Awk & sed Snippets for SysAdmins

Contacting the sysadmin from command line

If you are a sysadmin, communicating with your users is an important aspect of your job. Phone, e-mail, SMS, and various service request systems are commonly used by most businesses. The problem with all these …

Changing time

Unix systems record several time parameters associated with files. Sometimes you might need to set time parameters on a file to a particular value. Or you might need to modify a file without changing any …

Mountpoint permission problem in Solaris

The following condition was originally discovered in OpenSolaris 11 (Bug ID: 4697677). This problem occurs when you do mkdir -m 700 on a mountpoint before mounting it. This superceeds whatever permissions you might give to …

Monitoring Veritas VM problems on Solaris

Several Veritas VM and system logs can be used to monitor and diagnose problems with the Volume Manager. An automated script can be used to grab the last few lines from these logs whenever a …

Solaris One-Liners

Useful Solaris commands for system administrators

Sun Java Desktop

A few screenshots taken with Sun Java Desktop running under Solaris 10 on a SunBlade 2000 workstation, which also works great as a heated footstool when placed under your desk.

A general view of the desktop …

Using pkg-get on Solaris

Pkg-get Installation Notes
Pkg-get is an open-source,  Sun-approved software installation and management tool for Sun Solaris. You can use pkg-get to install a variety of pre-compiled software without having to worry about version compatibility, patch requirements, …

Script to modify Veritas HA Cluster Resource Configuration

The following interactive Korn shell script can be used to make common changes to the configuration of Veritas HA Cluster resources. The script enables you to view the listing of available resources; view resource configuration; …

Running Windows Apps on Linux

CrossOver is a commercial variation of Wine freeware – a Windows emulator for Linux. This program allows you to run popular Windows applications under x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Wine and CrossOver can …

Solaris performance monitoring

The following is a brief overview of common performance monitoring tools for Solaris, including built-in tools, freeware add-ons, and commercial applications.
Souce: http://www.sunperf.com/perfmontools.html
Built-in Tools
vmstat
The vm in vmstat stands for Virtual Memory, of course. So let us …

Basic Network Configuration Under Solaris

The following document provides a general overview of the network configuration process for Solaris. For a detailed review of Solaris network configuration please see Chapter 4 of the O’Reilly Solaris 8 Administration Guide by Paul …

Create boot block on Solaris disk

To make a Solaris disk bootable you need to install the boot block on the disk. This should be done, for example, after copying the primary boot disk to the secondary disk.

Solaris boot disk copy using dd

The following Korn shell script will make a bootable copy of the boot disk on a Solaris system. The script uses dd and requires that the source disk and destination disk have the same geometry.

Command-line backup methods

The following is a brief overview of standard Unix comman-line utilities used for data backup on Solaris systems. Most of the information below is also applicable to other unixoid systems.

Working with ISO images on Solaris

The following two commands will take all data in /home/neal, copy it to the ISO file, and burn the ISO file to a recordable CD.

Executing commands with ‘find’

To executes commands with ‘find’ use the ‘-exec’ option. Example:

Install PHP, Mysql, Apache2 on Solaris 9

A sample procedure for installing PHP, MySQL and Apache2 on Solaris 9.

Apache MySQL PHP Solaris 8 Installation

A sample procedure for installing PHP, MySQL and Apache2 on Solaris 8.

Solaris boot disk copy

A sample procedure for installing PHP, MySQL and Apache2 on Solaris 8.

Resetting Root Password under Solaris

The following document explains how to change an unknown root password on a Solaris system. Use this only for disaster recovery purposes. Please be sure to read the Notes section below if you run into …

Find largest files

How to find the largest files in the directory tree on Solaris.

Increase swap space

Instructions for adding swap space on the fly for a Solaris system. Adding swap space via a swap file degrades system perfomance. However, this is a useful method for quickly adding swap space without interrupting …