SUMMARY: Solaris 2.6 stability

Brian T. Wightman (wightman@acm.org)
Tue, 10 Feb 1998 06:40:19 -0500

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Well, it looks like responses have stopped trickling in.

It appears that the consensus is that 2.6 is much more stable than
previous versions of Solaris. That being said, there are a few
issues of which to be aware [not verified, just a compiled list -
BTW]:

* Named hangs [could be a local problem]
* Resolver libraries changed a lot from 2.5->2.6
* Printing interface has changed (i.e. /etc/lp/printers/*)
* OS will randomly send packets out with address of virtual
address instead of primary address. Because of this, NFS
clients need to know of all interfaces.
* /var/adm/loginlog didn't work (has since been patched)
* Font rendering problem (visible in Netscape). Bug 4060341.
* Some third party software [some from SunSoft?] will fail due
to static linking vs. libsocket (NeWSprint, AVS/Express <= 3.2
- you must relink, AOLpress 2.0 with build date < Dec 1997,
static Z-Mail binaries, SparcCompiler < 4.2, gcc+top+lsof build
for 2.5.1 - recompile
* NFS problems when client is 2.6 and server is IRIX 6
* mmap'd NFS files may be a problem
* netstat reports errors that are not actually errors (patch avail)
* NFS.3 mount from SGI to 2.6: tcsh builtin "ls-F" doesn't list all
files. Mount NFS.2 and it is fine.

The general opinion of the responses was that 2.6+patches is more
stable, faster, and bulletproof than 2.5 or 2.5.1+patches.

Thanks to the following people for their feedback:

Thomas Anders
Steve Binyon
Mike Blandford
Frank Cusack
Dan Dunn
Philip A. Fitzpatrick
Chuck Milam
Igor Schein
Stephen Wolthusen
Scott F. Woods

Original Message:

Hi all,

Quick question: how stable is Solaris 2.6. I had a vendor tell me
today that 2.6 has a couple of major problems with it WRT the
network/NFS subsystem.

Anyone have any non-fud information on this?

TIA, and I will summarize.
Brian

Brian
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