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OpenSolaris From a Linux Admin and User Perspective
MSa writes "How does OpenSolaris, Sun's effort to free its big-iron OS, fare from a Linux user's point of view? Is it merely a passable curiosity right now, or is it truly worth installing? Linux Format takes OpenSolaris for a test drive, examining the similarities and differences between the OS and a typical Linux distro. If you want to sample the mighty ZFS filesystem, OpenSolaris is definitely the way to go."
Horses for courses, but Solaris has much to offer even for shops that aren't traditionally tied to Sun. Hell, even my private ``1U box in someone else's datacentre'' server for my family is now a Solaris machine.
ian
Excerpts from the article:
"... I found OpenSolaris significantly slower than Ubuntu or OpenSUSE..."
"There are fewer packages available than for a mainstream Linux distro, although they do have over a thousand (and certainly enough for a fully-functioning system). The package naming is slightly odd; package names begin with a handful of capital letters (eg SUNW or FSW)."
"ZFS is transactional, meaning that the filesystem is always consistent (so fsck or equivalent isn't used or needed), and snapshots are intentionally both easy and cheap in terms of disk space."
"I'm very impressed with the concepts behind ZFS, but I'm also concerned that cross-functionality with Linux is limited."
"I did find it frustrating to have to relearn commands that I've been using without thinking for years now (eg ifconfig), and right now I'm not convinced that for me it's worth the mental effort, especially given the relative scarcity of external software available."
Trying to harden Solaris is a nightmare. Mostly because so many packages in the Solaris install are interdependent. It is either install 90% of the packages or install nothing. Why do they even bother breaking the software packages if this is the end result? Getting rid of RPC can create so many problems it isn't even funny. Both BSD and Linux offer the option of only installing the base package and only choose the services you want with little to no other packages to depend on. This however absolutely cannot be the case for solaris because a single needed software package will require you to install nearly all services.
Where is the "Ignorant" mod tag?
Solaris scales far better than any BSD or Linux distro out there.
Yeah, you know, the roadrunner team would like a word with you, as would pretty much everyone in the Top 500. For some business loads Solaris scales better. But the claim the "it scales far better" in general is as absurd as it is patently untrue.
Ask any *real* Unix admin who uses both and more than likely they will say Linux is great for small jobs but Solaris is king for anything else.
Ah, and no true scotsman^W UNIX admin would run a supercomputer, right?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
One of our Linux servers regularly copes with a load in excess of 100. Things slow down, but nothing breaks.
Having been a UNIX admin for 23 years and Solaris for 10 years, I'm not sure what you're drinking, but I'm staying away from it.
Solaris support has rocked. We've never had an issue that Sun hasn't been able to solve, and yes, we've thrown them some curves (and sliders for that matter). IBM's support has told us on multiple occasions to re-install the system as a fix for a problem. RedHat we've stumped more often than not. HP? Well - they still can't figure out how to handle more than 8 luns per target for scsi (as well as fibre)...
Solaris performance has been fantastic - outperforming Linux, AIX, HP-UX on modern equipment.
We've migrated workloads to and from Solaris - no big deal - as long as you know what you're doing.
(Our misguided DBA's started migrating from old SunOS 5.8 boxes to Linux - and are now migrating back.)
If you use tools that are available on multiple platforms, migrating isn't all that tough.
If you are developing native language apps, porting isn't terribly difficult although finding workarounds for pesky native quirks is troublesome at times.
So I guess it depends on what you call "experienced"...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Actually, Solaris doesn't use the BSD TCP stack. They completey replaced the stack in Solaris 10.
The review didn't address desktop vs. server and as a "lightweight" review doesn't look any deeper than the distro package for answers to the questions and objections raised. /is/ it's heritage. It's easier to run OpenSolaris headless and on a serial console than any of the *BSD and Linux distros that I've used over the years. All of the "standard" server packages are available to run web and net services out of the box. For truly lights-out server rooms it's still necessary to choose hardware that implements some sort of remote power cycle or remote system monitor capability.
OpenSolaris works well as a server OS - that
The ZFS filesystem is interesting for desktop installations - it does allow seamless use of the 1-2 terabyte desktop disk configurations that are now possible. ZFS was designed for the datacenter - eliminating the need for the time-honored but fragile combination of journaling filesystem over software volume manager (usually over HW RAID). It's the first real innovation in filesystem architecture since journaling filesystems were developed.
Additional software packages are available from 3 well-known (in the Solaris community, at least) sites. Sun has it's own freeware site, blastwave.org and sunfreeware.com
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/freeware/s10pkgs_download.xml
http://www.blastwave.org/
http://sunfreeware.com/
The package manager for blastwave.org is their own, the others use the standard Solaris pkgadd commands. The package naming convention is a long-standing convention - each vendor uses a different prefix, making it easy to differentiate the source of packages.
OpenSolaris commands, where Sun hasn't replaced stock UNIX commands with their own, reflect SVR5 standard rather than the more Linux-ish BSD syntax.
One of the places where Sun has replaced "normal" functionality is the init process. SMF is Sun's attempt at fixing the long-standing problems and in-efficiencies of the BSD or SVR5 init process. Apple has launchd, there's openrc and gentoo's baselayout that all have similar goals. SMF works well and there's a fair amount of support on the net for integrating non-distro apps.
One of the "why OpenSolaris" answers is that there is value in running the same OS on the desktop as on the server. For Solaris shops OpenSolaris on the x86* servers provides a common platform that enables system management efficiencies to be extended.
To be fair, ZFS is a lot more than just a filesystem. It encompasses snapshotting, redundancy and volume management as well.
The ZFS filesystem is interesting for desktop installations - it does allow seamless use of the 1-2 terabyte desktop disk configurations that are now possible. ZFS was designed for the datacenter - eliminating the need for the time-honored but fragile combination of journaling filesystem over software volume manager (usually over HW RAID).
It's the first real innovation in filesystem architecture since journaling filesystems were developed.
just karma whoring here, but it's important to mention that pretty much everything ZFS has to offer was already available on tru64's advFS: http://advfs.sourceforge.net/
it's a shame HP killed this fine unix to keep that abominable HP-UX, so kudos to sun for bringing back the functionality of tru64 back to the datacentre AND the desktop.
hmmm, i wonder if my notebook (presario v6210) is compatible with opensolaris...
What ? Me, worry ?
One of our Linux servers regularly copes with a load in excess of 100. Things slow down, but nothing breaks.
Be careful with comparisons like these.
Linux lumps disk I/O into the load average, whereas most "other" Unixes don't. I've seen a Linux box with a load of 300+ and idle CPU, and a Sun with a load of 2 that was near unusable because the disks were being thrashed to death.
Comparing the two can be unfair to either side depending on the context. It's apples and laundry detergent.
Brandon Hume
hume -> BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca, http://WWW.BOFH.Halifax.NS.Ca/
I'd like to give Znork some credit here.
ZFS is really, really nice but it does have some warts and the biggest for many would be that arcane operating system that's dangling off its nutsack. Yes the solaris kernel is great, scales like a champ etc. but the userland and the lack of centralized package management (in 2008, no less!) are bad joke.