen.

The most common method is to issue L1+n from the
keyboard (WYSE) while powering
on the system. Hold down this key combination until
you see video with a
message stating that the NVRAM parameters have been
set to their default values.

On some Sun keyboards, the "L1" key is replaced with a
"STOP" key. Therefore,
issue the key sequence STOP+n simultaneously from the
keyboard while powering on
the system. Hold down this key combination until you
see video with a message
stating that the NVRAM parameters have been set to
their default values.

Newer systems (Sun Blade[TM] workstations and Sun
Fire[TM] hardware) are using
USB Keyboards and Mice. Unlike the older 8 pin
mini-din keyboards, these systems
do not have a "STOP+N" key sequence to reset the
OBP/NVRAM parameters. Instead,
a "safe NVRAM" boot mode is available. Remember that
unlike a STOP+N which
restores ALL factory NVRAM parameters, the "safe
NVRAM" boot only alters a few
parameters and only for that one boot cycle. The
described work around allows
booting any USB keyboard type system, including RSC
equipped servers, to the OK
prompt and communicating with these systems via the
serial ttya console.

Note: For security reasons this procedure does not
reset the settings for
security-mode and security-password. The information
from this Infodoc cannot be
used to recover from a lost OBP password. Please
contact Sun Service to get a
replacement NVRAM in such circumstances.

==================== Procedure ====================

1. Press the power button to power up the system.

2. Once the maintenance LED starts to flash rapidly,
immediately press the Power
button twice (similar to double-clicking a mouse, but
leave a short gap of
around 1 second between presses, to have the action
reliably registered.) The
actual time when you do the double press of the power
button is the point in
POST when the maintenance LED (wrench light) rapidly
flashes.

NOTE:

If you double press too late or too soon, the system
will power off. Do not get
confused with the earlier occurrences of the
maintenance and OK to remove LEDs
flashing together. This is a part of the system test
to make sure the LEDs are
functional.

If you're running POST even in MIN level, it will be
several minutes depending
upon your configuration, before the maintenance LED
flashes rapidly.

A screen similar to the following is displayed to
indicate that you have
successfully reset the OpenBoot NVRAM configuration
variables to their default
values:

Sun Fire xxx (8 X UltraSPARC-III), Keyboard Present

OpenBoot x.x, 256 MB memory installed, Serial
#xxxxxxxx.

Ethernet address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx, Host ID:
xxxxxxxx.

Safe NVRAM mode, the following nvram configuration
variables have been
overridden:

diag-switch? is true
use-nvramrc? is false
input-device , output-device are defaulted
ttya-mode , ttyb-mode are defaulted

These changes are temporary and the original values
will be restored after the
next hardware or software reset. Once you are at the
OK prompt, it is at this
point you make your changes to the OBP parameters, or
use set-defaults to reset
all parameters to factory default settings.

On the Netra[TM] 20 server, the defaults cannot be set
by hitting the power
button twice. The power button does not function in
the same way as it does on
the Sun Fire or Sun Blade. The LOM command bootmode
will need to be used as
shown below:

lom> poweroff

lom> bootmode reset_nvram

lom> poweron

This will reset the nvram to default values.

Note:
If the RSC card is your console device, resetting the
NVRAM will take the
console away from the RSC and put it back to the
default (example, input-device

useradd/passwd script

2005-10-07T07:52:00.001-05:00

RE: useradd/passwd script

I found this script that might work for you. I haven't tried it
myself. I hope it helps.

Here is the link for this script:

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.misc/msg/b2867efd801e77ab?dmode=source&hl=en

#!/bin/sh

## SCRIPT TO ADD MULTIPLE USERS TO A LINUX SYSTEM
##
## The script will add users, generate secure password and mail
## info to the users. Also a log file is made!
##
## You need to make it work:
##
## mailx - traditional command-line-mode mail user agent
## pwgen - password generator
## http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwgen/##
## user_list format: USERNAME NAMES LASTNAME CLASS EMAIL
##
## (c) 2005 Manuel de la Torre
##

# Modify this variables if you need

MINDAYS=0 # Change password at anytime
MAXDAYS=45 # Max days password is valid
WARNDAYS=10 # Warning message before expire passwd
EXPDAYS=180 # Days to expire account from now
INACTIVE=45 # Days to lock after passwd expires

# Calculte days from Epoch
YEARS_FROM_EPOCH="$((($(date +%G) - 1970 ) * 365 ))"
DAYS_THIS_YEAR="$((($(date +%j))))"
DAYS_FROM_EPOCH=$(( $YEARS_FROM_EPOCH + $DAYS_THIS_YEAR + 8 ))

# Define some colors first:
red='\e[0;31m'
RED='\e[1;31m'
blue='\e[0;34m'
BLUE='\e[1;34m'
cyan='\e[0;36m'
CYAN='\e[1;36m'
NC='\e[0m' # No Color

# Ensure that root is running the script
WHOAMI=`/usr/bin/whoami`
if [ $WHOAMI != "root" ]; then
echo "Sorry. You must be root to add new users"
exit 1
fi

