Solaris Support at Rutgers

The Open Systems Support group (OSS) coordinates support for Solaris 8 and 9 at Rutgers. That web page should be your primary reference. The CTO coordinates support for Solaris 10 and later, to the extent that we provide local support.

OSS works with Solaris administrators in at least the following ways:

• You can contract with OSS to administer systems
• If you administer your own systems, OSS will give you advice.
• OSS maintains a set of software and tools for Solaris

Solaris is now in some sense free. You can download copies directly from Sun. Security patches and new device drivers are available without paying for support. However full support requires a contract.

Rutgers currently pays for Solaris support on a University basis. This includes access to patches, and the ability to call for phone support. Phone support must go through one of a small number of contacts defined by OIT. In most cases it should not be necessary for you to purchase support yourself. (The exception is if you have a critical system, and need to be able to contact phone support directly.)

Here is a list of the primary software and tools:

• A mirror of public Sun patches. The patches are mirrored automatically. Note however that OSS is now advising people to go directly to sunsolve.sun.com for patches. They are not committed to maintaining the local mirror.
• Copies of Sun distributions. These are not always the most up to date versions, so you may be better off going to www.sun.com/software.
• A repository of commonly used software, in RPM format, at rpm.rutgers.edu.
• Tools for doing automated system installation and administration. I don't have a URL for these. If you're interested, you're probably best to contact the OSS staff directly. You're probably not going to be able to use these tools without their help.

The central systems in New Brunswick are maintained using these tools.

Online Sun Software

Anyone on the Rutgers network may mount oss-public-nfs:/rutgers/public. If you prefer to use the /net automount point, you will need a more complex path, currently /net/oss-public-nfs/vol/vol0/rutgers/public. (oss-dist has the current distributions. oss-media is older software.)

In oss-public-nfs/rutgers, you'll find several useful things:

• oss-dist/solaris/patchroot. A mirror of the patches from Sun. However OSS recommends that you go directly to sunsolve.sun.com for patches. You'll need to register for a free account at Sunsolve. If you need to access private patches (typically you don't) you'll need to supply a Sun Software Contract number. Because this web page is public, I'm not including it. People within Rutgers should contact OSS.
• oss-dist/solaris/Solaris_8|9|10. In Solaris 8 and 9, you'll see directories named BINARIES and ISO. ISO has images of the CD's. The BINARIES contain the extracted files. (Solaris 10 currently has only the ISO images.) See oss-dist/solaris/HOW_TO_MOUNT_ISO_IMAGES.RUTGERS for instructions on mounting the ISO images if you don't want to use them to burn CD's.
• oss-dist/solaris/Sun_Compilers contain distributions of the compilers and related language tools
• oss-media contains staroffice, Gnome, and a few other things. Use Sun_Compilers instead for the languages. However you're probably better getting newer versions directly from Sun.

RPM's

Rutgers maintains a repository of Sun software in RPM format. For more information, see rpm.rutgers.edu.

Solaris 10

OSS is currently not supporting Solaris 10 to the same degree as Solaris 9. Solaris 10 is being used by Enterprise Systems and Services and the Office of Instructional and Research Technology, but some other areas either have not upgraded yet or are evaluating Linux. For basic information on using Solaris 10 at Rutgers, see Installing Solaris 10 at Rutgers.