Documentation and How-To Info

OpenSolaris documentation and how-to information is available here:

• The OpenSolaris Information Resources wiki is a sun.com site that hosts a variety of information created by and for the OpenSolaris community, for example, OpenSolaris 2009.06 guides such as the OpenSolaris System Administration Guide.

  This wiki also contains sections dedicated to specific audiences, such as new users, application developers, and sys admins. The sys admin section contains links to server admin how-to info organized by task (action), for example:

  • How to Access Files From Other File Systems
  • How to Create a ZFS File System Snapshot
  • How to Set Up Samba in the OpenSolaris 2009.06 Release
  • Migrating from Solaris 10 to OpenSolaris

  Additional sections contain links to server admin info organized by topic, links to laptop admin info organized by task (action), and links to laptop admin info organized by topic.

• The Use section of the opensolaris.com site* section provides links to documentation and how-to info for installing, using, administering, and distributing the OpenSolaris software.

• The documentation page at opensolaris.org* lists documentation resources available on opensolaris.org according to topic. In addition, the Documentation Consolidation Download Center* on opensolaris.org provides links to books and tutorials that can be downloaded.

  Note: The Explaining the various doc sites entry of The Doc Exchange blog by Alan McClellan, the community manager for the opensolaris.org documentation community, explains the difference between the documentation page at opensolaris.org* and the OpenSolaris documentation community pages*.

• The OpenSolaris Resource Collection on BigAdmin has links to third-party, community, and Sun resources. It also includes BigAdmin articles, tech tips, documentation, and resource centers, such as:

  • Resource Center for the Solaris OS and OpenSolaris OS on HP Servers
  • Using Amanda Enterprise 3.0 on Sun Fire X4500 Server With OpenSolaris 2008.11 OS
  • Using ZFS Snapshots With Zmanda Recovery Manager for MySQL on OpenSolaris 2008.11 OS
  • Understanding PCI Express Maximum Payload Size on OpenSolaris
  • Managing I/O Topology Changes Due to CPU Chip Failures in OpenSolaris
  • Assigning Meaningful Names to Network Interfaces, which introduces the concept of datalink interface "vanity naming" in OpenSolaris

• OpenSolaris document collections on docs.sun.com:

  • OpenSolaris System Administrator Collection
  • OpenSolaris Reference Manual Collection
  • OpenSolaris User Collection
  • OpenSolaris Software Developer Collection

• Man page consolidation, which contains 44 new man pages and a total of 5,637 man pages (95% of all the man pages in the SunOS reference manual)

• Genunix HOWTOs and Guides page* on genunix.org

And here are some specific how-to documents and articles that might be of interest:

• OpenSolaris how-to guides on opensolaris.com:

  • How to Configure a Logical Domain (pdf)*, which is intended to help sys admins configure SPARC CMT machines with logical domains (LDoms) and contains step-by-step instructions for installing the logical domain manager and configuring a guest domain
  • How to Install and Share a File System to CIFS Clients (pdf)*, which describes how to quickly and easily install and configure CIFS to share a file system to other CIFS clients, such as Microsoft Windows
  • OpenSolaris Network Administration for Administrators Familiar With Linux (pdf)*, which is for admins who are familiar with using the Linux command line for configuring and monitoring network connections on Linux systems and want to do the same tasks on OpenSolaris systems
  • OpenSolaris Automated Installer Guide (x86/x64/SPARC), which describes how to use the automated installer (AI) to perform "hands-free" network installations of the OpenSolaris OS on multiple client systems
  • How to Use SourceJuicer (pdf)*, which describes how to build new IPS software packages and submit them for review to be hosted on an IPS repository for users to install

• OpenSolaris resources on the Sun Developer Network (SDN) web site:

  • Working With Multiple Boot Environments on the OpenSolaris OS, which describes how to manage boot environments on OpenSolaris with beadm through an example
  • Installing Sun Web Stack on OpenSolaris OS, an article that shows how to install Web Stack, which contains popular preconfigured tools for developing and running applications
  • Developer Recipes: Setting Up an OpenSolaris NAS Box, which describes how to create a home NAS box to replace a Windows share machine

• Articles on genunix.org*, such as:

  • OpenSolaris with MacOS on MacBook Pro*, which provides instructions on how to configure a system to dual boot OpenSolaris and other operating systems
  • OpenSolaris on MacOS*, which provides instructions on how to set up guest operating systems with Virtual Box

• Migrating from Linux to Solaris or OpenSolaris, a good resource if you are familiar with a Linux distribution but less familiar with OpenSolaris or Solaris