Some things i need to know when im now learing Solaris....

I see the "Stop-A" command now and then, but what keys are those, im not sure what they mean. If i do use the so called "Stop-A" keys, do i get to the "ok" prompt then, because i havent found it

The commands "devalias" and "nvalias" are they only working in the "ok" prompt, because i cant find any info about these commands in the shell.

And 1 last question, does Solaris have modules like Linux, so you can load and unload them, or is it just a big kernel ? If there is modules, how can you list the modules that are loaded ?


Thankes for answers....



Ole

The "Stop" key is in the top left corner of the Sun keyboard. You have to hold "Stop+A" to get the system to halt. This will take you to the EPROM screen, where you can do all of your lower level administration. To reboot, just type "boot".

Ohhh...so thats why i dont have that on my nice Dell laptop :P... do you have any other key-combination for this, or is it specific for SPARC or SUN box... ?

Not too sure. What you might be able to do is figure out the key sequence that Stop-A returns and use LinEAK to create a key combination that returns the same sequence that Stop-A returns.

RHELL just linked this for me in a thread around here

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/...olsysadmin.pdf

pretty sweet info in there.

That's SPARC specific, x86 haven't a boot monitor but a dumb BIOS ...
Yes
Sure, but that's in fact the other way around: Linux have modules like Solaris have

The commands to list modules is "modinfo".

Thanks for clearing this for me....Now i just need to install Solaris on a Sparc at work


Ole

You may want to be careful because when you use the stop+a key sequence, you are crashing the box. You may not want to do this at work. Use init 0 to bring the box to the ok prompt (sparc system only) successfully.

Once there, you can use commands like printenv, setenv, nvalias, nvunalias, nvstore, banner, show-devs, probe-scsi or probe-ide (ex. ultra 10).

But stop+a is mainly use to crash a system if it hangs. Furthermore, you can disable stop+a by editing /etc/default/kbd
if you want or the command kbd -a disable (won't survive a reboot if you don't edit the file)

Good luck.

Not really, Stop-A is simply suspending the O/S and giving control to the boot monitor.
The O/S can be resumed by entering the "go" command.

If you really want/need to crash the O/S, for example to have a crash dump available for further analysis, then run the "sync" command under the boot prompt.

That is true but what I am telling him is that if he does a stop + a combo, although he is suspending the os, if he types other commands at the ok prompt like probe-scsi (or a few others), he won't be able to do a "go" and then he will be hosed (try it if you don't believe me). Plus, let's see how long one keeps the job when you do a stop+a in a production machine

I do not contest that, I was just warning the readers that your first statement was inaccurate. Stop-A doesn't crash the system. Of course some commands like probe-scsi will change the SCSI bus state, and consequently the driver will crash if the O/S is resumed. Outside this and similar cases, Stop-A can be "undone" and it is worthwile knowing it.
Production machines should have the stop-a feature disabled.

To quote:

"Production machines should have a stop-a feature disabled."

Since you like to debate other people's opinion, it's my turn (returning the favor for the raid 4 "incorrect" answer (not seldom used, NEVER supported by
Sun/Solaris), I don't know about France but most production servers in the
States are headless systems (no monitor, no keyboard)to begin with so there is no reason to disable stop-a. Examples: 25k, 20k, 15k, 12k, 10k, 6900, 6800, 4900, 4800, 3800, etc.

On top of that, other smaller servers are usually connected to a terminal concentrator, meaning that to do a stop-a, you use "control/right square bracket/send break". Stop-a would only "suspend" (as you put it) the so-called admin workstation, not the servers. Besides that, you don't always want to disable stop-a since the systems are not local and that is the only way to bring them down when they freeze; unless you volunteer to drive to the server room at 2am

Please "debate" this one, I would love to since I work for Sun Microsytems and I am a member of the storage support team (tse).

Linuxtesting, for big servers, you use the equivalent sequence by using other comands like setkeyswitch -d A (domain A in this case) off and on (25k). Or the
reset -d A (again, domain A here) in the same machine (and 20k, 15k, 12k). Oher servers use other techniques as well.

Thanks all for clearing this up nice that people are so good to give feedback.


cheers



Ole

I see, nobody's perfect

Closing the debate actually, I yield, you are quite right on that one, and I do not want to put a co-worker or myself in trouble ...

To my defense, I was really thinking about the servers where a key allow to switch the machine in "safe mode" or the equivalent "setkeyswitch" virtual keyswitch on other, where the break and reset functions are disabled.

Quoting the "Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 Systems Platform Administration Manual":

The Sun Fire 6800/4810/4800/3800 systems do not have a physical keyswitch. You set the virtual keyswitch in each domain shell with the setkeyswitch command. To secure a running domain, set the domain keyswitch to the secure setting.

With the keyswitch set to secure, the following restrictions occur:
[...]
Ignores break and reset commands from the system controller. This is an excellent security precaution. This functionality also ensures that accidentally typing a break or reset command will not halt a running domain.

Cheers.