mgerdts - Developer IT

Linux to Solaris @ Morgan Stanley

- by mgerdts

I came across this blog entry and the accompanying presentation by Robert Milkoski about his experience switching from Linux to Oracle Solaris 11 for a distributed OpenAFS file serving environment at Morgan Stanley. If you are an IT manager, the presentation will show you: Running Solaris with a support contract can cost less than running Linux (even without a support contract) because of technical advantages of Solaris. IT departments can benefit from hiring computer scientists into Systems Programmer or similar roles. Their computer science background should be nurtured so that they can continue to deliver value (savings and opportunity) to the business as technology advances. If you are a sysadmin, developer, or somewhere in between, the presentation will show you: A presentation that explains your technical analysis can be very influential. Learning and using the non-default options of an OS can make all the difference as to whether one OS is better suited than another. For example, see the graphs on slides 3 - 5. The ZFS default is to not use compression. When trying to convince those that hold the purse strings that your technical direction should be taken, the financial impact can be the part that closes the deal. See slides 6, 9, and 10. Sometimes reducing rack space requirements can be the biggest impact because it may stave off or completely eliminate the need for facilities growth. DTrace can be used to shine light on performance problems that may be suspected but not diagnosed. It is quite likely that these problems have existed in OpenAFS for a decade or more. DTrace made diagnosis possible. DTrace can be used to create performance analysis tools without modifying the source of software that is under analysis. See slides 29 - 32. Microstate accounting, visible in the prstat output on slide 37 can be used to quickly draw focus to problem areas that affect CPU saturation. Note that prstat without -m gives a time-decayed moving average that is not nearly as useful. Instruction level probes (slides 33 - 34) are a super-easy way to identify which part of a function is hot.

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Automating custom software installation in a zone

- by mgerdts

In Solaris 11, the internals of zone installation are quite different than they were in Solaris 10. This difference allows the administrator far greater control of what software is installed in a zone. The rules in Solaris 10 are simple and inflexible: if it is installed in the global zone and is not specifically excluded by package metadata from being installed in a zone, it is installed in the zone. In Solaris 11, the rules are still simple, but are much more flexible: the packages you tell it to install and the packages on which they depend will be installed. So, where does the default list of packages come from? From the AI (auto installer) manifest, of course. The default AI manifest is /usr/share/auto_install/manifest/zone_default.xml. Within that file you will find: <software_data action="install"> <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name> </software_data> So, the default installation will install pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server. Cool. What is that? You can figure out what is in the package by looking for it in the repository with your web browser (click the manifest link), or use pkg(1). In this case, it is a group package (pkg:/group/), so we know that it just has a bunch of dependencies to name the packages that really wants installed. $ pkg contents -t depend -o fmri -s fmri -r solaris-small-server FMRI compress/bzip2 compress/gzip compress/p7zip ... terminal/luit terminal/resize text/doctools text/doctools/ja text/less text/spelling-utilities web/wget If you would like to see the entire manifest from the command line, use pkg contents -r -m solaris-small-server. Let's suppose that you want to install a zone that also has mercurial and a full-fledged installation of vim rather than just the minimal vim-core that is part of solaris-small-server. That's pretty easy. First, copy the default AI manifest somewhere where you will edit it and make it writable. # cp /usr/share/auto_install/manifest/zone_default.xml ~/myzone-ai.xml # chmod 644 ~/myzone-ai.xml Next, edit the file, changing the software_data section as follows: <software_data action="install"> <name>pkg:/group/system/solaris-small-server</name> <name>pkg:/developer/versioning/mercurial</name> <name>pkg:/editor/vim</name> </software_data> To figure out the names of the packages, either search the repository using your browser, or use a command like pkg search hg. Now we are all ready to install the zone. If it has not yet been configured, that must be done as well. # zonecfg -z myzone 'create; set zonepath=/zones/myzone' # zoneadm -z myzone install -m ~/myzone-ai.xml A ZFS file system has been created for this zone. Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20111113T004303Z.myzone.install Image: Preparing at /zones/myzone/root. Install Log: /system/volatile/install.15496/install_log AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.XfaWpE SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: myzone Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://localhost:1008/solaris/54453f3545de891d4daa841ddb3c844fe8804f55/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) Completed 169/169 34047/34047 185.6/185.6 PHASE ACTIONS Install Phase 46498/46498 PHASE ITEMS Package State Update Phase 169/169 Image State Update Phase 2/2 Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 531.813 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/myzone/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20111113T004303Z.myzone.install Now, for a few things that I've seen people trip over: Ignore that bit about man pages - it's wrong. Man pages are already installed so long as the right facet is set properly. And that's a topic for another blog entry. If you boot the zone then just use zlogin myzone, you will see that services you care about haven't started and that svc:/milestone/config:default is starting. That is because you have not yet logged into the console with zlogin -C myzone. If the zone has been booted for more than a very short while when you first connect to the zone console, it will seem like the console is hung. That's not really the case - hit ^L (control-L) to refresh the sysconfig(1M) screen that is prompting you for information.

