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"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research. "
- Wilson Mizner (1876-1933)

These Tips are mainly for my Sun Solaris compatriots out there. Linux, sadly, seems to have been on the cutting edge when it comes to desktop usefulness. Although I love my Solaris, and would not trade my E4500 for a Beowulf linux cluster, on the desktop...it's a different story.

Now don't get me wrong, I have had Solaris desktops for almost a decade now, I've had Irix and Linux, but my workhorse has always been a Sun Sparc. SparcStations, UltraSparcs, love 'em all. They are what I call home. However, I've often found myself looking a bit lustfully at a linux desktop wondering how long it will be until some of those features are added to my beloved Solaris.

But, enough blathering. All that was set-up for this, my Tips & Tricks. They are almost always going to be based on Solaris. Sure some will work on any *NIX OS, but some will seems silly for Linux users, or impossible for the users of other OSs.

All Introductions aside I bring you.......

Solarboyz1's Unix Tips & Tricks of the Day. (And sometimes Perl)

Daily Tip for May 13, 2006

Who can contain the power of the Sun?

Ok, I decided to mess around with Linux containers in Solaris 10. This allows me to run Linux programs under Solaris without modification. I tried this in an attempt to run the Linux Citrix client under Solaris x86..so far it's not working so well..but setting up the containers was fun:

# zonecfg -z Citrix
Citrix: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:Citrix> create -t SUNWlx
zonecfg:Citrix> set zonepath=/export/zones/Citrix_root
zonecfg:Citrix> add net
zonecfg:Citrix:net> set address=192.168.0.20/24
zonecfg:Citrix:net> set physical=iprb0
zonecfg:Citrix:net> end
zonecfg:Citrix> add attr
zonecfg:Citrix:attr> set name="audio"
zonecfg:Citrix:attr> set type=boolean
zonecfg:Citrix:attr> set value=true
zonecfg:Citrix:attr> end
zonecfg:Citrix> commit
zonecfg:Citrix> exit

For the linux distro in the zone I used the CentOS tar ball dist that was made for Solaris10 SCLA: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/downloads.

# zoneadm -z Citrix install -d /export/home/jc209962/centos_fs_image.tar 
Installing zone 'Citrix' at root directory '/export/zones/Citrix_root'
from archive '/export/home/jc209962/centos_fs_image.tar'

This process may take several minutes.

Setting up the initial lx brand environment.
System configuration modifications complete.
Setting up the initial lx brand environment.
System configuration modifications complete.

Installation of zone 'Citrix' completed successfully.

Details saved to log file:
    "/export/zones/Citrix_root/root/var/log/Citrix.install.2139.log"

So far so good. No to check it out:

# zoneadm list -iv
  ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP    
   0 global           running    /                              native   shared
   - Citrix           installed  /export/zones/Citrix_root      lx       shared

Let's boot the new environment:

# zoneadm -z Citrix boot
# zoneadm list -iv
  ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP    
   0 global           running    /                              native   shared
   1 Citrix           running    /export/zones/Citrix_root      lx       shared
# 
# zlogin Citrix
[Connected to zone 'Citrix' pts/5]
Welcome to your shiny new Linux zone.

        - The root password is 'root'.  Please change it immediately.

        - To enable networking goodness, see /etc/sysconfig/network.example.

        - This message is in /etc/motd.  Feel free to change it.

For anything more complicated, see:
        http://opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/

You have mail.
-bash-2.05b# uname -a
Linux Citrix 2.4.21 BrandZ fake linux i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Daily Tip for February 5, 2006
Killing XSun softly with Alt+Del...killing it softly

I love the ability in Linux to kill the windows manager with ctl+BackSpace. This sadly is missing in Solaris...even in my newly beloved Solaris 10. Apprently this can be fixed easily:

To do this, add +kb to the Xsun options in /etc/dt/config/Xservers to start in XKB mode. (If /etc/dt/config/Xservers doesn't exist, create it with "mkdir -p /etc/dt/config ; cp /usr/dt/config/Xservers /etc/dt/config/" .)

Now login and run 'xmodmap -pke | grep Delete' - it should print a line like this, though the number varies depending on keyboard type.
```
 keycode  83 = Delete
```
Take that line and feed it back into xmodmap with "Delete Terminate_Server" added to the end like this:
```
xmodmap -e "keycode  83 = Delete Delete Terminate_Server"
```
Now pressing AltGraph (or the right Alt key on PC's) + Delete should cause Xsun to exit. To make it permanent, you probably want to stick the xmodmap command in your $HOME/.dtprofile or somewhere similar.
Daily Tip for January 11, 2006
smpatch for fun and profit!

Solaris 10 has done something wonderful, they have finally given us an automated patching system that is easy to use, and fairly automated. Although now, most likely to make it easier for the MS minions to understand, it is not called patching..but updating. This will probably make it easier to explain to sr. management.

Any way, they have included a nice little GUI and an even better IMHO CLI.To start the GUI version of Sun's Update Connection Manager.
```
# /usr/bin/updatemanager & 
```
It's a GUI so it's pretty self explanatory. Just follow the screens to input your sunsolve account or to create a new one.

NOTE:You have two options one is to let Sun manage the updates for you system, the other is for you to manage the updates. I NEVER would allow a third party, even when it's a Sun itself, manage my patching remotely. PLUS, if you do select to allow them to manage the patching you will find the rest of this info useless!