# Ensure proper format of the command

thiscmd=`basename $0`

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
echo "USAGE: $thiscmd user_file" && exit 1
fi

USR_FILE=$1

# Remove blank lines from input file
# Used this solution because of problems
# with the IFS in a if [ -n ] statement
#

# Check if buffer file exist, then remove

if [ -a /tmp/buffer ]
then
rm /tmp/buffer

# Read input file, and delete blank lines

cat $USR_FILE | while read TEMP

do
if [ -n "$TEMP" ]; then
echo "$TEMP" >> /tmp/buffer
fi
done

# Copy temporal file to input file

cp /tmp/buffer $USR_FILE
rm /tmp/buffer

#
# Save the current value of the IFS
ifs="$IFS"

# Define the separator (TAB) between fields
# if your input has tabs between fields
#IFS=`echo t | tr t '\t'`

# Define the separator (COMMA) between fields
# if your input has spaces between fields
IFS=","

# assumning the file has one line per user, in a layout like:
#
# USERNAME NAMES LASTNAME CLASS EMAIL
#

# Configure the useradd program globaly:
# useradd -D -b $DEF_HOME -e $EXPIRE -g $GROUP

cat $USR_FILE | while read USERNAME NAMES LASTNAME CLASS EMAIL

USERNAME=`echo $USERNAME | tr A-Z a-z` #lower case
FULLNAME="$NAMES $LASTNAME"
COMMENT="$FULLNAME,$CLASS"

# Check if users exists in system

NOEXISTE=`cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd | grep -i $USERNAME`

if [ -n "$NOEXISTE" ]; then
echo -e "Creating user $USERNAME: \t ${RED}FAILED${NC}"
else
# Some output to keep you happy
echo -e "Creating user $USERNAME: \t ${CYAN}SUCCESS${NC}"

# Add the user

useradd $USERNAME -c "$COMMENT" -m

# Set the initial password

PASSWORD=`pwgen -s`
echo $USERNAME:$PASSWORD | chpasswd

# Change expitation of passwords

chage -m $MINDAYS -M $MAXDAYS -E $(( $EXPDAYS + $DAYS_FROM_EPOCH )) -I $INACTIVE -d 0 $USERNAME

# Mail password

echo -e "login: $USERNAME \npassw: $PASSWORD" | mail -s "Account Info" -b <email@removed> $EMAIL

# Log the results
echo "$USERNAME:$FULLNAME:$PASSWORD:$CLASS:`date`" >>
users_created_log

fi
done

Password Aging

2005-10-07T07:52:00.000-05:00

Password Aging, Part 1
ITworld.com, Unix in the Enterprise 10/4/05

Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

While it's clearly possible to use the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
files in Solaris and other Unix systems without making use of the
password aging features, you could be taking advantage of these
features to encourage your users to practice better security -- and,
with the right password aging values, you can configure a good
password-changing policy into your system files while limiting the
risk that your users will be locked out of their accounts.

In this week's column, we look at the various fields in the shadow
file that govern password aging and suggest settings that might give
you the right balance between user convenience and good password
security.

The /etc/shadow File

To begin our review of how password aging works on a Solaris system,
let's examine the format of the /etc/shadow file. Each colon-separated
record looks like this:

johndoe:PaSsWoRdxye7d:13062:30:120:10:inactive:expire:
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | | | | | |
username:password:lastchg:min:max:warn:inactive:expire:flag

The first field is clearly the username. The next is the password
encryption. The third is the date when the password was last changed
expressed as the number of days since January 1, 1970. The min field
is the number of days that a password MUST be kept after it is
changed; this is used to keep users from changing their passwords and
then immediately changing them back to their previous values (thereby
invalidating the intended security). The max field represents the
maximum number of days that any password can be used before it is
expired. If you want your users to strictly change their passwords
every 30 days, for example, you could set both of these fields to 30.
Generally, however, the max field is set to a considerably larger
value than min. The warn field specifies the number of days prior to a
password expiration that a user is warned on login that his/her
password is about to expire. This should not be too short a period of
time since many users don't log in every day and the display of this
message in the login messages is easy to overlook.

The inactive field sets the number of days that an account is allowed
to be inactive. This value can help prevent idle accounts from being
broken into. The expire field represents the absolute day (expressed
as the number of days since January 1, 1970) that the password will
expire. You might use this field if you want all of your users'
passwords to expire at the end of the fiscal year or at the end of the
semester. The last field, flag, is unused until Solaris 10 at which
point it records the number of failed login attempts.

If the lines in your shadow file look like this:

sbob:dZlJpUNyyusab:12345::::::

The username and password are set and the date on which the password
was last changed has been recorded, but no password aging is taking
effect.

If it looks like this, the account is locked.

dumbo:*LK*:::::::

Various other combinations of the shadow file are possible, but the
min, max and warn fields will only make sense if the lastchg field is
set. For example:

jdoe:w0qjde84kr%p0:13062:60:::::

User must keep a password for 60 days once he changes it, but no
password changes are required.

jdoe:w0qjde84kr%p0:13062::60::::

User must change his password every 60 days, but can change it at any
time (including immediately changing it back to its previous value).