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Come see me @LISA

- by mgerdts

LISA '11 is just around the corner and once again includes an Oracle Solaris Summit the day before the main conference. Please come to the summit and to as my esteemed colleagues and I introduce many of the great improvements found in Solaris 11. Even with a full day to talk about Solaris 11, we'll certainly be unable to get into the depth in the areas that concern you the most. To get some face time with Oracle engineers, stop by the Oracle demo booth - I'll be there Wednesday from 2:00 - 4:00.

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Oops, I left my kernel zone configuration behind!

- by mgerdts

Most people use boot environments to move in one direction. A system starts with an initial installation and from time to time new boot environments are created - typically as a result of pkg update - and then the new BE is booted. This post is of little interest to those people as no hackery is needed. This post is about some mild hackery. During development, I commonly test different scenarios across multiple boot environments. Many times, those tests aren't related to the act of configuring or installing zone and I so it's kinda handy to avoid the effort involved of zone configuration and installation. A somewhat common order of operations is like the following: # beadm create -e golden -a test1 # reboot Once the system is running in the test1 BE, I install a kernel zone. # zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSsolaris-kz # zoneadm -z a178 install Time passes, and I do all kinds of stuff to the test1 boot environment and want to test other scenarios in a clean boot environment. So then I create a new one from my golden BE and reboot into it. # beadm create -e golden -a test2 # reboot Since the test2 BE was created from the golden BE, it doesn't have the configuration for the kernel zone that I configured and installed. Getting that zone over to the test2 BE is pretty easy. My test1 BE is really known as s11fixes-2. root@vzl-212:~# beadm mount s11fixes-2 /mnt root@vzl-212:~# zonecfg -R /mnt -z a178 export | zonecfg -z a178 -f - root@vzl-212:~# beadm unmount s11fixes-2 root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 attach root@vzl-212:~# zoneadm -z a178 boot On the face of it, it would seem as though it would have been easier to just use zonecfg -z a178 create -t SYSolaris-kz within the test2 BE to get the new configuration over. That would almost work, but it would have left behind the encryption key required for access to host data and any suspend image. See solaris-kz(5) for more info on host data. I very commonly have more complex configurations that contain many storage URIs and non-default resource controls. Retyping them would be rather tedious.

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Who keeps removing that file?

- by mgerdts

Over the years, I've had many times when some file gets removed and there's no obvious culprit. With dtrace, it is somewhat easy to figure out: #! /usr/sbin/dtrace -wqs syscall::unlinkat:entry /cleanpath(copyinstr(arg1)) == "/dev/null"/ { stop(); printf("%s[%d] stopped before removing /dev/null\n", execname, pid); system("ptree %d; pstack %d", pid, pid); } That script will stop the process trying to remove /dev/null before it does it. You can allow it to continue by restarting (unstopping?) the command with prun(1) or killing it with kill -9. If you want the command to continue automatically after getting the ptree and pstack output, you can add "; prun %d" and another pid argument to the system() call.

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Hardware refresh of Solaris 10 systems? Try this!

- by mgerdts

I've been seeing quite an uptick in the people that are wanting to install Solaris 11 when they are doing hardware refreshes. I applaud that effort - Solaris 11 (and 11.1) have great improvements that advance the state of the art and make the best use of the latest hardware. Sometimes, however, you really don't want to disturb the OS or upgrade to the a later version of an application that is certified with Solaris 11. That's a great use of Solaris 10 Zones. If you are already using Solaris Cluster, or would like to have more protection as you put more eggs in an ever growing basket, check out solaris10 Brand Zone Clusters.

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Oracle 12c: First (and best!) on Solaris

- by mgerdts

Oracle 12c is now available for download. Notice that support for Solaris SPARC and x86-64 are among the operating systems supported on the first day of availability. New database features that relate to Solaris include: I/O outlier support. This is made possible through the database's use of DTrace, and as such Solaris has a clear edge here. Oracle ACFS Replication and Tagging for Solaris Integration with Solaris resource pools As has been the case for some time, Oracle databases are supported in zones.

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