Tag Archives: solaris

Perfect DHCP configuration for Solaris

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I've already posted on configuring DHCP + Dynamic DNS for some operating systems.

I still claim that that's the only way to go for dynamic, trusted networks.

So after RedHat, Debian/Ubuntu, Windows, it's about time to stop the IP suffering with Solaris as well:

  1. Make sure /etc/nodename contains the FQDN, e.g. "snoopy.ac.uk"
  2. touch /etc/dhcp.<interface name> . There are two peculiar parameters I'm not fully sure about their meaning (how come they're not needed in other OSes?) - but here is what I used:
    1. add "primary" (a separate line) if it's the primary interface.
    2. Add "wait <seconds>" (a separate line) - I put "wait 60" to be on the safe side.
  3. /etc/hostname.<interface name> should have the hostname inside. NOTE! It's the hostname dhcp client would send (Option 12) to the server for Dynamic DNS registration. According to /etc/defaults/dhcpagent, the format is "inet name", e.g. "inet snoopy"

That should be it, then. Please add your comments and corrections.

Init script dependency

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"Behind my back", a new feature was added to LSB specification and to Debian Lenny accordingly: Init scripts dependency.

The new LSB defines new fields for init script headers: Required, Should (like Required but only if installed) and Provides. This means that the init system should take care of ordering the init scripts according to their dependencies (i.e. "NFS" service requires "portmap" service which requires network and thus order should be Network -> Portmap -> NFS). This eliminates the need to give funny "K01/S99"-style numbers manually to each service.

Cool. But is it enough? The init system is several decades old. Maybe we need something revolutionary such as Upstart or Solaris SMF. Features like starting/stopping independent services in parallel, service monitoring (watchdog/keepalive), or other crazy ideas that Upstart & SMF implement.

Ubuntu's Upstart was adopted also by Fedora 9; this means that RHEL6 might use Upstart as well. In that case, the revolution is over.. Debian, SuSE (and Windows maybe? 🙂 ) would probably follow.