Solaris[tm] 9 Operating Environment 8/03
Description and What's New

The Solaris 9 8/03 Operating Environment builds on the success of the Solaris 9 OE. Enhancements in the areas of scalability, availability, manageability and security define the industry leading UNIX(TM) operating environment. This Solaris 9 update integrates fixes, performance improvements as well as select new technologies in a tested easy-to-install configuration, while maintaining guaranteed binary compatibility with prior Solaris releases. Our commitment to compatibility ensures the highest level of investment protection for our customers.

• Guided Tour
• Datasheet
• Solaris Operating Environment - Family Comparison Chart

Key Features

• GNOME 2.0

  GNOME 2.0 is an intuitive new desktop user interface that enables users to easily manage files and documents, launch applications, locate information, access menus, and personalize their work environment. It is an alternative to CDE, is built from open source software, and is also in widespread use on Linux platforms. Transitioning from CDE to GNOME is very easy because your favorite applications will continue to run in the GNOME desktop even if they are built around Java technology or a CDE/Motif design center. For more information, see http://www.sun.com/gnome/.
  
  The visually appealing and intuitive user interface enhances productivity and efficiency; and can be customized to suit the user's working style. Efficient navigation enables fast access to the most frequently used applications, utilities, and accessories, and at the same time helps the user keep track of tasks.

• Multi-terabyte UFS (SPARC Platform only)

  The creation of UFS filesystems up to 16 terabytes in size is now supported
  
  UFS will now support a larger storage capacity. The usable space within UFS is now being increased from 1TB to up to 16 TB

• Live Upgrade Boot Environment Enhancements

  Allows creation of boot environments when the Solaris operating environment is installed. Provides mechanism to allow finer control over which file systems, directories, and files should be excluded or included when creating a new boot environment. Enables creating, splitting and deleting of SDS/Solaris Volume Manager mirrors. Allows upgrade from volume managed file systems to Solaris Volume manager file systems.
  
  These enhancements allow JumpStart to automatically create boot environments during install time, making the Live Upgrade copy process faster. Splitting a mirror requires no copy time, decreasing time to migrate. Customers can easily migrate to Solaris Volume Manager from other volume manager products
  
  Customers have the choice of selecting their Operating Environment (OE) and can select from the rock solid, high-performance Solaris OE or the popular Red Hat Enterprise Linux OE as well.

• PDASync Support PalmOS 4.0/5.0 & Globalization

  The PDA Sync application synchronizes the data from Sun applications such as Desktop Calendar, Desktop Mail, Memo, and Address, with data in similar applications on user's Personal Digital Assistant with Palm OS 4.0 and 5.0. PDASync 2.0 supports the latest Java Standard Edition 1.4.x
  
  Chinese, Korean and Japanese PDA users will now be able to synchronize their data with popular Palm devices.

• Smartcard Terminal Interfaces

  Solaris now implements the MUSCLE PC/SC IFD specifications for Smart Card device drivers. The Smart Card Administration interface (GUI and command line) has also been modified to allow for selection of these new drivers.
  
  Support for this new specification allows third party developers to very easily port smart card reader device drivers to the Solaris operating system. There are a substantial number of device drivers available in source form at the MUSCLECard Web site : http://www.musclecard.com/

• BIND 8.3.3

  BIND (Berkeley Internet Name Domain) is an implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) developed cooperatively by ISC and implemented by several vendors in multiple operating systems. BIND continues to be an important component of the Solaris Operating Environment to our customers.
  
  BIND 8.3 introduces IPv6 transport support for the resolver library and several bug fixes.

• TCP Multi-Data Transmit (MDT)

  The current model for packet transmission throughout the Solaris TCP/IP stack and network device driver is geared towards sending one packet at a time. Multi-data transmit removes that limitation.
  
  Allows multiple packets to be transmitted from the TCP/IP stack to the driver in a single call, increasing overall system performance.

• Unicode 3.2 support in Solaris Unicode locales

  The Unicode consortium announced a new version of the Unicode Standard Version 3.2. Unicode 3.2 introduces additional 1,016 new characters.
  
  Users will now have a wider set of Unicode characters to choose from within their Unicode locale environments

• XScreenSaver

  Integrates support for the XScreenSaver application into the Solaris X11 software, giving users Screen lock function and broad choices of graphical features for screen saving.
  
  This essential user security feature gives the new GNOME desktop state of the art screen lock functionality. Because it is integrated with PAM, it allows users to use Smart Cards as a means of authentication.

• Audit Enhancements

  The Basic Security Module (BSM) Audit system has been enhanced in several areas. It now does not produce audit records for public objects by default. The L1-A key is not disabled by default when first enabling audit. Audit classes have be redefined for finer granularity. Audit reports can now be produced in XML format via the praudit(1m) command.
  
  To reduce the amount of 'noise' in audit files, read request to files owned by the system do not produce audit log entries. Also, when running bsmconv(1m) to enable system auditing, the L1-A system interruption key is not disabled by default. Finally, output of audit records into XML format via the praudit(1m) command allow for an administrator to further analyze audit logs in a standard, documented format via XML parsers.