SunOS (Solaris) tips

Having to deal with a SunOS system here at the university, I've devised bits and pieces of tips that one may find useful in the usage of Unix utilities to the SNG system. The machine runs Solaris, has 4 processors, 4GB of RAM and just about 11GB of swap.

• uname - prints the name/information of the system
  • Usage for the Sun systems vary, and Power commands: uname is a rather good reference.
  • uname -a displays all basic information on the system
  • uname -X displays expanded information, including number of CPU's included
  • appendix
• ping - sends ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to a network
  • In Linux, ping shows all the time it takes to ping the host, and the return time, and it doesn't stop till you break it. In the Sun world, an example like ping bytebot.net will show you an output as follows:
    

    sng> ping bytebot.net
    bytebot.net is alive
    

    
    OR
    

    sng> ping bytebot.net
    no answer from bytebot.net
    

  • To achieve what is seen in Linux systems, ping -s bytebot.net is what you want. The -s switch sends one datagram per second and collects the necessary statistics for it (which is what Linux normally does).
• psrinfo - displays information about processors
  • psrinfo - just displays the <processor number> <status>, where status has information with regards to it being on-line or not, and since what time/date.
  • psrinfo -v displays a more verbose output. Show's the processor speed, and what kind of floating point processor is installed.
  • appendix

Mainly here so that when the Sun machine gets decomissioned, the output will always remain. Also useful to check against the kind of output you're getting.

uname

sng> uname -a
SunOS sng 5.8 Generic_108528-21 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise-10000

sng> uname -X
System = SunOS
Node = sng
Release = 5.8
KernelID = Generic_108528-21
Machine = sun4u
BusType = 
Serial = 
Users = 
OEM# = 0
Origin# = 1
NumCPU = 4

psrinfo

sng> psrinfo
8       on-line   since 06/05/03 08:10:11
10      on-line   since 06/05/03 08:10:14
12      on-line   since 06/05/03 08:10:14
14      on-line   since 06/05/03 08:10:14

sng> psrinfo -v
Status of processor 8 as of: 06/10/03 22:54:03
  Processor has been on-line since 06/05/03 08:10:11.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 400 MHz,
        and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 10 as of: 06/10/03 22:54:03
  Processor has been on-line since 06/05/03 08:10:14.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 400 MHz,
        and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 12 as of: 06/10/03 22:54:03
  Processor has been on-line since 06/05/03 08:10:14.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 400 MHz,
        and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.
Status of processor 14 as of: 06/10/03 22:54:03
  Processor has been on-line since 06/05/03 08:10:14.
  The sparcv9 processor operates at 400 MHz,
        and has a sparcv9 floating point processor.