# hostname
unknown

or 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

This happens when the DHCP server doesn’t provide a hostname for your server. Most of the DHCP Servers or routers acting as a DHCP Server doesn’t provide a hostname and Solaris DHCP agent relies on the DHCP server for its hostname.

To fix this problem, edit the dhcpagent config and set it not to request a Hostname from the DHCP server and then add a hostname to the /etc/hosts & /etc/nodename file.

Edit DHCPAGENT config

[For Solaris 10, this is not required as setting the hostname in /etc/nodename overrides the hostname provided by the DHCP Server. Move onto the next step]

Edit the dhcpagent config file /etc/default/dhcpagent with your favorite editor

# vi /etc/default/dhcpagent

and look for

PARAM_REQUEST_LIST=1,3,6,12,15,28,43

and remove the Parameter “12″ from the above to look as follows:

PARAM_REQUEST_LIST=1,3,6,15,28,43

and save the file.

Now, add the hostname to the /etc/nodename & /etc/hosts as follows

# vi /etc/nodename

and add the hostname you want it to have (solarisserver for me)

# cat /etc/nodename
solarisserver

and edit the /etc/hosts file

# vi /etc/hosts

and add the line similar to the following

192.168.0.3 solarisserver loghost

Now,reboot the server and you should be all fine with hostname set for the system.

# init 6

The nscd daemon is a caching daemon in Sun Solaris. It provides caching services for hosts,passwd,group,ipnodes databases using various nameservice lookups like hosts file, DNS, NIS,NIS+ and more. Each cache has a separate time-to-live for its data and modifying the local database like /etc/hosts invalidates that cache within ten seconds. nscd doesn’t cache /etc/shadow (contains encrypted passwords for /etc/passwd) file simple for security reasons as anyone would understand.

As nscd daemon provides caching service, it is necessary when you run a name service like DNS, NIS or NIS+ in your network. The configuration of nscd daemon can customised using the /etc/nscd.conf file and it is important more from a security point of view where you can control what is and how is cached on your solaris server.

A sample configuration looks like the following

enable-cache          passwd no
enable-cache          group no
positive-time-to-live hosts 3600
negative-time-to-live hosts 5
suggested-size        hosts 211
keep-hot-count        hosts 20
old-data-ok           hosts no
check-files           hosts yes

Each line of the config file has an attribute and a value or an attribute, cachename and value

Example:

attribute: enable-cache

cachename: group or passwd

Value: 3600 (time in seconds) or yes/no for to cache or not to cache.

Enable/Disable nscd caching

However, if caching is not required, disable the service at start up by renaming the startup script

/etc/rc2.d/S76nscd

to

/etc/rc2.d/s76nscd

optionally, rename the kill scrips in /etc/rc1.d/, /etc/rcS.d/, /etc/rc0.d/ from

K40nscd

to

k40nscd

Manually Start & Stop nscd daemon

To start & stop nscd daemon manually:

Start nscd

solaris#/etc/init.d/nscd start

Stop nscd

solaris#/etc/init.d/nscd stop

For more information, please check the Sun man pages