Choosing Min and Max Settings

If you want to turn on password aging, the combination of minimum
(must keep) and maximum (invalid after) values enforces a practical
password update scheme. Suggested settings depend in part on the
security stance of your particular network. However, general consensus
seems to be that passwords, once changed, should be kept for a month
(min=30) and that passwords should be changed every three to six
months (from max=90 to max=180).

Once a user has used a password for 30 days, he's probably not going
to reset it back to its previous value. By then he should know it well
enough to continue using it.

Changing a password more often than every month or so would probably
make it hard for users to remember their passwords without writing
them down.

The down side of min values is that this setting doesn't allow someone
to change his password if he believes it has been compromised when the
compromise happens within the "min" period. Whatever system you adopt
should, therefore, make it painless for a user to request that his
password be reset whenever he believes it may no longer be secure.

Wrap Up

We hear a lot about the tradeoff between security and convenience as
it permeates so many of our decisions about how we manage our networks
but, when it comes to passwords, we must be careful not to cross the
line between securing logins and preventing them altogether. Locking
our users too easily out of their accounts can reduce security as
easily as enhance it. Using password aging with the proper settings
can limit the risk that security constraints turn into unintended
denials of service.

Next week, we'll look at how to introduce password aging on a system
where users have never had their passwords expire.

DNS client Troubleshooting

2005-10-05T13:14:00.000-05:00

DNS trouble..

nslookup always uses dns.
ping uses /etc/nsswitch.conf to determine which method of address lookup.

Recommend that you
# cp /etc/nsswitch.dns /etc/nsswitch.conf

does ping with an IP number work? If it does then there is something wrong
with nsswitch.conf or possibly nscd or even /etc/hosts.

Try viewing a webpage by IP address for example:
http://209.249.116.195 (Sun Site)
If this don't work then it's a routing problem; if it does, then you
need to check your dns files: resolv.conf et all.

Also worth (as suggested by someone else) posting the output of:

dig www.sun.com @204.186.23.65
and maybe,
dig www.sun.com @192.18.128.11

dns2 is outside my main network 204.184.23.65
dig @dns2 google.com works
dig google.com works
dig @gate google.com does not work, as expected, since it is not a
dns server

I think that since I can go to websites by ip fine, my defaultroute
must be correct, same with netmasks
( it has to be 255.255.0.0 since we use both 192.168.10 and 192.168.20
on this section of the network.

double check /etc/nsswitch.conf is called exactly that and has appropriate
perms, I don't know what they _should_ be but 644 shouldn't hurt. And it
contains at least

hosts: files dns

double check /etc/resolv.conf is called exactly that and contains
appropriate entries.

then pick an external address that you *know* won't be in /etc/hosts
OR have been cached by nscd. But one that you know has at least one
IP address

then try

getent hosts your.chosen.host

getent is an interface to your system resolvers and is dictated by
/etc/nsswitch.conf and if appropriate, /etc/resolv.conf

If this displays nothing "echo $?" will show the return of the getent
- a failed lookup is "2". A successful one is "0".

A successful one though, should show you an address and stuff,

If this fails try rebuilding /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/resolv.conf
to ensure there is no parsing errors or the like...

'nslookup' uses the DNS resolver libraries directly. It thus bypasses
the name service switch (configured via /etc/nsswitch.conf). If
you're seeing applications fail to resolve addresses, but nslookup
works fine, then the next thing to try is this:

% getent hosts "host name here"

If that works, then it's an application problem of some sort. The
application is just misconfigured (perhaps it has a SOCKS proxy
configured that it doesn't need, or needs one and doesn't have it).

If that doesn't work, then the problem is almost certainly in
/etc/nsswitch.conf.

Check the firewall, whether port 53 tcp and udp are passed. My guess is
that only one of them may pass.

Sun Solaris 10 on 280R & Brocade 3250 Attachment and Sun Solaris 10 on 280R & Brocade 3250 Attachment and Configuration

2005-10-05T09:29:00.000-05:00

Subject: Sun Solaris 10 on 280R & Brocade 3250 Attachment and
Configuration

Server: Sun 280R
Card: *SUN* 2342 Dual Port HBA (uses QLC driver)
Switch: Brocade Silkworm 3250.

I need some assistance getting a Sun 280R to see tape drives attached to
a Brocade 3250 switch.

[switch] -> box (port 0)
-> tape1 (port 1)
-> tape2 (port 2)
-> tape3 (port 3)
-> tape4 (port 4)

Here are my devices according to a Brocade Silkworm 3820.
I am not sure I am adding the zones correctly.

Basically, I want one zone per drive:

DRIVE1<->ZONE1
DRIVE2<->ZONE2
DRIVE3<->ZONE3
DRIVE4<->ZONE4

However, my first step is just to get the Solaris 10 box to see all four
tape drives.

