Control/Modify dhcpagent configuration in Sun Solaris
Do you you DHCP to get the IP Address for your Solaris Server or workstation then its worth understanding what your DHCP Agent by default requests for from the DHCP server and help avoid certain network issues like “unknown” hostname issue as I’ve descrbed here.
The DHCP Agent by default requests for the
Subnet Mask
Default Router
Hostname
DNS Domain
Broadcast Address
Encapsulated Vendor Option (vendor specific information as described in RFC 2132)
Fix: No hostname when using DHCP in Sun Solaris 8/9/10
If you are using DHCP to receive IP Address for your Sun Solaris system, you may end up with no hostname assigned to the system. This can be confirmed when there is no hostname at the prompt or if the output for the command “hostname” is as follows:
# hostname
unknownor the /etc/hosts file has an entry as follows:
# cat /etc/hosts
#
# Internet host table
#
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.3 unknown # Added by DHCP
UFS Maximum File Size (2GB) restriction in Sun Solaris
In Sun Solaris, UFS file system default maximum file size is 2GB which restricts the maximum size of any file will be restricted to 2GB. This can cause problems with applications like Databases. Solaris 10 by default however sets the Maximum file Size to unlimited on the UFS File System.
Configure IPMP Load Balancing & Resilience in Sun Solaris
IP Multipathing (IPMP) in Sun Solaris enables the load balancing capabilities and resilience for Network connections with multple Network Interface Cards (NIC).
I discussed here about providing resilience for network connections with multiple NICs on the system. Now, we take it to the next step and make the network connections not only resilient but also load balance the network connections such that both the NICs participating in IPMP are active and forwards traffic. This improves the network throughput and thereby efficiency of the server especially if it is a critical system serving multiple connections.
Read more
Multiple Interfaces (NICs) use single MAC-Address in Solaris on SPARC
In SPARC Servers running Sun Solaris, you can see multiple Network Interface Cards (NICs) or interfaces are all sharing a single MAC-Address than having a unique Factory-default MAC-Address assigned to it. This is because by default, a System-Wide MAC-Address is assigned to all the NICs and hence a ifconfig -a output will show only one MAC-Address.
To confirm this behaviour
Configure IPMP network resilience with Multiple NICs in Solaris
IP Multipathing (IPMP) in Sun Solaris enables the load balancing capabilities and resilience for Network connections with multple Network Interface Cards (NIC).
IPMP is mostly used to provide resilience with network connections wherein a Sun Solaris Server with multiple NICs can be configured such that if the primary NIC fails it automatically failover to the secondary NIC on the system. Also, if it is a multi-switch environment then each Network Interface participating in IPMP can be connection to two different switches such that a network connection failure due to a NIC failure or a switch failure can be avoided.
How to change Default Gateway/Default Router in Sun Solaris
The Default Gateway or the Default Router is the IP address (IPv4) to which all the traffic to any target destination(s) which does not have a route in the Routing Table of the server will be forwarded.
This Default Gateway is maintained in the file
/etc/defaultrouter [IPv4 only]
How to Add or Edit DNS servers in Sun Solaris
Domain Name Service (DNS) is a system which translates the meaningful Hostnames and Domain Names into valid IP Addresses. A DNS Client or a Resolver is a host or a network device which queries the DNS servers for various resource records like the IP Address for a host like a Mail Server.
Disable ICMP Redirect in Sun Solaris for Security
Solaris Operating Environment by default is configured to both accept and send the ICMP Redirect messages. According to RFCs, only a router or a gateway device should send an ICMP Redirect message and any other hosts should only be able to receive the ICMP Redirects. If the Solaris server is not acting as a Router or a Gateway then sending ICMP Redirect message should be disabled. The same applies to accepting ICMP Redirect messages if the solaris server is not required to receive ICMP Redirect messages (say a single Router/Gateway network/subnets scenario) as a malicous hacker could send fake ICMP redirect messages to modify the routing table on the host and potentialy cause a Denial of Service attack.
Solaris 10 – Change IP Address without reboot
Adding or editing the IP address on a Solaris 10 server is different from the previous versions of the OS (Solaris 9, Solaris 8 etc).
In the previous versions of the Solaris Operating System, you need to edit the /etc/hosts file and add/edit the entry for the IP address and the hostname.
Sun Security Alerts- Sun Alert 275590 A Security Vulnerability in the ntp Daemon (xntpd(1M)) May Lead to a Denial of the Solaris Network Time Protocol(NTP) Service
- Sun Alert 274110 Security Vulnerability in the Apache 1.3 "mod_perl" Module Component "Status.pm" May Lead to Unauthorized Access to Data
- Sun Alert 274990 Security Vulnerability in the Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer 3.0 (SSLv3) Protocols Affects Multiple Server Products in the Sun Java Enterprise System Suite
- Sun Alert 275530 Integer Overflow Security Vulnerability in AES and RC4 Decryption in the Solaris Kerberos Crypto Library May Lead to Execution of Arbitrary Code or a Denial of Service (DoS)
- Sun Alert 271169 Multiple Security Vulnerabilities in the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) Web Interface in OpenSolaris May Lead to Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and HTTP Response Splitting Attacks