How to create bootable USB in solaris

 How to create bootable USB (pen drive) in Solaris 

Why it is required: Sometime there is requirement to boot server using bootable iso media to resolve issues like root password recovery, new installation, server is in maintenance mode, booting server from iso etc. 

Steps:

1. Search in google "Solaris 11.4 iso download". Depending on server hardware (SPARC/X86) select appropriate option. Suppose we have SPARC hardware then we will download SPARC USB Text Installer

If we want to download iso on server for new installation then download below ISO image

SPARC Text Installer 

2. After downloading SPARC USB Text Installer, copy it to any working test Solaris server.

root@cdom3:~# ls -lrth
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        1.1G Jul 18 13:09 sol-11_4-text-sparc.usb
root@cdom3:~#

3. Attach bootable media (pendrive) to the test server to copy image properly on it.

root@cdom3:~# usbcopy sol-11_4-text-sparc.usb
Image type: dd-able Sparc
Found the following USB devices:
0:      /dev/rdsk/c9t0d0s2      14.7 GB SanDisk  Cruzer Blade     1.00
Enter the number of your choice: 0

WARNING: All data on your USB storage will be lost.

Are you sure you want to install to
SanDisk Cruzer Blade 1.00, 14700 MB at /dev/rdsk/c9t0d0s2 ?  (y/n) y
Copying and verifying image to USB device
Finished 1160 MB in 234 seconds (4.9MB/s)
Successfully completed copy to USB
root@cdom3:~#

Note : We will se message like "Successfully completed copy to USB"

4. As our bootable device is ready with the iso image, remove USB from the test server.

5. Attach the USB to the server which is in maintenance mode. Take login prompt, you will get ok prompt.

Run below commands to scan the devices connected to the servers. Here we are booting server from USB.

{0} ok probe-scsi-all       

Target 9
  Unit 0   Disk   HITACHI  H109030SESUN300G A606    585937500 Blocks, 300 GB
  SASDeviceName 5000cca043487328  SASAddress 5000cca043487329  PhyNum 0
Target a
  Unit 0   Disk   HITACHI  H109030SESUN300G A606    585937500 Blocks, 300 GB
  SASDeviceName 5000cca043487400  SASAddress 5000cca043487401  PhyNum 1

/pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/usb@0/hub@8/storage@1
  Unit 0   Removable Disk     SanDiskCruzer Blade1.00

{0} ok devalias

{0} ok show-disks
a) /reboot-memory@0
b) /pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@7/SUNW,qlc@0,1/fp@0,0/disk
c) /pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@7/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/disk
d) /pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6/SUNW,qlc@0,1/fp@0,0/disk
e) /pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@6/SUNW,qlc@0/fp@0,0/disk
f) /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk
g) /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk
h) /pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/usb@0/hub@8/storage@1/disk
i) /iscsi-hba/disk
q) NO SELECTION
Enter Selection, q to quit: h
/pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/usb@0/hub@8/storage@1/disk has been selected.
Type ^Y ( Control-Y ) to insert it in the command line.
e.g. ok nvalias mydev ^Y
         for creating devalias mydev for /pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/usb@0/hub@8/storage@1/disk

{0} ok devalias
screen                   /pci@380/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/display@0
primary-vds0             /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/virtual-disk-server@0
primary-vsw0             /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/virtual-network-switch@0
primary-vc0              /virtual-devices@100/channel-devices@200/virtual-console-concentrator@0
net3                     /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1
net2                     /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@1/network@0
disk5                    /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p1
disk4                    /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p0
scsi1                    /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0
cdrom                    /pci@3c0/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p3
net1                     /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@1/network@0,1
net                      /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@1/network@0
net0                     /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@1/network@0
disk3                    /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p3
disk2                    /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p2
disk1                    /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p1
disk                     /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p0
disk0                    /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p0
scsi                     /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0
scsi0                    /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0
virtual-console          /virtual-devices/console@1
name                     aliases

{0} ok boot mydev
Boot device: /pci@300/pci@1/pci@0/pci@2/scsi@0/disk@p0  File and args: mydev
/
Can't open mydev

 

Evaluating:
The file just loaded does not appear to be executable.
{0} ok boot /pci@340/pci@1/pci@0/pci@3/usb@0/hub@8/storage@1/disk

Regards,

Kiren Jadhav

How to mirror root disks in Solaris 11

 How to mirror root disks in Solaris 11

Mirroring root disks is used for redundancy purpose i.e. incase of failure of 1 disk the data will be accessible from other disks. If we want to mirror the root disk in rpool then we need to follow below process.