Here are the devices:

s3250:admin> nsshow
{
Type Pid COS PortName NodeName
TTL(sec)
N 010000; 3;21:00:00:e0:8b:14:12:05;20:00:00:e0:8b:14:12:05; na
FC4s: FCIP FCP
Fabric Port Name: 20:00:00:05:1e:35:78:77
NL 010155; 3;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:1f;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:1e; na
FC4s: FCP [HP Ultrium 2-SCSI K4B0]
Fabric Port Name: 20:01:00:05:1e:35:78:77
NL 010255; 3;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:22;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:21; na
FC4s: FCP [HP Ultrium 2-SCSI K4B0]
Fabric Port Name: 20:02:00:05:1e:35:78:77
NL 010355; 3;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:1c;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:1b; na
FC4s: FCP [HP Ultrium 2-SCSI K4B0]
Fabric Port Name: 20:03:00:05:1e:35:78:77
NL 010455; 3;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:25;50:01:04:f0:00:52:cf:24; na
FC4s: FCP [HP Ultrium 2-SCSI K4B0]
Fabric Port Name: 20:04:00:05:1e:35:78:77
The Local Name Server has 5 entries }
s3250:admin> zonecreate "greenzone", "3,21; 3,50"
s3250:admin> zonecreate "redzone", "21:00:00:e0:8b:14:12:05; 4,3"
s3250:admin> cfgsave

On the Solaris side of the fence:

I believe c3 and c4 is the Sun QLogic (QLC) 2342 adapter.

bash-3.00# cfgadm -c configure c4
bash-3.00#

bash-3.00# cfgadm -alv
Ap_Id Receptacle Occupant Condition
Information
When Type Busy Phys_Id
c0 connected configured unknown
bash-3.00# cfgadm -c configure c4 ; cfgadm -alv
Ap_Id Receptacle Occupant Condition
Information
When Type Busy Phys_Id
c0 connected configured unknown
unavailable scsi-bus n /devices/pci@8,700000/scsi@6:scsi
c0::dsk/c0t6d0 connected configured unknown
TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1401
unavailable CD-ROM n
/devices/pci@8,700000/scsi@6:scsi::dsk/c0t6d0
c1 connected configured unknown
unavailable fc-private n
/devices/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4/fp@0,0:fc
c1::2100000c500187f5 connected configured unknown
SEAGATE ST373307FSUN72G
unavailable disk y
/devices/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4/fp@0,0:fc::2100000c500187f5
c1::2100000c50018daa connected configured unknown
SEAGATE ST373307FSUN72G
unavailable disk n
/devices/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@4/fp@0,0:fc::2100000c50018daa
c2 connected unconfigured unknown
unavailable scsi-bus n /devices/pci@8,700000/scsi@6,1:scsi
c3 connected unconfigured unknown
unavailable fc-fabric n
/devices/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@1/fp@0,0:fc
c4 connected unconfigured unknown
unavailable fc n
/devices/pci@8,600000/SUNW,qlc@1,1/fp@0,0:fc
usb0/1 empty unconfigured ok
unavailable unknown n /devices/pci@8,700000/usb@5,3:1
usb0/2 empty unconfigured ok
unavailable unknown n /devices/pci@8,700000/usb@5,3:2
usb0/3 empty unconfigured ok
unavailable unknown n /devices/pci@8,700000/usb@5,3:3
usb0/4 empty unconfigured ok
unavailable unknown n /devices/pci@8,700000/usb@5,3:4
bash-3.00#

Does anyone have a good doc for attaching Fiber Channel Tape Drives to a
brocade switch and then getting Solaris to see the devices? :)

Thanks!

Justin.

Disk usage monitoring

2005-10-05T09:25:00.000-05:00

Disk usage monitoring

Takeaway:
Learn to use scripting and cron to run regular scripts that will
monitor your disk space.

Monitoring disk usage is a critical part of running any server. There
is nothing worse than having a runaway process or malicious user fill
up a filesystem only to find out about it when the boss calls to
indicate she can't connect to or write to the server. With a little
bit of shell scripting and cron usage, you can have a script run every
hour or at any other interval that will indicate if you need to be
concerned about disk space filling up.

The script itself is very small:

<code>

#!/bin/sh

fs=`mount|egrep '^/dev'|grep -iv cdrom| awk '{print $3}'`

typeset -i thresh="90"

typeset -i warn="95"

for i in $fs

skip=0

typeset -i used=`df -k $i|tail -1|awk '{print $5}'|cut -d "%" -f 1`

if [ "$used" -ge "$warn" ]; then

echo "CRITICAL: filesystem $i is $used% full"

if [ "$used" -ge "$thresh" -a "$used" -le "$warn" ]; then

echo "WARNING: filesystem $i is $used %full"

done

</code>

The first thing the script does is get the list of mount points from
the mount program and filters out any mounted CD-rom drives. It also
doesn't take into account any special file systems like /proc or /sys
by making sure the mount point device is an actual device (by making
sure the device name starts with /dev).

Next, set your threshold to something sensible, like 90% full. Adjust
this to taste; this just generates a warning. Likewise, you set your
critical warning value to 95%. Notice that the command typeset -i is
used to ensure that bash treats these numbers as integers, which you
need for comparing the values obtained from df.

The $used variable gets set on each filesystem with the Use% column
output from the df tool. This is compared to your thresholds.

