The document provides an overview of OpenSolaris, including a brief history of Solaris and its development into OpenSolaris. It describes key Solaris and OpenSolaris technologies like ZFS, DTrace, SMF, and Zones. It also discusses the licensing of OpenSolaris code and summarizes some drawbacks and alternative OpenSolaris distributions.

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OpenSolaris
Overview
Ivan Richwalski
ivan@seppuku.net
http://seppuku.net/

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A brief history
● SunOS 1 - 4
 Based on original BSD
 Sun 680x0 workstations
 Later added Sun SPARC
● AT&T & Sun collaboration in 1987
 Merging the best parts to create SVR4
● New operating system named Solaris 2
 ( SunOS 4 retroacively named Solaris 1 )
 Solaris brand to identify whole system
 OS, Graphics system, Desktop software

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A brief history
● 1989 – AT&T forms Unix System Labs
● 1991 – First Solaris 2 release
● 1993 – AT&T sells USL to Novell
● 1994 – Sun buys out license from Novell
 No more license/royalties, Sun owns the code
● Early 2004 – OpenSolaris planning begins
● Late 2004 – OpenSolaris pilot project starts
● 2005 – Open to the public
 Dtrace source, website & lists, more code mid-year
● 2007 – Ian Murdock joins Sun, project Indiana starts

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Solaris/OpenSolaris Today
● Supports SPARC, x86 CPUs
● Both 32 and 64 bit kernels
 SPARC systems 64 bit kernel only
 Mixed 32 & 64 bit programs on 64 bit kernel
● Highly scaleable
 32 CPUs on 32 bit x86, 256 on 64 bit, 512 on SPARC

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Licensing
● CDDL - Common Development & Distribution License
 Kernel, drivers, and most of userland programs
● OpenSolaris Binary License
 Not open source, but is freely redistributable
 http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/no_source
● Lots of other code with their own licences
 GPL, BSD, MIT, Apache, Perl Artistic, etc.

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About the CDDL
● Comon Development & Distribution License
● Based on Mozilla Public License v1.1
● File Based
● Allows combination with code that has other
compatible licenses
● Requires modifications shared back
● Explicit patent license, “patent peace” clause
● http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/licensing_faq

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CDDL Misconceptions
● Gives Sun ownership of your code
 You retain ownership/copyright of your code
 Seperate contributor agreement for including your source
code in Sun's code base
● Designed to be GPL incompatible
 Compatible with lots of other licences
 File based, does not require everything to be under CDDL
● http://blogs.sun.com/cmh/entry/cddl_is_it_so_bad
● http://blogs.sun.com/harpster/entry/cddl_me_elmo

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Building an operating system
● Many seperate consolidations
 Operating System/Networking ( aka ON )
 Kernel, drivers, networking, libraries, services, & commands
 X11
 Desktop
 Gnome, Firefox, Thunderbird
 SFW ( Sun Freeware, various open source software )
 Globalization ( includes internationalization & localization )
● Not all consolidations open sourced
 SPARC Graphics Drivers
 OpenWindows, CDE ( obsolete, removed )

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SMF: Service Management Facility
● Framework for defining persistent system services
● Each service identified by FMRI
( Fault Management Resource Identifier )
● A service can have multiple instances

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SMF: Service Management Facility
● Configuration stored in repository
 Persistant, transaction based, safe rollback
● XML manifests used to import/export service
● Tracks dependencies, manages parallel startup

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SMF: Service Management Facility
● Restarters responsible for managing services
● New process attribute: contract
 Restarter alerted if contract becomes empty
 Decides what action to take

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SMF: Service Management Facility
● Long running & transient ( run once ) services
● Service manifest defines how service runs
 User/Group Credentials
 Process Privileges
 Working Directory
 Environment variables
 Project ID / Resource Pool
● Delegated administration of services
● Users assigned profiles for managing services
 [ demo 1 ]

