Class overview :

Class goals :

Administering Solaris systems involves many standard tasks including; starting and shutting down a system, managing printers and performing regular backups. Delegates taking this course will gain the necessary knowledge and skills to perform these tasks.

The delegates will practise:

• Using the Solaris Desktops
• Local System Administration with Solaris Management Console (SMC)
• Configuring the Openboot Firmware
• Managing Boot Procedures with GRUB
• Startup and Shutdown Procedures
• Managing Services with the Service Management Facility (SMF)
• Installing the Solaris Operating system
• Software Package Administration
• Maintenance Of Patches
• Disk Management and Partitioning
• File System Management
• ZFS
• File Security and ACLs
• User and Group Management
• Accessing Remote Systems
• Backup And Recovery
• Managing the Print Environment
• Managing Processes

Content of Solaris 10 Systems Administration Part 1

Course Introduction

• Administration and Course Materials
• Course Structure and Agenda
• Delegate and Trainer Introductions

Accessing the Solaris Operating System

• Solaris Desktops
• Solaris Desktop Administration Tools
• Main Features and Usage of SMC

Boot Procedures

• Openboot interface
• Openboot parameters
• Device names and aliases
• Openboot diagnostics
• Boot Options
• Boot Device Sequence with BIOS
• Booting with GRUB
• Exercise: Setting Openboot parameters and Boot options

Startup and Shutdown Procedures

• Boot Phases
• init
• System run levels
• inittab file
• Run control scripts
• Adding a run control script
• Disabling a run control script
• System shutdown
• The shutdown command
• The init command
• The halt/poweroff commands
• The reboot command
• The stop-a command
• Exercise: Creating a run control script

Service Management Facility

• Basic Features
• The SMF Environment
• SMF and Booting
• SMF Environmental Structures
• Service States
• Managing Services
• Listing Services with svcs and inetadm
• Managing the State of a Service with svcadm
• Configuring a Service with svccfg
• Managing the State of inetd Network Services with inetadm
• Exercise: Listing and Managing the State of Services

Installing the Solaris Operating System

• Installation requirements
• System configuration for servers and clients
• Partitions and multiple disks
• Software terminology
• Packages, Clusters and Groups
• Configuration cluster
• Definition of Installation methods
  • Web Start
  • Interactive
  • Jumpstart
  • Flash
  • Live Upgrade
• Interactive Installation Process
• Installation from CD/DVD
• Exercise: Installing a Solaris System (possibly, optional at the end of the course)

Software Package Information

• Documentation Packages
• Configuration clusters
• Tools for managing software
• Displaying current software package information
• Checking the installation of a package
• Adding software packages using a CDROM device
• Removing software packages
• Package logfiles
• Exercise: Removing, adding and listing a Package

Maintenance of Patches

• Maintenance of patches and patch clusters
• Verification of currently installed patches
• Installing a patch on the system
• Removing a patch from the system
• Patch logfiles
• Exercise: Installing and listing a Patch

Connection Services

• Sun Connection Services Overview
• The smpatch command
• The Update Manager

Disk Management

• Displaying disk information
• Partitions/Slices
• Naming conventions
• Physical device names
• Instance name
• Logical device names
• Block and character devices
• Configuring new disk devices
• Partitioning the disk with the format command and Solaris
• Management Console
• Making a new partition
• Exercise: Configuring and listing a disk slice

File System Management

• Disk based file systems
• Main root sub-directories
• Pseudo file systems
• Components of a ufs file system
• Boot block
• Superblocks
• Inodes
• Data disk blocks
• Ulimit parameter
• File types
• Symbolic and Hard links
• Creating file systems
• The newfs command
• The mount command
• The umount command
• The vfstab file
• The mnttab file
• Filesystem checking
• Determining if a file system needs checking
• Running fsck manually
• The lost+found directories
• Automounting CDs and floppies (Volume Management)
• Checking free disk space
• The df command
• The quot command
• The du command
• Freeing disk space
• Freeing up disk space with compression utilities
• Rotating files with logadm
• Exercise: Managing file systems, newfs, mount etc.

ZFS

• ZFS – A Basic Description
• Requirements
• Main Features
• ZFS Tools
• Managing ZFS Pools with zpool
• Pool Storage Devices
• Pool Configuration Features
• Creating and Deleting (‘Destroying Pools’)
• Managing File Systems with ZFS
• Creating and Destroying a File System
• Snapshots and Clones
• ZFS Properties
• Read-Only Native Properties
• Settable Native Properties
• ZFS GUI Interface
• Exercise: Creating and managing a ZFS system

File Security and ACLS

• ACLs (Access Control Lists)
• The setfacl command
• The getfacl command
• The ACL mask
• Exercise: Setting and Viewing ACLs

User Management

• User accounts
• Files used in creating a user – the passwd, group and shadow files
• Adding a user
• Changing user details
• Deleting a user
• User group maintenance
• Password administration
• Password command
• Local Login control
• Remote Login control
• Login logs
• User communication
• The wall command
• The message of the day
• Controlling the amount of disk space accessible to users using quotas
• Exercise: Creating and listing users and groups

Backup and Recovery

• Backup overview
• Backup policy
• Backup and restore utilities overview
• Tape device names
• The mt utility – retentsion, rewind, space forward or backward and status
• The ufsdump and ufsrestore utilities
• ufs snapshots
• Exercise: Backing up and restoring /export/home

Managing The Print Environment

• The print service
• Print service files
• Hardware setup – ethernet, parallel & serial
• Printer configuration with Solaris Print Manager
• Printer configuration with lpadmin
• Line printer commands – lpshut, lpsched, accept, reject, enable, disable, lpmove lpusers, lpstat, lp, cancel
• Printing from copies of files
• Stopping banner output
• Exercise: Configuring and managing printer queues

Managing Processes

• Introduction to Process Management
• The ps command
• The prstat command
• The process manager application
• The kill command
• Using the cron processes
• Cron files
• Creating crontab entries
• Amending existing crontab files
• Crontab command options
• The at command
• Exercise:
  • Monitoring and managing processes
  • Setting up cron batch files