Hi, before i specifically state my problems with Solaris 9. i feel i must give a brief introduction why i'm bothering to learn Solaris, so that the Solaris gurus can better understand my level of understanding of Solaris (which is zero by the way ) and also because this is my first thread in a Solaris forum. I've been using different Linux(s) somewhat for the past three years (during and after my undergrad studies). Now since i'm finally working and not studying anymore (and have some time after work), i was planning to progress my linux knowledge from newbie/basic to advanced system administration. Before i was trying to decide what to practise on, Unix? BSDs or linux? to me it feels that Linux will eventually replace other unix(s) more and more as the time goes on (i could be or may be wrong, i'm only saying what it seems to me).

I had no plans of learning Solaris, but i am kind of forced to learn it to progress my growth on my job. I'm working in a call center and that call center is using Cisco's IPCC and soon they will integrate Cisco's IVR (solaris based) into IPCC.

I once installed Solaris 9 one year back and i remember that it was smooth and the i started browsing internet right away, since during installation i specified that the machine will be using a DHCP environment (at that time the Solaris machine was connected to a LAN router working as a gateway to internet and a DHCP server). I also saw gnome desktop environment and switched between the two.

(1) Two days back when i installed Solaris 9 again. I didnt not find any network administration utility or tool to make sure my Solaris box is configured as DHCP client. Let me go into little bit more detail on how i'm going to connect my solaris box to the internet. Presently i do not have broadband internet access and will not have for the next 6-8 months. So i will have to connect to the internet via 56k dial-up modem. I will also not try to use Solaris box's modem (most probably it will not work) i do have an external modem that worked with linux, but i want my Solaris box to access internet using Windows XP's Internet Connection Sharing service. That's how i connected Debian Linux few days back to internet. The windows XP box will dialup and connect to the internet and through its Internet Connection Service it will allow the Solaris box to access internet (the Solaris box will be connected to the NIC of that XP box directly or through a hub).

(2) In CDE i saw netscape icons, but when i clicked them it said didnt find any browsers installed. Doesnt solaris 9 comes with preinstalled browsers like netscape or mozilla? i thought it was.

(3) I didnt not see any option for gnome in CDE login dialog box.

Kindly treat me as complete Unix newbie. I will be asking more and more questions as i will move forward. Once these issues are resolved then i will move forward to install different applications that i like, specially multimedia.

Thanks to all gurus in advance.

Hasan

1) man ifconfig

2) yes, mozilla is bundled with Solaris

3) you have to install it

PS: you'd rather install Solaris Express, why bothering with SunOS 5.9 when 5.11 (beta) is more advanced.

I installed Solaris 9, because i bought a book on Solaris 9 and plus i just printed two 400+ pdf docs on Solaris 9 from sun's site. Please tell me something, can i still use books/docs/guides on Solaris 9 for practising on Solaris Express? or does it mean that if i use Solaris Express all those books/docs are more or less are useless for it?

(Also here in Pakistan all the Telecom Companies are still using Solaris 5.8. Even that new Cisco IVR we are getting its going to be installed with Solaris 5.8.)

I reinstalled Solaris 9 but this time i also downloaded the companion software CD. And it installed most gnu utilities like Gnome, kde desktop environments. FVWM, xfce, window maker window managers. Gimp, xmms, xcdroast etc.

At the first login there i saw gnome or CDE, but where is xfce, windowaker? This time netscape did work, which means just solaris 9 software CDs 1 & 2 is not enough, for all these apps we also need the software companion CD.

(1) Now how do i launch these apps Gimp\xmms etc.? In Linux if we simply type and enter mozilla or xmms or gimp or emacs at the prompt, the application would come up. How do launch those apps since they do not show up in the menu.

Most of your Solaris 9 documentation will still be valid with Solaris 10/Express.

You'll miss major new stuff like smf, zones, dtrace, zfs, new boot on x86, and several drivers on x86/x64.

mozilla (or perhaps netscape with this Solaris release) is bundled with Solaris, it doesn't come from the companion CD.

If you want recent versions of gimp, xmms and the like, better to install them from blastwave.org.

Jilliagre, how do i launch installed applications in solaris, like i said earlier almost all the linux apps are now installed from the software companion CD, like xmms\gimp\gaim\xcdroast\evolution\xpdf\ etc. In Linux if you install distro specific package like rpm or deb then simply typing and entering the name of the app launches it. If the package is installed manually from a source or bin file then yes we have to type the whole path to the exact filename to launch the app.

Kindly tell me the steps for that in Solaris.

You just have to have your shell path set to include /opt/sfw/bin for the companion CD utilities to be launched from the shell prompt. Also, you might like to look at the apps available at blastwave (they are installed into /opt/csw/bin/)

(1) Okay, i was able to set path and yes the apps are launching, but there is something wrong with the graphics. For example the first app i launched was xmms. As soon as the xmms came up, the graphics of rest of the desktop and windows became dull and dark whereas xmms was showing perfect. When i closed xmms, the color/contrast of the desktop and windows came back automatically. Then i launched Gimp, and the same thing happened. Gimp's color and contrast was perfect but again the rest of the desktop and everything turned dull dark and ugly. As soo as i closed Gimp, the desktop's and other apps color/contrast came back.