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Fault Management Daemon
● Manages diagnosis engines, response agents, logging
● Recieves telemetry from other parts of system
 Hardware error reports ( CPU, memory, IO bus bit errors )
 Driver faults ( NIC reporting corrupted data )
 Disk errors ( bad blocks, disk not responding )
● Diagnoses problem, takes action when needed
 Offline/retire faulty CPUs & memory pages
 Reroute IO ( Multipath disks, aggregated NICs )
 Activate disk hot spares
 Restart affected services via SMF
 Send alerts via syslog, SNMP

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ZFS
● Pooled storage
 Does away with dealing with partitions/slices
 Eliminates extra volume manager layer
 Simplifies administration, improves performance
Volume Filesystem FS
Storage Pool

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ZFS
● Pool built on one or more vdevs
 Stripe, Mirror, Raidz1, Raidz2, Raidz3
 Able to add additional vdevs to a pool
● NFSv4/NTFS style ACLs
● Instant read-only snapshots
 Can be cloned to create new writeable filesystem
● Delegated administration
 Allow users & groups ability to manage own filesystems
 Fine grained control of allowed tasks
● Compression, deduplication
● In place upgrades for new capabilities

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ZFS
● Guaranteed data protection
 Checksums used end to end, catches & repairs corruption
 Transactional writes, always consistent state on disk
 Copy on write, never alters live data, no “write hole”
 Checksum Trees, checksum stored in parent block pointer
 Avoids corruption hitting both data & checksum together
 Validate entire pool by walking whole tree
 Background scrubbing & resilvering
● Maximum performance
 Writes spread across all devices in pool
 Most disk writes sequential due to copy on write/transactions
 Smart prefetch, detects length & striding reads

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ZFS
● Self healing ( as long as there's redundancy )
● Redundant copies of all filesystem metadata
● Copies of user data optional, setable on the fly
App App App
Mirror Mirror Mirror

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ZFS & SSDs
● Seperate Intent Logs ( aka “slogs” )
 Intent log used for synchronous writes
 Normally uses space from disks in pool
 Move to SSD for fast, short lived writes ( NFS, iSCSI )
● Level 2 ARC ( aka “L2ARC” )
 ARC == Adaptive Replacement Cache in memory
 L2ARC best for read optimized SSDs
 Faster than disk, slower & cheaper than RAM

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ZFS vs btrfs
● 2001 start, 2005 release ● 2007 development start
● CDDL License ● GPL License
● Checksum: fletcher2, ● Checksum: crc32, off
fletcher4, sha256, off
● Always copy-on-write ● Selective copy-on-write
● Device removal, defrag
● No fsck needed ● Online/offline fsck
● Rollback from snapshot

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DTrace
● Dynamic Tracing of kernel & userland code
● Simplified C-like “D” language
 Added functions and variables for tracing
 Thread-local variables
● Completely safe to run on production systems
● Zero probe effect when dtrace not running

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DTrace
● Provider: syscall, pid, proc, io, fbt ( functional block trace )
● Module: Process executable, library, driver
● Function
● Name: entry, return, connection-start, connection-done
● Applications can also have their own providers

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IPS: Image Packaging System
● Replaces old SVR4 packaging system
● Network based software repository & delivery
● GUI and CLI package tools
● Multi-variant packages

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IPS: Image Packaging System

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IPS: Image Packaging System
● Uses ZFS to create & manage boot environments

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Desktop
● Gnome 2.28
● Xorg 1.7
● Compiz ( on live CD )
● Firefox 3.5.8
● Thunderbird 3.0.1
● Device Driver Utility

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Desktop
● Time Slider
 Automated ZFS Snapshots
 Addon to Nautilus File Manager
 Enable/disable per filesystem
● [ demo ]
● Future improvements
 Backup to external media
 Better retention configuration

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Crossbow: Network Virtualization
● Great for server & network consolidation
● Add virtual NICs, switches, & vlans
● Assign cpu resources, priorities, bandwidth limits
 Local IP/network & remote IP/network
 Local & remote network port
 Transport type ( tcp, udp, sctp, icmp, icmpv6 )
 Limit max bandwidth, set relative priority
 Extended accounting for flows for tracking usage

