Re: A new Solaris x86 user, looking for documentation

From: S. Anthony Sequeira (tony_at_sequeira.com)
Date: 03/27/04 

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 20:15:02 +0000

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 14:10:56 -0500, Richard B. Gilbert penned:

>>problem is that there is so much of it, and I have a tendency to get
>>sidetracked, and disturbed by domestic problems.
>>
>>Cheers.
>>
> Solaris is not a simple system. There are thousands of pages of
> documentation because there's a lot to document. There's a lot that
> doesn't seem to get documented at all.

I appreciate that. I was hoping to narrow the starting parameters for a
search.

> For setting up a DNS, I'd recommend "DNS and BIND"
by Paul Albitz and
> Cricket Liu, O'Reilly & Associates.
> My copy is dated 1994 and there have been two new editions since then so
> there may be different or additional authors.

Thanks, seems to be the general recommendation.
 
> For getting the machine "recognized by the rest of the LAN", you need to
> define the problem in a little more detail! Can you "ping" the machine
> by IP address from other machines on the LAN? $ ping 192.168.1.113

Yes. I'm sorry I was being imprecise. It is accessible via it's IP
address (fixed, no DHCP) on all the machines on the LAN. However, it is
not accessible by it's name, and this is probably a consequence of the
LAN DNS setup. I have a gateway running dnsmasq, which sufficed until I
bough a couple of 2nd hand PCs to play with. I set up a proper (BIND)
server on FreeBSD on one, and this should or will be the 'master' server.
I realise that I probably need to set up the Solaris machine in the zone
file(s), and I will do this, except I keep getting sidetracked/disturbed.
I'm also trying to configure the (FreeBSD stable) BIND (version 8) to
handle dynamic updates for the DHCP clients on the LAN, all the
documentation I found refers to BIND 9.

> If not, the new machine was not installed properly.
The install asks
> you about networking and, if you answer the questions correctly, the
> machine should work "out of the box". Check /etc/hostname.* (e.g.

I did get an 'invalid DNS' message during the install, every time I
installed (4 times to date). So left it as a problem to be addressed
later. One nagging issue is that the LAN domain portion seems to have
been lost:

This is on the Solaris machine.

$ /usr/sbin/ping fireball
fireball is alive
$ /usr/sbin/ping fireball.sequestor.lan
/usr/sbin/ping: unknown host fireball.sequestor.lan

> /etc/hostname.iprb0) There
should be one file per NIC containing the
> hostname. Check /etc/inet/hosts. If the hostname is "dumdum" there
> should be a line that looks like:
> 192.168.1.113 dumdum, loghost

Excellent, this is the kind of stuff I was looking for.

> Check /etc/defaultrouter. It should contain a line like 192.168.1.1
> Check /etc/netmasks. It should contain a line like: 192.168.1.0
> 255.255.255.0
> If you are using a DNS, check /etc/resolv.conf.. It should contain you
> domain name in the first line. The second, third, and fourth lines
> should each contain the IP address of one of your name servers.

$ ls /etc/host*
/etc/hostname.elxl0 /etc/hostname6.elxl0 /etc/hosts
$ cat /etc/host*
fireball
 
#
# Internet host table
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.150 fireball
$ cat /etc/inet/hosts
#
# Internet host table
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.150 fireball
$ cat /etc/defaultrouter
192.168.0.1
$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain sequestor.lan
nameserver 192.168.0.100
nameserver 192.168.0.1

All this looks OK to my eye, doesn't explain the lack of domain, unless
it's the DNS thingie.
>
> See "Sun System Administration Guide, Volumes 1, 2, & 3 for all those
> "common tasks". About 2,000 pages altogether. It will get you
> started.

Thanks, some bedtime reading then :)

> There are many books on "Unix System Administration". Whichever one you
> have in front of you will not apply fully and exactly to the system in
> front of you!!

I appreciate that, thanks for your response. 

-- 
Tony
Experience is directly proportional to the cost of the equipment ruined.

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