The script simply outputs the warnings to standard output. The script
can easily be adjusted to have it send an e-mail to someone should one
of the thresholds be breached. To have this executed every 30 minutes
via cron, edit the system crontab to include:

<code>

0,30 * * * * * /usr/local/bin/diskmon.sh

</code>

In this case, all the warnings will be sent via cron to whoever
receives cron's output mails.

FTP tutorial

2005-10-05T09:23:00.000-05:00

There are also some higher ports above 1024 that FTP uses to display
files and folders. FTP just grabs those ports whenever it needs them.

Following is a short FTP tutorial:

Active FTP vs. Passive FTP, a Definitive Explanation
Introduction
One of the most commonly seen questions when dealing with firewalls
and other Internet connectivity issues is the difference between
active and passive FTP and how best to support either or both of them.
Hopefully the following text will help to clear up some of the
confusion over how to support FTP in a firewalled environment.

The Basics

FTP is a TCP based service exclusively. There is no UDP component to
FTP. FTP is an unusual service in that it utilizes two ports, a 'data'
port and a 'command' port (also known as the control port).
Traditionally these are port 21 for the command port and port 20 for
the data port. The confusion begins however, when we find that
depending on the mode, the data port is not always on port 20.

Active FTP

In active mode FTP the client connects from a random unprivileged port
(N > 1024) to the FTP server's command port, port 21. Then, the client
starts listening to port N+1 and sends the FTP command PORT N+1 to the
FTP server. The server will then connect back to the client's
specified data port from its local data port, which is port 20.

From the server-side firewall's standpoint, to support active mode FTP
the following communication channels need to be opened:

FTP server's port 21 from anywhere (Client initiates connection)
FTP server's port 21 to ports > 1024 (Server responds to client's
control port)
FTP server's port 20 to ports > 1024 (Server initiates data connection
to client's data port)
FTP server's port 20 from ports > 1024 (Client sends ACKs to server's
data port)

When drawn out, the connection appears as follows:

In step 1, the client's command port contacts the server's command
port and sends the command PORT 1027. The server then sends an ACK
back to the client's command port in step 2. In step 3 the server
initiates a connection on its local data port to the data port the
client specified earlier. Finally, the client sends an ACK back as
shown in step 4.

The main problem with active mode FTP actually falls on the client
side. The FTP client doesn't make the actual connection to the data
port of the server--it simply tells the server what port it is
listening on and the server connects back to the specified port on the
client. From the client side firewall this appears to be an outside
system initiating a connection to an internal client--something that
is usually blocked.

Passive FTP

In order to resolve the issue of the server initiating the connection
to the client a different method for FTP connections was developed.
This was known as passive mode, or PASV, after the command used by the
client to tell the server it is in passive mode.

In passive mode FTP the client initiates both connections to the
server, solving the problem of firewalls filtering the incoming data
port connection to the client from the server. When opening an FTP
connection, the client opens two random unprivileged ports locally (N
> 1024 and N+1). The first port contacts the server on port 21, but
instead of then issuing a PORT command and allowing the server to
connect back to its data port, the client will issue the PASV command.
The result of this is that the server then opens a random unprivileged
port (P > 1024) and sends the PORT P command back to the client. The
client then initiates the connection from port N+1 to port P on the
server to transfer data.

From the server-side firewall's standpoint, to support passive mode
FTP the following communication channels need to be opened:
FTP server's port 21 from anywhere (Client initiates connection)
FTP server's port 21 to ports > 1024 (Server responds to client's
control port)
FTP server's ports > 1024 from anywhere (Client initiates data
connection to random port specified by server)
FTP server's ports > 1024 to remote ports > 1024 (Server sends ACKs
(and data) to client's data port)
When drawn, a passive mode FTP connection looks like this:

In step 1, the client contacts the server on the command port and
issues the PASV command. The server then replies in step 2 with PORT
2024, telling the client which port it is listening to for the data
connection. In step 3 the client then initiates the data connection
from its data port to the specified server data port. Finally, the
server sends back an ACK in step 4 to the client's data port.
While passive mode FTP solves many of the problems from the client
side, it opens up a whole range of problems on the server side. The
biggest issue is the need to allow any remote connection to high
numbered ports on the server. Fortunately, many FTP daemons, including
the popular WU-FTPD allow the administrator to specify a range of
ports which the FTP server will use.

The second issue involves supporting and troubleshooting clients which
do (or do not) support passive mode. As an example, the command line
FTP utility provided with Solaris does not support passive mode,
necessitating a third-party FTP client, such as ncftp.
With the massive popularity of the World Wide Web, many people prefer
to use their web browser as an FTP client. Most browsers only support
passive mode when accessing ftp:// URLs. This can either be good or
bad depending on what the servers and firewalls are configured to
support.

