SUMMARY Solaris 2.6

From: Jay A. Cohen (jcohen@paragren.com)
Date: Fri Sep 12 1997 - 11:23:03 CDT


Sorry for taking so long to summarize.

Thanks to all who had so much to offer on this matter!!!

Original question:

I just got a thing in the mail for upgrading to solaris 2.6 ....has anyone out there already installed 2.6 and can you tell me if it is worth upgrading to right now????

Replies in no special order:

>From Daniel Baker (dbaker@cuckoo.com)
I've had it in beta for months and got the final release
a couple weeks ago.

It all depends in what you do. It's just a new version/

BTW, if you do get it, check out /usr/include/sys/model.h

and note that they have a mungled c header

>From Marks, Evan R[SMTP:markser@aetna.com]

its cool and it works

>From Joel Lee <jlee@thomas.com> | Network Administrator/System Programmer

Yes, we are using it and the first time we upgrade (actually reinstall) we
are surprise how smooth the transition is. It's very stable and we have
not heard complaints from users (300+) for the past week. Definitely
making jobs easier for administrator. Also great new added features in
2.6 as you will soon see.

From Philip A. Fitzpatrick phil@philco.libs.uga.edu

I just upgraded one of my boxes today and it seems to have gone pretty smoothly.I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for any incompatibilities or other
problems with existing software, etc. before I upgrade any production machines.

>From Parks Fields[SMTP:parks@xdiv.lanl.gov]

I have install one machine and upgraded one machine.

It looks like it will be trouble to upgrade a diskless server.

There are some nice features about 2.6.
ITs suppose to some things faster. I haven't had time to benchmark yet.

CDE is better....
DTmail is improved, auto screen lock is handy....

>From John Justin Hough Post: UTHSCSA - Medicine/Medical Oncology

it fixes a lot of things that I have been disgruntalled
     about Solaris 2.x for a long time.

     Variable length Subnet masks, support for NTP, fail
     over to another NFS server if the first goes down
     preventing lockup if using CacheFS, to name a few.

>From Fred Byrd[SMTP:fred@po2.repair.navy.mil

yes I attempted it last weekend on a test machine and after freeing up
300 meg on my root disk I was able to proceed. I also have a storage
array that was at firmware 3.6 so I upgraded the firmware to 3.11 like
the book said. the machine paniced at reboot . Sun guys at Chelmsford
said it was mandatory to be running ver 2.4 of the Veritas Vol Man
software. I don't do Disksuite. I think the upgrade would have gone
well had it not been for the array issue. Make sure you have a min free
of 300 meg prior to an upgrade.

>From James Wendling[SMTP:jbwendl@mtb.phil.mop.com]

I already installed it on several machines, but I don't know that there are any
great compelling reasons to go to it unless it just happens to be that you are
in the process of upgrading anyhow like I was. The release notes give the
changes/new features.

>From Coffindaffer, Virginia[SMTP:Virginia.Coffindaffer@wang.com]

I just installed it. It looks great. Your applications should be
certified to work with Solaris 2.6 before making the plunge. Check with
your application venders. 2.6 is a definite improvement.

It installs either with Web Start or Interactive. The Web Start does
not give you a lot of flexibility on what gets installed. The
partitioning has changed quite a bit. For example, root is a minimum of
105 MB and /usr is a minimum of 600 MB while /var is lower than 100 MB
as a minimum. Web start lets you customise the partitioning but has
definite minimums. I believe I prefer the Interactive install to the
Web Start that uses the Sun HotJAVA browser.

>From Gianluca Rotoni, Unix Systems Administrator, Email: gianluca@tell.ascom.ch

We have. It surely looks promising. Amongst other minor changes, it's got a
*working* printing system BSD compatible, a brand new answerbook Web based,
a power manager built in, some new custom jumpstart features, a brand new
installation method Java based. All of this seems working (apart from the
latter which I haven't had the chance to make it running).

I only get an error running top which might be a bug (not clear yet).

Sure, go for a couple of test installations and keep them for a while (read
the sun-managers list meanwhile :-)

Again Thanks to all who took the time to share there Knowledge!!!

Jay A. Cohen jcohen@paragren.com
UNIX Systems Analyst / Administrator

Paragren Technologies, Inc.
Reston, Virginia
an APAC Teleservices Company



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