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:

http://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:

RSA
DSA
3DES
DES
RNG

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:

Solaris QLC Common driver for Sun and QLogic branded HBAs
Solaris EMLXS Common driver for Sun and Emulex 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 StorageTek^TM 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.