Summary
The following chart should help admins remember how each FTP mode
works:
Active FTP :
command : client >1024 -> server 21
data : client >1024 <- server 20

Passive FTP :
command : client >1024 -> server 21
data : client >1024 -> server >1024

gnu date increment by 1

2005-09-16T15:50:00.000-05:00

> Hi

> With gnu date, how can I get the list of dates continuosly between a
> specific period say for example apr 2,2005 to july 31,2005 in the
> format %Y/%m/%d

> command should be in the form of
> ./script -d1 04/02/2005 -d2 06/31/2005

ITYM 07/31/2005

> 2005/04/02
> 2005/04/03
> 2005/04/04
> ..
> ..
> ..
> 2005/07/29
> 2005/07/30/
> 2005/07/30

> Help is very much appreciated.

> Thanks,

Something like this should work:

now=`date +"%Y/%m/%d" -d "04/02/2005"`
end=`date +"%Y/%m/%d" -d "07/31/2005"`

while [ "$now" != "$end" ]
do
now=`date +"%Y/%m/%d" -d "$now + 1 day"`
echo "$now"
done

Note that date handles some invalid dates like "06/31/2005" by trying to
map them to a close real date.

Regards,

Ed.

sets network nic parameters value

2005-09-16T15:49:00.000-05:00

Bhushan <bhushan.li...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Add following line in /etc/system file

> set bge:bge_adv_autoneg_cap=0

> This sets value to permannetly even after reboot

That's the most inflexible way of doing it:

1. It requires a reboot to activate
2. It sets the value on all instances of the driver

You have more flexibility with ndd:

ndd -set /dev/bge0 adv_autoneg_cap 0

I hope Sun will make a consistent interface for all network drivers one
day. The situation today is frustating.

- some drivers have a single /dev entry, you have to set instance first
then the parameter:
ndd -set /dev/qfe instance 3
ndd -set /dev/qfe adv_autoneg_cap 0
- others (like bge) create a separate /dev entry for each instance:
ndd -set /dev/bge3 adv_autoneg_cap 0
- some drivers use completely different names
- some drivers (mostly x86) don't have a ndd interface at all.

ether address on multi-port cards

2005-09-16T15:48:00.000-05:00

ether address on multi-port cards

Why is the ethernet address the same for every port on a multiport
ethernet card, and what are the implied consequences of this?
Specifically the 4 bge interfaces in a V210, or the 4 ce interfaces on a
quad gigaswift.

The system gets this hardware address from the EEPROM not from the
ethernet hardware.

> The system gets this hardware address from the EEPROM not from the
> ethernet hardware.

not default on the v210, as it has:
local-mac-address?=true
try # eeprom local-mac-address?=true
if you want quads to have different addresses.

v210: # ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=1000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 8232 index 1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
bge0: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
inet 137.58.166.251 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 137.58.166.255
ether 0:3:ba:da:a8:8f
bge1: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 3
inet 137.58.167.251 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 137.58.167.255
ether 0:3:ba:da:a8:90
bge2: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 4
inet 137.58.168.251 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 137.58.168.255
ether 0:3:ba:da:a8:91
bge3: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 5
inet 137.58.169.251 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 137.58.169.255
ether 0:3:ba:da:a8:92

/jörgen

>Why is the ethernet address the same for every port on a multiport
>ethernet card, and what are the implied consequences of this?
>Specifically the 4 bge interfaces in a V210, or the 4 ce interfaces on a
>quad gigaswift.

That's because the PROM programs them that way; there are no supposed
consequences as generally you don't have all cards in the same
domain.

But all of our current interfaces have on-board private mac addresses
you can use by setting:

eeprom local-mac-address?=true

and then rebooting.

The qfe cards have a "local-mac-address" property (and from the
looks of it, so do many other cards) which reveals their
programmed mac-address even if booted with local-mac-address?=false

prtconf -vp | grep local
local-mac-address?: 'true'
local-mac-address: 0003ba30.c0f4
local-mac-address: 0003ba30.c0f5
local-mac-address: 0003ba30.c0f6
local-mac-address: 0003ba30.c0f7
local-mac-address: 080020a9.f67e

Solaris 8 hung on boot.

2005-09-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

RE: Solaris 8 hung on boot.

If you want to determine what is is hanging on, you can:
- boot from CD
- mount the root FS
- edit /etc/rc2

find the section that looks like this:

for f in /etc/rc2.d/S*; do
if [ -s $f ]; then
case $f in
*.sh) . $f ;;
*) /sbin/sh $f start ;;
esac
fi
done

and change the line with 'start' on it to look like this:

*) /sbin/sh -x $f start ;;

- unmount the FS, and reboot.

On the next start up, you will see a verbose output of what is actually
running. You should then be able to determine what line the startup is
hanging on. That will give us/you a better idea of what's wrong. Often, it's
network related, like it can't resolve a name or address encountered in a
config file somewhere.

Brian

delete a file on logging UFS

2005-09-16T15:46:00.001-05:00

When you delete a file on logging UFS, the file and its allocated
resources are not freed immediately, what happens is that the
directory entry gets zapped and the inode is put onto a so called
delete queue and the delete thread will run from time to time
to drain the queue (also on umount and lockfs -f requests).

when the delete queue gets drained, the inode and its allocated
resources are freed, this is done within a transaction in case
of logging and as part of this delete transaction the allocated
blocks are freed as well, but are not immediately available
for re-use as long as the whole transaction is not committed
to the log.

this does not mean that a log roll must happen to be able
to re-use those blocks, committing the entire transaction
to the log makes them available for new allocations.

if you run out of space UFS will detect a possible ENOSPC failure
and will forcibly drain the delete queue in this case to
free up any resources still lurking around in the delete queue
and re-do the allocation attempt before eventually
failing with ENOSPC.

cloning hard disk to new, bigger ones...

