New Features in Solaris Express 1/06
This section describes all features that are new or have been enhanced in
the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
ZFS Web-Based Management Feature
In the Solaris Express 1/06 release, an enhancement has been made to the
ZFS feature that was introduced in the Solaris Express 12/05 release. For a
description of this ZFS enhancement, see ZFS Web-Based Management.
x86: PCI Express Support on x86 Systems
This device management feature is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
This Solaris release provides support for the PCI Express (PCIe) interconnect. PCIe is
designed to connect peripheral devices to desktop, enterprise, mobile, communication, and embedded applications.
The PCIe interconnect is an industry-standard, high-performance, serial I/O bus. For details on
PCIe technology, go to the following site:
https://www.pcisig.com
The PCIe software provides the following features in this Solaris release:
Support for extended PCIe configuration space
Support for PCIe baseline error handling and MSI interrupts
Modified IEEE-1275 properties for PCIe devices
PCIe hotplug support (both native and ACPI-based) by enhancing the cfgadm_pci component of the cfgadm command
ATTN Button usage-based PCIe peripheral autoconfiguration
The following cfgadm example output displays the hotpluggable PCIe devices on an
x86 system. Note that the display below may differ from platform to platform.
Check your hardware platform guide for the correct cfgadm syntax.
# cfgadm pci
Ap_Id Type Receptacle Occupant Condition
pcie1 unknown empty unconfigured unknown
pcie2 unknown empty unconfigured unknown
pcie3 unknown empty unconfigured unknown
pcie4 etherne/hp connected configured ok
pcie5 pci-pci/hp connected configured ok
pcie6 unknown disconnected unconfigured unknown
The administrative model for hotplugging PCIe peripherals is the same as for PCI
peripherals, which uses the cfgadm command.
For more information, see the cfgadm_pci(1M) man page and the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems. Check
your hardware platform guide to ensure that PCIe and PCIe hotplug support is
provided on your system. In addition, carefully review the instructions for physically
inserting or removing adapters on your system. And, review the semantics of device
auto-configuration, if applicable.
SSL Proxy Module
This security enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
A kernel level SSL proxy server has been added in this
release. The proxy simplifies and accelerates the SSL/TLS protocol implementation by pushing handshake and
records processing to the kernel. The proxy supports the most commonly used cipher
suites. Applications, such as webservers, can be enabled to offload the handling of
the SSL operations with those cipher suites to the proxy, and seamlessly fall
back to their existing user-level SSL l library for the others.
For more information, see the ksslcfg(1M) man page.
TCP_INIT_CWND Socket Option
This networking enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
The new TCP socket option, TCP_INIT_CWND, enables an application to override the settings
in the initial TCP congestion window, as described in RFC 3390, “Increasing TCP's
Initial Window.” By default, TCP sets the initial congestion window at connection
set up time and after an idle period. (An idle period is when
no traffic occurs between the two ends of the TCP connection. An application
can use the TCP_INIT_CWND socket option to set the initial congestion window
to a specified number of TCP segments. So the value of this
new socket option is used both at the connection start time and after
an idle period to set the initial congestion window. The process must have
the PRIV_SYS_NET_CONFIG privilege if a number greater than that calculated by RFC 3390
must be specified.
For further information, see the tcp(7P) man page.
x64: Watchdog Timeout Feature
This additional software is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
The Watchdog mechanism detects a system hang. This feature is a timer that
is continually reset by a user application as long as the operating
system and user application are running. While the watchdog timer is operating in application
mode, an additional alarm function, Alarm 3, is available to generate alarms in
case of critical problems in the user application.
Object Migration and Interoperability Enhancements for pktool
This security enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
The pktool command enables users to manage PKCS#11 objects. New subcommands have been
added that can be used to move, display, and delete PKCS#11 objects. The
subcommands can also show which PKCS#11 tokens are available. These operations help migrate
cryptographic objects to or from the default Sun Software PKCS#11 softtoken or from
other PKCS#11-compliant tokens.
For further information, see the pktool(1) man page.
Deimos Cryptographic Accelerator
This driver support is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
The DCA driver supports Sun's SCA1000 and SCA500 cryptographic accelerator cards. Additionally,
the driver will support Broadcom's 5820, 5821, and 5822 cards.
All of these cards support the following operations:
The driver acts as cryptographic service provider to the Solaris Cryptographic Framework. The
driver can be used by anyone who uses this framework.
HBA Drivers
These driver enhancements have been added to the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
The following HBA drivers have been added to the Solaris OS to
support the full family of QLogic and Emulex HBA products which includes the
following Sun and non-Sun HBAs:
These HBA drivers provide choice of selection with a single fibre channel implementation.
The supported HBAs are Solaris-ready certified and also enable PCI-X and PCIe
4 Gbyte HBA support.
For further information, refer to the following links:
Driver Support for New STK Tape Drive 10000 “Titanium”
This driver support is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
This release adds the st driver, a driver for SCSI tape devices. This
feature provides support for the new StorageTekTM tape drive T10000A “Titanium.”
For further information, see the st(7D) man page.
x86: Driver Support for AMD64 Platform
This driver support is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
In this release, the glm driver has been ported to the x64 platform.
This driver enables you to use the x4422a card on the AMD64 platform.
For further information, see the glm(7D) man page.
USB-to-Serial Driver for Prolific Adapters
This driver is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
This USB-to-serial driver supports Prolific pl2303 chipset-based adapters. With this new driver, customers
can choose between Edgeport adapters and Prolific adapters.
For more information, see usbsprl(7D) man page.
USB-to-Serial Driver for Keyspan Adapters
This driver is new in the Solaris Express 1/06 release.
A new driver is provided in the release for Keyspan USB-to-serial adapters. This
driver supports the USA-19HS model. With this new driver, customers have a choice
between Edgeport adapters and Keyspan adapters.
For further information, see the usbsksp(7D) man page.
