ZFS for production in an ISP?

Is TextDrive nuts? I can't believe I just read this about TextDrive Support:

"And yes, for Solaris we will be using ZFS."

*boggle*

I mean, ZFS is cool and all; but it just got seeded to OpenSolaris developers in build 27a.

Any ISP that says they are going to be using ZFS today needs to be whacked upside the head. For testing? Sure. Long-term? Maybe after they go through a full Solaris 11 release cycle with it. I've heard conflicting reports as to whether zfs will be only in Nevada or if they will ship it as an 'add-on' to 10; my bet is that it only makes it into Nevada, but I could be dead wrong. Who knows.

ZFS today? For customer data? Come on.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Patching Solaris 10 with zones

Sun now requires all Solaris 10 updates to go through the Update Manager. However, note the following blurb:

The Sun Update Connection cannot currently be used on systems
configured with Zones. This is a result of changes to the
low-level Solaris patch utility, patchadd, that rendered it
incompatible with the Sun Update Connection client software.
Updates for these systems must be obtained from SunSolve and
applied using patchadd.

Oops. Zones are by far the killer feature in Solaris 10.

Sun's argument is that because patchadd changed the result code that it is impossible to script it? How exactly did this change get through the ARC? Were they sleeping that day?

In the Update Connection support forum, they've been promising that a fix will come real soon now - I'm beginning to think they just don't care to fix it and produced this lame excuse.

Luckily, it's not terribly hard to script the patching process with zones installed.

Caveat emptor.

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Recall this patch, Sun!

Sun Solaris/10 Intel kernel patches 118844-18 through 118844-23 blow up Solaris 10/x86. Your machine will become a brick and enter an infinite reboot loop. Lovely.

I just spent the better part of an hour dealing with Sun's idiocy. If you have a bad patch, revoke it. Don't keep allowing poor admins to come along later after you know it's broken and fall into the same trap.

Not happy at all.

Here's the workaround so that you can boot:

[...at the Solaris boot prompt; enable kmdb, debugging, and single-user
    so that you can remove the patch and reboot...]
boot -kds
[...wait for it to boot...]
physmax:w
:c
[...you'll see 'stop on write of'...]
physmax/X
[...you'll see something like the following line:

   physmax: bff7f

 this is a hex number; add one; so if you see bff7f,
 your next line will need to be bff80...]
physxmax/W bff80
:c
[...system will boot and go into single user mode...
    now, go toss those patches...]
patchrm 118844-19 120662-03 118345-12 118376-04 \
  118565-03 118886-01 119076-10 118813-01 \
  118881-02 120082-07 119851-02
shutdown -i6 -y -g0 "sun should test their patches"

[/software/solaris] permanent link

SMF description for OpenLDAP

I finally got around to writing an smf description for OpenLDAP and a suitable start script.

We have a local LDAP server on this machine and the box also uses the same LDAP server for accounts.

Prior to Solaris 10, this could be easily managed by having slapd start before the LDAP client.

No more in Solaris 10 due to the idiocy of smf. Without this file, the LDAP client will start first and then the whole system will go wonky as the name-service system won't contact the LDAP server. Ouch.

So, download this file and then do:

# svccfg import slapd-smf.xml
# cp slapd.sh /lib/svc/method/slapd
# chmod +x /lib/svc/method/slapd

[/software/solaris] permanent link

Another smpatch error

For the record, if you update your Solaris 10 machine from a GA install and then run smpatch analyze (or smpatch update) and get:

# smpatch analyze
Failure: Unknown host (getupdates.sun.com) connecting to https://getupdates.sun.com/solaris/

Run 'updatemanager' to register your machine with Sun Update Connection.

For security patches, it's still free (for now). Otherwise, you need to pony up for their service plans.

Why they didn't test this and give a useful error message is beyond me.

Lame.

[/software/solaris] permanent link