NWAM (Network Auto Magic) is a very easy way of getting a DHCP lease on OpenSolaris. It runs as a service, enabled by default on install, which will automatically try and get you a DHCP address when Solaris detects that you plugged your ethernet cable in! To most people thats nothing special, but theres more to it.
You can also use it to automatically configure a static IP address upon boot too.
Simply edit the file /etc/nwam/llp to your desired settings. For example:
e1000g0 static 192.168.0.45/24
Easy!
The /24 part of that string represents the netmask. in this case, it would be expressed as 255.255.255.0 in decimal notation.
Then create /etc/defaultrouter so that your machine can reach the outside world! For example…
192.168.0.1
…as this is the address of the router on my LAN
Finally, create the /etc/resolv.conf file, so that the OS knows where to look to resolve DNS names!
On my LAN , this would be:
nameserver 192.168.0.1
If your still having trouble resolving host names, you may need to check that the /etc/nsswitch.conf file reflects the fact that you want to look in both files and the DNS to resolve host names. The hosts and ipnodes entries should look like this:
hosts: files dns
ipnodes: files dns
Once all that is done you can simply restart the NWAM service:
The latest version of Opensolaris can be found at opensolaris.com . This was known as project indiana whilst in development and is now yours absolutely free! (support does cost). Its basically Sun’s home rolled distro of opensolaris.org , and now contains IPS (Image Packaging System) . Essentially IPS is like apt for ubuntu and debian:
you want netbeans?
pkg install netbeans
Theres also a graphical installer too! Theres a screencast you might want to watch which explains a little about how to use it, and what its about!
You should also note that its made it onto distrowatch.com, to rank 69!!!!Hopefully enough people will blog about the release to push that figure up!!!Surely it should make it to the top ten, for all the features it has?
Turning Solaris to goo with destructive commands is something I’ve been enjoying for a while now, so its great to see someone add cash to the equation and take the next step in “squashing” bugs.. and hard drives.
One thing I found out about the Solaris OS is that regardless of system load or runlevel, you could always ping the box. Even when you rm -rf / Ok, so that wasn’t always true, somtimes it was powered off, but its pretty close. Solaris appears to have gained another ability……Despite a “failed” install of build 78 of OpenSolaris which collapsed at 85% completion, the machine still appears to have installed well. It boots, JDS works fine, ZFS is happy, and nothing has crashed (yet). This is another shining example why those guys down in the Sun labs deserve a pay rise!!! Now, if only they could fix a gigabit ethenet bug thats affecting me……
