In the past Oracle provided Solaris SRUs (Support Repository Updates)
each month. This does change now. The types of SRUs are reduced
from 3 types to 2 types. Instead of 12 SRUs per year we will see 8 SRUs
per year.
a) Feature SRU (NEW)
This will be available early in the months
March, June, September, December
Around 6 weeks after the CPUs.
This SRU includes new features, tools, packages, version updates
and removal of old, outdated/insecure software.
I would recommend to install this SRU on test systems to verify
application compatibility and identify required configuration changes.
b) CPU (Critical Patch Updates)
No changes here.
Available January, April, July, October
The release dates are predefined and are published on
https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/#CriticalPatchUpdates
This SRU includes critical fixes and security updates.
Most of our enterprise customers update to this SRU.
For critical issues Oracle will release individual
IDRs (Interim Diagnostic or Relief).
04 May 2026
Oracle changes Solaris 11.4 SRU delivery
23 April 2026
Oracle provides JDK17 for Solaris 11.4 SPARC now!
It is free for personal use and development.
Download here:
https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/#java17-solaris
The installation guide can be found here
https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/javase/17/install/installation-jdk-oracle-solaris.html
03 April 2026
Solaris 11.4 Updates/Patching Overview
CBE (Common Build Environment)
For developers Oracle provides a free version for software development
and testing. No patches are available for this version, but around every
year a new version is published. This version is named
CBE "Common Build Environment" and can be downloaded here
https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/downloads/solaris-downloads.html
SRU (Support Repository Updates)
For customers with a support contract Oracle provides monthly updates.
The updates are cumulative. If you update to the current SRU you
receive all the updates of the previous SRUs from the past.
Current SRU as of March 2026 is number 91. This is the 91th update
since the first release of Solaris 11.4 GA in 11/2018.
SRUs can be received by the solaris pkg command from
the Solaris Support Repo
https://pkg.oracle.com/solaris/support
or download the SRU ZIP files from
My Oracle Support / Solaris 11.4 SRU Index Page
https://support.oracle.com/support/?anchorId=&documentId=KB631614
The benefit of monthly updates is the customers are using
the same software levels. A major step forward in
standardization compared to the times of Solaris 10 (or Linux)
where a lot customers used a different set of individual patches.
There are 3 different types of SRUs.
a) Feature SRU
Available February, May, August, November
This SRU includes new features, tools, packages, version updates
and removal of old, outdated/insecure software.
I would recommend to install this SRU on test systems to verify
application compatibility and identify required configuration changes.
b) Stabilisation SRU
Available March, June, September, December
This SRU includes small updates, bug fixes and security updates.
c) CPU (Critical Patch Updates)
Available January, April, July, October
The release dates are predefined and are published on
https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/#CriticalPatchUpdates
This SRU includes critical fixes and security updates.
Most of our enterprise customers update to this SRU.
IDR (Interim Diagnostic or Relief)
For critical issues Oracle releases IDRs, which are
individual patches. They are available on request
from Oracle Support. Some of them can be applied
online using Ksplice without reboot.
Summary
- quick fixes for critical issues using IDRs
- standardized and well tested monthly SRU updates
- free CBE updates for developers to develop and test
the applications
and the best: Oracle guarantees this updates till AT LEAST January 2037
This update solutions are one of the reasons I like this stable and long term
Solaris Operating System.
31 March 2026
Solaris 11.4 / iostat latency reporting
The iostat command is used for IO performance reporting
and has a lot of options.
Since Solaris 11.4 it includes the -L option to display
the latency distribution.
You can see how many request are sent to the disks and
how the distribution is
Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 1:23:55 PM CEST
extended device statistics
r/s w/s Mr/s Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t %w %b device
6.8 48.4 0.4 0.3 0.0 0.1 0.0 1.9 0 4 c2d13
latency range count density distribution
<16us 0 0.00% 0.00%
16-32us 1 0.36% 0.36%
32-64us 2 0.72% 1.08%
64-128us 0 0.00% 1.08%
128-256us 7 2.51% 3.58%
256-512us 59 21.15% 24.73%
512-1024us 62 22.22% 46.95%
1-2ms 73 26.16% 73.12%
2-4ms 56 20.07% 93.19%
4-8ms 12 4.30% 97.49%
8-16ms 5 1.79% 99.28%
16-32ms 2 0.72% 100.00%
>32ms 0 0.00% 100.00%
total 279
6.0 387.4 0.3 87.8 0.0 1.1 0.0 2.7 1 56 c2d14
latency range count density distribution
<16us 0 0.00% 0.00%
16-32us 1 0.05% 0.05%
32-64us 1 0.05% 0.10%
64-128us 0 0.00% 0.10%
128-256us 5 0.25% 0.36%
256-512us 66 3.35% 3.71%
512-1024us 388 19.70% 23.40%
1-2ms 677 34.37% 57.77%
2-4ms 491 24.92% 82.69%
4-8ms 261 13.25% 95.94%
8-16ms 64 3.25% 99.19%
16-32ms 16 0.81% 100.00%
>32ms 0 0.00% 100.00%
total 1970
The following options are used
iostat -LxnM -Td c2d14 c2d13 5
Td to display date/time
L to display the latency
M to display MB/s
x to display extended output
n to display the disk names
04 March 2026
The Next Oracle Solaris 11.4.90 CBE is available for Developers
CBE is the Common Build Environment
The first release 11.4.42 was made available by Oracle 03/2022.
Last year 05/2025 the version 11.4.81 was published.
And now 03/2026 11.4.90 is already available.
This release can be used by Developers to develop, test and demonstrate
their software for free. It includes current compilers and tools.
Download from
https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/downloads/solaris-downloads.html
This is great news and confirms Oracle continues investing into Oracle Solaris.
27 February 2026
New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU90 (Feb 2026)
Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features
devnm -s
beadm preserve policy
ls -sh output change
bootadm GRUB unrestricted property
ikev2cert PIN from SMF
nscfg check
new smf svc:/system/check/name-services:default
ipadm _forward_src_routed IPv6 property removed
FOSS: BIND 9.20
EOF: GCC 12
12 February 2026
New postgres packages are ready for Solaris 11.4 SPARC
You don't need to download source and compile yourself for Solaris.
We provide compiled postgres as Solaris 11.4 SPARC IPS pkgs.
Current versions are 18.2, 17.8, 16.12, 15.16, 14.21
Free download and no registration
https://www.jomasoft.ch/downloads/#js-opensource