What could be the reason for that?

(2) Now i have some questions regarding configuring network. This link (http://my.execpc.com/~keithp/bdlogsol.htm#basics) guides you how to configure network setup.

The article talks about dealing with /etc/hosts, /etc/netmasks, /etc/resolv.conf, nssswitch.conf.

I feel that i do not have to make a resolv.conf file, because my solaris box will not be directly dialing up to connect to internet. The solaris box will be connected to a Windows XP's NIC and Windows XP box will allow solaris box to use the internet through its ICS (internet connection sharing) service. It will be the Windows XP box which will be needing the name servers (ISP's DNS servers).

I feel instead of /etc/resolv.conf i do need to make the file "defaultrouter", which will have the IP address of the gateway machine, in this case it will be the Windows XP box. Or even if do have to make the resolv.conf file then it will again have the IP of gateway machine.

Right?

Please guide me.

Yes, you do have to set the default route to your XP system.

And also you have to place the DNS address in the /etc/resolv.conf file.
As for surfing the net each PC have to have its DNS entry.

You may have a look at the thread I started few days back, which may help
you a little bit ragarding configuring network, but mine problem was different.

Subject is "Realtek Network Card - IP Assignment Problem"

Will find it somewhere in the middle of the first page of this Forum.

It seems you are launching X11 with a 8 bit colormap, set it to 24 or 32 bits.
Wrong, the windows machine won't act as a DNS server, so you definitely need to set the DNS client part on the Solaris machine to be able to resolve names.
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/ics_other
Don't forget to set the defaultrouter to point to the windows box.

So far i didnt try to change the bitmap or configure the network portion. what i did was on the advice of jlliagre, i installed Solaris 10.

Solaris 9 chose the intel driver for i810 with 4mb memory on its own, which works (not the xf86 driver for intel 810 chipset). With solaris 10 i had to manually change the driver to the proper one. I installed Solaris 10 in graphical mode. Everything was fine.

But on the first reboot. The X server did not start. I dont know anything about Solaris but it feels it got something to do with naming service (NIS\NIS+\LDAP etc which i chose none during installation. I chose none because i dont know what else to choose, does anyone have any suggestions what should i choose to practise Solaris at home?)

Here is all the info that i'm seeing after the first reboot
____________________________________________________________

unKnown console login
********************************
starting Desktop Login on display :0....
Wait for the Desktop login sceen before logging in
********************************
The X-server can not be started on display :0....
********************************
Syslogd:line24:Warning : loghost could not be resolved
Jan 23 13:45:40 unKnown sendmail [361]: unable to qualify my own domain name (unKnown) -- using short name
Jan 23 13:45:40 unKnown sendmail [361]: unable to qualify my own domain name (unKnown) -- using short name
______________________________________________________________

My advice was in fact to install Solaris "11" beta, nevermind.
none is ok.
Your machine hostname is "unknown", which is weird.
Here is an explanation and a fix:
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/816...aoq020t?a=view
Which server is running ? Xorg or Xsun ?
Anything interesting in the X server logs ?

This is harmless, disable sendmail to remove it.

(1) How do you edit a file using vi in solaris? In linux i would simply press 'Insert' key and it would allow me to make changes. I still have to follow the Sun's guideline to fix that hostname issue. But i have two questions on the steps they mentioned.

In step 2 they are saying :-
*******************************
Find the REQUEST_HOSTNAME keyword in the /etc/default/dhcpagent file and modify the keyword as follows:

REQUEST_HOSTNAME=yes
If a comment sign (#) is in front of REQUEST_HOSTNAME, remove the #. If the REQUEST_HOSTNAME keyword is not present, insert the keyword.
*******************************
That file has many keywords including REQUEST_HOSTNAME=yes. So should only uncomment REQUEST_HOSTNAME=yes, right?


In step 3 & step 4 they are saying :-
***************************
(3) Edit the /etc/hostname.interface file on the client system to add the following line:

inet hostname

hostname is the name that you want the client to use.

(4) Type the following commands to have the client perform a full DHCP negotiation upon rebooting:

# pkill dhcpagent
# rm /etc/dhcp/interface.dhc
# reboot
****************************

Why is "interface" in italics?

(2) I tried to look at the log file. It is a huge file, and i was not able to see any error messages. I was trying to see anything that looks like error messages so that i could write it down and paste it here in the forum.

What is command to start Xserver? just like in linux we type startx to start the x server.

One command to enter in insert mode under vi is "i", insert is probably mapped to "i" under linux vi, which is actually vim.
The same mapping can easily be done with Solaris vi.
right
because it has to be replaced by the actual interface name with which you want dhcp to be used.
If your server crashes, it should tell something about it around the end of the log.
By the way, you do not tell which X server you use.
That depends, you can try or simply

(1) So it means that the interface in "/etc/hostname.interface" will be replaced by the device name of the NIC? which is e1xl0 or e0xl1 i guess (what ever it shows during bootup).

(2) I think i'm using X.org server. But to be on the safe side is there a way that i can check which server i'm using?