Similar to jumpstarting a server we can automate the process of answering the questions asked during a zone's initial boot. Drop this in the zone's /etc/ directory and boot it up. You might need to modify some settings to customize to your region or language.

These questions usually prompt for locale settings and root password.
system_locale=C
timezone=US/Eastern
terminal=xterms
security_policy=NONE
root_password=rootpw
timeserver=localhost
name_service=NONE
network_interface=primary {hostname=zone2
netmask=255.255.255.0
protocol_ipv6=no

During the process of upgrading updating to Solaris 10 from Solaris 9. I noticed that Sendmail was not able to relay to our Microsoft Exchange cluster. In my past experience with Sendmail I usually only had to update the DS macro in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf configuration file restart Sendmail and we would be ready to relay. However within Solaris 10 this did not work. A peak at the Sendmail maillog revealed:

Want to clear your command trail when logging out of a system? If your on a Linux machine and using the bash shell simply append the following to your .bash_logout located in your home directory. This is a hidden file so you'll need to do a ls -a to see it.

Here is an example of my .bash_logout:

#~/.bash_logout

If your reading this your probably looking for a way to boot Solaris without a GUI login. To disable GUI logins we run a single command to get the job done. Since many servers usually run services that do not require GUI login terminals we can disable GUI logins to increase system security as well as performance. Here is a quick tip on how to disable the graphical GUI login.  After the system finishes booting simply open a shell and issue:

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -d

to disable the GUI or

/usr/dt/bin/dtconfig -e

The following tutorial demonstrates how to install and configure DJBDNS on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system. If you are new to DJBDNS it is basically an alternative to Bind designed with security in mind. For more information on DJBDNS please visit http://cr.yp.to/djbdns.html.

The first part of this series covers how to install and get DJBDNS working.

Prerequisites