2005-09-16T15:46:00.000-05:00

Fixed font - Proportional font

cloning hard disk to new, bigger ones...

Subject: cloning hard disk to new, bigger ones...

I'm using g4u (basically a clever script which the heart is dd) to clone old
hard disks containing Interactive Unix (sigh) to new, bigger one.

My question is : because the geometry of the disk differs, at least for the
cylinder count, I feel that I should adjust some parameters to reflect the
disk change. The free size is not an issue, but I would like to do things as
best as possible...

I suspect I should modify the Partitions file, but how ? Is it possible to
use sysadmin to do that ?

Thanks

Matthieu

> I'm using g4u (basically a clever script which the heart is dd) to clone old
> hard disks containing Interactive Unix (sigh) to new, bigger one.

> My question is : because the geometry of the disk differs, at least for the
> cylinder count, I feel that I should adjust some parameters to reflect the
> disk change. The free size is not an issue, but I would like to do things as
> best as possible...

> I suspect I should modify the Partitions file, but how ? Is it possible to
> use sysadmin to do that ?

classic method is with tar. boot up into single-user-mode, then
initialize the new disk with your partitions. Then for each partition
you want to move over, mount it (say in /mnt), and do something like this:

# cd /mnt
# tar cf - /var | tar xfpB -

That would have moved your var onto the new partition.

After you've moved everything over, don't forget to make the new disk
bootable. On Solaris, there is a command would be 'installboot',
hopefuly IU had something similar.

Terminal Characters

2005-09-16T15:45:00.000-05:00

stty erase ^H

tells the terminal driver upon which character it should perform
the "bacward erase character" operation in its built-in line
editor.

That built-in line editor is only used when the terminal is in
canonical mode, ie when the terminal sends the data to the
reading application only when you press enter.

Typically, neither bash nor vim use that canonical mode as they
need to be able to get each typed character as soon as they are
typed. But vim may want to query the terminal driver to find out
what character is supposed to be the backspace character (if
it's good for the terminal builtin editor, then it will be good
for vim).

bash doesn't care. It treats both ^? and ^H as a backspace
character.

What I think is that when you press <Backspace>, you get a ^?
character. So, you should instruct your terminal driver (and
indirectly vim) that "erase" is ^? with stty erase '^?'.

> Now I am using an application, it has its shell, in pressing UP
> arrow key, I see ^]]A, I look through manpage of stty, I do not see how
> to redefine UP arrow key.

stty is not to redefine keys, it's to tell the terminal driver
on which received character it should perform its special
operations. It works only for single characters. ^[[A is a
sequence of 3 characters.

And the builtin terminal line editor has few operations you can
map a key to, mainly "backward erase character", (^H, ^?)
"backward erase word" (^W), "kill line" (^U), "interrupt" (^C),
"quit" (^\)...

If you need a more complex line editor, then you need to
implement one just as bash (readline) or vim do.
That means, leave the canon mode stty -icanon. Tell the terminal
you want to receive characters as soon as they are typed: stty
min 1 time 0, (you may want to disable the signal keys as well
stty -isig, or the automatic conversion of CR into NL stty
-icrnl... stty raw may even be what you want) read characters
one at a time (c=$(dd bs=1 count=1 2> /dev/null)) then do the
processing for each character: if it's a ^[, then read the next
one, then if it's a "[", read the next one, then if it's a "A"
then perform whatever you want to be done on the pressing of the
Up key.

>> Hi,
>> I am using BASH 2.05 on Red Hat Linux, I have the following command
>> in .bashrc,

>> stty erase "^H"

> The linux console and xterm both produce a DEL character (^?) when
> you hit the big backspace key.

[...]

For xterm, it depends on the implementation on the default value
of the terminal driver and on the configuration.

find comand

2005-09-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

When you use a pipeline to run vi like this, it's stdin isn't the
terminal any more. That's what "Input not from terminal" means. The
input is coming from the pipe instead.

Try

vi `find . -name config.xml`

find . -name config.xml -exec vi {} \;

find . -name config.xml | while read f;do vi $f;done

Joe

uppose we want to compress all .txt
files in an entire subtree. Simple enough, using what we've learned
before:

find /path/to/tree -name '*.txt' | xargs gzip

Another extremely useful way find can sift through files is to find
files created or modified recently. Often you want to know what has
changed recently. For instance, to list all of the files in your home
directory that changed within the past two days hours:

find ~/ -mtime -2

To find the files that haven't been modified in the past two days, you
can change the -mtime parameter:

find ~/ -mtime +2

You can also select files by the last time they were accessed (atime)
or created (ctime). Like bash's test command, find has a wide variety
of options; reading the manpage is advised (not just for reference,
either; it will give you an idea of the flexibility of this peculiar
command).

ownership for all the files pkgchk

2005-09-16T15:43:00.000-05:00

> All,
>
> By mistake someone changed the ownership for all the files under /
> etc, now no
> one can access that system anymore.
>
> Is there anyway to recover /etc?