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Zones
● OS level virtualization, “chroot on steroids”
 One kernel, isolated userland instances
 Seperate naming services inside each zone ( DNS, NIS, LDAP )
 Processes isolated within zones
 Broad resource controls
 Processor pools, process, thread, memory, swap limits
 Limited privileges & device access
 Must be granted by configuration
 Shared ip stack networking or exclusive access to NIC

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Branded Zones
● Support for non-native environments
 Interpretation layer to translate from brand to native
 System calls, signals, process & thread handling
 Different brand types
 native: on Solaris 10 / Solaris Express releases
 ipkg: for OpenSolaris releases
 lx: Linux 2.4 kernel & 32 bit apps
 lx26: Experimental Linux 2.6 support
 solaris8 & solaris9: on SPARC ( commercial support )
 s10brand: to support transition of Solaris 10 to future versions
● [ zones demo ]

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xVM
● OpenSolaris as dom0 on top of Xen
 Xen 3.4 hypervisor & tools
 Live migration support
 Full & Paravirtualized domU on top of hypervisor
 Intel VT or AMD-V instruction set needed for Full HVM
 OpenSolaris as full PV guest
● Use Crossbow for managing networking
● Can use ZFS volumes for storage

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COMSTAR
● Common Multiprotocol SCSI Target
● Seperates storage backend from access methods
● LUN masking & mapping
● Multipathing over different transports
COMSTAR

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COMSTAR
● Logical Unit Providers
 Disk, Tape, Virtual Tape Library logical units
 Actual storage via ZFS volume, raw disk, file, tape
 Supports thin provisioning
COMSTAR

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COMSTAR
● Port Providers
 Exports LUNs to other hosts
 Looks like normal block device to the host
 iSCSI, FibreChannel, FCoE, SAS, iSER ( iSCSI over RDMA )
Server 1
Server 2
COMSTAR
Server 3

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CIFS Server
● Native, in kernel CIFS server
● Can join Windows domain
● LDAP/Windows AD user maps
● Map Windows Security ID to
Solaris user/group
● NT ACL stored natively in ZFS
● ZFS snapshots work with
Windows Shadow Copy
● Virus scan engine support
 Integrated into ZFS, uses ICAP
 Protects NFS & local access too

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Trusted Extensions
● Replaces previous seperate “Trusted Solaris” OS
● System enforced mandatory access control policies
● Explicit authorization needed to cross security labels
● Device & network access also labeled
● [ demo ]

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Drawbacks
● Uses more memory
● No KDE ( Other distros include KDE )
● ZFS block pointer rewrite a ways off yet
 For online pool resizing, re-compress/dedup/defrag
● ZFS encryption still being developed
● IPS going through heavy development
● Power Management, Suspend/Resume
● Limited Wi-Fi chipsets supported
● Proprietary media codecs
 Fluendo commercial gstreamer plugins

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Other Distributions
● OpenSolaris: http://opensolaris.com/
 Official Sun/Oracle sponsored distribution
● BeleniX: http://belenix.org/
 First non-Sun Live CD & GUI distro
 KDE, GNOME, & XFCE packages
● Nexenta: http://nexenta.org/
 OpenSolaris kernel, Ubuntu userland & packaging
 Easy NAS/SAN Seutp
 Commercially supported NexentaStor storage platform

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Other Distributions
● EON: http://sites.google.com/site/eonstorage/
 Embedded Operating System/Networking
 Small NAS focused distribution
● MilaX: http://www.milax.org/
 Started as mini/rescue CD experiment
 Full CD/USB based distro, enough for older hardware
● Jaris: http://jaris.jp/
 Japanese based distribution

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Other Distributions
● Schillix: http://schillix.berlios.de/
 First non-sun distribution
 Lead by Joerg Schilling
● MarTux
 First SPARC distribution
● Korona:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_on_Solaris/OpenSolaris/Korona
 KDE4 based test drive Live DVD
 Experimental, currenly on KDE 4.3.98