Add Zone Function to Solaris 10 Core build

These are my notes on adding the zone functionality to Solaris. Solaris 10 comes with six Software Groups. The Software Groups are, from lowest to highest, Reduced network Support, Core System Support, End User, Developer, Entire and Entire Plus OEM.

I installed Solaris 10 at the Core level. When I tried to install a zone it couldn't find the zonecfg command. This is because the packages needed to support zones are not install at this level. Below are the packages I install to in order to get zone functionality on my Solaris 10 server.

SUNWzoneu
SUNWzoner
SUNWpoolr
SUNWluzone
SUNWluu
SUNWlur
SUNWlucfg

Bash Shortcut keys

I found this little reference chart on the short cut keys in BASH. These short cut keys allow for command line editing. I for example use Ctrl + A all the time to edit the line.

Ctrl + A	Go to the beginning of the line you are currently typing on
Ctrl + E	Go to the end of the line you are currently typing on
Ctrl + L	Clears the Screen, similar to the clear command
Ctrl + U	Clears the line before the cursor position. If you are at the end of the line, clears the entire line.
Ctrl + H	Same as backspace
Ctrl + R	Let’s you search through previously used commands
Ctrl + C	Kill whatever you are running
Ctrl + D	Exit the current shell
Ctrl + Z	Puts whatever you are running into a suspended background process. fg restores it.
Ctrl + W	Delete the word before the cursor
Ctrl + K	Clear the line after the cursor
Ctrl + X	Then Backspace clear the line before the cursor
Ctrl + T	Swap the last two characters before the cursor
Esc + L	Changes to upper case
Esc + U	Changes to lower case
Esc + T	Swap the last two words before the cursor
Alt + F	Move cursor forward one word on the current line
Alt + B	Move cursor backward one word on the current line
Tab	Auto-complete files and folder names

Referance:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/keyboard-shortcuts-for-bash-command-shell-for-ubuntu-debian-suse-redhat-linux-etc/
I found this chart at the link above.

Mount an ISO in Solaris 10

Sometime I run into an issue were I need to install a program and the only installer I can find is on a CD or DVD. Unfortunately most servers don't have CD/DVD players. I can usually download the media, in the form of an ISO from the vender website. Then the issue is how do I get the application out of the ISO if you don't have a CD or DVD drive. Luckily for me, most UNIX based Operating Systems can mount a ISO. In much the same way you would mount an NFS (Network File System) or other external volumes, like a CD/DVD drive. As the title suggests this How-to will focus on doing this on a Solaris 10 server.

Mounting an ISO

# lofiadm -a /path/to/cd.iso
/dev/lofi/1
Now you can mount the ISO. # mount -o ro -F hsfs /dev/lofi/1 /mnt

Unmount and detach the images

# umount /mnt
# lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/1
Useful links
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-mount-sun-solaris-cd-iso-image/
http://bradthemad.org/tech/notes/solaris_mount_iso.php

Make Firefox load ILOM pages, Part III

This yet anther way to make Firefox load the ILOM web interface properly. Posted below is a script my co-worker wrote. Basically it adds the content to the userContent.css file via this script. This way you don't have to edit the file manually, like you had to in my other post "Make Firefaox load ILOM pages".




export PROFILE_IDZ=$(grep Path= $HOME/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini | awk -F={`print $2`})
export FILE4FIXZ-"~/.mozilla/firefox/${PROFILE_IDZ}/chrome"

mkdir -p ${FILE4FIXZ}
touch ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css

echo "@media print {" > ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css
echo "}" >> ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css
echo " " >>  ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css
echo "@namespace url (https:www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);" >>  ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css
echo "#mainpage { visibility: visible !important; }" >>  ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css

cat  ${FILE4FIXZ}/userContent.css

If you have comments please post below.

Script for checking accounts

In a perfect world all user accounts are centrally managed by a directory server such as NIS, LDAP or Active Directory. Unfortunately not all servers use accounts that are centrally managed or there are some servers that are set aside, as stand alone servers. It a can be a real pain to find out your account's password expired. Then be forced to change it before you can login. So I wrote this is a little script because I need to know when my passwords are about to expire. This way I can change my passwords on all the servers, before they expire.

I have three different operating systems at work so of course they all do this differently. In this how to I will be using examples from Solaris 10, RHEL 5 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and SLES 11 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server). I created a different file, containing the server names, for each OS.

The script below logs into each server listed in the server-sol file and runs the passwd -s command and prints the output on the screen. It then runs the change -l command on the Linux servers. SUSE needs elevated privileges to run the change -l, so I add sudo to the line. The line where you see the echo statement, prints the server's name indented and in bold.

man@earth>cat check-login2
for s in `cat server-sol`
do echo -e "\e[1m $s \033[0m "
ssh -q $s sudo passwd -s man
done
for r in `cat server-rhel`
do echo -e "\e[1m $r \033[0m "
ssh -q $r chage -l man
done
for sles in `cat server-suse`
do echo -e "\e[1m $sles \033[0m "
ssh -q $sles sudo chage -l man
done
Examples of out from script on the different OS versions.
man@earth>./check-login2
   solaris-server
rich PS 04/03/13 7 56 7
   rhel-server
Last password change : Apr 03, 2013
Password expires : May 29, 2013
Password inactive : never
Account expires : never
Minimum number of days between password change : 7
Maximum number of days between password change : 56
Number of days of warning before password expires : 7
   sles-server
Minimum: 1
Maximum: 60
Warning: 7
Inactive: 35
Last Change: Apr 03, 2013
Password Expires: Jun 02, 2013
Password Inactive: Jul 07, 2013
Account Expires: Never
As you can see there is a difference in the output each OS gives you. If you have any comments or questions please post them below.