CERN Accelerating science

The Solaris 8 certification process finished on the 13th September 2002, thus making Solaris 8 the recommended Solaris version at CERN.

The operating system level is Solaris 8 HW 02/02 with the latest Sun recommended patches as available in /afs/cern.ch/project/sun/solaris/patches2.8.

The recommended post-installation is described by the CERN SUE feature as available in /afs/cern.ch/project/sue/pro/sun4x_58/dist/feature/cern.

The default compilers are the Sun SPARCcompilers 6.1. The SPARCcompilers 6.2 and Sun ONE Studio 7 are also available, in particular you may find the production version of Sun ONE Studio 7 with the latest compiler patches in /afs/cern.ch/project/sun/solaris/opt/SUNWspro7.

A SUE feature to automate the installation of Java 1.4.0 as distributed by SUN for Solaris 8 is available. This is Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.0-b92) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.0-b92, mixed mode). This feature allows choosing between a remote installation using pointers to AFS and a local installation using Solaris packages. The feature is installed by executing /usr/sue/etc/sue.install java

The persons responsible for them in a cooperative effort have performed extensive tests of the main software packages used on Solaris at CERN with the system support people. Many thanks for the help of everybody involved. The Solaris 8 Certification page in http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/ce/UI/Docs/sol8cert.html provides the detailed list of tests performed, as well as the list of products and SUE features that are available.

The SUNINST0 Solaris network installation server has been upgraded to new hardware and software (Solaris 8). The upgrade was required due to the former SUNINST0 HW being extremely obsolete. We profited to consolidate the BOOTP/DHCP server used for Solaris installations onto the same machine. This service offers fully automated and reproducible "Jumpstart" Solaris installations through the network using BOOTP/DHCP protocol for Solaris 8 and RARP for older Solaris versions. Please contact Solaris.Support@cern.ch in order to define machines for installation.

Please note that, triggered by a request from CMS, we are working to upgrade the SUNDEV public Solaris service to Solaris 8 soon.

Should anybody have any concern or question about this upgrade please share it on the mailing list forum-solaris-certification@listbox.cern.ch. We also propose this list for discussions on product availability and versions on Solaris, with the goal of reaching wide consensus with the Solaris community before any important move.