INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS FOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS WHO ARE FAMILIAR WITH BASIC system administration and with the tasks described in the Solaris System Administrator's Guide, cited in the bibliography at the end of this book.

A Quick Tour of the Contents

This book is divided into seven parts, two appendixes, a glossary, and a bibliography.

Part 1, “Mail Services,” describes the Solaris 2.x mail services in four chapters. Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new mail service or expand an existing one.

Chapter 1, “Understanding Mail Services,” describes the components of the mail service, defines mail service terminology, and explains how the programs in the mail service interact.

Chapter 2, “Planning Mail Services,” describes several common mail configurations and provides guidelines for setting up each configuration.

Chapter 3, “Setting Up and Administering Mail Services,” describes how to set up, test, administer, and troubleshoot mail services.

Chapter 4, “Customizing sendmail Configuration Files,” describes the sendmail configuration file and how to customize it if you need a more complex configuration file for your mail system.

Part 2, “NIS+,” introduces the NIS+ naming service environment. Refer to the chapters in this part if you want to familiarize yourself with the basics of the NIS+ naming service and its administrative commands. Also refer to these chapters for instructions for setting up an NIS+ client. This part does not provide in-depth information for a system administrator who must set up and support an NIS+ environment.

Chapter 5, “Introducing the NIS+ Environment,” provides an overview of NIS+, explains how NIS+ differs from the Solaris 1.x NIS naming service, and introduces the NIS+ commands.

Chapter 6, “Setting Up NIS+ Clients,” describes how to set up a SunOS 5.x system as an NIS+ client when NIS+ servers are set up and running.

Part 3, “Automounter Services,” describes the Solaris 2.x automount services. Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new automount service or modify an existing one.

Chapter 7, “Understanding the Automounter,” describes automount terminology and the components of automounting, explains how the automounter works, recommends automounting policies, and tells you how to plan your automount services.

Chapter 8, “Setting Up the Automounter,” describes how to set up and administer automount maps.

Part 4, “Service Access Facility,” describes the Solaris 2.x Service Access Facility (SAF). Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new SAF service for terminals, modems, or printers or need to modify an existing one.

Chapter 9, “Understanding the Service Access Facility,” provides an overview of the SAF and describes the port monitors and services used by the SAF.

Chapter 10, “Setting Up Modems and Character Terminals,” describes how to set up and administer the SAF for modems and terminals.

Chapter 11, “Setting Up Printing Services,” describes how to set up and administer the SAF for printers and how to troubleshoot printing problems.

Part 5, “Application Software,” describes how to install and delete application software. Refer to this part for guidelines on setting up an application server and for information on installing and removing application software and patches.

Chapter 12, “Installing and Managing Application Software,” provides an overview of the installation process, introduces the package commands and the Software Manager for installation, recommends a policy for installing software on an application server, and describes how to access files from a CD-ROM drive.

Chapter 13, “Package Commands,” describes how to use the package commands to administer application software and how to set up the users' environment.

Chapter 14, “Admintool: Software Manager,” describes how to use Admintool to administer application software.

Chapter 15, “Installing and Managing System Software Patches,” describes how to use the new patchadd and patchrm commands.

Part 6, “Introduction to Shell Programming,” familiarizes you with the basics of shell programming. Use the information in this part to decide which shell language you want to use to perform a specific task. This part does not provide in-depth instructions for writing scripts in the three shells.

Chapter 16, “Writing Shell Scripts,” introduces the basic concepts of shell programming and the three shells available with Solaris 2.x system software. It describes how shells work and describes the programming elements.

Chapter 17, “Reference Tables and Example Scripts,” provides reference tables comparing shell syntax. It also contains examples of shell scripts.

Part 7, “System Security,” provides information about creating and administering secure systems. Refer to these three chapters if you want to familiarize yourself with the basics of system security and if you want to use authentication services and ASET security.

Chapter 18, “Understanding System Security,” introduces the basic concepts of system security, including file, system, and network security.

Chapter 19, “Using Authentication Services,” describes how to use authentication services. It provides an overview of secure RPC and explains how to use pluggable authentication modules (PAM).

Chapter 20, “Using the Automated Security Enhancement Tool (ASET),” describes how to set up and use automated security enhancement tool (ASET).

