I'm a FreeBSD guy but somewhat recently began work at a Solaris shop. We're running mostly Solaris 8 and 9 but even still have Solaris 6 & 7 on some servers. Machines are not patched as they should be. Thus I'd like to begin upgrading.
I've fiddled with Solaris 10 a bit but find difficulty with the whole package system for software and patches. Coming from FreeBSD, I'm used to what its call a "ports" system which is basically a collection of shell scripts that downloads source and then compiles. Compile time options can be set so software is compiled with desired options. It also pulls in and builds any dependencies. From an admin perspective, all one has to do is type "portupgrade" with appropriate options and the system takes care of the rest. With Solaris 10, I find old and outdated packages available from Sun and it's up to me to figure out dependencies. I'm also aware of blastwave and sunfreeware which are more current but still a manual process. Maybe I just don't get it but for me, package and patch management on Solaris is pure hell! Thus I am interested in OpenSolaris and its IPS package system. It appears that it provides similar function to package managers from the Linux world such as rpm, yum, and apt-get. I am also encouraged by this OpenSolaris help list to guide me along the way. I have not found any such reliable list or forum for Solaris. So, is OpenSolaris a viable OS for a production shop? It would basically host common unix services such as Apache, PHP, MySQL, Samba, DNS, DHCP, LDAP, etc. Are SPARC and x86 processor support equally stable? Thoughts, opinions, nudges to appropriate links, etc. all appreciated. Thanks, Drew -- Be a Great Magician! Visit The Alchemist's Warehouse http://www.alchemistswarehouse.com
