InformationWeek

Feburary 8, 1999

Solaris Gets Simpler

Sun's latest upgrade of its Unix operating system delivers on some of the vendor's promises of improved installation and better Windows NT compatibility-but some questions remain

By Logan Harbaugh

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un Microsystems' latest version of Solaris, its Unix operating system for Intel and Sparc-based computer systems, arrived late last year with the promise of significant improvements in ease of installation and configuration, and better compatibility with Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. And Sun has delivered on those promises, at least in part.

Though Solaris 7 certainly is significantly easier to deal with than earlier releases of the operating system, it still has some rough edges that require more familiarity with the world of command-line Unix administration than most newcomers to the operating system will be comfortable with initially.

Experienced Solaris users will find Solaris 7 to be a significant upgrade from Solaris 2.6--that's Sun's reason for changing the name from Solaris 2.7 to Solaris 7. While users of older versions will find Solaris 7 easier to install than before, Sun's claim that Solaris is now "easier to install than Windows NT" is true only for administrators with Sun experience and no Windows NT experience. Sun's promise to provide a graphical user interface for installation and management tools has been fulfilled for the most part, although there are a number of things that must be done by manually editing text files.

Solaris 7 offers a number of improvements, including a full 64-bit kernel, a GUI install program, and a management console. However, there are caveats on all the improvements.

The 64-bit kernel is currently available in Solaris for Sparc only--the Intel version will ship when that company's Merced chip ships next year. Also, while the Sun WorkShop development environment supports 64-bit code, the 64-bit Java compiler isn't available yet (it's slated for release in the next version, Solaris 8). The WebStart GUI installation utility works very well for a basic install, but it has some limitations when compared with similar products in the Windows world. The Solaris Management Console provides GUI access to many parts of the system, but not all.

Installation Adventures
I installed Solaris 7 with the Easy Access Server 2.0, Netscape Communicator 4.05, and the documentation sets on a 300-MHz Sun Ultra Sparc 10, with 256 Mbytes of RAM and a 4-Gbyte hard disk. The version I installed was an early release; it included the final operating system code, but lacked the printed documentation and included a prerelease version of Sun's Easy Access Server 2.0.

The lack of documentation led to some early adventures with the installation. Not having the quick- start guide and release notes, I made some assumptions that turned out to be incorrect. I knew that I needed to boot from the installation CD-ROM, so I started the system and typed "boot CD-ROM" rather than the "boot CD-ROM--browser" required to launch Solaris' graphical install routine. Thus, I got the old-style installation utility, rather than the new, refined GUI installation utility.

Once I talked with Sun's tech support, this headache went away--for the most part. The first few dialog boxes of the new installation routine are the same as the old one, but then WinStart, Sun's Java-based GUI installation program for Solaris 7, guides you through the rest of the installation with relative ease. It installed not only the server, but Easy Access Server, the documentation, and Netscape Navigator as well.

There were only two minor problems. First, there's a small bug in the release version that miscalculates the size of one of the partitions if you select Install Server and Easy Access Server--requiring you to modify the partition size. This is documented in the release notes, though. I actually followed the recommendation from Sun's tech support and created only three partitions: big root partition, the swap partition, and a small partition for users (/export/home).

The other issue was that the program automatically ejects the CD-ROMs when necessary and prompts for the next one to continue the installation process. At one point, I was away from the system long enough for the monitor's power-saving feature to kick in. When I came back, I found the CD-ROM drawer open. When I moved the mouse to continue, the dialog box allowing me to click to continue wasn't visible. Fortunately, minimizing the progress screen allowed me to find it, but inexperienced administrators might assume that something had gone wrong and reboot the system at that point.

The Interface
As I have generally found to be the case with Sun GUIs (primarily because they've changed so often that they're usually first-generation GUIs), there were some interface issues that I found to be annoying--not an unusual occurrence with first-generation products. For example, the interface requires you to click on a continue box rather than just press return in many dialogs, since the default is set to change your answers to the questions you've just gone through.

Also, users with a Windows background may be disappointed with WinStart's level of installer control. At least with Easy Access Server, I received no opportunity to designate installation locations for files, even using the customize option; this was a disadvantage when the default locations didn't have enough room.

However, Sun is definitely making progress, both with the installer and with the Management Console. Most tasks that an administrator will have to do more than once can be done through the management console. Also, the console can be run from any system that has a Java-equipped Web browser such as Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Configuration And Administration
While many of the configuration parameters can be set from the GUI of the installation program or the Management Console, there are a number of exceptions, including some surprising omissions. For instance, it seems strange that there's no way to change the IP address of the system or install or configure domain name service (DNS) from the management console.