Refer to these three chapters if you want to familiarize yourself with the basics of system security and if you want to use authentication services and ASET security.

Appendix A, “Volume Management,” describes a new feature with Solaris 2.2 system software. Volume management automates the mounting of CD-ROMs and diskettes. You no longer need to have superuser permission to mount a CD-ROM or a diskette.

Appendix B, “Solaris Server Intranet Extension Products,” introduces the products available on the Solaris Server Intranet Extension 1.0 CD-ROM and provides brief installation instructions.

The glossary contains basic system administration terms and defines their meanings.

The bibliography contains a list of books on related system administration topics.

Important: Read This Before You Begin

Because you should assume that the root path includes the /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/bin, and /etc directories, the steps show the commands in these directories without absolute pathnames. Steps that use commands in other, less common directories show the absolute path in the example.

The examples in this book are for a basic Solaris 2.x system software installation without the Binary Compatibility Package installed and without /usr/ucb in the path.

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CAUTION! If /usr/ucb is included in a search path, it should always be at the end. Commands such as ps and df are duplicated in /usr/ucb with formats and options that are different than the SunOS 5.x commands.

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This book describes six different system administration areas in depth; however, a given section may not contain all of the information you need to administer systems. Refer to the complete system administration documentation set for complete information.

Because the Solaris 2.x system software provides the Bourne (default), Korn, and C shells, examples in this book show prompts for each of the shells. The default Bourne and Korn shell prompt is $. The default C shell prompt is system-name%. The default root prompt for all shells is a pound sign (#). In examples that affect more than one system, the C shell prompt (which shows the system name) is used to make it clearer when you change from one system to another.

SPARC and x86 Information

This book provides system administration information for both SPARC and x86 systems. Unless otherwise noted, information throughout this book applies to both types of systems. See SPARC and x86 System Administration Differences summarizes the differences between the SPARC and x86 system administration tasks.

Solaris System Software Evolution

Because Solaris 2.x system software is evolving, the procedures may differ depending on the system software that is installed on the system you are administering. For example, with the advent of Solaris 2.2 volume management, procedures for accessing files on CD-ROM discs and on diskettes are different for Solaris 2.2 and later releases. The old procedures will not work on the new software. To help you understand how Solaris is evolving, See SPARC and x86 System Administration Differences provides a list of the major system administration feature differences for each release. See Solaris System Software Evolution describes three new NIS+ scripts.

Refer to the nisserver(1M), nispopulate(1M), and nisclient(1M) manual pages for more information.

Conventions Used in This Book

Commands

In the steps and examples, the commands to be entered are in bold type. For example: "Type su and press Return." When following steps, press Return only when instructed to do so, even if the text in the step breaks at the end of a line.

Variables

Variables are in italic typeface. When following steps, replace the variable with the appropriate information. For example, to tell a printer to accept a print request, the step instructs you to “type accept printer-name and press Return.” To substitute the printer named pinecone for the printer-name variable, type accept pinecone and press Return.

Mouse Button Terminology

This book describes mouse buttons by function. The default mapping of mouse buttons in a three-button mouse is:

•  SELECT is left.

•  ADJUST is middle.

•  MENU is right.

Use the SELECT mouse button to select unselected objects and to activate controls. Use the ADJUST mouse button to adjust a selected group of objects, either adding to the group or deselecting part of the group. Use the MENU mouse button to display and choose from menus.

Storage-Medium Terminology

This book distinguishes among different types of media storage terminology in this way:

•  Disc is used for an optical disc or CD-ROM.

•  Disk is used for a hard-disk storage device.

•  Diskette is used for a floppy diskette storage device. (Note that sometimes screen messages and mount points use the term floppy.)

Icons

Marginal icons distinguish between three different types of information:

•  The New with SVR4 icon marks material that is new with Solaris 2.x system software (not available in Solaris 1.x).

•  The New with 2.6 icon marks features that are new with Solaris 2.6 system software.

•  The New in this edition icon marks new information that has been added to this edition. Some of the new information describes new commands and features that were introduced between the Solaris 2.1 and 2.5.1 releases. Other new information was available in the Solaris 2.0 release but was not included in the first edition. Where possible, the text following the icon indicates the release number in which the command or functionality was added.