So, now you system is all registered. It will pop you into the GUI and after analyzing your system it will show you the available updates. At this point you have two choices...use the GUI to patch the system or quite the GUI and hit the CLI. I think you know where I'm going....shut 'er down and skip to the smpatch part.

Now, what if you want to do it all via the command line, the first is to register the system. You need to create the registration profile for the system. This is a file with the following lines:

userName=user123

password=abc123

hostName=

subscriptionKey=

portalEnabled=false

proxyHostName=

proxyPort=

proxyUserName=

proxyPassword=

Once you create the file, we'll call it /tmp/registration.txt, you want to run the registration command:
```
# /usr/sbin/sconadm register -a -r /tmp/registration.txt
```
If you don't have a SUN subscription key or contract number, you can still register the system without one just leave that field empty.

The -a option accepts the Sun user agreement for the update manager. The -r points to the registration file. There are several other options to the sconadm command, just check the man pages.

Alright, so we're all registered...not what?

/usr/sbin/smpatch is the command line interface for patching. It has several options, but I will simply cover the ones I believe are most useful. Let's face it, your not here because you want to to experiment...you're here because you want an easy way to patch your systems.
- Applying ALL recommended patches for your system
- Viewing ALL recommended patches for your system
- Applying individual patches to your system
- Remove patches from your system
I know real complicated. It's great especially for workstations, just put your smpatch update in your crontab and viola automated updates.

Happy Patching!
Daily Tip for January 10, 2006
lsof free port discovery

Ever wonder what was process was keeping that port open? Ever wonder what ports a particular program was using? Ever think this was possible without lsof? Well, it is, thanks to pfiles.

/usr/proc/bin/pfiles is one of the many tools in our proc toolset. The proc toolset is used to view various information on the process running on your system. The /proc filesystem on your Solaris box provides a file like interface into the process running on your system..but the only real way to exploit this information is to use the toolset they provide. I'm sure we will dig into the toolset deeper at a later time. For now let's get back to the problem at hand.

Let's see...we have a system running ssh
```
# ps -ef | grep ssh
    root   279     1   0 22:23:24 ?           0:00 /usr/lib/ssh/sshd
#
```
Nothing too interesting, but this is just an example...So I wonder what port ssh is running on? I already know the process id, now I just need to see what resource this process is using.
```
# pfiles 279 | grep port
        sockname: AF_INET6 ::  port: 22
```
Now, as you can see I used grep to narrow the results to what I was looking for. In this case it was the port number. Now, how would you do that when you don't know the process? Easy you write a script that takes all the running process id's, runs them through pfiles, and prints out the id of the port you were looking for

Some of you will probably wonder why I don't just put the script for it here. Well the fact is I don't have one with me or I'd think about it. At the same time, it's simple to write a ps -> awk -> psfile -> grep and bam! done. If your doing the type of work that requires you to use this info...you should be able to do some basic scripting. So consider this practice.

If your good I will post the script in a few day.
Daily Tip for January 9, 2006
prstat or look whose not top dog anymore!

Starting with Solaris 8, our buddies at Sun decided to throw us users a bone. No longer would we need to install third party apps to do basic functions. This includes monitoring what process are holding up the system.

It used to be the only way to see what processes were hogging the resources would be to load and run top. Or you could use your proc tools, but then, that would only get you so far.

Anyway, that is now done with. prstat is here to allow realtime process monitoring. Lets take a look at what it can do:
```
[me@localhost]: # prstat
   PID USERNAME  SIZE   RSS STATE  PRI NICE      TIME  CPU PROCESS/NLWP       
  1181 me       4832K 4544K cpu0    59    0   0:00:00 0.2% prstat/1
    91 root     4056K 3000K sleep   59    0   0:00:30 0.0% nscd/27
   387 root      127M   27M sleep   59    0   0:03:00 0.0% Xsun/1
   442 root       11M 7544K sleep   59    0   0:02:44 0.0% dtgreet/1
   725 me       8584K 2632K sleep   59    0   0:00:02 0.0% sshd/1
   424 root     3640K 1896K sleep   59    0   0:01:45 0.0% nmbd/1
     1 root     2216K  792K sleep   59    0   0:00:03 0.0% init/1



Total: 47 processes, 151 lwps, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
```
What's that, you say that looks familiar? Well, of course it does. It's looks exactly like our old buddy top, except when you dig further you will find that it is even better. Check out the man pages to learn more!
Daily Tip for January 8, 2006
-h or Human Readable Format

This is a new phenomena in the Solaris world. It came about in Solaris 9, and was a god send to those of us who struggle to convert our -k kilobyte information into MBs and GBs.

The old way consisted of:
```
[me@localhost]:/home/me # df -k .
Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7    5037950 2617145 2370426    53%    /export/home 
```
WTF!?!?

Sure, we can divide by 1024 to see that there are 4919MB. And divide again by 1024 to get 4.8GB.

But wouldn't it be simpler just to:
```
[me@localhost]:/home/me # df -h .
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0s7      4.8G   2.5G   2.3G    53%    /export/home
```
Of course it would. That's why Sun has finally gotten around to adding that into our beloved Solaris's built in commands. Give it a try next time your looking for big files, or trying to calculate your space requirements. It's in most of the commands that can be used to display sizes (du, df, ls, etc..).