Solaris 2.6

Components:

• SunOS 5.6
• OpenWindows 3.6
• CDE 1.2

Releases:

Beta Release: Dec. 1996

Initial Release: August 18, 1997

SunSolve Release Name: s297

Supported Hardware Platforms:

• SPARC: sun4c, sun4m, sun4d, sun4u
• Intel 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro

Newly supported hardware:

• SCSI-3 devices

Old hardware no longer supported:

• Intel 386 PC's (not Sun 386i's - those are not supported by any Solaris release)
• SPARCserver 630MP, 670MP, 690MP
• PowerPC
• Printers using the NeWSprint software
• GS & GT graphics devices
• SBus Expansion Subsystem

Changes from Solaris 2.5.1:

• new printing software based on the SunSoft Print Client from the Solaris Migration CD, including support for distributing printer config data via NIS or NIS+
• WebPrint - web based printer administration & Windows NT connectivity
• Power Management integrated into OS, x86 support added
• File synchronization for mobile machines ("like the Win95 Briefcase")
• OS Install/upgrade enhanced - can reallocate space when upgrading
• WebStart - a new web browser/Java-based install tool for "easy" installs of software from multiple cd's (upgrades and heavily customized installations will still require use of the existing install tools, which themselves will still not support installation from multiple CDs.)
• dataless client support removed in favor of AutoClient
• Direct Xlib support removed in favor of X Shared Memory (see Early Notifier #13632 or 2.6 Release Notes)
• vold added features: support for removable-media SCSI devices other than cdroms (i.e. Zip drives, syquest cartridges, etc.) (rfe/bug 1226629), WABI & SunPC able to access vold-controlled drives (rfe/bug 1214434), volrmmount command to provide additional user control over how vold mounts removable media (rfe/bug 1214453)
• The Answerbook viewer will have Web browser functionality added to support a new SGML format of answerbook - many of the Answerbook docs shipped with the OS will be converted to the new format, but both old & new formats will be supported for unbundled product docs & docs that aren't converted in time for release. (Contrary to prior posts, man pages will stay in troff format.) All answerbooks will be provided on a single CD, instead of having many CD's, each with one or two answerbooks on. (Sun has also made Answerbook 2 available over the web.)
• Java Virtual Machine 1.1.2 (with native threads) and HotJava WWW browser included
• DHCP server & client software
• CDE 1.2 - integrated into OS CD, dtlogin is the default on console instead of command-line login
• CDE's dtmail supports IMAP v4
• OpenWindows based on X11R6 (the original release, not R6.1, R6.2 or R6.3)
• TrueType font support
• NFS clients better able to deal with server failures through client failover and cachefs enhancements to allow use of cached data when server is down
• WebNFS added
• Sun WebServer added
• NISKIT bundled
• NIS+ enhancements: backup/restore, better support over WAN's, nis_cachemgr made multi-threaded and provides ypbind-like functionality for NIS+
• BIND DNS client/server upgraded to 4.9.5
• 64-bit file system interfaces (individual files > 2 gigs) based on the API agreed upon at the Large File Summit, and included in the Single UNIX Specification, Version 2 (UNIX 98) standard
• Single UNIX Specification Version 1 (aka SPEC 1170) Compliance - UNIX 95 branding; partial, but not full Single UNIX Specification, Version 2 (UNIX 98) compliance
• libw & libintl merged into libc, along with basename, dirname, regcmp, and regex calls from libgen (rfe/bug id 1258035)
• snprintf/vsnprintf added - currently as defined by BSD 4.4/GNU libc, future versions will comply with the UNIX 98 specification and the ISO C9x revised standard currently under development (rfe/bug id's 1220849, 1266418)
• POSIX standards support added: 1003.1b real-time support, POSIX Async I/O, POSIX.4 message passing
• Pluggable Authentication Model (PAM) - per-application configurable authentication choices (see also this presentation on PAM)
• Kerberos 5 client & server support
• GSS-API (Generic Security Service Application Program Interface, RFC's 1508 & 1509) - allows for RSA & Kerberos 5 functionality in RPC
• doors API available to the public, as well as used more places in the system (such as a new RPC transport which is supposed to show big performance increase over using the loopback interface)
• keyserv is multithreaded and uses the new doors RPC transport
• new PCMCIA Card Services interfaces added to DDI (rfe/bug id 1254731), booting from PCMCIA devices supported
• x86: new booting system supports EISA & Plug-and-Play devices, driver installation can be done by just inserting floppy with new driver ("just like Win95"), binary compatibility with SCO Unix
• device names persistent across reconfiguration boots
• X/Open Federated Naming (XFN) 2.0
• network clock synchronization via NTP (the Network Time Protocol, RFC 1305)
• general speedups in a variety of areas, including optimization improvements from upgrading to the SPARCompilers version 4.2 (better register allocation & branch prediction algorithms)
• Logging UFS pulled from Solstice DiskSuite 4.1 and integrated into main OS
• Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM) support added
• Virtual Memory enhancements: 4 gig total address space, page sizes > 4kb
• MP enhancements: ability to bind a process to a set of processors instead of just a single processor
• MT enhancements: user-level mutexes smarter (if waiting for a sleeping thread then just block - but if waiting for a live thread, go ahead and keep trying for a little bit)
• TCP/IP enhancements: Zero-copy hardware checksums on ATM, large windows, Maximum size of listen queue raised from 1024 (bug id 1265336)
• SCSI drivers (esp, isp, fas) now allow setting options at per-device level
• "Direct I/O" - halfway between UFS & raw partitions for databases
• Year 2000 Compliance: bug fixes for several utilities, all parts of O/S tested with date set past 2000 (Early Notifier #13631)