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  • How to enforce password complexity on Solaris

    Posted May 12, 2012 - 7:44 pm

    Solaris 10 is the first version of Solaris to provide a complex set of variables for controlling password strength. The /etc/default/passwd file contains a series of parameters -- most commented out when a system is first installed -- that allow you to exercise some fairly rigorous constraints on the passwords your users may select.

  • Oracle has a Sun spot

    Posted September 28, 2011 - 3:23 pm

    Oracle is pushing itself into a corner, a fantastic money-making corner, but a corner nonetheless.

  • Why I Love Unix

    Posted October 27, 2010 - 8:48 am

    Sandra Henry-Stocker's long-standing and largely happy relationship with Unix has been an interesting and rewarding trek. If she hasn't helped you to love Unix, let her try just once more.

  • Unix How-To: Checking Responses with ckyorn

    Posted September 1, 2010 - 8:11 am

    In last week's column, we looked at ckrange, a Solaris tool for validating numeric responses in scripts. A related command, ckyorn (for "check yes or no"), ensures that a user responds with some version of yes or no. With similar behavior to ckrange, ckyorn has the same advantages of simplifying your code so that you don't have to check whether a user has entered y, Y, Yes, yes, n, N, No, no or even YeS or nO.

  • Unix How-To: Checking Responses with ckrange

    Posted August 25, 2010 - 11:53 am

    One of the all too common coding mistakes leading to security vulnerabilities is the failure to validate all entered data for accuracy. A defensive developer will consider all input to be evil until proven otherwise. Anyone writing scripts on Solaris has a leg up when it comes to input validation -- the versatile and wonderfully handy ckrange command.

  • Friday the 13th, Part II: Oracle Officially Ends OpenSolaris

    Posted August 13, 2010 - 3:18 pm

    An OpenSolaris developer leaks an apparent Oracle internal memo that details the end of the line for the OpenSolaris Project.

  • OpenSolaris Appears Missing from Oracle-Sun Party

    Posted January 27, 2010 - 4:31 pm

    There is a lot of news coming out of Silicon Valley today, as Oracle and Sun host a five-hour marathon briefing on just how Oracle's approved acquisition of Sun will effect both companies' present and future customers.

  • Great and Disappointing Operating Systems of the Decade

    Posted December 21, 2009 - 7:14 am

    There were literally hundreds of them from huge companies down to busy people with laptops: operating systems. Some found their way into microdevices, watches, refrigerators, mobile phones, cars, motorcycles, jets, even the International Space Station. Occasionally, they worked, and perhaps they worked well. Others, sadly, didn't-- or weren't the right thing at the right time. We name names.

  • Getting help with scat

    Posted August 18, 2009 - 1:47 pm

    Since we looked at mdb last week and probed into a core dump, we should take a quick look at another tool for analyzing core dumps. The "scat" tool provides an easy way to extract an extensive amount of information from a core dump and provide it to you in a relatively readable fashion (as readable as data from a core dump is ever likely to be). Once you start the tool, you can get some help figuring out what commands to use.

  • Unix tip: Putting old systems to sleep

    Posted January 28, 2009 - 3:27 pm

    When you're about to shut down a system that isn't serving any useful purpose right now -- whether to save power or preserve an old environment -- it's a good idea to make sure it will reboot when needed without a lot of work. In today's column, we'll look at the proper procedure for putting a system to sleep.

  • Unix tip: 7-Zip to the rescue

    Posted December 30, 2008 - 4:55 pm

    Need to build or extract files from archives in a wide range of formats? Ever heard of 7-Zip? Now that I've used it, it goes into my standard tool set!

  • Using prtdiag to troubleshoot system problems

    Posted October 15, 2008 - 5:00 am

    Those amber warning lights on your servers are trying to tell you something. Want to know what they're trying to tell you? Take a look at the output of the "prtdiag -v" command and you might learn more about your system than you knew could be known.

  • Setting up Jumpstart clients: Create a profile

    Posted July 17, 2008 - 4:38 pm

    Setting up client jumpstart profiles might seem tedious, but can save you a lot of time, particularly if you will be installing many identical systems.

  • Setting up Jumpstart clients

    Posted July 10, 2008 - 6:25 pm

    Setting up jumpstart clients can be tedious, but you can make the process easier with simple scripts and some insights into the files that are added to and updated on your jumpstart server.
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