New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU63 (Nov 2023)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

LDAP setup for Active Directory domain
ldap commands: -h / -p have been deprecated
Strict Mode for Live Memory Reconfig for Kernel Zones
ZFS File Retention Autodelete and Hold
prstat -s usr/sys (sort key)
sysadm maintain noreboot


FOSS: GCC 13
EOF: GCC 10
Removed: SMF svc:/system/auto-update:ehc

SPARC Firmware Live Update

The newest SPARC Firmware 9.10.6 can be updated live, without
downtime of the server, if you are already on 9.10.3 or newer.
This applies to SPARC M8,M7,T8,T7 and S7 servers.

Live Update of the ILOM is done since serveral years,
but now even the Hypervisor is updated live ...

Befor the update

-bash-5.1$ ldm -V

Logical Domains Manager (v 3.6.2.0.54)
        Hypervisor control protocol v 1.16
        Using Hypervisor MD v 1.4

System PROM:
        Hostconfig      v. 1.11.9       @(#)Hostconfig 1.11.9 2022/10/20 00:54
        Hypervisor      ROM v. 1.20.6.b @(#)Hypervisor 1.20.6.b 2022/10/20 00:40
        OpenBoot        v. 4.43.9       @(#)OpenBoot 4.43.9 2022/10/20 00:32


# fwupdate update all -x /var/firmware/system/S7-2/sysfw9-10/p35402495_9106/Firmware/Sun_System_Firmware/metadata.xml

The following actions will be taken:
==========================================================
ID        Priority Action      Status      Old Firmware Ver.   Proposed Ver.       New Firmware Ver.   System Reboot
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sp        1        Check FW    Success     9.10.5              9.10.6              N/A                 N/A
During SP FIRMWARE update SP may not be available for 400 seconds
Do you wish to process the above actions? [y/n]? y
Update sp: Updating sp: Success
Waiting for service processor to reset and recover
Sleeping for 60 seconds.
Checking whether the service processor has finished booting.
Service processor has not finished booting yet.
Sleeping for 60 seconds.
Checking whether the service processor has finished booting.
Service processor has not finished booting yet.
Sleeping for 60 seconds.
Checking whether the service processor has finished booting.
Service processor has not finished booting yet.
Sleeping for 60 seconds.
Checking whether the service processor has finished booting.
Service processor finished booting.

Verifying all priority 1 updates

Execution Summary
==========================================================
ID        Priority Action      Status      Old Firmware Ver.   Proposed Ver.       New Firmware Ver.   System Reboot
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sp        1        Validate    Success     9.10.5              9.10.6              9.10.6              N/A


after the update


-bash-5.1$ ldm -V

Logical Domains Manager (v 3.6.2.0.54)
        Hypervisor control protocol v 1.16
        Using Hypervisor MD v 1.4

System PROM:
        Hostconfig      v. 1.11.9       @(#)Hostconfig 1.11.9 2022/10/20 00:54
        Hypervisor      ROM v. 1.20.6.b @(#)Hypervisor 1.20.6.c 2023/03/09 00:20
        OpenBoot        v. 4.43.9       @(#)OpenBoot 4.43.9 2022/10/20 00:32



-> show /HOST hostfw_status

 /HOST
    Properties:
        hostfw_status = Host firmware update pending; HV live-patch applied

Oracle extends Support for Solaris 10 and 11.3 to 2027

Oracle has once again changed the Extended Support for Solaris 10 and Solaris 11.3
from January 2025 now to January 2027.

You can find all the Support dates in

http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-hardware-301321.pdf

Impact of new openssh 9.3p1 on Solaris 11.4.60

When connecting to an old server you may see

-bash-5.2$ ssh g0083
Unable to negotiate with 192.168.100.83 port 22: no matching host key type found. Their offer: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss

or if you try to connect from an old system to Solaris 11.4.60 or newer

-bash-4.4$ ssh g0049
no hostkey alg

This is because the new openssh version on Solaris 11.4.60 has sha-1 hash disabled by default.
It is recommended to update your old systems to newer versions.

On Solaris 11.3 you need to:
pkg install openssh
pkg set-mediator -I openssh ssh

If this is not possible as a workaround you can enable sha-1 on the new Solaris server
for the target systems in /etc/ssh/ssh_config and/or sshd_config

Host g0083
HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa
PubkeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU60 (Aug 2023)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

iostat -S (separator)
coreadm -d asr to disable ASR SR
svccfg setnotify problem-diagnosed asr:inactive to disable ASR SR
no /etc/vfstab entry required anymore for swap
fcinfo hba-port -T (tabular format)
pkgadd: -d http & https removed

FOSS: OpenSSH_9.3p1
EOF: pcre
Removed: CVS, perl 5.32

 

Overview of Solaris ZFS blog posts

I wanted to write a blog post about ZFS encryption and found
there was already a post in 2020.

It looks like it's time for an overview about such posts

Solaris 11.4 SRU42 (Feb 2022) - zpool status -s
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2022/02/solaris-114-sru42-feb-2022-zpool-status.html

Don't remove Data Disks from Solaris Zpools if performance is important
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2021/08/dont-remove-data-disks-from-solaris.html

Performance Impact of ZFS Encryption on Oracle Solaris
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2020/06/performance-impact-of-zfs-encryption-on.html

Oracle Database on Solaris ZFS done right
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2020/05/oracle-database-on-solaris-zfs-done.html

Solaris 11.4 Beta: Fast (asynchronous) ZFS destroy
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2018/02/solaris-114-beta-fast-asynchronous-zfs.html

Is there a performance impact when using Solaris ZFS lz4 compression?
https://jomasoftmarcel.blogspot.com/2017/04/is-there-performance-impact-when-using.html

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU57 (May 2023)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

Kernel Zone live storage migration support for individual disk operations
Kernel Zone Virtual CPU binding improvements
Kernel Zone MRP reservation for Nested Page Tables
Comments for reboot(8), halt(8), and poweroff(8)
pbind(8) default output change for querying multi-LWP processes
Courteous NFS Server
Force flag for shrinking ZFS volumes
ZFS send with raw crypto


FOSS: PHP 8.2, MySQL 8.0
EOF:  CVS, MySQL 5.7
Removed: Python 2.7, PHP 7.4, Ruby 2.6, OpenSSL 1.1.1