Yes.

What you're looking for is the pkgchk command.

First, find out what packages reference /etc:

pkgchk -l -p /etc

Then take each package listed in that output and run:

pkgchk -af <pacckage1> <package2> ... and so on.

/dale

Setting Up the Solaris OS to Work with Cable Modems

2005-09-16T15:42:00.000-05:00

Setting Up the Solaris OS to Work with Cable Modems

Introduction

This tip is written to help you configure a machine running the
Solaris OS as DHCP client to work with DSL cable modem Dynamic Host
Configuration Protocol (DHCP). DHCP provides the IP address, default
route, and name servers. You need Solaris 2.6 or higher for DHCP.
Setup Procedure

The following steps are required as root:

touch /etc/dhcp.hme0

Replace the .hme0 with whatever the Ethernet interface for your
system might be, as shown by ifconfig -a.
2.

cp /dev/null /etc/hostname.hme0

> /etc/hostname.hme0

Important note: You need to make sure that this file is empty --
otherwise, the DHCP configuration won't work.
3. Make sure that /etc/inet/hosts only has one line in it, the one
containing 127.0.0.1 localhost. Any other lines will be ignored, and
any additional necessary lines will be added by the DHCP client at
boot time.
4.

touch /etc/notrouter

This creates a file to tell the Solaris OS that your system will
not be performing routing or packet-forwarding duties. If this file is
already there, leave it the way it is.
5.

cp /dev/null /etc/defaultrouter

Since the DHCP client software will automatically put the needed
entries in this file, we just need to make sure that it exists as an
empty file. If it already exists, rename it and create the empty file
in its place.
6.

cp /dev/null /etc/resolv.conf

The DHCP client will add the necessary entries. If you already
have this file, rename it and create an empty file in its place.
7. Check the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and look at the hosts: line.
Make sure that it reads hosts: files dns.

This will enable your machine to resolve addresses using DNS, the
Domain Name System. Reboot your machine. While booting, you will see
status messages about the DHCP client; this is normal. Once the
machine is booted, type the ifconfig -a command. You will see output
similar to this:

lo0: flags=1000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4>
mtu 8232 index 1 inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
hme0: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4>
mtu 1500 index inet 192.168.1.35 netmask ffffff80
broadcast 192.168.1.255 ether 8:0:20:d2:15:2f

Conclusion

If you have followed all my instructions, the Solaris machine is ready
to get its networking information by means of DHCP.

debug a process

2005-09-16T15:41:00.000-05:00

Thanks everyone. Again I had lots of replies, and I will copy the the
most complete answers below:

[Ric Anderson]

There are many
truss -p pid
shows what system calls a process is making.

ps -fp pid
shows general status

pldd pid
shows what dynamic libraries (.so) files a process is using.

In addition, there are a number of tools in /usr/proc/bin
that let you look at the actions of a process.

If you have lsof installed, then
lsof -p pid
will show open files for a process.

Some debuggers (e.g., gdb) can also be used with a pid
to interactively debug a running process.

[Jonathan Birchall]

It all depends on how deep you wish to go and what version of Solaris
you are using.

Truss -wall -vall -fall -o<outputfilename> -p <PID> will give you
details of system calls etc. see Man truss

You can also use the p commands see man pfiles , ptree , pmap etc.

In Solaris 10 you can also now use dtrace for a detailed view of what
the process is doing.

Using a mixture of the about should give you a fairly detailed view of
what is happening.

You can also use adb (debugger).... which also pointed me to mdb
(solaris 9)

With Ric's help, using lsof, we managed to track down the problem.

swap

2005-09-16T15:40:00.000-05:00

Jason Stout wrote...
> The space problem is a good guess but I don't think thats it. The
> OpenBSD box has PLENTY of storage space free. The Solaris box is
> only running about 50% on the disk I'm ftp'ing to and /tmp is
> fine. df -k doesn't show me swap space so maybe that's it. I
> don't even know how to check swap space usage. Any help?

solaris$ swap -l
swapfile dev swaplo blocks free
/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s1 32,25 8 196552 182328

solaris$ swap -s
total: 10208k bytes allocated + 3720k reserved = 13928k used, 169840k available

Check to make sure that /tmp is being mounted as a swap filesystem.

solaris$ grep tmp /etc/vfstab
swap - /tmp tmpfs - yes -

If not, make sure that you're ftp'ing the file to a filesystem
that has enough free space...unless you have more than 900mb of swap
space, and you're ftp'ing a 900mb file to /tmp....that would explain
the problem.

> The space problem is a good guess but I don't think thats it. The
> OpenBSD box has PLENTY of storage space free. The Solaris box is
> only running about 50% on the disk I'm ftp'ing to and /tmp is
> fine. df -k doesn't show me swap space so maybe that's it. I
> don't even know how to check swap space usage. Any help?

swapctl -l ; see swapctl(8)

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