New Features in Solaris Express 6/06

This section describes all features that are new or have been enhanced in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

IPsec Policy Bypass Option While Running the `ping` Command

This networking enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

In this release, the -b option has been added to the ping command. This option enables administrators to bypass global IPsec policy for a specified ping connection.

The IPsec policy bypass option enables isolating network issues from IPsec policy issues without changing or disabling global IPsec rules. Because, this option only affects the specified ping socket, encrypted and clear text pings can be run simultaneously. Only superuser or a user granted suitable privileges can use the IPsec policy bypass option.

For more information, see the ping(1M) man page.

Extended File Descriptor Limits For `stdio`

This system resource enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

The Extended file descriptor limits for stdio feature removes the 256 FILE structure limitation on 32-bit Solaris processes. This feature provides both binary relief and programmatic interfaces.

For more information, see the following man pages:

Cloning Non-Global Zones With ZFS Zonepaths and Other ZFS Enhancements

This system resource enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

The zoneadm clone command now automatically uses ZFS clone to clone a zone, when both the source and the target zonepaths reside on ZFS and are in the same pool.

The zoneadm clone command takes a ZFS snapshot of the source zonepath and sets up the target zonepath. The snapshot is named SUNWzoneX, where X is a unique ID which is used to distinguish between multiple snapshots. The destination zone's zonepath is used to name the ZFS clone. A software inventory is performed so that a snapshot used at a future time can be validated by the system.

Note that you can still specify that the ZFS zonepath be copied instead of ZFS cloned if desired.

To clone a source zone multiple times, a new parameter added to zoneadm command allows you to specify that an existing snapshot should be used. The system validates that the existing snapshot is usable on the target.

The zone installation process now has the capability to detect when a ZFS file system can be created for a zone. The process for uninstalling a zone can detect when a ZFS file system in a zone can be destroyed. These steps are then performed automatically by zoneadm.

MDI Enabling and Disabling of a Path

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

The MDI enabling and disabling functionality provides a path management mechanism to enable or disable a path for a target device. These new interfaces to MDI provide a user to enable or disable the path from a pHCI to a target-address and a client service address (LUN address in case of scsi_vhci). This feature can be used by diagnostic applications to ensure that no user I/O is routed on the path on which diagnostic operations are being performed.

For more information, see the mpathadm(1M) man page. See also Multipathing Administration Guide.

`SIGEV_THREAD` Event Notification

This language support enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

The SIGEV_THREAD Event Notification feature implements the POSIX-specified SIGEV_THREAD notification mechanism. The SIGEV_THREAD notification mechanism calls a user-specified function in the context of a separate thread when an event occurs.

This feature also extends the implementation of the existing SIGEV_PORT notification mechanism to message queues. This extension enables uniform application of all Solaris-supported notification mechanisms to all interfaces that accept a sigevent structure to request asynchronous notification. The following Solaris notification mechanisms are supported:

SIGEV_NONE
SIGEV_SIGNAL
SIGEV_THREAD
SIGEV_PORT

For more information about the asynchronous notification mechanisms, see the signal.h(3HEAD) man page.

x86: Uncacheable Memory Access Support

This system performance enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

On x86 and AMD64 architectures, modern graphics controller cards, such as NVIDIA or AGP require a mechanism to access uncacheable memory to enhance performance. The uncacheable memory access enables these graphic controller cards to keep coherency on the system with performance gain.

The uncacheable memory access support feature provides this functionality by using the ddi interfaces.

The following memory type are supported:

Uncacheable (UC)
Write-combining (WC)

For more information, see the following man pages:

Predictive Self-Healing for PCI Express on x64 Systems

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

Starting with this release, the Solaris OS includes a set of predictive self-healing features to automatically capture and diagnose hardware errors detected on your system.

The Solaris Fault Manager automatically diagnoses failures in x64 hardware. Diagnostic messages are reported by the fmd daemon.

For more information about Fault Management in Solaris, see the following:

Default Desktop Session in `dtlogin`

This desktop enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

Now, when a user logs into the Solaris Desktop for the first time, Java Desktop System (JDS) is the default desktop environment instead of the Common Desktop Environment (CDE). JDS has also become the default environment for users who chose a desktop environment on an older Solaris release that is no longer present in the Solaris release, such as OpenWindows^TM or GNOME 2.0.

System administrators can modify the dtlogin configuration to override the default choices by using the defaultDt and fallbackDt resources.

For more information about defualtDt and fallbackDt resources, see the dtlogin(1M)man page.