In this example we are mirroring root disk which are locally present on server. We can mirror the disks which are coming from external storage. 

1.       To know the disks attached to the server.

#echo |format

1.       Check rpool status. Here it is showing only 1 disk is present in rpool.

#zpool status rpool

1.       Attach one more disk of same size to rpool.

#zpool attach -f rpool <disk1> <New disk_disk2>

1.       Resilvering will start on new disk and till that time you will see the particular pool in Degraded state.

 

What is resilvering: Resilvering operation is moving data from the good copies to the new device.

1.       Once resilvering done the pool will have status ONLINE and you will be see 2 disks in mirrored.

Thanks,

Kiren Jadhav

Unable to do root login even after entering correct root password in solaris 11

Unable to ssh root user even after entering correct root password in solaris 11

After doing OS installation on physical server or ldom/zones, we try to login using root user but sometimes it fails even though we use correct root password. And if we try to login via console using same password then we will be able to login.

This means there is nothing to do with password, something need to be changed in sshd configuration file. Here is the solution:

1.       Note down PermitRootLogin value in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file

1.       Take backup of /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

#cp -rp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config_15mar2024

 

2.       Edit sshd_config file using vi editor and change PermitRootLogin and PasswordAuthentication value to yes

1

Restart ssh service

Thanks,

Kiren Jadhav

How to delete/unconfigure ldoms in solaris 11

 How to delete/unconfigure ldoms in solaris 11:

1.       In this example, we are having primary domain and 1 logical domain.

List all the LDOMs which are running on primary domain.

ldm ls

 

2.       Stop all LDOMs which are running.

2.1 to stop all running ldoms; it will bring LDOMs in bound mode

ldm stop-domain -a   

2.2   unbound all the LDOMs

ldm unbind-domain -a

2.3   remove all ldoms and its resources from primary domain

ldm remove-domain -a

3.       List all services:

To list all services which are given from service domain.

ldm list-services

4.       Remove all 3 services:

4.1 Remove vds service

ldm remove-vds primary-vds0

If we directly remove vds service then it will get failed as we can see primary-vds0 disk has been added to LDOM testdb, so remove it first.

 

Below command it will remove forcefully virtual disk service added to any LDOM

ldm remove-vcc primary-vcc0

4.2 Remove vsw0 service.

ldm remove-vsw primary-vsw0

              4.3 Remove vcc0 service.

ldm remove-vcc primary-vcc0

 

5.       Check all sp-config file and try to restart primary domain using factory-default spconfig file.

 

ldm ls-spconfig

ldm set-config factory-default

 

6.       Now restart/shutdown server so it will take booting config as factory-default.

shutdown -y -i6 -g0

Thanks,

Kiren Jadhav

How to reduce coredump size in Solaris 11

How to reduce coredump size in Solaris 11.

Suppose rpool is full and we don’t have any scope for further housekeeping then we can try to reduce the size of coredump to free up some space in rpool.

If we reduce the size of coredump directly it will give us error and ask to do it forcefully but doing it forcefully may cause data loss.

Below are the steps to do reduce coredump size.

#dumpadm     >>> to get info on current dump device and savecore directory

# zfs get volsize rpool/dump       >>> To get vol size of dump device

#zfs create -V 10G rpool/dump1       >>> creating new dump volume of size 10G (suppose previous dumpsize is 20G)

# dumpadm -d /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/dump1          >>> set the dump device to new volume

#dumpadm             >>> We can see new dump device

#zfs list |grep -i dump                >>> We can see 2 dump devices here

#zfs destroy rpool/dump                       >>> destroy old dump device

Thanks,

Kiren Jadhav