Solaris 8 Advanced System Adminstratior's Guide

The book is divided into several sections for easy reference, each section addressing a major service or task, including: Mail Services, NIS+ naming service, Automounter Services, Service Access Facility to set up access to printers, modems, and terminals, application software installation and sharing, shell programming to automate routine tasks, and system security.

This officially authorized tutorial for Solaris system administration is ideal for experienced administrators. Used as a hands-on guide or as a quick reference, as well as being completely updated, this task-oriented and easy-to-follow book details how to perform increasingly complex system improvement, revision, and customization. Solaris Advanced System Administrator's Guide, Second Edition is the classic tutorial that provides indispensable tips, advice, and quick-reference tables to help you add system components, improve service access, and automate routine tasks. Also take advantage of updated information on Solaris 2.6 topics-including x86 differences, patch administration, redesign of print packages, and new coverage of security, the Solaris Server Intranet Extension and more!

Contents

This book is divided into seven parts, two appendixes, a glossary, and a bibliography.

Part 1, "Mail Services," describes the Solaris mail services in four chapters. Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new mail service or expand an existing one.

• Chapter 1, "Understanding Mail Services," describes the components of the mail service, defines mail service terminology, and explains how the programs in the mail service interact.

• Chapter 2, "Customizing sendmail Configuration Files," describes how sendmail works, introduces the m4 macro processor, and describes how to write a custom macro configuration file and generate the sendmail configuration file.

• Chapter 3, "Planning Mail Services," describes how to create sendmail configuration files for a number of different mail services configurations.

• Chapter 4, "Setting Up and Administering Mail Services," describes how to set up, test, administer, and troubleshoot mail services.

Part 2, "NIS+," introduces the NIS+ nameservice environment. Refer to the chapters in this part if you want to familiarize yourself with the basics of the NIS+ nameservice and its administrative commands. Also refer to these chapters for instructions for setting up an NIS+ client. This part provides only the basic information for a system administrator who must set up and support an NIS+ environment.

• Chapter 5, "Introducing the NIS+ Environment," provides an overview of NIS+, explains how NIS+ differs from the NIS nameservice, and introduces the NIS+ commands.

• Chapter 6, "Setting up NIS+ Servers and Clients," describes how to use the nisserver, nispopulate, and nisclient scripts to set up one Solaris system as a root master server and others as NIS+ clients.

Part 3, "Automounter and WebNFS Services," describes the Solaris automount services and introduces WebNFS. Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new automount service or modify an existing one.

• Chapter 7, "Understanding the Automounter," describes automount terminology and the components of automounting, explains how the automounter works, recommends automounting policies, and tells you how to plan your automount services.

• Chapter 8, "Setting Up the Automounter," describes how to set up and administer automount maps.

• Chapter 9, "Introducing WebNFS," contains a description of how WebNFS works and describes how to set up WebNFS files.

Part 4, "Service Access Facility," describes the Solaris Service Access Facility (SAF). Refer to the chapters in this part if you need to set up a new SAF service for terminals, modems, or printers or if you need to modify an existing one.

• Chapter 10, "Understanding the Service Access Facility," provides an overview of SAF and describes the port monitors and services used by the SAF.

• Chapter 11, "Setting Up Modems and Character Terminals," describes how to set up and administer SAF for modems and terminals.

• Chapter 12, "Setting Up Printing Services," describes how to set up and administer SAF for printers and how to troubleshoot printing problems.

Part 5, "Application Software," describes how to install and delete application software. Refer to this part for guidelines on setting up an application server and for information on installing and removing application software and patches.

• Chapter 13, "Installing and Managing Application Software," provides an overview of the installation, introduces the package commands and the Software Manager for installation, recommends a policy for installing software on an application server, and describes how to access files from a CD-ROM drive.

• Chapter 14, "Package Commands," describes how to use the package commands to administer application software and how to set up the users' environment.

• Chapter 15, "Admintool: Software Manager," describes how to use Admintool to administer application software.

• Chapter 16, "Solaris Product Registry," describes how to use Solaris Product Registry to install and uninstall software.

• Chapter 17, "Installing and Managing Software Patches," describes how to use the patchadd and patchrm commands.

Part 6, "Introduction to Shell Programming," familiarizes you with the basics of shell programming. Use the information in this part to decide which shell language you want to use to perform a specific task. This part does not provide in-depth instructions for writing scripts in the three basic shells.

• Chapter 18, "Writing Shell Scripts," introduces the basic concepts of shell programming and the three basic shells available with the Solaris Operating Environment. It describes how shells work and describes the programming elements.

• Chapter 19, "Reference Tables and Example Scripts," provides reference tables comparing shell syntax. It also contains examples of shell scripts.

Part 7, "System Security," provides information about creating and administering secure systems. Refer to these three chapters if you want to familiarize yourself with the basics of system security and if you want to use authentication services and ASET security.

• Chapter 20, "Understanding System Security," introduces the basic concepts of system security, including file, system, and network security.

• Chapter 21, "Using the Automated Security Enhancement Tool (ASET)," describes how to set up and use automated security enhancement tool (ASET).

• Chapter 22, "Using Authentication Services," describes how to use authentication services. It provides an overview of secure RPC and explains how to use pluggable authentication modules (PAM).

• Chapter 23, "Role-Based Access Control," introduces the Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) security feature, new in the Solaris 8 Operating Environment, that enables you to assign a subset of superuser privileges to one or more users. It also describes new RBAC functionality added with the Solaris 8 Update 3 (01/01) release.

Appendix A, "Volume Management," describes the volume management feature introduced in the Solaris 2.2 system software. Volume management automates the mounting of CD-ROMs, diskettes, and DVD-ROM drives. You no longer need to have superuser permission to mount a CD-ROM, a diskette, or a DVD-ROM drive.

Appendix B, "Celeste's Tutorial on Solaris 2.x Modems and Terminals," describes how to set up modems and character terminals if the basic configuration instructions provided in Chapter 11, "Setting Up Modems and Character Terminals," are not sufficient.

This book also provides a glossary of common system administration terms and a bibliography of useful reference books and URLs.